Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 2757797" data-attributes="member: 3649">No-one would have the cash to pick up the D&D rights as I don't see the TSR 'estate' breaking them up peice-meal. I wouldn't think anyone else but WoTC at the time had anywhere near the amount of money to do so.The internet would have kept a lot of the game alive, and we'd now be seeing a few 'unofficial D&D 3E' PDFs, all different. There'd probably be no means or incentive to pursue legal action against them, since no-one would be at the helm of the IP, so the best wuold in effect become 'D&D'. It would basically be a return to 1978, with dozens of little 'unofficial game aid for D&D' one-man-shops. But most gamers don't even know PDFs exist. The people dependent on the book trade never see what happens with D&D: just some old books slowly fading under the florescent lights. Most games shops simply close or diversify even more. Card Games come, then fade.What does happen is that some other company creates a knockoff that replaces D&D. The concepts of classes and levels and such aren't part of the IP - many other games around and just before that time had them but they failed to 'become D&D' because there already was a D&D. Without that restriction, those games return or others similar to them are born and fight it out for first place. Another game similar to D&D arises, missing only the IP-specific monsters and settings. It takes them a little while because they don't have the brand name recognition but they eventually find that this works in their favor as word-of-internet spreads. The people that played D&D want a replacement fantasy system, so they flock to it. The people that despised D&D for being D&D flock to it because it's not D&D. Eventually another book trade deal goes through. A few grognards stick to the old systems and get pretty much ignored, like the people that still play Bunnies and Burrows or John Carter of Mars.</blockquote>

Verification