I have read the recent books and also pat interviews from many people involved. Gary was long gone around 1982 as he was in Hollywood trying to get media deals done. He got the cartoon. The Blumes were involved with day to day operations once their father died. Their father was the main investor and his shares passed to his sons. Lorraine Williams stabbed him in the back. Stop making excuses for her. She had the company for 12 years and totally botched her job. The debt during that 12 years span is owned by her. They had a sweet deal with Random House where they would get advances for their print runs and used that money to fund the next project. The projects didn’t sell and Random House demanded payment for all the stock in their warehouse. That happened under Williams watch. Also the hate-branded idea to upset DC comics by trying to publish D&D comics I house when they were already successful under the DC contract. Yeah, I read a book or two plus interviews over the years. Cite all your proof that my points are invalid if you can. Stop making vague, general points that Gary was a bad manager. Everyone knows that. It does not matter because TSR failed 12 years after deposing him.
Gary wasn't "long gone" in '82. He was still one of the guys in charge, even while he was abdicating most of the management responsibilities to the Blumes while he was in Hollywood. That was by his choice, and he repeatedly approved and agreed with decisions they made which hurt the company. Though he disagreed with others, it was still his choice to have the Blumes make those decisions. One of the recurring themes we see in
When We Were Wizards was how a lot of the creative staff thought of Gary as one of their own and expected that if he knew what the Blumes were doing he would help them out, while behind the scenes he was indeed aware of the Blumes' decisions and giving them tacit or explicit approval. And he was already making terrible decisions well before deciding to focus on media and movie deal- like when Dave Megarry tried to share a book with him on corporate management and stages of development, and tried to get the company to hire someone with actual management experience to head off problems, and was treated with contempt.
Yes, we all know about the Random House deal. You're late to the discussion and preaching to the choir on that. If you want to call Williams worse because as a manager she kept the company operating two years
longer than Gygax and the Blumes... That doesn't seem to add up. We also have the fact that virtually every TSR employee who worked under both the Gygax/Blume regime and the Williams regime has said they preferred working for Williams. Williams seems to have been unpleasant in some regards, and definitely made some bad decisions, but the company wasn't a massive mess of nepotism, over-expansion and years of mass firings like it was under Gary and the Blumes. The "Comic Book Modules" idea and screwing up with licensing deal with DC was indeed dumb. But it wasn't "buy needlepoint company Greenfield Needlewomen because my cousin owns it" dumb, or "hire my brother in law to run procurement and purchasing and swallow hundreds of thousands in losses when he mass-orders mismatched board game board and box sizes" dumb. Or "dump the Grenadier and Ral Partha licensing to try to bring miniature production in-house, overpay Duke Seyfriend to run it, then throw good money after bad to buy him out when it fails completely" dumb. Or "stop ordering dice before in-house molds are actually anywhere near ready, and be forced to sell Basic sets with cardboard chits for several months" dumb.
It is very important to get the facts correct. Was Gygax a poor manager. Yes. Was Lorraine Williams a worse manager? IMHO, yes. She obviously did not understand the product line, mismanaged it and contributed nothing but cash. The utter failure led to the collapse and near disappearance of the game.
Nah. She contributed more competent management, as attested by TSR employees who worked under both. She kept it alive at least long enough to and finally did sell to WotC, allowing the game to continue to exist. Gary and the Blumes in 1985 were in the same kind of financial position in terms of debt and failure. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy and being lost to the bank before Gygax recruited Williams and she gave it another 12 years.
Gary at least had the collaborative idea along with Arneson and turned it into the hobby we all enjoy to this day. The books, video games, comics and even the forums here all sprang from his idea. Sorry that it doesn't fit into your notions about Gygax but whatever his flaws he did far more for our industry than Lorraine Williams ever did and I am tired of seeing him dragged through the mud to cover up the flaws of The Blume Brothers, Lorraine Williams, TSR, WOTC, Hasbro and everyone else involved.
And we credit him for his creative and promotional achievements! Gary pretty much founded the TTRPG hobby at the overlap point between the wargaming and sci-fi fandoms. But we don't need to keep repeating lies he told about all TSR mismanagement being other people's fault. And we don't need to keep repeating the canard that Williams never did anything for the hobby, when a ton of books millions of people love came out under her watch, including all of 2E, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the vast majority of the fiction. And when she's the one who made the WotC deal and enabled Peter Adkison to save D&D. If she really didn't give a damn she could have walked away and let it sink.
