D&D General When We Were Wizards: Review of the Completed Podcast!

[MGibster]

I continue to listen to the podcast and it occurred to me that we're missing Kevin Siembieda's flare for dramatics. Imagine if the dude who came up with the "Crisis of Treachery" could have named what was going on at TSR in 1984-1985. That would have been pure gold. I keep saying this in threads about TSR, but the more I learn about them the more impressed I am they stayed in business so long. How many friends/relatives/girlfriends of other employees did they hire in the 70s and early 80s who essentially did nothing? Kevin Blume used TSR funds to pay for his daughter's college and gave her a salary despite her not being an employee.

There is certainly a lot of blame to go around regarding TSR's troubles in the mid-1980s, but I'm getting the impression Gary could be quite duplicitous at times. The sheer, unmitigated gall to get everyone to agree TSR owns the rights everything employees create only to claim this didn't apply to Gary's ownership of D&D is impressive. Was he able to keep a straight face when making that assertion?

I just now got in to the Lorraine Williams portion of the podcast and Gary's going to be out soon. Hope he enjoyed that Hollywood mansion while it lasted.

 

[Warren]

Gary was his own worst enemy for sure. As a kid/teen playing in the late 80s and early 90s, I still associated him with the game and had no clue that Williams had forced him out in late 85. The sheer volume of material TSR produced during that time period is amazing to look back on.

 

[Zardnaar]

Gary was his own worst enemy for sure. As a kid/teen playing in the late 80s and early 90s, I still associated him with the game and had no clue that Williams had forced him out in late 85. The sheer volume of material TSR produced during that time period is amazing to look back on.

Way I see it. I also like Lorraine's era better product wise.

 

[Riley]

Way I see it. I also like Lorraine's era better product wise.

The campaign worlds were amazing. OTOH, the published adventures didn't do much for me.

 

[Zardnaar]

The campaign worlds were amazing. OTOH, the published adventures didn't do much for me.

Dungeon was good published adventures generally sucked until post Lorraine. There's the odd exception of course. Ymmv.

 

[Mr. Lahey]

Way I see it. I also like Lorraine's era better product wise.

Perhaps the best way to look at it is that TSR developed more and more interesting, imaginative games through the 80s and 90s despite the executive structure of the company.

 

[Warren]

The campaign worlds were amazing. OTOH, the published adventures didn't do much for me.

As a 12 yr old or whatever the adventures were great to me, but everybody is different. I did appreciate all of the background campaign info too. There was something for everyone coming out every ~2 weeks(!)

Plus Dragon and Dungeon magazines.

 

[Clint_L]

There is certainly a lot of blame to go around regarding TSR's troubles in the mid-1980s, but I'm getting the impression Gary could be quite duplicitous at times. The sheer, unmitigated gall to get everyone to agree TSR owns the rights everything employees create only to claim this didn't apply to Gary's ownership of D&D is impressive. Was he able to keep a straight face when making that assertion?

Everyone is the hero of their own story. His attitude seems to have been that the basic concepts all came from him, so all those other creators were essentially riffing on what he gave them, which put him in a different category of creative ownership.

The Arneson situation obviously complicates that narrative, but that has been covered to death. I don't think Gygax was being intentionally duplicitous; I think he strongly believed that D&D/RPGs were basically his baby, whereas the reality was a lot more complicated.

I really, really love this podcast - I think I'll have to listen to it again.

 

[Parmandur]

Everyone is the hero of their own story. His attitude seems to have been that the basic concepts all came from him, so all those other creators were essentially riffing on what he gave them, which put him in a different category of creative ownership.

The Arneson situation obviously complicates that narrative, but that has been covered to death. I don't think Gygax was being intentionally duplicitous; I think he strongly believed that D&D/RPGs were basically his baby, whereas the reality was a lot more complicated.

I really, really love this podcast - I think I'll have to listen to it again.

Not duplicitous, but a little bit meglomanical.

 

[Mannahnin]

It's certainly duplicitous to sign a contract assigning rights to your creative work to your company, as a means to encourage every other creative working for that company to follow suit, but with no intention of actually giving up your own rights or control of your creative output. Which seems to be what Gary did.

He may have been self-deluded enough to believe that this was morally justified, because he considered himself the genius who came up with the idea and founded the RPG industry, but it's certainly deceitful.