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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Switch AD&D with iPods for the digital music player market. Switch it with PC compatibles for the computer market. Switch it with Windows for the home OS market.
iPods cost 2-3 times as much as most other brands and are only really usable with iTunes for managing the things. Why does everyone have it almost over every other brand? Its got name recognition, was one of the earliest digital music player brands, and its popularity feeds itself making it almost synonymous with the public's perception of digital music players.
PC compatibles were overpriced, stuck with terrible OSes, had less features, more complicated to use, and always required a monitor in order to use (some with a whopping 16 colors!) over the competition. How come they ended up taking close to 90% of the market? The 1984 PC compatible gave you a CGA screen system for about 2 grand while a 16 color Commodore 64 you could hook up to your TV set ran about 500 and was much easier and more fun to use in almost every application. The 1990 PC was still around 2 grand, only slightly more powerful yet it blew away the Commodore Amiga which was using a multitasking graphical OS that beat the pants off of Windows 3 and could show up to 4096 colors on screen at once over the usual 16 color EGA that was still PC default at the time. And the Amiga was about 600 bucks. How come PCs continued to win? They certainly didn't deserve to!
Same thing with Windows. Every version has had its own sucktastic elements yet it beats out every OS under the sun, system exclusive like Mac OSes, or non such as Linux, GEOS, and OS2. Why is that? Its certainly NOT the best, and Vista has done nothing to change it, yet its probably sold more copies since release a couple weeks back than all other OSes combined will sell this entire YEAR.
This constant D&D IS POPULAR SO THAT PROVES ITS AWESOME SO YOU CRITICS SHOULD SHUT UP YOU KNOW NOTHINGS stuff has no basis in anything. Hell, I just gave 3 solid real world examples that closely align with the AD&D situation. I am sure other folks could provide many more.
Where is the well thought out reasons WHY people like AD&D so damned much? How come the BS things Gary did are never really praised by AD&D players?
Most of AD&D's defense seems to be "I have no idea why I like it but I love it so you can't make fun of it or I will get huffy and insulting. And its popular so NYAH NYAH".
If D&D in all its incarnations is so fucking wonderful and perfect and so many people play and love it, how come anyone who says anything negative about it gets jumped on with the ferocity of a thousand suns?
The critics should merely merit a chuckle and a shaked head then as you D&D faithful sit comfortable knowing you have the RPG genre by the dangly bits.