But I just figured out THAC0!

It should come as no surprise to my loyal minions that I still indulge in a handful of my juvenile pastimes, one of my favorite being role playing.  No, not the naughty kind - that's for another post.  I mean good old-fashioned table top rpgs (role-playing games not rocket-propelled grenades).  Table top only, however - I do not LARP.

Anyway, since I've been at this particular habit for a while now, I've seen most of the games I enjoy go through a number of editions.  Which is fine, I understand the need to tweak rules that aren't working and expand the reality, etc and so forth.  I also understand that it can be difficult to turn a profit in the business.  Well, think about it - let's say you have a group of six people who game together.  Out of those six, only two of them are likely to purchase the books, and that's me being generous - in my group only one person has the books, and that would be the person who runs that system.  Back to the example, though - two people buy the core rule books, and maybe they each purchase a couple expansions or race/class/clan books.  At this point, they're done.  The company will not make any more money off of this group, unless they continue to come out with new expansions, new books, and new editions.

I understand all of this.  That said, there comes a point where it's just bloody ridiculous.  This is why Dungeons and Dragons is now dead to me.  So we go from the original and then move on to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons which incorporates fun things like THAC0 (took me five years to figure that one out).  Then, when we've finally figured out the rules for AD&D we get Dungeons and Dragons 3 and 3.5, which was very pretty, got rid of THAC0 entirely, brought about that annoying cross-class skill penalty nonsense, but was livable enough with the addition of a few house rules.  And let's face it, they have yet to make a game system that doesn't need a few house rules.  Now we have Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition.  No.  No, no, a thousand times no, I'm not doing it, you can go try to appeal more to the MMO demographic all you want but you will do it without my financial contribution.  Good day, sir!

And don't even get me started on what White Wolf did.  Vampire: The Requiem can kiss my grits.