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

[dragoner]

There's definitely a degree to which controversy IS free advertising, but by '85 D&D sales were tanking by comparison with those boom years, and while some of it was no doubt market saturation and the challenge of people learning to play, the satanic panic does seem to have done real damage too.

No argument there was a satanic panic, hit music too; though for RPG's istr other companies, such as GDW were also reporting a downturn in sales, which wasn't about the satanic panic.

 

[PHATsakk43]

No argument there was a satanic panic, hit music too; though for RPG's istr other companies, such as GDW were also reporting a downturn in sales, which wasn't about the satanic panic.

GDW was hit because while D&D wasn’t a path way to devil worship, it was the gateway drug to TTRPGs.

 

[michaeljpastor]

You mean like I noted in the paragraph above the one you quoted?

Edit: I did some digging into archived online department store catalogs a few years ago during a related discussion, and confirmed the Sears annual Christmas Wishbook kept TSR stuff until 1984, but it looks like Penneys and Montgomery Ward dropped them earlier.

Thank god my mom was able to get me all the books up to that point with her Penney's employee discount. 20% on 12 bucks meant something back then!

 

[Mannahnin]

Thank god my mom was able to get me all the books up to that point with her Penney's employee discount. 20% on 12 bucks meant something back then!

20% off certainly still does today, even if the book is $50 or whatever!

 

[Nikosandros]

20% off certainly still does today, even if the book is $50 or whatever!

It's almost like the ratio between the discount and the full price remained constant!

 

[Emerikol]

My only criticism was that Lorraine Williams might have been better but being better than what you describe is nothing to brag about. Yes they needed restructuring and downsizing. No. Their product approach in 2e was not good and helped further send the company down the tubes.

 

[Mannahnin]

My only criticism was that Lorraine Williams might have been better but being better than what you describe is nothing to brag about. Yes they needed restructuring and downsizing. No. Their product approach in 2e was not good and helped further send the company down the tubes.

Well, it was up and then down, remember. They produced a ton of gaming stuff and were the biggest publisher of fantasy/SF in the country for a while. They absolutely failed at cost containment, though, and the factoring agreement with the bank cutting 20% off their revenue handicapped them despite the predictable flow of operating capital it gave.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think the reality is that in order for TSR to have remained profitable, they would have had to downsize, limit themselves to only a handful of actual D&D projects, and not overload their novel line.

That would most likely mean no products like Night Below, Al Qadim, Ruins of the Underdark, etc. And novels would have been limited to Weiss&Hickman, Greenwood, and Salvatore (assuming TSR would have treated them better). Maybe Denning, Grubb and Lowder as well. No other books or authors.

Basically, we got a lot of products, many of them we enjoyed, at the expense of the health of the company.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think the reality is that in order for TSR to have remained profitable, they would have had to downsize, limit themselves to only a handful of actual D&D projects, and not overload their novel line.

That would most likely mean no products like Night Below, Al Qadim, Ruins of the Underdark, etc. And novels would have been limited to Weiss&Hickman, Greenwood, and Salvatore (assuming TSR would have treated them better). Maybe Denning, Grubb and Lowder as well. No other books or authors.

Basically, we got a lot of products, many of them we enjoyed, at the expense of the health of the company.

I'm not sure that would have even been necessary if they:

1. Got rid of the factoring agreement, which took 20% off the top and hobbled their ability to respond in real time to sales data.
2. Had functioning cost and profitability data for products. It's true that some boxed sets were sold below or near cost, right? That's a crazy level of administrative dysfunction, and one of the most damning data points against Williams' regime.
3. Had better voice of the customer (Ryan Dancey's main point from that old essay) and communicated it to their designers as well as the beancounters.

 

[PHATsakk43]

I'm not sure that would have even been necessary if they:

1. Got rid of the factoring agreement, which took 20% off the top and hobbled their ability to respond in real time to sales data.
2. Had functioning cost and profitability data for products. It's true that some boxed sets were sold below or near cost, right? That's a crazy level of administrative dysfunction, and one of the most damning data points against Williams' regime.
3. Had better voice of the customer (Ryan Dancey's main point from that old essay) and communicated it to their designers as well as the beancounters.

I think this gets to a good point. It doesn’t seem that TSR was loosing out on the IP side, but on the publishing and distribution side.

To be honest, I posted a while back that had the company focused on a few core products in the game sphere and instead focused their efforts on the periodicals and fiction, they would have likely been far better positioned.