Lorraine Williams did... what?

[Sammael]

Oh wow. I had no idea Flint Dille was Lorraine Williams' brother.

 

[wingsandsword]

Oh wow. I had no idea Flint Dille was Lorraine Williams' brother.

Yeah, Ms. Williams being part of the Dille family is why TSR kept trying to push Buck Rogers games on the public back in The Bad Old Days: The family owned the license so it was a dirt-cheap way to make a licensed RPG.

Now, that there is minimal interest in the license (it's a number of decades past it's glory days), and the game itself wasn't exceptional kind of doomed the project though.

 

[D'karr]

Yeah, Ms. Williams being part of the Dille family is why TSR kept trying to push Buck Rogers games on the public back in The Bad Old Days: The family owned the license so it was a dirt-cheap way to make a licensed RPG.

Now, that there is minimal interest in the license (it's a number of decades past it's glory days), and the game itself wasn't exceptional kind of doomed the project though.

I think a Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 century would make an excellent game.

Indubidubidubitably Sir!

 

[JohnRTroy]

Actually, there IS renewed interest in the property, since the whole reason that site is up there is because there's a new comic coming out and Frank Miller is doing a Buck Rogers movie. (Although good luck with that, after the Spirit has flopped I don't believe Miller's take on old properties should be followed, assuming Flint's looking at doing a "Sin City" type file).

However, you are correct about the property's current state. Buck Rogers is sort of a relic from the past. Since it came from the pulp-era and also was showing the future as imagined then, it comes off as dated. Science Fiction from the past tends to not age well. I think the 1970s series was the last successful attempt at this. I think the Dille family is pushing it as "retro-future".

I am appalled by that puffing of Lorraine's resume. TSR was incorporated years before she came on board, and I would be very careful saying that on a public web site, considering enough history has been written about the company so it's an obvious untruth.

I believe Ryan Dancey said there was tons of the Buck Roger's XXV game in warehouses when he had to inventory the company. I believe the trust got paid royalties from wholesale print copies. Whatever else you can say about Ms. William's, I believe that strategy was self-interest and really hurt the company, and if TSR had been a larger company and under public scrutiny she would have been raked over the coals for that.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

Savage Worlds players of the Slipstream RPG might certainly find the Buck Rogers stuff interesting now.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I don't think "lack of interest in the property" matters much. The '79 TV series followed a decades-long hiatus on film for Buck Rogers, and it was relatively successful for a sci-fi series. The trigger event was probably the unexpected success of Star Wars, which also led to Battlestar Galactica and a number of other lesser-known "tributes."

Buck Rogers is a known property, like Flash Gordon. The right treatment could easily turn it into something very cool. How does a 500-year-old man deal with culture shock and displacement? What kind of different perspectives does he bring? Where can he find a Nintendo Wii?

 

[Silver Moon]

Lorraine created the company TSR...

Well sure, of course she did, right after she ~edited~

 

[Emirikol]

I'm not exactly sure how relevant or pertinent this is, but I was here and noticed this interesting tidbit...
Which made me say, "Um... what?"Lorraine is credited here as creating the company TSR

I bet the Gygax family trust would like to review that for "accuracy."

jh
(mod edit: not appropriate)

 

[Dausuul]

Hmm. I too have heard conflicting accounts of Lorraine Williams' tenure; although it's pretty clear she was a lousy CEO, since the company went from highly profitable to massive indebtedness and near collapse on her watch.

The fact that this flat-out lie is being posted on a website presumably representing her does not incline me toward the sympathetic view. Whoever currently owns the rights to the name "TSR" (probably WotC) might want to have a word with that site...

 

[Xyxox]

All I can say is, I'll never have anything to do with anything connected to Buck Rogers.

Buck Rogers is a big part of why TSR went belly up.