Quote:
Originally Posted by Melan
But if it is simply the roleplaying concept, why didn't another, superior product depose it a few years after inception? If Runequest did things so well - and it did a lot of things well - why didn't it become the market leader? I don't see the early history of RPGs as an era where D&D's lead was already definitive. Somebody still could have come up with a more successful recipe; given the thirst for gaming material, I suppose it wouldn't even have had to have very good production values. Yet neither Traveller nor Runequest - being more elegant both, as well as better edited - made such a strong impression.
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RuneQuest, if my gaming history knowledge serves me correctly, actually was making a serious challenge to AD&D by the early 80s. However, Chaosium's finances weren't exactly in the state of the juggernaut, and indeed they <i>had</i> to sell the game to Avalon Hill, just to keep afloat. AH's marketing and production was abysmal, so bad it virtually killed the game (see the excellent review of the years 1984-1991: <a href="http://members.ozemail.com.au/~mrmob/ruinedquest.html">Ruined Quest</a>).
Further, and I'm not sure how many times I've mentioned this, market success, domination or prevalence is not an indication of substance or the quality of the rules - which is actually what is being reviewed here. It's like, as I have said before, suggesting <i>Hagar The Horrible</i> is a better example of literature of the old Norse era than the <i>Poetic and Prose Edda</i> simply because more people have read it and bought it.
Market success is its own reward and a discussion for different threads. In reviews, I am only interested in discussing the game system and the game presentation.