D&D General The First Demise of TSR: Gygax's Folly

[Cordwainer Fish]

Didn't TSR go to court to spike Gygax' guns every time he tried to make a game after leaving?

 

[Mannahnin]

Didn't TSR go to court to spike Gygax' guns every time he tried to make a game after leaving?

My recollection is that they definitely interfered with Dangerous Dimensions (DD; huh), later renamed Dangerous Journeys. I don't know the full details of the lawsuits. Some of the details I've heard over the years sound really dumb, others sounded more substantive.

I'm not aware of them interfering with his (famously terrible) Cyborg Commando game.

 

[Morrus]

More people living in Ivory Towers.

Rewatched breakfast Club recently and reading lyrics from Gen X songs eg grunge. I knew a John Bender well more than 1.

Whole other world out there people here just don't/can't comprehend.

You are asked by a moderator to stop this. You chose to ignore him. You won't be posting in this thread again.

 

[David Howery]

getting into reading this a week late
I had some mixed views on EGG even way back in the day when all this stuff was happening. I loved his created works, the books and modules; he had a real talent for it. OTOH, there were quite a few signs that he wasn't the greatest business manager around.... the whole needlepoint thing, trying to publish some of SPI's defunct games, etc. That stuff had me going "wait, why are they getting into that kind of thing?"

 

[Staffan]

I think as a society we suffer too much from “great man theory”.

A lot of people brought their own creativity to make D&D, including Gygax.

Did he contribute more than all the others combined? Maybe so at some early point.

My understanding is that the ideas that lead to D&D were circulating a lot in various wargaming circles at the time. Gygax was the one who turned those ideas into the concrete product "Dungeons & Dragons". If he hadn't done that, it's quite possible someone else would have done it, but that product probably wouldn't be D&D as we know it.

And that's basically how I see Great Man Theory in general. Various conditions set the stage for the world to change in ways great and small. Individuals in the right circumstances can determine in which direction those changes go. Basically, the tree is going to fall, but you have a chance to decide in which direction it falls and at what time.

But if Great Man theory was correct, surely he could have made a hit product after he left TSR.

The problem there is that D&D isn't really all that great. But it has the weight of tradition behind it as well as name recognition, which made it the market leader at the time, and by now those advantages have compounded along with advantages in production values.

My recollection is that they definitely interfered with Dangerous Dimensions (DD; huh), later renamed Dangerous Journeys. I don't know the full details of the lawsuits. Some of the details I've heard over the years sound really dumb, others sounded more substantive.

You can read some of TSR's claims at https://darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/cases/tsr_vs_gdw2.txt. For example, you have:

(8) In MYTHUS (page 67), the concept of and the method by which
the game characters' attributes are defined by randomly-generated
numbers, and the players' choices of vocations precede and alter such
attribute generation, are derived from a similar concept and method in
the AD&D 1st ed. DMG (pages 11-12) and the AD&D UA (page 74).

So TSR claimed to hold a copyright on rolling for stats.

 

[Mannahnin]

You can read some of TSR's claims at https://darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/cases/tsr_vs_gdw2.txt. For example, you have:

(8) In MYTHUS (page 67), the concept of and the method by which
the game characters' attributes are defined by randomly-generated
numbers, and the players' choices of vocations precede and alter such
attribute generation, are derived from a similar concept and method in
the AD&D 1st ed. DMG (pages 11-12) and the AD&D UA (page 74).

So TSR claimed to hold a copyright on rolling for stats.

Right, thanks for that. This is a good example.

Here's an even dumber one:

(36) The "First Aid" skill in MYTHUS (pages 28 and 165) is
derived from the AD&D "Cure Light Wounds" spell in the AD&D 1st ed. PHB
(page 43) and the AD&D OA (page 57).

A lot of the individual claims here seem dumb, and clearly also applicable to other common games which were derivative of D&D in the 70s and 80s. Say, Palladium RPG, which used the same kind of ability scores, with minor differences.

But going down the list in aggregate it DOES seem like DD uses a lot of renamed concepts from D&D. Including Gary going back to the well with stuff like birth rank and socio-economic status from UA, which are of dubious play value and look like him repeating himself, despite not being concepts new or unique to D&D.

 

[Staffan]

Right, thanks for that. This is a good example.

Here's an even dumber one:



A lot of the individual claims here seem dumb, and clearly also applicable to other common games which were derivative of D&D in the 70s and 80s. Say, Palladium RPG, which used the same kind of ability scores, with minor differences.

But going down the list in aggregate it DOES seem like DD uses a lot of renamed concepts from D&D. Including Gary going back to the well with stuff like birth rank and socio-economic status from UA, which are of dubious play value and look like him repeating himself, despite not being concepts new or unique to D&D.

I played Mythus. It wasn't any closer to D&D than any other early 90s fantasy RPG, and appeared to have taken steps to differentiate itself on nomenclature ("K/S Area" instead of skill or proficiency, "Heka" instead of magic/mana points, "Dweomercraefter" instead of magic-user). Generating families and social status as part of character generation wasn't exactly default back then, but it certainly wasn't unheard of. If Dangerous Journeys had been found to infringe on TSR's copyrights, the whole RPG industry could have packed up and left.

 

[The Soloist]

I was shocked when I learned, at the local hobby store, that Gygax had been ousted from TSR. We didn't know much at the time. Lots of rumours went around but I'm not a fan of hearsay.

I was sad for the guy, but I was not a fan of his deadly modules or some of the design choices he made in AD&D. I recovered quickly, and my gaming life went on. My players, who were 5 years younger than I, didn't even care.

It's only when I started visiting forums like The Piazza for Old School D&D that I slowly learned about how the events probably unfolded. A good thing I didn't view Gygax as a personal hero.

 

[Mournblade94]

You've served up a very biased account. Very few ex TSR alumni seem to have nice things to say about Lorraine.

A few say something to the effect she wasn't as bad as the internet claims and she had sone positive points.

She arguably drained TSR money herself with Buck Roger's.

Gary wasn't good at business he also wasn't in charge lije Lorraine was

It's no big secret around here I like Lorraine's era better in terns of product. Gary buried her but she had here own issues as well even if you ignore Gary's worst accusations.

Gary also came from nothing essentially. Struck gold and messed it up. Lorraine cane from money theoretically should have known better.

Gary was a jackass we knew that long before new books came out. At least if you paid attention to various interviews. Doesn't make Lorraine a saint either.

None of us were there and it often cones down to who liked who in interviews.

Lorraine bought D&D a decade or so though.

I think the essay is true in that Williams saved the company, and in other sources I've read she was very kind to at least some of the staff. But the renown alumni of TSR have very little that is good to say about her.

Her issue was not understanding the business. All My Children Game and the forced output of Buck Roger's comes to mind.

 

[billd91]

Her issue was not understanding the business. All My Children Game and the forced output of Buck Roger's comes to mind.

The All My Children game was under Gygax's tenure. He wrote about it in Dragon 101 and TSR's moves to establish more of a presence for general-audience games.