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Lots of businesses make all the right decisions and still fail. TSR wasn't that in the early 80s. It was a quickly growing and profitable enterprise that was mismanaged and fumbled.

Have we heard anything from the Blumes? I understand Brian passed away in 2020, I'm not sure about Kevin. They were certainly involved in the details throughout this whole timeline.

Well said I think this summarizes it. He had that something special that seemed to be lacking in the traditional gaming/creative world. While he could not manage TSR's business in its huge growth stage, he did well getting it off the ground financially where others would have failed.

Well if she took a business in trouble and ran it for another 12 years she was doing something right. I'd love to see the year by year financial summary from about 1978 to the WOTC buyout, but that info just isn't available. It's a weird and fascinating contrast to read about the history of...

My thoughts earlier were that if Gary accepted this deal it would have been the death of both TSR and "D&D" as a thing. Surely Gary would have flubbed the business aspect and we wouldn't have anything like D&D as we know it today.

Sad. The Ben Riggs excerpt talks about the potential comic-movie pipeline, which is probably wishful thinking, but they were fun stories and having the stats in the back was fun. This could have easily morphed into modules or campaign setting products.

I collected all of the DC/TSR comic lines, and was bummed when they stopped. I still have them all. At the time (I was a kid) I assumed it was from low sales. Is there any detail on how successful they were?

Did Gygax come up with the original AD&D psionics? Those were points based. Or did that not count? :)

You're risking the company (yes, your own money), and having to lay off all of your employees because of a personal financial risk you're taking. Not illegal, but I'd call this unethical. I don't think the Buck Rogers investment was at that level to be clear.

I think it's an important distinction that yes, this is a private company, and does not have the same fiduciary duty to shareholders as a publicly traded company. I'd argue "ethics" covers a little more than that. Certainly looking out for your own family and friends was par for the course for...

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

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

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."

In lieu of Williams I'd love to hear more from Adkison. He appears to be the hero that saved D&D for the modern age. At the time it felt like TSR was selling out to the new elephant in the room, but WOTC certainly revived D&D, and saved TSR when perhaps nobody else would have.

I'd argue her reputation has only improved in recent years. Much more information is out there, and her side of the story would only help her case, IMO.

Imagine a world where Gygax gets control of AD&D. He fails and so does TSR. Yikes. It's too bad Lorraine is maintaining her silence. It's understandable, but with Dave and Gary both gone, we don't have many original sources left.

Yes, I think that's important and I do recall he wanted creators to be a part of the company ownership and share the wealth that way. I don't know when he said that, but it's clear not much was done about it.

"Sign over your rights to the company, like I did. Note: I also own the company."

I wonder how much of that attitude came out of what went down with Arneson and all of the animosity that resulted.

As a 12 yr old or whatever the adventures were great to me, but everybody is different. I did appreciate all of the background campaign info too. There was something for everyone coming out every ~2 weeks(!) Plus Dragon and Dungeon magazines.