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

Warren said:

The devil is in the details: specifically how much TSR paid Williams' family for the rights to a Buck Rogers game.

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Well, yes and no. It might very well be that what TSR paid was, in fact, the fair market value for the rights to make a Buck Rogers RPG (though I doubt we'll ever know for certain).

Rather, to my mind the issue is one of the appearance of impropriety, which is a separate consideration from impropriety itself. If you're the VP of a corporation, and you're in charge of throwing a party for an outgoing CEO, you don't employ your wife's catering company, regardless of how good they are or what you pay for their services.

Alzrius said:

Rather, to my mind the issue is one of the appearance of impropriety, which is a separate consideration from impropriety itself. If you're the VP of a corporation, and you're in charge of throwing a party for an outgoing CEO, you don't employ your wife's catering company, regardless of how good they are or what you pay for their services.

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I agree, and of course this type of thing has a long and storied history at TSR, starting with Gary's wife's company.

TiQuinn said:

Was it unethical? Depends on your perspective of ethics. I think pushing a product by a company that you are that has low interest in the market but would benefit your family personally because they own the rights is bordering on unethical even if you have controlling shares in the company.

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Warren said:

The devil is in the details: specifically how much TSR paid Williams' family for the rights to a Buck Rogers game.

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Warren said:

I agree, and of course this type of thing has a long and storied history at TSR, starting with Gary's wife's company.

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Uh-huh, yeah. And these are all pretty much things you get to do when you closely own a company. With the Blumes AND Gygax bought out, Lorraine was in full control. She had the ability to push whatever products she wanted, including Buck Rogers and that's fine. It's her company.

Same, ultimately, with TSR when owned by the Gygax-Blumes triumvirate. Nepotism may be bad for business because you're not looking for competitiveness in your employees and there may be relationship issues involved, but if you're content to be the one holding the bag when your bad business decisions catch up to you - you can be your bad, nepotistic self.

Warren said:

I don't think it was the intent so much as continuing to push a bad idea after it was an obvious flop, and suggesting it all the time for new product ideas. I think it was James Ward in one of the biographies quoted with "We're going to keep making Buck Rogers until you start buying it."

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Obvious to you and me and obvious to a woman who literally came from a family fortune founded on Buck Rogers IP, and who really didn't understand the hobby she bought into, are two different things. I imagine that from her perspective, it would make sense that these nerd things would go together.

As I've already stated, Williams' seeming disinterest in getting to understand her product and its fan base was a pretty massive business failure. I just don't think it was at all unethical to use the company she owned to keep pushing the IP that she owned. Just myopic and futile.

And even there, Buck Rogers isn't why TSR went under. After they bought it, WotC commisioned a forensic review of its finances and cited the main reason being that it was essentially splitting its fan base with way too many product lines, mostly for AD&D, all while essentially using the Random House deal to build up more and more debt. A practice, incidentally, that started in the Gygax/Blume regime and was already a problem then, so Williams really should have known better. She probably did and felt like she had no other option - TSR basically survived those last few years by repeatedly kicking the can down the road until there was no more road.

Ultimately, I think Williams was trapped and not the right person for the job, at all, though she managed to find enough revenue streams to keep TSR going long enough for someone who understood the business to finally buy it out. I give her credit for that - I really think she did save TSR in the 80s.

Clint_L said:

Obvious to you and me and obvious to a woman who literally came from a family fortune founded on Buck Rogers IP, and who really didn't understand the hobby she bought into, are two different things. I imagine that from her perspective, it would make sense that these nerd things would go together.

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To be honest, even now I don't think it is obvious that it couldn't have worked at the time, if done the right way.

Way too much is made over the Buck Rogers stuff, IMHO.

Buck Rogers was sunk cost two or three years in the rear view when the whole thing went belly up.

As for Ms. Williams ethics in the “coup” I’d suggest reading the story in The Game Wizards first. The podcast is great for the drama of last minutes of EGG as a TSR board member, but it isn’t as clear as to the whole story.

Williams was brought in by EGG. She only came on board with her cash infusion based on getting some part of the company. Granted, EGG was hoping to use her for cash and her brother for this unrealized mission of getting a film out (which seems like it was mostly a coke fueled mix of Hail Mary and hubris). Let’s face it, the “heirs of the Buck Rogers IP” aren’t really A list people. Or even really B list even. They had money—ultimately enough to buy TSR—but the total number put up by Ms. Williams for everything was under a million dollars. No small sum, but not necessarily a huge fortune either.

She was vested, saw the dysfunctional state of the management, and also saw an opportunity. It’s not like the Blume’s were going to get a better offer from anyone else. No one who really wanted the company had the liquidity to pay the Blumes off for their shares. Gary couldn’t. TSR couldn’t. TSR couldn’t even get its bank to lend it enough to pay them off. And TSR was effectively going bankrupt—especially with the liabilities it had accumulated, particularly those created by the other remaining major shareholder who wasn’t named Blume.

EGG had played Diplomacy for years. He thought he had counted all the shares. He set up the gambit and lost. Then after a brief period wandering in the wilderness, he came back to sell his version of things. Williams basically faded completely after TSR went bankrupt and never really given her story.

I posted the thank you to Williams in the Encyclopedia Magica which is one of the only places where I can ever remember seeing her name in anything D&D related, but again, it doesn’t look like it was there as simply praising the benevolence of the Dear Leader, but meaningfully that she provided direction on the project scope.

Alzrius said:

Rather, to my mind the issue is one of the appearance of impropriety, which is a separate consideration from impropriety itself. If you're the VP of a corporation, and you're in charge of throwing a party for an outgoing CEO, you don't employ your wife's catering company, regardless of how good they are or what you pay for their services.

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I would be curious to learn if Williams took the issue to TSR's board of directors. It did occur to me that Gygax himself had a major conflict of interest with his royalty payments. It was in his best interest to focus on D&D to the exclusion of other projects because he would personally profit from it. It almost didn't matter how well TSR was doing so long as he continued to get those royalties. i.e. Gygax didn't really seem to care about TSR as an entity just that he had control over D&D.

I do not ever recall seeing Buck Rogers for sale at my LGS. I bet it was there, but having zero interest in Buck Rogers I simply turned a blind eye to it. Too bad. I just read the Wikipedia entry and it sounded kind of cool.

billd91 said:

But that assumes there's a case that needs to be put forth at all. What should she care about the feelings of a bunch of nerds carrying on and fighting issues from the last century? The misinformation spread around by the Gary loyalists and rumormongering gamers is taking up less and less of the hobby's mindshare all the time anyway. So why bother? Her side of the story might matter to some of us looking for a broader perspective on the game's history - but it's largely an academic question with little practical use or application.

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In my part of the country, most of the muck-raking involving Lorraine I heard were of the "legal embezzlement" variety, which I'd love to hear an opposing side of the story. I enjoyed both versions of the Buck Rogers products, even if both were wonky in their own ways. The video-based games is one I'd like to hear more about properly.

dbolack said:

I enjoyed both versions of the Buck Rogers products

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Beedeebeedeebeedee!

dbolack said:

The video-based games is one I'd like to hear more about properly.

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The CRPG Addict has play reports on both ([1] [2]) and the Digital Antiquarian has a flyby on the circumstances around their making.

Parmandur said:

To be honest, even now I don't think it is obvious that it couldn't have worked at the time, if done the right way.

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I agree with this. I am of the age that I saw the movie in the theatre and watched the TV Show in reruns for a long while. Got excited by Defenders of the Earth, etc... I was excited for this one. Though they went... places. And later, the comics serial-based set deserves reexamination.