BrOSR

[Mannahnin]

The books were an accident. The success didn't start with Dragonlance, it actually started with the Endless Quest Books. Rose Estes pitched the idea, management was against it, and finally told her, "Fine, if you want, but do it on your own time." So she did.

They were a huge success. Then management decided to go all in with novels, but screwed up again by not compensating the talent and letting them walk (Weiss and Hickman) or putting unrealistic demands on them (Bob Salvatore) or way over-producing what the market wanted.

Basically, the success was because of right place and right time and in spite of themselves, and all the bad things were because of decisions by management. So no, I don't consider that a positive of management. You don't get credit for the success of something you initially tried to stop in the first place, then screwed the talent that got you there in spite of yourselves.

I remember the Rose Estes and Endless Quest story, which was also related to TSR's abortive Educational department, but that was a few years earlier and a different product. I think it's a mistake to lump in the Endless Quest (and Super Endless Quest, and various other game books) series with the popular paperback fiction line. Yes, Endless Quest was successful, Rose crushed it despite sexist TSR management having no clue was a gem she was, and the distribution to schools (and Scholastic book fairs?) was a big part of that. But I don't think game books are the same thing as novels.

I think what we've seen in When We Were Wizards, Game Wizards, and Slaying the Dragon, and everything @JLowder has posted on these forums, that the fiction publishing arm was a vital and extremely successful part of late-era TSR, starting shortly before Gary left and expanding enormously from there. I don't think you can describe that as an accident at all. They experimented with Dragonlance, it was very popular, and they capitalized on that success by expanding into a huge line of novels which dominated their publishing category for more than a decade, right?

Absolutely the Williams regime made some boneheaded management decisions in underpaying and eventually overworking and driving out talent like Weis and Hickman and later Salvatore, but their sales and the fact that the fiction publishing helped keep the company successful and afloat for years while they were bungling the sales and budget strategies for the game side of the company seems undeniable.

 

[Gus L]

[...]
Absolutely the Williams regime made some boneheaded management decisions in underpaying and eventually overworking and driving out talent like the Weis and Hickman and later Salvatore, but their sales and the fact that the fiction publishing helped keep the company successful and afloat for years while they were bungling the sales and budget strategies for the game side of the company seems undeniable.

This strikes me as a reasonable take. I think that Williams and others managing later TSR get a lot of blame for bad decisions (and they made quite a few), but that this blame tends to be overblown and often deployed as a shield for people like Gygax ... who also made some bad business decisions and some rather self-serving ones. To me this goes back to the original topic of the reactionary love of early D&D/TSR and a nostalgic idealization of it that cannot recognize the flaws of the company, its personalities, or the games themselves.

I find this especially frustrating, because I don't especially enjoy more modern styles of play or editions of D&D ... but I also think it helps promote older games and styles to recognize and address issues and problems in the early game and culture. There are clear inefficiencies and clumsy rules in early D&D's ... how couldn't their be? OD&D is effectively the prototype of a brand new type of game! Acknowledging, addressing and improving on these mechanics and other issues without destroying the style of play involved is precisely what people who love old games should be doing, but this is hampered by a rigid adherence to the old systems, and a deification figures like Gygax.

Gygax wrote clunky mechanics. Arneson wrote unfinished games.

We can work with that though.

To do so we don't need to pretend everything that happened to TSR was Williams fault, or that the Hickmans ruined D&D. Making larger then life heroes and villains makes actual discussion and analysis much harder.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This strikes me as a reasonable take. I think that Williams and others managing later TSR get a lot of blame for bad decisions (and they made quite a few), but that this blame tends to be overblown and often deployed as a shield for people like Gygax ...

I think it's fair to place a lot of blame on bad management decisions on Williams and it's not a shield to protect Gary. It's a fact. But it's also a fact that Gary was just as horrible with management decisions. It's not an either/or situation. Remember, the original disaster of a contract with the printers happened before Williams ever came on board. Then there were the blow ups in leadership meetings, and blowing tons of money in California, and some of the really weird efforts (All My Children, etc.), and the non-payment to employees, and so on and so on.

