How Gary Gygax lost control of D&D

[Dungeoneer]

If you have any interest in the history of D&D, you have to be aware of Jon Peterson's excellent work. He's got a new article up on Medium called The Ambush at Sheridan Springs, and it recounts, as closely as possible, just how Gary Gygax effectively got kicked out of his own company in 1985.

 

[doctorhook]

Good read! Long though.

 

[TerraDave]

I knew the story, but not laid out like that, and certainly not all those details.

Just as tragic, in any case.

 

[Alzrius]

Thanks for the link! I hadn't seen this already - I'm a huge fan of Jon's book, but I've been lax in checking his blog lately, so this is a pleasant surprise.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Thanks for the link! I hadn't seen this already - I'm a huge fan of Jon's book, but I've been lax in checking his blog lately, so this is a pleasant surprise.

No problem.

I think the story is interesting for a couple reasons. #1 is Gary Gygax's desire to make sure that D&D/TSR was owned by gamers, which was admirable. But #2 it was clear that they needed some people with business experience too, to keep them from running their company into the ground. Unfortunately they couldn't seem to come up with a way to find a balance.

 

[Sadras]

Thanks for this - extremely informative.

 

[Sadras]

I think the story is interesting for a couple reasons. #1 is Gary Gygax's desire to make sure that D&D/TSR was owned by gamers, which was admirable. But #2 it was clear that they needed some people with business experience too, to keep them from running their company into the ground. Unfortunately they couldn't seem to come up with a way to find a balance.

#3 Based on this article he didn't treat the Blumes all that well, before or after the takeover.

 

[Sacrosanct]

*Edit* Eh, nevermind. Probably not relevant to the point of the article.

 

[Hussar]

Fantastic and fascinating read. Thanks.

 

[increment]

Sorry, I couldn't get past the very first sentence. Gary was not, in any way, shape, or form, the most powerful man in hobby gaming. That would still be the big companies that put out Monopoly, etc. In role-playing games, sure. But not hobby gaming as a whole.

When you lead off your article with some crazy inaccurate hyperbole like that, it sends a message that the entire article may be shoddy.

Yeah, actually one of the people I asked to give this an advance read for me flagged this sentence, but I decided to keep it. I think the term "hobby gaming" had a slightly different sense than "gaming overall," though if you want to get real technical about what it meant in the 80s, I'd grudgingly agree that Parker Bros and Milton Bradley were Hobby Industry of America members, say. But I think it far more meant the kind of products you had to go to a hobby shop to get - model planes, miniatures, and so on. You didn't go to a hobby shop to buy Monopoly, you went to Sears. Today we don't have this concept anymore.

But the main reason why I kept it is that there was no one in the big toy companies that had the personal power over the industry that Gary Gygax wielded, and no one in those companies was a household name who appeared on TV and in magazines like People. His power came from who he was, what he had made, just as much as from his corporate position (which is indeed a point the article makes explicitly). How many people do you suppose could name a designer who worked for Milton Bradley or Parker Bros in the 80s?

So I don't think it's actually inaccurate, or hyperbolic. It is called setting the scene for a tragedy, in the old school sense.