[DT] What System to Use

[Oedipussy Rex]

In the end I wonder if WOTC is what made it great since they insisted on the parody.

Not really. If you've read Knights of the Dinner Table you know that the guys at Kenzer have a good, and broad, sense of humor. The problem came about partially because WotC didn't expect HM to do anything after being forced to license out AD&D (remember the Dragon Archives that WotC had to pull off the shelves? That was because they didn't have, or couldn't prove they had, reprint rights for much of the material in Dragon. When WotC announced the Archives, Kenzer contacted them to let them know that they specifically did not have those rights for the old KotDT strips. WotC printed them anyway. A bit of free advice: when a copyright and trademark lawyer tells you that you do not have printing rights, believe him.) let alone win Game of the Year, so they were a little pissy about that, then the liason at WotC kept changing, each worse than the next. Think Bruno Kirby in Good Morning, Viet Nam. "That's a joke. I get it." Then imagine his brother; the one without a sense of humor.

So almost every time after the first or second year when Kenzer would try to contact the liason, they'd have to deal with someone new. "We already have approval for this," Kenzer would say. "Well, you didn't get approval from me," came the reply. "This is supposed to be parody. How come I'm not laughing?" "I don't know. Maybe because you're an idiot who's incapable abstract thinking?"
Needless to say, by the time the license ran out, Kenzer & Co. were happy to see it go.