Now, let's compare this with the Buck Rogers saga. Yes, Lorraine had a pecuniary interest in Buck Rogers IP. Yes, TSR paid for it. That's always the end of the analysis. Seriously, it's always, "BUT BUCK ROGERS!" Fine. Show me the receipts. Show me that Lorraine was not paying the correct ("fair") price for it. Show me that it was treated differently. Because otherwise, we have the usual situation-
Quite a lot of what you say about Lorraine's tenure at the company is excellent and needs to be said, repeatedly, especially about the misogyny underlying some of the criticism aimed at her and the ways in which critics use different standards for the pre- and post-takeover company. More than anything, Lorraine understood the importance of creating worlds and characters. She understood the importance of reaching different audiences through different media (games, fiction, comics, etc), too. Not a shock since the family money came from owning and exploiting the Buck Rogers IP. If you look at what IP Wizards has been using for cross-media products over the past fifteen years, it's largely stuff from Lorraine's tenure. One of the biggest stumbles WotC made after buying TSR was diminishing the importance of creating new characters and developing settings--building new IP or at least exapnding what they owned. Good thing they have all the material from the 1980s and 1990s to stripmine.
Two things to mull over, though:
Buck
was treated differently at the company. Products were placed on the schedule with no regards for sales or demand from Random House or the hobby market. Sales did not matter. The fact the products were taking space on the schedule from Realms or Dragonlance or other things that would have sold better did not matter. Random House was particularly salty about that, as I heard firsthand from their reps at the company distribution/sales conference in 1991.
TSR also pressured licensees to license Buck along with properties they wanted to license; I saw that firsthand, too, in some of the meetings with Mike Gold and others from DC when they visited Sheridan Springs Road. DC refusing to do a licensed Buck comic after a relentless hard sell from TSR was the root cause of the break with them. This cost TSR years of substantial and largely passive income, as well as a licensing deal that was growing the D&D brands in the wider pop culture. The license was also on the verge of expanding into at least three additional regular comics, including Ravenloft and Greyhawk.
Now, as you say, Lorraine had every right to do all this. It was a private company. It's also not unusual for companies to have "pet" lines they want to succeed and which they support even though sales are not great. They sometimes even bundle these "pet" IPs with attractive IPs for licensing. This happens more than people realize--but with company-owned IP. TSR did not own Buck outright. TSR licensing deals were being used to forward an IP the company did not entirely own. TSR was also locked into creating and releasing licensed products themselves even when they knew those products were not selling. That's not normal.
Working on Buck projects caused a lot of grief for staff and freelancers, too, because of the whim-driven way in which the trust (Flint and Lorraine) reviewed and approved/rejected material. Again, this grief is not uncommon when working with IP holders. But it was a major problem with Buck and burned relationships with some freelancers completely to the ground. (e.g. the anthology
Arrival, which lost multiple name SF writers before release; two of the stories eventually published were even ghostwritten by Book Department staff over a weeked, for no pay, because the licensing review was so destructive veteran writers were still bailing the week before the book was headed to the printer.) The channels through which staff might resolve the licensor problems were closed off, as well, since ownership was the licensor being capricious. If Flint were being a huge problem, Lorraine would sometimes reel him in, but staff knew where sympathies fell.
All that said, was Buck a significant reason TSR failed? Internally it squandered resources, but not to a fatal extent. It even produced some good material, like the Pondsmith RPG and the board game, which was fun and years ahead of its time. The way Lorraine handled Buck products undermined staff trust in management to make reasonable and not whim-based decisions, but not to a fatal extent there, either. The greatest damage was, I think, to relationships with licensees and potential licensees. The bundling of Buck with TSR properties could be a deal killer and what happened with DC provided a huge red flag for anyone looking to do business with the company. Buck certainly didn't help TSR, but it was not a core reason for the failure.
The other thing I would caution you on is the assessment of creator treatment. Yes, Lorraine did some good things for Rose after the previous adminstration had screwed her over, but Rose also ended up walking away from TSR under Lorraine—with TSR angry at her because she went elsewhere. Lorraine also did some amazing things for individual employees, especially Bill Conners (as covered in
Slaying the Dragon). But the company leadership as a whole under her often reveled in being bullies. Stomping on creators and detaching creators, especially fiction writers, from things they had created for the company became a stated internal priority by the mid-1990s. For example, management was unhappy Christie Golden was being identified by fans as a motive force behind Ravenloft's success so the head of books refused to even consider her for more fiction after 1993. She was banished (and went on to great success elsewhere). They went after Bob Salvatore over Drizzt for much the same reason. (That's covered pretty well in
Slaying the Dragon, too.) There was all kinds of destructive crap like that. Really nasty, salt-the-earth kinds of things. Petty and mean and spiteful.
TSR management under Lorraine regularly bullied people—staff and freelancers—with those problems accelerating as the finances started to really sour. I personally tried to raise this with Lorraine and management before I left, but was repeatedly shut down. They knew what they were doing. They did a lot of damage to people, including people who had made them a lot of money.
Was this bullying, anti-creative behavior a reason TSR failed, though? No.
It diminshed the quality of work they received and published, especially with the fiction line; the talent market there had less tolerance in the 1990s for creator mistreatment. But the overall goal of separating/erasing the individual creators from their creations is pretty much standard practice now, especially in TTRPGs. Even when Wizards stripmines older material, they are not going out of their way to trumpet the fact I created Artus Cimber or Aramag or Jergal or Caradoc or any of the other characters or world elements or plots I created and they continue to use and license. Lorraine was looking back to the way her family had capitalized on Buck for the model there—and she was known to threaten people who pointed out John Dille had
popularized, not
created Buck, as I found out firsthand. Lots of current TTRPG companies agree with her on how these matters should be handled. The company is the real creator, not the individuals.
Hope you find all that helpful in honing your thoughts on all these matters. Thanks again for the terrific posts. Great stuff.
