What did you do during TSR's dark days of '97

Eridanis said:
Your article about what you found there resides permanently on my hard drive. As a love letter to gaming, it has no equal.

Let me also say "Thank you."

Add my voice to the chorus

Thanks to you and your crew for making 3e (and it OGL sibs) such a great game.
 

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I became a DM and ran Darksun for about three years. Also played some 1st edition Greyhawk classiacs like the Keep on the Borderlands.

When that failed...I had a kid.
 

Davelozzi said:
dark days of 1997 when TSR was floundering and stopped printing new products for a period of roughly 7 months. Even if you had a subscription to Dragon or Dungeon, nothing came for months.

what happened in those days for you. How did you get your D&D fix?
I was overjoyed that TSr had gone under and perhaps finally the market might get more balanced rather than dominated by one player.

Until third edition came out, I saw DnD as unplayable - it didn't manage to meet any of my needs.
 



GURPS... er, excuse me. Heh, heh.

I played and ran (mostly) GURPS heavily.

GURPS Morrow Project
GURPS Fantasy-genre Homebrew (Mostly)
GURPS Twilight 2000
GURPS Traveller
GURPS Homebrew-Bioengineered/Psionic/MorrowProject/Reign-of-Steel type game (which was AWESOME, I might add. Gonna do that again when d20 Future comes out).

I owned tons of GURPS books. GURPS computer programs (GCA, GVehicleConstructor, etc). GURPS, GURPS, GURPS. And then :::BAM::: total burnout!!! Luckily, 3e came out something like a month or two later and I was saved! Saved, I say!!

Then I moved to California, lost my gaming group, had a divorce, and am now working 50-60 hours a week and doing joint custody of my daughter... Almost makes me wish I could go back to the "Dark Times." Heh.
 



I don't know if getting more tight with rpgs in the end can be seen as a natural reaction to the dark days of '97.

The days of '97 had a serious impact in Greece, where at the time 95% of the market was D&D (actually the only serious presence of other products on the shelves was Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and White Wolf's World of Darkness.
The dire condition of TSR which was the staple of our everyday rpg diet, meant that we as role players suffered as well. And the hobby stores in Greece suffered as well and were threatened with extinction because D&D was the main product - ensuring that rent was paid ;) .

At that time I have been playing for six years role playing games and the whole condition unfolded as a way of me getting a different perspective of the hobby (a more active one) not only playing with my group but getting to know the local rpg community as well and searching for something more from my hobby.

So the dark days of '97 became the starting point of me publishing a Greek fanzine for role playing games. In that way I found a medium to channel my creativity and get acquainted with organized attempts in my local environment, in that way getting more out my favourite hobby.

I also noted the same attitude in many persons of the Greek rpg community. I believe it is not a random fact that both the rpg unions active in Greece now, set out to rent a place and establish themselves in that period.

Seeing this period after some years it seems that reaching the bottom was exactly what might be needed. One could say that from the late 1994 up to 1997 there was a product and design stagnation , i.e with Greyhawk falling to oblivion by its official distributor... and that spillt over to the rpg community (at least the local Greek one from what I can tell). And the actual threat of total extinction of the hobby (because it was perceived in this kind of extreme way in Greece because of the special conditions) was the only thing that could reverse the gradual decline in the rpg hobby at the time.
 

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