O motivo principal da falência da TSR não foi a produção das duas linhas simultâneas, mas sim a produção excessiva de cenários que no final não deu o lucro desejado e fudeu literalmente com a empresa.

Não esqueça da péssima administração, apesar de que isso é endemoniado ao infinito.

Tirando daqui: http://www.gamegrene.com/node/387
daqui: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSR,_Inc.#Williams_ownership
E daqui: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Williams#The_downfall_of_TSR

Here's some of the highlights, I sure I'm missing bits.

Much of the trouble started early on when one of Gygax's partners died. His stock fell to his wife who had no interest and sold it. After several people coming and going, Gygax and the original creators were gone and the owner was (blanking on name "Williams"). She had no respect for games and just wanted to milk it for money.

Under her, you had some decent designers but who generally suffered from the hubris that they would tell the fans what they wanted to buy. They cranked out tons of products without much feedback of what was wanted and didn't adjust things by sales much. At the rate of several items a month that amounted to the same old adventures, the products were competing with each other more that anything; unless you expand the pool of players; there is a semisolid limit to the amount of gaming money that can be spent.

Many of the designers at the time were wannabe writers hoping to work for TSR for the chance to work on the fiction lines. Because of this, many of the products felt like they were designed to be read more than played - they didn't have lots of options off of the main plot and had way too much background material the players would never hear.

Another big design issue is something common in rpgs - power drift. 2e was fairly sound mechanically (though thematically generally lame). Then TSR put out the various handbooks with kits. Characters with kits were generally a step above ones without kits (at least with the overpowered kits which were the most popular). So people had to either keep buying every handbook or just disallow them altogether. There was also lack of uniformity across handbooks - some were a much bigger boost compared to others. Then came the poorly edited Skills & Powers books. A few good ideas but they allowed a total min/maxing of character design. Characters made with this could take one normal character twice their level. Many people I knew got fed up at this point. It also meant that adventures balanced for standard characters were a joke with skills and powers characters.

TSR also generally did not reach out to their market. They didn't attempt to expand the player base much. They also seemed to fear the internet. They tried ineffectually to get rid of fan-based material that was online.

By the time WOTC bought TSR, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Williams was a financial planner who saw potential for rebuilding the debt-plagued company into a highly profitable one. However, she was disdainful of the gaming field, viewing herself as superior to gamers. She implemented an internal policy forbidding game playing at the company. This resulted in many products being released without being playtested (some were tested "on the sly"), and a large number of products that were incompatible with the existing game system.

Despite total sales of $40 million, TSR ended 1996 with few cash reserves. When Random House returned an unexpectedly high percentage the year's inventory of unsold novels and Dragon Dice for a fee of several million dollars, TSR found itself in a cash crunch. With no cash, TSR was unable to pay their printing and shipping bills, and the logistics company that handled TSR's pre-press, printing, warehousing and shipping refused to do any more work. Since the logistics company had the production plates for key products such as core D&D books, there was no means of printing or shipping core products to generate income or secure short-term financing. With no viable financial plan for TSR's survival, Lorraine Williams sold the company to Wizards of the Coast in 1997.

Temos o outro lado, também:

As someone who was employed at TSR in the final years leading up to the sale of Wizards of the Coast, I feel compelled to offer a few clarifications:

Lorraine never banned playing games. In fact, all of us played games daily at TSR and conducted playtesting of upcoming products. That includes all the members of R&D (from the VP down to the newest editor or designer), sales, marketing, warehouse staff, and more.

When a company fails, you have two choices: Sell it to the highest bidder on terms you influence, or watch your assets be broken up and sold in bankruptcy proceedings to the highest bidder.

Bankruptcy ensures that all of your institutional knowledge goes away–the employees that know how to get the work done go find other jobs. It also would have ensured that every brand under TSR would have been spliced and diced among a large number of different companies (some to Hollywood, some to other game publishers, some to book publishers).

Wizards of the Coast came in and paid (in most people’s estimation) more than TSR was worth to both preserve the employee knowledge and to ensure that D&D would continue. Personally, I can’t think of a better steward for TSR than Peter Adkison (CEO of Wizards at that time). He was (and still is) a gamer at heart.

-Jim Butler

E um bom review: http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p1.html (vale a pena ler todas páginas!)

Como eu leio e jogo/testei sistemas diferentes, tem elementos individuais que aprecio em cada um.
Quando o assunto é HP, o sistema que mais me agradou é o de Tagmar 2, com Energia Heroica e Energia Física, não existe essa de HP ( muito menos o nome torto em português: PV).
Como o jogo é heroico, lógico que eu não quero uma letalidade estilo GURPS ( no modo padrão) e muito menos de jogos Old School.

Condição Sangrado: Não gostei na 4E da Condição  Sangrando, só presta para disparar poderes mesmo, e o nome é terrível.

Lentidão de Combate 3E/4E :
Qualquer mestre de 4E que se preze sabe que reações imediatas/interrupções imediatas apesar de teoricamente e estrategicamente serem lindas, é um dos motivos principais da lentidão no combate ( se ataques de oportunidade já enche o saco, imagina esses outros dois que inventaram).
Combate lento é uma praga em 3E ou 4E, tem mestres que arrumam 1000 artifícios para acelerar o combate, procurando corrigir esse erro evidente do sistema, mas para mim, combates dinâmicos e rápidos tem que vim de "fábrica" no Sistema.