Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
...games & comic books were often prone to "one person in a group buys; everyone else borrows that copy." Their sales plans always included a lot of sharing and encouragement to buy the next issue/module/supplement, rather than strictly controlling the use of the already-bought copies.
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Not always.
I remember when TSR, via their aptly-named rep Rob Repp, insisted that not only did every player have to buy their own copy of everything, but TSR's stats format was theirs and theirs alone, so that it was illegal to write up your own NPC for an adventure -- you couldn't give values for strength, intelligence, etc., because TSR owned them. Yes, Rob said that, in writing, in so many words. You could only use TSR-provided adventures, characters, etc., with AD&D, and really, if you used any other RPG system, you were infringing on TSR's rights, too, because they owned the very concept of an RPG.
That insistence didn't last long. Rob Repp insisted that the resulting boycott had no measurable effect on sales. Numbers I got through other (insider) sources said a 10% sales drop within a month, and still going down when they abruptly changed their stated policy. And not long afterwards, poor Rob was unceremoniously sacked.
TSR never did get it. Things like that, and even more so "read the boxed text to your players", and everything else that numbed, discouraged, or killed creativity on their customers' part, turned RPGs from the dominant games into also-rans, mostly forgotten behind the great wave of card games. TSR was bought by WotC, who was bought by Hasbro, who has seemingly nearly forgotten them behind their kiddie toys. It didn't use to be that way. Not when the industry was constantly being revitalized by the players and their ideas -- when the players were co-creators, not merely consumers. In the end, TSR didn't so much cut their own throats as quietly die of starvation in a corner.
(yes, I
know it was a lot more complicated than that; this is "RPG history lite"; and yes, I'm
that Worldwalker)