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

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

In 1997 I was pretty much oblivious to what was happening in the gaming world. I had stopped gaming my second year of college (sometime around 1992) and other than a year of M:TG around 1995 I wasn't playing anything until 1999.

 

[diaglo]

...With that, I realized what I had been missing...

and you must have also realized just how bad they were screwing up the game. at least i did. and that's why i got back into it.

 

[BOZ]

i was pretty heavily involved in the TSR online community at AOL at the time (right before it disappeared into non-existence). guess i was kinda worried that my hobby was about to disappear also. i didn't have a regular group at the time, so i just kinda relaxed after going to my (oddly enough) first gencon and hoped for the best.

 

[Davelozzi]

Wouldnt matter if D&D "ended" tomorrow, we'd still play. We've got all the stuff we need (OD&D/1e/2e/3e/3.5 rules, imagination, dice, etc.).

I agree that you could easily playing without any new material (and I would). When I said I feared the end of my hobby was nigh, I really talking more about collecting and reading game books side of things, which for me is just as much a part of the hobby as playing. Even if I'll never use it in an actual game, I get the urge once or twice a month to go down to the game store and pick something up new to read. I've actually gone through a number of periods of a few years at a time without any actual games played when I was still an active RPG fan/collector. Fortunately, I know enough gamers now that I don't think I have to worry about that happening again, unless I end up moving somewhere else for some reason and have to start fresh, and even then through these boards I'd stand a good chance at finding a new group without too much fuss.

Game on.

 

[Emiricol]

you can say that again.

Except in his quote, 3.0 and 3.5 were both in there

and you must have also realized just how bad they were screwing up the game. at least i did. and that's why i got back into it.

No, I realized they got it right finally. Which is why I got back into it.

 

[Psychic Skeksis]

If every game and toy company in the world stopped manufacturing chess sets, I would still play chess. Same goes for D&D. Who needs new material? Just play the game, bro.

 

[diaglo]

Same goes for D&D.

you would still play D&D if they stopped making chess sets. man, you are dedicated.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

We had just gotten together with a new group. My wife and I had only played sporadically for the past couple of years, so we had some material to work with, but I definitely noticed that some things were almost impossible to get. Most of the gaming stores in my area barely had any stuff on the shelves. Fortunately things began to turn around before we got desparate. If we had to homebrew all of our stuff, it would have been the death of the group, nobody had the time to do it. Of course looking back, two kids later, I am amazed at how much time I really did have back then compared to now...

 

[DaveMage]

For me, the break allowed me to catch up on purchases I couldn't afford while TSR was putting out so much so fast.

E-bay was a great place to find all those out-of-print/hard to find items that I couldn't get when they were first released.

My group was playing 2E, and since by that point we really didn't *need* any new 2E products, the lack of new accessories didn't bother us at all.

 

[Frost]

While I was aware when WotC bought TSR, I really hadn't noticed the lack of product. My college gaming group was quite happy with what we had (basically, we used 2nd edition rules with 1st edition adventures). I do remember thinking that WotC buying TSR was a good thing, but I too didn't know that WotC had ever done anything but M:TG.