What indeed? At one time
I think I knew, but have certainly forgotten. Some of you may remember how
back in the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons was attacked rather viciously by
right-wing Christian organizations who wanted to imagine (and convince others)
that a game could be responsible for the ills of society. In what was clearly
a misguided move to placate the people least likely to buy
their games, TSR set about removing many of the offensive elements
from their products, which included changing iconic words like "demon"
and "devil" into nonsense words like "baatezu" and "tanaari."
Between that and what seemed to be the same six people writing every single
product, D&D went through a stultified period of unoriginality and mediocrity.
Who knows how many were lost to the game in those days? We certainly were
for awhile. But if the ad described at left is an indicator of new days
at TSR, then we will be back. And a lot of other players will be, too.