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Message: <blockquote data-quote="an_idol_mind" data-source="post: 5711360" data-attributes="member: 43749">I'm not sure how accurate that belief is. Sure, AD&D was the top dog for a long time. But it was also waning by the 90s. Had the D&D game not been revitalized, I don't think it's necessarily true that it would have made it all the way to 2011, especially with the way it was being mismanaged.Sure, AD&D might be around, but I don't think it would be a lock. It had been badly managed for years and was showing its age as a system. Even with the power of the brand name, it needed something to keep it going.This is around where you lose me. Does the game need to be called AD&D? I don't see how OSRIC can't be considered AD&D - its got nearly identical mechanics and flavor. Same with Labyrinth Lord and B/X D&D. Why do these not "hit it exactly," especially when you considered 3rd edition and Pathfinder to be about the same?Furthermore, the AD&D that existed in the 1990s was almost certainly not going to make it in the 2000s. Whether AD&D continued as a brand, 2nd edition was dying and whoever picked it up was going to do some sort of revision. 3rd edition AD&D might not have ended up the same as WotC's version, but the game would have changed, possibly to something closer to Castles & Crusades, possibly in a much more radical departure than what WotC did with it.I don't think that any game disappearing from the market is good (well, except for FATAL), but I definitely don't miss AD&D all that much.I can only answer from my perspective, but I probably wouldn't be playing AD&D anymore had it not been for the changes that WotC made. The system was frustrating to me, and the flavor wasn't so unique that I needed the AD&D game to make it work. I was already about to ditch the game and either go back to the Rules Cyclopedia or move on to a totally new game like Big Eyes, Small Mouth. AD&D was inconsistent, required a lot of house rules, and was just generally not my kind of game anymore.Obviously, this isn't the case with everyone, since some folks have stuck with the AD&D rules and had a lot of fun with it. But for me personally, 3rd edition streamlining the game's mechanics was welcome and I didn't mind one bit that the older editions were put on a shelf to make it happen. I think the high sales of 3rd edition suggest that there were more folks on board with the revision than upset at the removal of the AD&D brand name.</blockquote>

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