If there's any shield for Gary, it's that he had no experience in running a company and found himself doing so.

But either way, the point that TSR, under both Gary and Lorraine (and Blumes), should be required reading on how not to run a company for any business major stands lol.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I remember the Rose Estes and Endless Quest story, which was also related to TSR's abortive Educational department, but that was a few years earlier and a different product. I think it's a mistake to lump in the Endless Quest (and Super Endless Quest, and various other game books) series with the popular paperback fiction line. Yes, Endless Quest was successful, Rose crushed it despite sexist TSR management having no clue was a gem she was, and the distribution to schools (and Scholastic book fairs?) was a big part of that. But I don't think game books are the same thing as novels.

Judging by how management reacted to the pitch originally, I don't think its out of the realm of reality to think that they wouldn't have launched heavily into the novels without first having seen how successful those EQ books were. Which was my point, that the huge success of novels didn't start with Dragonlance, but it started earlier with the EQ books. I think it's also worth noting that the people who got into those EQ books in 1982 (like myself) became teenagers by the time the Dragonlance books came out and it was the perfect transition to full novels from those youth books. I.e., the audience for Dragonlance was already primed.

 

[Mannahnin]

Judging by how management reacted to the pitch originally, I don't think its out of the realm of reality to think that they wouldn't have launched heavily into the novels without first having seen how successful those EQ books were. Which was my point, that the huge success of novels didn't start with Dragonlance, but it started earlier with the EQ books. I think it's also worth noting that the people who got into those EQ books in 1982 (like myself) became teenagers by the time the Dragonlance books came out and it was the perfect transition to full novels from those youth books. I.e., the audience for Dragonlance was already primed.

Eh. I think they're meaningfully different products. You and I are both gamers, who got into the game books and actual D&D first, right? Then encountered Dragonlance as existing D&D fans? Or did you not get into the actual game until later?

@JLowder has given some great insights into the fiction publishing wing of the business, and I do think it's a different kind of product, with less overlap of audience. Choose your own adventure game books are really not novels.

Dragonlance, of course, was also a transitional/multi-media concept. The module series got pitched first, and the idea to add novels got added partway through the development process. Apparently management didn't initially have confidence that Dragons of Autumn Twilight would sell that many copies, initially trying to order 30k copies before going with the minimum print run of 50k.

While obviously both the original management and the Williams regime made some really impressive (and I agree, educational) blunders, the massive development and success of the fiction publishing wing of TSR seems like one of the company's biggest wins.

 

[PHATsakk43]

I’ve said elsewhere on this forum—I believe in a discussion with @Mannahnin—that the post-Gary TSR had a shot at viability had it focused on fiction, its periodicals, and a stripped down core of 2E. But I digress.

To return to the topic at hand, I’d like to propose something. A “Let’s Read” a la RPG.net style of BROZER: Island of War and Winter. It seems that while the “BrOSR” predates this particular product, it also seems that at least the biggest (or at least loudest) cheerleader of the BrOSR has declared this to be its manifesto.

I was initially tempted to start a new post for this suggestion, but I’m not sure I really want to amplify the BrOSR or anything associated with it beyond the bare minimum.

I downloaded it last night and got 5-6 pages in. Which sounds like not much, but it’s only a 60 page pdf and the first 5 or so pages are the cover and mostly blank.

From what I’ve read so far, it seems like an interesting piece to critique (or criticize).

 

[jdrakeh]

That looks interesting, but a few of the low star reviews worry me. Specifically the one that says the author talks about playing war games, but ignoring terrain and attributing that style of play to Gary. I may be mistaken, but as I recall, Gary had a sand table. So he very specifically used terrain. So, uh... yeah.

 

[Jahydin]

To return to the topic at hand, I’d like to propose something. A “Let’s Read” a la RPG.net style of BROZER: Island of War and Winter. It seems that while the “BrOSR” predates this particular product, it also seems that at least the biggest (or at least loudest) cheerleader of the BrOSR has declared this to be its manifesto.

