Help finding these articles. One from former WOTC employee and one from former TSR employee

[Stormonu]

With nearly twelve year's hindsight, looking back at that article is interesting. It's definately slanted, and the "our customers said we were producing too much material [of inferoir quality]" and they intended to cut back is hilarious looking back at the pile of books for 3E. As does the "more core, less campaign worlds" statement.

Looking back, I'm sad Alternity got the axe. It was a much better system than d20 modern/future, but at the time it was laid low, I just wasn't interested in much beyond D&D.

Most of all, I wonder what happened with that warehouse of AD&D stuff...with the 1E reprints of late, they might have been able to garner some interest in that stuff (though I doubt they would have made much profit considering the warehousing fees for all those years).

 

[billd91]

Ok, When it came to WOTC, part of what I was recalling was Rick Marshall's articles at Oaths and Fates (although Rick was only a friend and his wife had worked for them). I don't see anything about mortgages and stressed marriages so my recollection was off or I was recalling some other articles that I read about this period in WOTC's history and conflating it with this article.

You are on the right track. It was Rick Marshall but it wasn't on Oaths and Fates. It was an extended set of comments made on Grognardia.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/11/thank-you-ryan-dancey.html

Rick's comments about the principals hurting is November 30, 2010 at 8:23 pm.

 

[Hussar]

With nearly twelve year's hindsight, looking back at that article is interesting. It's definately slanted, and the "our customers said we were producing too much material [of inferoir quality]" and they intended to cut back is hilarious looking back at the pile of books for 3E. As does the "more core, less campaign worlds" statement.

Looking back, I'm sad Alternity got the axe. It was a much better system than d20 modern/future, but at the time it was laid low, I just wasn't interested in much beyond D&D.

Most of all, I wonder what happened with that warehouse of AD&D stuff...with the 1E reprints of late, they might have been able to garner some interest in that stuff (though I doubt they would have made much profit considering the warehousing fees for all those years).

Umm, you realize that there was more material produced by TSR for 2e than all the 3e material, WOTC and 3pp combined? 3e had what, 4 campaign worlds? 2e had dozens. I'm not sure where the problem is.

 

[Greg K]

Bill,
Thanks! That was what I was recalling.

You are on the right track. It was Rick Marshall but it wasn't on Oaths and Fates. It was an extended set of comments made on Grognardia.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/11/thank-you-ryan-dancey.html

Rick's comments about the principals hurting is November 30, 2010 at 8:23 pm.

 

[Morrus]

This thread has prompted me to start collecting these links so they can be kept in one place should anyone need them.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=From+TSR+to+WotC:+A+History+of+D+and+D&redirect=no

 

[Stormonu]

Umm, you realize that there was more material produced by TSR for 2e than all the 3e material, WOTC and 3pp combined? 3e had what, 4 campaign worlds? 2e had dozens. I'm not sure where the problem is.

It was still a metric ton of books for 3E.

Campaign worlds? Yeah, the problem was 3E did diddly while the fans were clamoring for campaign worlds to be reinstated. Ravenloft and Dragonlance being two that thankfully were taken up by 3pp. And look at the love lavished on Greyhawk, not by WotC, but by the RPGA. I think WotC screwed down too hard in the opposite direction on campaign worlds.

 

[Alzrius]

Umm, you realize that there was more material produced by TSR for 2e than all the 3e material, WOTC and 3pp combined? 3e had what, 4 campaign worlds? 2e had dozens. I'm not sure where the problem is.

There are a few problems with this statement. First, it's in error to say that the material TSR produced for 2E was greater than the total volume of material produced by WotC and the third-party publishers combined. The 3.X material produced by the third-party publishers alone easily dwarfs the total 2E materials, even without taking into account PDF-only products.

Secondly, 2E did not have "dozens" of campaign worlds. The only way you'd get anywhere close to that number is if you started counting stand-alone or short-run products like Jakandor or Tale of the Comet as campaign settings.

That's the problem.

 

[Greg K]

I just found the second article. It was this post on the WOTC blog of WOTC_Huscarl (a.k.a., Steve Winter). He talks about the old TSR building in Lake Geneva and, one day while he and others were waiting for a manager to show up with keys, breaking into it to gain entry to the office.

What is, really, cool, is that there are pictures of the the building and some of the surrounding area and storefronts.