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

[Velderan]

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?

I would need to go back and reread it, but Ben Riggs’ book discussed the inventory mismanagement TSR suffered from at the end with the board game Dragon Strike being an example. They designed the game, ordered an initial print run of like 50k and sold them all faster than expected. Someone recommended they order an additional 50k because that seemed like a reasonable number they could sell based on the initial demand and Lorraine instructed them to order something like 150k which ended up mostly gathering dust in their warehouse when demand wasn’t there. Eventually they ended up selling the unsold copies for something like $1 each.

 

[billd91]

I mean, I suppose we could start quoting dictionary entries at each other; isn't that how these things usually go?

Kinda hard to have a useful discussion if you aren't speaking the same language.

 

[Alzrius]

I would need to go back and reread it, but Ben Riggs’ book discussed the inventory mismanagement TSR suffered from at the end with the board game Dragon Strike being an example. They designed the game, ordered an initial print run of like 50k and sold them all faster than expected. Someone recommended they order an additional 50k because that seemed like a reasonable number they could sell based on the initial demand and Lorraine instructed them to order something like 150k which ended up mostly gathering dust in their warehouse when demand wasn’t there. Eventually they ended up selling the unsold copies for something like $1 each.

If I recall correctly, there was an attempt to course-correct for this by someone in middle management, in that they tried to alter that 150k back down to 50k. They got an angry phone call from upstairs telling them to change it back to 150k, which (and this is where someone needs to double-check me) was because TSR got paid up front for each unit by Randomhouse, and wanted the cash immediately, despite knowing that they'd have to pay Randomhouse back for unsold units (a lot of what they did was based around the idea of "cash now, consequences later," such as their use of factoring).

Kinda hard to have a useful discussion if you aren't speaking the same language.

Definition-nitpickery never struck me as rising to the level of a "useful discussion," but (case in point) here we are.

In an attempt to move things back around to the broader point, I'll say again that TSR under Williams' leadership had an issue of nurturing very creative people, only to then drive them out, artists and writers alike. This was not a good thing by any measure, and holding it against the company strikes me as entirely justified.

 

[Count_Zero]

But that's what I mean. It appears that people, despite the accumulation of historical evidence, will just categorize everything as "Lorraine bad."

In my case, I generally consider Gary, Kevin Blume, and Lorraine Williams to all be terrible for different reasons. I never moved in the circles online where the insults about her appearance and weight were going around, but I did observe the "They Sue Regularly" complaints, including from people who got sent C&Ds during Williams tenure.

Maybe CEOs don't necessarily need rehabilitation. Especially those in niche industries who actively engaged in campaigns of litigation against that industry and their customers.

 

[Ondath]

While I appreciate the nuance Snarf points here, I'm kinda with Alzrius with this one. Too many bad decisions seem to have piled up under Lorraine's tenure to argue that she was a net positive influence.

Also one thing that doesn't seem to be discussed even though I remember it being common Internet wisdom at some point: Didn't TSR under Lorraine have the policy of not allowing playtesting because it was viewed as playing games on company time? If this was indeed how it was, that's a terrible business decision for a tabletop gaming company.

 

[KYRON45]

Kinda hard to have a useful discussion if you aren't speaking the same language.

It's not that people aren't speaking the same language, it's that some people like to twist the language being used so that it represents their argument.

 

[Alzrius]

It's not that people aren't speaking the same language, it's that some people like to twist the language being used so that it represents their argument.

There's a quote somewhere about how the purpose of writing is to "inhibit clarity, obfuscate communication, and make dialog impenetrable," or something like that.

Unfortunately, some people treat that as a how-to guide, instead of satire.

 

[MGibster]

I'm in agreement and I've argued for the last few years that Lorraine Williams' role at TSR deserved to be reexamined. When I was younger, she certainly played the role of a villain, having driven the great Gygax out of the company and eventually steering the ship off the edge of the world, but it's only in recent years that I've seen anyone give her credit for saving TSR in the 1980s. A reevalutation of Williams' tenure at TSR doesn't mean you ignore the negatives. TSR likely would have been able to survive had Williams not structured the company finances in the manner she choose.

 

[Count_Zero]

TSR likely would have been able to survive had Williams not structured the company finances in the manner she choose.

Except that's just being good at being a CEO - that doesn't make her worthy of praise. Does it make Kevin Blume and Gary Gygax worthy of more condemnation? Sure. But the complaints about the lawsuits, the mistreatment of creators, etc, don't go away. Even if those policies were perpetuating policies set under Gygax or Blume, she could have ended those policies.

 

[Staffan]

There's a quote somewhere about how the purpose of writing is to "inhibit clarity, obfuscate communication, and make dialog impenetrable," or something like that.

Unfortunately, some people treat that as a how-to guide, instead of satire.

Oh...