D&D General Not the Wicked Witch: Revisiting the Legacy of Lorraine Williams

[dave2008]

She tried to do what she felt would help TSR but she also made A LOT of bad calls and mistakes.

I don't know enough of the history (and Snarf didn't really cover it), but what are the bad calls and mistakes that she made?

 

[Willie the Duck]

Regarding Buck Rogers and self-dealing -- I generally agree that there's nothing capital-w "Wrong" with it in a closely-held corporation situation. And yes, she was certainly not the only one to do it*. However, it is significantly risky in that it incentivizes you to see these other things you own as more valuable to the company than it really might be*. Sure, there's nothing saying that Buck Rogers couldn't have been a role-playing win, somehow**, but after two or three products, perhaps it would have been a good idea to reassess and hold back on repeated investment****. No, it did not singlehandedly bankrupt the company, but it was an avoidable misstep (to which financially incentivized loyalty to that specific IP played a part).
*although the counterpoint of multiple wrongs not making a right are also valid
**all those worthless Blume relatives, as another example
***I tend to think of it as something that really petered out by then, but that I suppose is looking at it in retrospect
****mind you, this was not the only case of TSR not really knowing what their market wanted, so this is more of a company-wide problem.

There's also the legal threats against members of the fan community, including fansites. Yes, Palladium Games was also litigious in this regard - and they were also justly criticized for it in equal (possibly even greater) measure.

Here I will say that, while this is true, it seems a reasonable misstep given the times. I remember being a tech-involved adult in the early 90s -- no one really knew what to do with this wild west of online reality. How do you make money? How do you protect your business (particularly an IP-based one)? It was a time of both excitement and fear, and a lot of people made a lot of mistakes before we settled into a (semi-) consistent internet culture.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't know enough of the history (and Snarf didn't really cover it), but what are the bad calls and mistakes that she made?

TSR made multiple attempts to make a Buck Roger's RPG, but each attempt was pretty unsuccessful. Dragon Duce was successful, but not profitable, a common problem in late stage TSR.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

To that end, I simply can't see Williams as someone who should be looked upon kindly, despite the recent pushes to frame her in a more sympathetic light.

I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad. I'm trying to be very honest about my perspective on this.

I am familiar with a lot of the stories about Lorraine Williams. All of them? Of course not- I can't know everything! I haven't seen every interview of every luminary on every blog or magazine. I don't know if Zeb Cook ever had an in-depth discussion about her, and I'd love to read it.

And for a very long time, I believed the received wisdom about Lorraine. After all, if there a ton of stories about how evil she was, there has to be some truth to them, right? Where there is smoke, there's fire, and all that.

But here's the thing- almost all of those stories come off very, very differently now. Some of them are beyond cringe-worthy. Some of them just have those "flag" words that make me realize just how skewed the perspective is. A lot of them aren't first-hand, but are repeating ('fun" or "nasty") rumors other people told them. Over and over again, it's the same thing. Sexist. Hearsay. Unreliable stories that make the (male) storyteller look good and the (female) boss look terrible. Even the constant refrain of, "She wasn't a gamer," sounds very different when we remember what it was like for women in gaming in the 80s and 90s.

Times change. I remember that there was a show a long time ago when they were interviewing Hugh Hefner and he explained that when he set up the Playboy Clubs (which are mentioned in Game Wizards AND When We Were Wizards as a place that Gygax frequented ... small world) he had a strict rule that the women ("bunnies") couldn't date customers. But then Hefner stated, "I'm not a customer. I'm the owner. I get my pick." It was played for laughs then.

That's the type of comment that plays .... very ... differently now.

I keep circling back to the same point- these stories seem different now. Again, I wasn't there. I don't know what really happened. But I am very skeptical of these stories, especially given that a lot of these self-serving stories don't seem to hold up in the light of day, and in light of what we now know about gender dynamics in the workplace.

Moreover, when we see serious histories on the matter, they always seem to contradict the received wisdom we have been told. The ouster of Gygax, for example- when we learn the real facts, Lorraine isn't the evil interloper. She is the one that saves the company, and (in addition) tried to give Gary a generous settlement. When it came to issues like that (see also, Rose Estes and the stock options) the actual facts always seem to be better to her than the anecdotes.

As I wrote, in the end, you can form your own opinion, and she was the head of the company when it was going bust the second time. But I am no longer comfortable viewing her in a negative light based on the stories I have heard.

 

[billd91]

As I wrote, in the end, you can form your own opinion, and she was the head of the company when it was going bust the second time. But I am no longer comfortable viewing her in a negative light based on the stories I have heard.

In a similar vein, I'm not entirely comfortable with all the rose-colored glasses that people looking back on the early days of TSR and the hobby seem to keep putting on. After reading (most of, still working through it) Jon Peterson's Game Wizards, I can't shake the impression that Arneson and Gygax benefit from a lot of hero-worshipping memory haze considering they were titanic asshats to each other (and various other collaterally affected people).

