Chris Brady
Legendary Pubber
- Joined
- May 3, 2019
- Messages
- 3,185
- Reaction score
- 3,566
Dancey has effectively almost killed two RPG lines. He's the one who pushed the OGL, and that hurt Wizards of the Coast. We, the customer, made out like bandits, but without the OGL, D&D 4e would not have died as fast as it did.Designers and Dragons is not a reliable source, Applecine just repeats what others claim often without often identifying the source and without cross-checking or any independent research to confirm the claim. It is riddled with factual errors.
At best it is an unresearched verbal history from select sources. At worst it regurgitates a bunch of internet rumours reinforced with bias and ax-grinding as if they were facts because Applecine was credulous enough to put it into print.
And similarly Dancey has already proven to be an unreliable source. James Ward who actually worked at TSR in the business end has refuted a number of Dancey's claims and the research of Peterson, Dewalt and Riggs have already located facts and figures that punch holes in Dancey's narrative.
Dancey's tone is that of the overconfident technocrat doing a post-mortem based on incomplete information papered over with broad assumptions and statements. It reminds me of the glib bullshit you see from CEOs in a TED Talk.
He also called White Wolf's RPG 'Legacy products' and that put the nail in the coffin of their market that got them effectively sold them to Onyx Publishing.
Then he runs to another business.