I thought the stuff all went to auction in the 2000s. It may have not included the IP though.
As for the injection of Buck Rodgers into TSR's product line, it doesn't seem unethical at all to me. Honestly, she was only involved because she was looking for a way to monetize Buck Rodgers. TSR seemed like a good enough vehicle for that. She was able to get the company at a decent price. Her primary reason it seems was to expand the value of the IP she had.
That it didn't work is more of a mix of marketing and market than anything. If she was able to get back out what she had invested, by say, licensing her IP to TSR, that is honestly just good business. It was a private company. She really had no fiduciary responsibility to anyone. I believe after EGG sold his shares back after the takeover, there weren't any outstanding shares, or at least no substantial holders of them. Williams held the Blumes' and TSR purchased Mr. Gygax's directly. If my head math is accurate, that was more than 90% of all the shares that had been distributed. Ernie Gygax had like 50 or something and there may have been a few others that held shares in the double digits.
You could even speculate that she probably didn't really care what happened by 1996 since it was obvious that TSR wasn't going to be able to provide any real return on the Buck Rodgers IP.
I did go over the Buck Rogers thing before.
See Part C.
But arguing Buck Williams is a fool's errand. It was neither unlawful nor unethical. Lorraine was not just focused on Buck Rogers- she was trying to diversify TSR in numerous ways. And it's not like this isn't the only property they licensed under Lorraine; they licensed everything from Red October and Perry Mason (??) to Bullwinkle and Rocky. And we all know that she was open to licensing other properties under the right terms (the deal to license Tolkien fell through because she wanted some publication rights for the fiction side).
Notice that no one produces any receipts or evidence that there were any terms about the license that weren't fair market value. Instead, we are led to believe that it was just per se bad- which anyone who has an iota of business experience knows is incorrect. Moreover, ithad nothing to do with the financial failure of TSR. It's just more of the usual, "I don't actually know any of the facts, but I'll throw more wood on the fire because it sounds bad, I think?"
You want to summarize Lorraine's stewardship of TSR? Here's my opinion based on what I've learned-
1. She saved TSR from ruin in 1985. Without her, we would have missed out on a lot of the products that people today love.
2. She was more professional and ethical than the prior Gygax/Blume management. Basic things like "honoring contracts," and "paying royalties," and "not screwing over employees what they were due and promised,"* became a thing. Also she didn't stock TSR with all of her relatives who were incompetent and/or did not work.
3. Her basic level of competence kept TSR going during a time when a lot of gamin companies were going under.
4. She failed to correct or realize that there were some structural problems going on- you know, stuff like "Are we making more selling this product than it costs to produce it?"
5. She was unable to make decisions that saved TSR from the combination of the rise of the card games (M:TG etc.) as well as the structural problems in the RPG industry.
*Regular screwing over of employees is always a thing. But at least the company did it like other companies do, and no longer went out of its way to get people to work by offering them stuff and then saying, "Oops, we totes had our fingers crossed, and also contracts only apply when we want them to."
In other words, she was perfectly cromulent. Certainly no better than that. Look at the history of gaming companies- they go bust all the time. We may all be patting ourselves on the back right now about D&D, but we should remember that D&D as a brand was close to being shut down completely when 5e came out. Would a great CEO have done better? Yes, of course! Can we all see the mistakes she made with 20/20 hindsight? Certainly. But it would have taken a great CEO.
Other than a very few TTRPG publishers, how many survived from the early 80s? And survived not just the first gaming crash, but also the '90s card game onslaught?
Mayfair Games?
Bard Games?
Games Designer Workshop?
Avalon Hill?
Flying Buffalo?
How about FGU? No?
Companies that you might have think "made it" also didn't ... not really. West End Games went bankrupt at the same time ('98). Chaosium was destroyed by the failure of their card game and had to split the assets into new subsidiaries. And so on.
That's the final point- not that Lorraine Williams was great. Simply that she wasn't a villain. Treat her the same as we do all the male CEOs of other companies that also didn't make it. Seems fair, doesn't it?
