steam and there are plenty of people, like me, with a renewed interest in old school products... especially those penned by Gary Gygax himself. I realize that she needs to do what is best for herself financially but holding off on releasing anything, and failing to communicate any plan of action to EGG's fans, isn't going to better Gygax Games at all.
I fear that the longer she silently waits, the more EGG will pass out of the collective geek consciousness and that the draw of his name will be diminished.
I doubt Gary will ever really fade from Geek consciousness, at least with the hard core. He's still the most famous RPG game designer out there. So I doubt she has to strike "now", otherwise it would just be saying the Old School is a fad.
The big problem though for the old school is--Gary doesn't have a lot of finished work for the system people most want to see. Most of his pure unpublished stuff revolves around Lejendary Adventures.
Castle Zagyg was him mostly giving notes to another. It might be in the best shape but still it's not as ideal as it was when originally proposed back in 2002/2003, due to changes, delays, and various factors.
Stonik was never committed to paper.
The "Shadowland" module (the original solicited WG7) required Skip Williams to help, and would not really be publishable outside of WoTC because it dealt with a lot of Greyhawk lore.
Even if Gary had notes on Greyhawk proper, you couldn't really publish them without going through a lot of awkward name changes.
Gary's proposals for 1e post UA are more or less lost in his mind and antiquity. I had suggested he consider creating the new classes hinted at in Dragon for C&C, but he didn't seem interested in writing rules for C&C other than a small 2-pager on multi/dual classing. I once asked for details on the Dumalduns, Dreggals, and Maelvis for LA, and he said he couldn't really remember any major details.
People need to remember that Gary, while having his own personal set of quality and things he wouldn't compromise on, didn't devote a lot of time to writing down stuff that was not commercial. In other words, unlike a guy like Ed Greenwood who did and does write Realms Lore on his own for his own campaign, Gary did not go through the craft of writing about his campaign settings if he would not likely benefit from them directly. Thus, DJ, a game he worked really hard on, as soon as the settlement was made, no more writing for that game system or world.
Does anyone really see the tabletop RPG market *expanding* in the future?
I seriously doubt it.
Well, if there's anything about markets, it is cyclical. We might be hitting a valley, but there's always the opportunity for a new resurgence, maybe 5 or 10 years from now.
If she's not going to publish now, I doubt we will ever see anything (unless she tries to salvage something to a smaller audience later).
(Unless she's thinking CRPG/MMO, in which case there may indeed be a better time in the future.)
I think the latter is what she may be considering, as Gary always wanted to have a computer game, and LA is perfect (it was originally designed as a computer game, that's why the term avatar is used for what we call character). Plus, that's a good way to either finance the print side of things, or to give Gary's works to a new generation that may not care about AD&D.
I also think that the former might be considered in the latter doesn't work out.