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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zardnaar" data-source="post: 7215256" data-attributes="member: 6716779">I watched a shoot interview with Stan! on youtube and he has been one of the sources I have referred to when I mention sales figures and things like that.  The unsold older material was not a major cause of TSR's downfall although I suppose they were paying to store it.  Stan!'s Al Qadim for example apparently made a slim amount of money, TSR was losing money on things like Planescape and probably Darksun. Lavish production values.  The novel thing was the straw that broke the camels back along with Dragondice. They ordered a million sets and sold 70k. Lorraine ordered that many to get the manufacturing price down. And TSR records were so bad they do not actually know how much they sold, 1 million+ of the red box and 1.5 million for the 1E PHB usually get thrown around. It might sound silly but in 1995 for example the people in charge of selling the product did not know how much to charge and they were selling boxed sets at a loss because no one had told them how much the sets cost to produce.  There was a reason the 1st thing WotC did when they took over was cancel all the game worlds apart from FR. People like to blame Lorraine but the problems predate her, TSR almost went under 3 times and it was the 3rd time that got them. The 1st time was in the 70's when the Blumes got involved and Garry ceded control of the company in effect and the 2nd time was when he brought in Lorraine and she and the Blumes pushed him out (Garry had that effect on people it seemed). D&D had double figure growth between 81-83 and they assumed it would keep going. They hired around 300 people and assumed the gravy train would keep rolling and in 84 they had a 30% reduction in sales leading to almost going under in 85 and Lorraine coming on board. Dragonlance Adventures and UA saved them. There is also stories of a fleet of cars, gold plated bathroom taps, cocaine and hookers being involved as well (it was the 80's) but IDK how reliable those stories are. Some of the grog sites are interesting anyway. No one really knew what was going on from Lorraine on down.</blockquote>

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