My advice is for people to question their assumptions and impressions they've picked up from rumors and "common knowledge" in the hobby and actually interrogate them. Neither your heroes nor your demons are probably quite what you think they are.

 

[Alzrius]

But here's the thing- almost all of those stories come off very, very differently now.

And this is where I have to respectfully disagree with you, Snarf.

While some of those stories come off differently now, the majority of them strike me as being just as true now as when they were first put out there. Yes, ones like her being fat are absolutely cringe-worthy now. But those don't, that I've seen, make up the vast majority of what people have to say about her.

It was under her tenure that TSR nurtured an impressive crop of future bestselling authors...and then alienated almost all of them. Passing on a Lord of the Rings license if it didn't include writing new novels. Draconian rules about artists not owning the originals of the work they made (Brom, specifically, cited that as being why he left TSR). Two Buck Rogers games that nobody wanted, in an effort to prop up IP her family owned (at least when Gary Gygax published Greyhawk, it was TSR's property rather than his). An incredibly litigious relationship with the fan community.

All of these, and numerous other stories, look exactly the same now as they did when we first heard about them, and none have "flags" that seem to suggest sexism is slanting what we're told. She might not have been the Wicked Witch of the West, but Lorraine Williams doesn't seem to have been a good boss by any reasonable standards that I've seen.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad. I'm trying to be very honest about my perspective on this.

I am familiar with a lot of the stories about Lorraine Williams. All of them? Of course not- I can't know everything! I haven't seen every interview of every luminary on every blog or magazine. I don't know if Zeb Cook ever had an in-depth discussion about her, and I'd love to read it.

And for a very long time, I believed the received wisdom about Lorraine. After all, if there a ton of stories about how evil she was, there has to be some truth to them, right? Where there is smoke, there's fire, and all that.

But here's the thing- almost all of those stories come off very, very differently now. Some of them are beyond cringe-worthy. Some of them just have those "flag" words that make me realize just how skewed the perspective is. A lot of them aren't first-hand, but are repeating ('fun" or "nasty") rumors other people told them. Over and over again, it's the same thing. Sexist. Hearsay. Unreliable stories that make the (male) storyteller look good and the (female) boss look terrible. Even the constant refrain of, "She wasn't a gamer," sounds very different when we remember what it was like for women in gaming in the 80s and 90s.

Times change. I remember that there was a show a long time ago when they were interviewing Hugh Hefner and he explained that when he set up the Playboy Clubs (which are mentioned in Game Wizards AND When We Were Wizards as a place that Gygax frequented ... small world) he had a strict rule that the women ("bunnies") couldn't date customers. But then Hefner stated, "I'm not a customer. I'm the owner. I get my pick." It was played for laughs then.

That's the type of comment that plays .... very ... differently now.

I keep circling back to the same point- these stories seem different now. Again, I wasn't there. I don't know what really happened. But I am very skeptical of these stories, especially given that a lot of these self-serving stories don't seem to hold up in the light of day, and in light of what we now know about gender dynamics in the workplace.

Moreover, when we see serious histories on the matter, they always seem to contradict the received wisdom we have been told. The ouster of Gygax, for example- when we learn the real facts, Lorraine isn't the evil interloper. She is the one that saves the company, and (in addition) tried to give Gary a generous settlement. When it came to issues like that (see also, Rose Estes and the stock options) the actual facts always seem to be better to her than the anecdotes.

As I wrote, in the end, you can form your own opinion, and she was the head of the company when it was going bust the second time. But I am no longer comfortable viewing her in a negative light based on the stories I have heard.

I would buy her own memoire in a heartbeat.

 

[Count_Zero]

Draconian rules about artists not owning the originals of the work they made (Brom, specifically, cited that as being why he left TSR).

This in particular probably plays worse now than it did at the time, especially considering how TSR would go on to treat those originals in the bankruptcy.

Also, if the lawsuits against GDW and Mayfair were to happen now from WotC/Hasbro, there'd not only boycotts, there'd be calls for GenCon and PAX to deny them floor and panel space on account of becoming an existential threat to the hobby.

A reminder - Designers and Dragons cites that TSRs argument in their suit against GDW was that TSR owned the core concept of the tabletop RPG. It wouldn't have held up in court, but it didn't have to - TSR dragged out Discovery until GDW was forced to settle, but at that point the damage was done, and GDW was in a death spiral.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I don't know enough of the history (and Snarf didn't really cover it), but what are the bad calls and mistakes that she made?

Stuff like pushing Buck Roger’s and weird things like D&D wood working kits

 

[dave2008]

Stuff like pushing Buck Roger’s and weird things like D&D wood working kits

OK, that doesn't seem like that qualifies as "a LOT," but I guess perspectives differ. IMO, that pales in comparison to what Gygax did (or didn't) do. Not saying she is a hero or anything, but ultimately it seems she saved D&D twice, once by helping to get rid of Gary and secondly selling to WotC. I respect her for that alone.