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

Mistwell said:

Saying the dislike for Williams is "unwarranted" is frankly in my opinion very weird. She does many bad things. The fact that Gary did worse things doesn't make her OK just because she's OK "in comparison" to Gary.

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We tend to hold Williams to a higher standard than we do good old Gygax, but yes, she engaged in some serious skullduggery to take control of TSR. All of which might have been avoided had Gary been a bit more serious about running TSR instead of running to LA to live the high life. It might have been avoided if Gygax hadn't been jerking the Blumes around in regards to purchasing their share of the company. The only reason the lack of 30 day notice of intention to sell wasn't violated is because the court found TSR had numerous opportunity to purchase the stocks over the last year and failed to do so. It also probably didn't help that Gary had insulted Williams at a meeting where he made it clear to her that her opinions were meaningless. This isn't a good way to treat someone you had earlier credited with turning the company around. Gygax gave Williams all the rope she needed to hang him.

Mistwell said:

The Podcast makes it very clear she directly orchestrated a secret takeover of the company, using directly nefarious means to trick Gary into a meeting under false pretenses. She used dubious interpretations of company policy to engage in multiple secret stock purchases, one of which very likely involved a conflict of interest loan from her to the person exercising a stock option. She told the CFO to not tell Gary about it, which runs counter to his fiduciary duty due to his involvement with it, and arranged for the whole thing to happen while Gary was attending a funeral knowing he wouldn't be in the office which also is a breach of fiduciary duty.

That whole takeover of the company is gross and clear violations of corporate ethics.

Saying you dislike Gary for things he did makes perfect sense.

Saying the dislike for Williams is "unwarranted" is frankly in my opinion very weird. She does many bad things. The fact that Gary did worse things doesn't make her OK just because she's OK "in comparison" to Gary.

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What the podcast made me understand in a very visceral way, is how ever involved in those maneuvers basically felt like rats trapped in a corner thanks to Gygax's actions. Ethical? Maybe not, but desperate people will do what they can to protect their livelihoods and families.

MGibster said:

We tend to hold Williams to a higher standard than we do good old Gygax, but yes, she engaged in some serious skullduggery to take control of TSR. All of which might have been avoided had Gary been a bit more serious about running TSR instead of running to LA to live the high life. It might have been avoided if Gygax hadn't been jerking the Blumes around in regards to purchasing their share of the company. The only reason the lack of 30 day notice of intention to sell wasn't violated is because the court found TSR had numerous opportunity to purchase the stocks over the last year and failed to do so. It also probably didn't help that Gary had insulted Williams at a meeting where he made it clear to her that her opinions were meaningless. This isn't a good way to treat someone you had earlier credited with turning the company around. Gygax gave Williams all the rope she needed to hang him.

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Agreed. He was behaving awful.

This does not make me think Williams was not also behaving awful. She was behaving "better" than Gary, but that's not the standard. Everything she did in that week was deeply weasel-like and nasty. There were much better and more honest ways to attempt to obtain that result. She made some creepy choices instead and it's worth criticism despite Gary behaving even worse.

Parmandur said:

What the podcast made me understand in a very visceral way, is how ever involved in those maneuvers basically felt like rats trapped in a corner thanks to Gygax's actions. Ethical? Maybe not, but desperate people will do what they can to protect their livelihoods and families.

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There are much more ethical means to accomplish those goals. She chose unethical ones because they were shortcuts and it left her in charge rather than someone they could all agree on together in arbitration or with a mediator or with the bank holders. I think people are finding excuses to defend Williams because that's the new narrative. The truth looks to me that both Gary and Williams were nasty in differing ways and both deserve lots of criticism.

Mistwell said:

There are much more ethical means to accomplish those goals. She chose unethical ones because they were shortcuts and it left her in charge rather than someone they could all agree on together in arbitration or with a mediator or with the bank holders. I think people are finding excuses to defend Williams because that's the new narrative. The truth looks to me that both Gary and Williams were nasty in differing ways and both deserve lots of criticism.

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Not "defending" her per se, bit this podcast made it really clear what a Greek tragedy this was: Gygax put these people in a box where they felt it was fight or lose everything...and he was not prepared for the push back, couldnwven imagine it, apparently.

Parmandur said:

Not "defending" her per se, bit this podcast made it really clear what a Greek tragedy this was: Gygax put these people in a box where they felt it was fight or lose everything...and he was not prepared for the push back, couldnwven imagine it, apparently.

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None of them could imagine it. Rose Estes, who isn't a bit fan of Gary at the time, was stunned. Everyone was stunned. Gary didn't even know it was Williams behind it when it was happening.

