Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?

[Vigilance]

I have a sudden desire to play a D&D game where all magic-users have green rings now.

Thanks guys!

[geneweigel]

Actuallly thats where many of D&D's spells, spell levels and recharging magic system most likely came from the original 1940's Green Lantern!

[Marriat the Ranger]

d20 grates on me. The...sheer annoyingness of it grates on me. The fans of it grate on me. The "WELL, DUUUH!" of the fans grates on me. "Armor classes go up now, because it makes sense!" (how does it make sense, it only makes sense to math cripples) "Three saving throw classes, because it makes sense!" (it only makes sense to illiterate and unimaginative people) "A unified XP chart, because it makes sense!" (it only makes sense to sensitive snowflakes who throw around concepts like "fair" and "game balance" as rule edicts because everyone has to have "fun" as dictated by the rules).

Nothing about d20 is particularly "sensible". What it is is practical, but practicality is not what I seek when I want to pretend to be Carlos the Dwarf. No, when that goes down I want to have some hoary, funky rules that creak like a Led Zeppelin gatefold album cover when I open them, fantastical rules that feel like they're designed to be dice and paper simulations of fantastical things, not slick and refined and "sensible". "Sensible" removed disintegrating drow (IT'S DROW LIKE COW, GENE, NOT DROW LIKE DROH!!!) armor, "sensible" forced magic item christmas lists on DMs and told them they were bad if they didn't follow those lists, "sensible" stripped half-orcs (oh my god, orcs have sex!) and assassins out, and put furry PCs in, "sensible" raped TSR from Gary and tried to make him never use his name on an RPG product ever again. "Sensible" put Ars Magica's rule system in the driver's seat for D&D and that's how it will be forevermore...despite the fact that Ars Magica isn't worth a god damn because if it was then Johnathan Tweet wouldn't have superglued the D&D name to it and foisted it off on the gaming world.

(as my signature says, bitter old crank)

/raises his jack of mead!!!