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What if Murlynd Survived?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 7694911" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>I'm not as well versed as other folks in the personalities involved, but I have watched the arcs of a couple of startup companies that struck it big (one I worked for personally, one that a close friend co-founded). I suspect that if Gygax and Kaye had remained in charge, the result would have been similar to what I saw in both cases: The founders' vision drives the company's success, and they attract a bunch of wild, weird, talented people. However, the founders struggle to manage the transition to scale and try to micromanage more than they can handle. All those talented folks are pulling in different directions and no one is able to rein them in. Eventually there is a reckoning; the company endures a painful shift to a more professional, less entrepreneurial mode. The burned-out, exhausted founders either sell their stakes and move on, or take on narrower roles within the company. Either way, they hand over day-to-day management to someone else... hopefully (but not necessarily) someone better suited.</p><p></p><p>Without the mismanagement of the Blumes and then Williams, however, the reckoning likely would not have been the near-death experience it was in the real world. You need a rare set of talents to take a startup company to the big time; I assume Gygax and Kaye had them, or the company would never have taken off in the first place. Chief among those talents are smarts, energy, and a readiness to improvise, and those are usually enough to keep the lights on... somehow or other.</p><p></p><p>As for D&D itself, my guess is that it would look today a lot more like AD&D. 3E, 4E, and 5E were all major overhauls in different ways; those overhauls would not have happened as long as the original creators were still present. Furthermore, the OGL would never have come into being - the OGL was a radical response to TSR's disastrous end, and without the disaster there would have been no need to be radical.</p><p></p><p>So... although I obviously would not wish on Don Kaye the untimely death that struck him, I do think things worked out for the best as far as D&D was concerned.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 7694911, member: 58197"] I'm not as well versed as other folks in the personalities involved, but I have watched the arcs of a couple of startup companies that struck it big (one I worked for personally, one that a close friend co-founded). I suspect that if Gygax and Kaye had remained in charge, the result would have been similar to what I saw in both cases: The founders' vision drives the company's success, and they attract a bunch of wild, weird, talented people. However, the founders struggle to manage the transition to scale and try to micromanage more than they can handle. All those talented folks are pulling in different directions and no one is able to rein them in. Eventually there is a reckoning; the company endures a painful shift to a more professional, less entrepreneurial mode. The burned-out, exhausted founders either sell their stakes and move on, or take on narrower roles within the company. Either way, they hand over day-to-day management to someone else... hopefully (but not necessarily) someone better suited. Without the mismanagement of the Blumes and then Williams, however, the reckoning likely would not have been the near-death experience it was in the real world. You need a rare set of talents to take a startup company to the big time; I assume Gygax and Kaye had them, or the company would never have taken off in the first place. Chief among those talents are smarts, energy, and a readiness to improvise, and those are usually enough to keep the lights on... somehow or other. As for D&D itself, my guess is that it would look today a lot more like AD&D. 3E, 4E, and 5E were all major overhauls in different ways; those overhauls would not have happened as long as the original creators were still present. Furthermore, the OGL would never have come into being - the OGL was a radical response to TSR's disastrous end, and without the disaster there would have been no need to be radical. So... although I obviously would not wish on Don Kaye the untimely death that struck him, I do think things worked out for the best as far as D&D was concerned. [/QUOTE]
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