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I'll make time this week. I'm fairly equanimous (Oops, that's not a word!) about it all by now. I wasn't there for the later civil wars or purges. It remains my best job experience to this day, looking back! Despite the rancor so many of us felt at the time. Hey, I figured out how to make a...

Heh! I dug up a copy of my first TSR weekly paycheck from May 1980. I was making $3.60/hour and punched in for 37 hours that first week. So you can guess how much I took home after taxes and Soc Sec. I can't post the image here because of SS number.

I don't think any of the Product Development staff knew that Gary was being paid royalties while we were denied them (having to sign "work for hire" statements as a condition of employment). That's news to me, reading over this topic. I think we sort of assumed as a president of the company, his...

When two Chaotic Neutrals meet, bad things will happen.

TSR offered employees a chance to buy shares of stock during my time there (1980-81) but it was incredibly expensive to us in the design (Product development) wing. We are being paid by the hour, something like three or four bucks (if that) and the stock was priced something like $600/share. I...

I recall that Rose Estes hand-made the Bolotomus soft toys that were available in very limited numbers back in 1980-81. At least, I think it was her. I wish I still had mine! Sold it for pennies, basically, in 1998. If only I'd held onto so many items that are now high-dollar collectibles. Like...

My memory of Icebergs was that the prototype (Tom's handmade original) was a lot of fun and I wasn't sure how it was going to be cut down and still be as playable. The final game came out after my time at TSR and I never had the heart to play it. Disappointing to hear that it doesn't seem to...

Hola! Some responses and further chit-chat: My recollection is that the Golden Unicorn was found, altho' not as quickly as the Silver Dragon. I felt at the time these were both just silly gimmicks. Garnered some publicity, but was it worth it in the long run, and could you sustain a line of...

I worked on the first four TSR MiniGames a lot and playtested some of the later batch. Revolt on Antares and They've Invaded Pleasantville I basically co-designed and wrote the final rules drafts but my credit is as "developer". At Metagaming I did development/playtesting on some games and...

Other highlights from that era -- getting to visit Forrest Brown's Martian Metals business, it was located in the rural Hill Country fringes northwest of Austin proper (at that time), seemed very slapdash, centered in old wood buildings from some abandoned farming settlement I want to say. I was...

Howard Thompson followed his own drummer. I have some photos from my Metagaming days but not as many as I'd like, and only taken on a cheap Instamatic. Most were taken at the HIA show in Dallas in January 1981, he was making the big push to sell the Unicorn Gold treasure hunt game and wore a...

I was very intrigued to learn about these copyright laws today. I suppose I could follow SJ's lead and seek to reclaim rights to "Fury of the Norsemen," and it might not even cost as much now that a path has been established. But I don't wanna bother! That game would require a complete redesign...