I believe Snarf is just trying to demonstrate that the simple narrative of Gygax vs. Evil Lorraine is not correct. He's saying that once you dive into the history, events are not so simple. If it seems that Snarf is showing bias, it's just that he's defending her against that narrative. I don't think Snarf is painting Lorraine as some kind of angel. He is aware of the post Gygax years, after all.

Arilyn said:

I believe Snarf is just trying to demonstrate that the simple narrative of Gygax vs. Evil Lorraine is not correct. He's saying that once you dive into the history, events are not so simple. If it seems that Snarf is showing bias, it's just that he's defending her against that narrative. I don't think Snarf is painting Lorraine as some kind of angel. He is aware of the post Gygax years, after all.

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It is simply inconceivable to me that someone could listen to that podcast and have the sole takeaway that, "Hey, Lorraine Williams was a real piece of work, AMIRITE?" The podcast is an oral history centered on the fall of Gary Gygax, and does an excellent job portraying his hubris, and I think makes it quite clear that his ouster was the result of Gygax's actions. I mean, I thought they did a pretty decent job considering the constraints of the form portraying it.

But apparently not clear enough, somehow?

Which is why there are further histories people can, and should, avail themselves of. And why I bothered to make a more detailed history- which cites the sources and provides the specific page rage for people to read- showing that Gygax played himself right into the ditch. It is simply impossible for anyone with an actual knowledge of the history (which is well detailed because it was litigated in court and there are numerous contemporaneous documents) to view this as anything other than "Directors oust incompetent CEO with knowledge of creditors and to save company; in other news, dog bites man."

But please do not take my word for it, or anyone else's. Listen to the full podcast (the OP). Read Game Wizards (by Jon Peterson) and other recent histories. And if you continue to have questions, look at the citations, find source documents, and make your own opinion.

Real history, with real facts, and real sources? That's fun! Whatever this is? That isn't- not to me.

Snarf Zagyg said:

Real history, with real facts, and real sources? That's fun! What @Mistwell is doing? That isn't- not to me.

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Is it worth tagging him and calling him out? Frankly he’s threadcrapped and made this personal enough…no need to draw his attention further.

Mistwell said:

The Podcast makes it very clear she directly orchestrated a secret takeover of the company, using directly nefarious means to trick Gary into a meeting under false pretenses. She used dubious interpretations of company policy to engage in multiple secret stock purchases, one of which very likely involved a conflict of interest loan from her to the person exercising a stock option. She told the CFO to not tell Gary about it, which runs counter to his fiduciary duty due to his involvement with it, and arranged for the whole thing to happen while Gary was attending a funeral knowing he wouldn't be in the office which also is a breach of fiduciary duty.

That whole takeover of the company is gross and clear violations of corporate ethics.

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I think it's far more nuanced than that. Gygax apparently defrauded a bunch of people, demeaned and degraded the woman he had brought in to save the company, and tried to rip off the Blumes too. Obviously the Blumes were equally culpable for running the company into the ground in the first place, so there's lots of blame to go around, but Williams seems to have clearly been doing what was necessary to save the company and her own investment from the situation Gary and the Blumes created and Gary was worsening with his ongoing dishonesty and malfeasance.

Mistwell said:

Saying the dislike for Williams is "unwarranted" is frankly in my opinion very weird. She does many bad things. The fact that Gary did worse things doesn't make her OK just because she's OK "in comparison" to Gary.

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That's not what Snarf wrote, despite you quoting it right above this, which is weird.

"I think that a lot of the inchoate dislike towards her that later became calcified into "common wisdom" really needs to be re-evaluated. And the more we get real histories (this, and more importantly, books like Game Wizards) the more we see that a lot of the hate toward Williams is the product of attitudes of the time, and not of actual events."

While Williams certainly did some crappy things, it has become increasingly clear as the real histories come out that "a lot of" the hate towards her "needs to be reevaluated". "A lot of" (not all) "the hate towards Williams is a product of attitudes of the times, and not of actual events". Which seems indisputable at this point. Those are appropriately caveated statements. We KNOW and have seen some of the gross sexism which has been part of the anti-Williams stories over the years. We now know that a lot of the "Lorraine stabbed Gary in the back" narrative Gary and others spread was deeply self-serving and misleading in that it completely left out their own misdeeds and dishonesty. Much of the hate towards Williams was clearly grounded in fan ignorance and unwarranted hero worship of Gary, as well as credulity toward his narrative.

That doesn't mean that ALL of it was, but clearly a big element of these more complete histories is debunking some of the misinformation and allowing us to challenge some of the narratives we previously had which were rooted in ignorance and misinformation.