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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5709423" data-attributes="member: 32740">It DID go out of print.  TSR WAS bankrupt, could not pay the printers, had no money to do anything.  IIRC it was something between 9 months and 1 year before WotC had purchased TSR and resumed shipment/printing of anything that retailers hadn't simply had left over in their stock.  They resumed production using stuff that TSR had had in the works before shutting down.  D&D was dead.  The fact that it was fortunate enough to be revived before it left the operating table doesn't change that.It's not that confusing.  When what we NOW call 1E was released it was simply titled "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", and that was more to simply differentiate it from previous editions than as an effort to impugn them.  When they undertook to revise Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rather than go the route of calling it Even More Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or Ultimate D&D they simply and logically called it the Second Edition of Advanced D&D, not meaning to suggest that the was only the second edition of the game EVER (not even 1E would be considered the second edition ever).  Only then did the previous edition become known as "1st Edition."Well we can speculate until the cows come home about what TSR would have done had they not gone bankrupt.  However, assuming that their downward corporate slide would have still taken place and that even if they had survived the cost of having the novels and dragon dice returned they would still have been in a serious cash crisis and needed to find SOMETHING to sell beyond the largely dull materials they had in the pipeline.  I think they'd have been FORCED by their situation to quickly work up a Third Edition to sell.  They had put out feelers about it through a survey taken at Gencon in 1996.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/208680-1996-d-d-3rd-edition-survey.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/208680-1996-d-d-3rd-edition-survey.html</a>  They went under shortly after that but even before then there was naturally discussion of a new edition - just as we currently see discussion of 5E.Which would those be?  The only D&D books from any edition I see WotC printing are from 4th.  They don't even sell PDF's of the old stuff anymore.  Am I missing something?Oh no doubt.  Even if WotC had not swooped in to pick up the pieces it isn't as if D&D would have disappeared entirely.  It just would have taken a decade or so for someone to be able to pull it out of the wreckage to do something with it.  I've no doubt that in that time some other game, probably VERY like D&D... SUSPICIOUSLY like D&D would have been published by someone if the name of Dungeons & Dragons itself could not have been extricated.I think you misunderestimate the utility of physical, paper books at a game table.  You just have it reversed - it would be hardcopy, but might be as likely to be available in ebook format in addition.POD is not the same thing as being "in print".  Just saying...Someone DOES want to have them reprinted and we have for years now.  OSRIC would not exist if some printed form of the 1E core books were being sold off game store shelves rather than ebay.  Same for other retroclones.  But times change.  I think that WotC is smart enough as a company that if they ever see a decent ability to profit from their publication without doing what they currently see as threatening their OTHER sales, their PRIMARY sales, then they'll do it.Um... OSRIC itself was indeed created for that very purpose - to enable publication and use of AD&D-compatible materials without having to reference AD&D core books.  Just ask the people who created it.  They're around.Only if you adhere to the very narrow and elitist view that only the TSR-produced versions of D&D were of any merit.  It is undeniable that 3E (in the continued form of Pathfinder) and 4E both very popular and viable variations of D&D.  Editions of D&D previous to that are no less viable just because they are out of print.  No version of D&D has ever had an expiration date.While WotC certainly is being quite UNaccommodating to fans of older, OOP editions of the game by refusing to even sell PDF's of the stuff they have not "killed" it because they CANNOT stop people from playing it and creating retroclone rulesets to facilitate their use.Quite so.  But as I said TIMES CHANGE.While internet polls are hopelessly biased I have to say that there is a poll here on ENworld right now which suggests that there are more people here who own 1E AD&D core rules than own the 4E rules.  I'm not so certain that the interest in 4E is as strong as the internet makes it appear.</blockquote>

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