This peaked my interest, so downloading now.

Found this video review of it as well:

 

[PHATsakk43]

Well, I guess I'll start this thing off.

First, I've never attempted one of these before, so I'll just lead with that caveat.

Alright, I decided to do this somewhat live. I've done a hard skim of the pamphlet, and that is exactly what it appears to be. Its a scant 60 pages. Of those 60, there is an amazing amount of weird white space. I'm not talking barely filled with text pages, like, pages with nothing whatsoever on them. Occasionally just with a page number. Even the ones without page numbers are counted in the pagination. Out of the 60 pages, you may have 48 that have anything of value and much of that includes the cover art and table of contents.

I'll be honest. I'm not an art critic. That said, the cover is pretty much what it should be. You have a early Chainmail inspired black and white drawing with some rather anachronistic for its era font. There is a centurion fighting a bullywug while a Renaissance statue male bod with a wizard's head grafted on floats above the combat between the frog and Roman. Looking more towards the reader than the action below, this figure I think, represents the übermensch GM who will be bringing those fortunate enough to play into the one, true way to play. It’s fine I guess. We later find that the two in combat are actual factions that will be described later, so this is actually a scene depicting a potential scenario.

As for the Table of Contents, you'd think that would come shortly after the cover page, but no, you get your first pointless, blank page. This one is not numbered (the cover oddly is numbered "1") but the following page is numbered "3". Which implies that, yes they included a completely blank page in an electronic document. We will see this over and over, which pads the page count in an already slim volume. Anyway, there is a title page with a copyright of 2024 and another blank page. On page 5, we finally get something. A quote from one François Viète, of whom I had never heard.

I'll provide a snippet:

Behold, the art which I present is new, but in truth so old, so spoiled and defiled by the barbarians,​

Well, that definitely sets the tone. I came in expecting a bit of arrogance. It's well layered throughout, so I was not disappointed. Given what I had seen of BrOSR stuff, primarily from other blogs I found linked on Jeffro's homepage, arrogance was the least of what I was concerned I'd find. So, I'll be honest. I wasn't sure if I was going to get a game or a manifesto. I honestly was expecting the latter. And while I'll admit there is plenty of pontificating, dogwhistles, some nearly audible, and more clear virtue signaling, it doesn't dwell on any of them long enough to make you want to completely give up. It just tosses some stuff out there where it really doesn't need to.

Anyway, first content and nothing to do with BROZER yet. Another blank page, pg 6, and finally get to the contents on pg 7. So, for those keeping track, more than a 10th of the physical book behind us and no content. One page covers the entire work. The chapters are hyperlinked which is a nice touch. It looks like there are a couple pages of meta, in the first chapter, titled, "WHY IS OUR BRAUNSTEIN SCENARIO FREE?*1" Followed by some introductory chapters, chapters listing major and minor factions, and some rules chapters at the end. The indents on the chapters are a little screwy.

The two faction headers are tabbed to the left of everything else, which looks like it makes sense for the factions, but after the last minor faction the indent stays the same but it appears that "Map of Brozer" is probably not a minor faction.

The title of the last chapter answers some questions. "Battle Rules for Old School Fantasy Games" as the last chapter in the pamphlet definitely makes me think this is just a way to sneak people into playing Warhammer with you. Well, I suppose that may be just as detrimental as grooming people into political extremism. You'll probably go broke faster with Warhammer.


So, next post, we'll find out why we're shouting about the pamphlet being free.

 

[Gus L]

It's a sad thing that the idea of designing a new sort a Braunstein (or at least some form of warbands/domains/skirmish based wargame with individual PCs) is being colonized by this sort of thing. It strikes me as both something with really potential for RPG clubs/shops to run and a twist on standard fantasy RPGs that is itself pretty appealing...

This sort of thing needs to be taken away from people who include personifications of the referee in their texts. This being a clear sign of design trouble.