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  1. MGibster

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

    So just your normal, every day office chit-chat?
  2. MGibster

    Old Lady Gamer

    I don't know if I ever saw a Black person in my local hobby shop during the 80s and I don't think I saw one until the 90s when Magic the Gathering was, heh heh, gathering steam. It was rare enough to see a woman or a girl at the game store. I only met a handful of girls who played AD&D when I...
  3. MGibster

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

    I came under some (mild) fire here for having the temerity to suggest it might be time to reevaluate the legacy of Lorraine Williams. I didn't offer a blanket pardon for her actions as CEO, and at the time I wasn't fully aware of how she took control of TSR, but I thought her role in the story...
  4. MGibster

    What Does the RPG Hobby Need Now?

    I can't say FFG didn't make a successful Star Wars line. Not counting adventures, they've produced something like thirty Star Wars books over the years and that's nothing to sneeze at. Someone likes it. While I dislike the proprietary dice, it's not all that bad. My biggest grip is that it...
  5. MGibster

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

    It's like seeing a restaurant shut down even though it was always busy. It's amazing how a seemingly healthy company can go under fairly quickly because of cash flow. Hats off to those brave enough to start a business. Like all human beings, he was complicated, and I certainly don't want to...
  6. MGibster

    Fighting the Gray Tide (Miniature Painting)

    It looks great! Every time I think about anything terrain related I start to wonder where I'm going to store it and how often I'm going to use it. I don't know why frequency of use should be important, it's not like I don't have a ton of minis that just sit around looking pretty.
  7. MGibster

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

    I'm smart guy. No, really, at least I think I am, but without the experience or education on how to run a large business, I likely wouldn't be able to run what unexpectedly became a multi-million dollar company. I'd probably make some of the same mistakes TSR made by hiring a lot of my friends...
  8. MGibster

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

    Funny enough that's kind of what got Williams in the end. She structured TSR's cash flow with the assumption the money would always be rolling in. When it stopped, there was nothing TSR could do to stop the coming avalanche. You're absolutely correct that Williams deserves plenty of...
  9. MGibster

    Old Lady Gamer

    In the pre-COVID days, I was at a Michael's, a crafting store in case you live outside the United States, looking at some Halloween decorations. A nice young lady working there, maybe 19 or 20, walked up to me while I was looking at something and said, "That's something fun you can do with your...
  10. MGibster

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

    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...
  11. MGibster

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

    When I was younger, I wasn't particularly interested in any of the designers behind the game or how TSR the company worked, but this was pretty much the narrative as I understood it in the late 1980s and stayed with me until the 2010s. Bingo. His face and voice also appeared on national...
  12. MGibster

    D&D 5E (2014) Hypothetical: WotC goes under and Hasbro vaults D&D. Now What?

    As crazy as it sounds, it can sometimes be very difficult to track down who owns a copyright or who has the rights to produce something. For one of their Grand Theft Auto games, Rock Star Games wanted to use a 1980 song called "Walk the Night" by a group called The Skatt Brothers. Rock Star...
  13. MGibster

    And then what? The AI conundrum.

    I don't see this as a flaw at all. The whole point of SkyNet becoming self-aware is that it gained the capability of examining its own thoughts and evaluating its own actions. i.e. SkyNet grew beyond its programing. I'm sure SkyNet was fully aware Los Angeles was a friendly, but when...
  14. MGibster

    And then what? The AI conundrum.

    It worked for Futurama. You're right, an AI might be very alien to us in how it thinks. If we're talking about an AI with a mission of some sort, they'd almost certainly care about their ability to fulfill their mission.
  15. MGibster

    Our Physical Fitness

    There's a Mad Orc 5k run I plan on participating in at Game Hole Con this October. My regular afternoon walk is 4.2 kilometers (2.6 to the moon units) and I've started jogging part of the route in preparation. I'm hoping by October I can job most of the run.
  16. MGibster

    And then what? The AI conundrum.

    It's a game I've never played, but I think you're right that you need to get the right group together. One that won't take things too seriously or personal and maintain the absurdities of the game without devolving into something too silly to play.
  17. MGibster

    D&D 5E (2014) Hypothetical: WotC goes under and Hasbro vaults D&D. Now What?

    A few days ago I came across an ad from the early 1990s for the boardgame Space Crusade, a collaboration between Milton Bradley and Games Workshop similar to HeroQuest. What struck me immediately was that I couldn't recall the last time I had seen a board game advertised on television. I used...
  18. MGibster

    And then what? The AI conundrum.

    Have we gone this far in the thread without mentioning Paranoia? Alpha Complex is run by Friend Computer, whom we love, because he loves us and not because failure to love Friend Computer is treason. Friend Computer can't do everything by himself, not that I mean to imply Friend Computer...
  19. MGibster

    D&D 5E (2014) Hypothetical: WotC goes under and Hasbro vaults D&D. Now What?

    I would expect the hobby to shrink quite a bit as well. Even if a bunch of games try to fill the large shoes of D&D, if you're a retailer, which one do you stock? I know there's the internet, I've certainly learned about games here at En World, but you're going to see fewer people in games...
  20. MGibster

    What Does the RPG Hobby Need Now?

    I suspect making your product compatible with "the world's great role playing game" you gain a built in audience. There are a significant number of gamers who are hesitant to venture out into other games for a variety of reasons.
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