I think TSR was right to publish so much material

[AllisterH]

Personally..I would actually defend Buck rogers as a license.

Buck Rogers, prior to the rise of Trek & Wars _WAS_ what sci-fi meant to the general masses.

The problem I think with Buck Rogers was that it came too late AFTER the tv show..it should've been on store shelves the same year the show was on....

 

[Dausuul]

The problem I think with Buck Rogers was that it came too late AFTER the tv show..it should've been on store shelves the same year the show was on....

Well, yes. Of course, Lorraine Williams wasn't involved with TSR back then. More to the point, Buck Rogers should have been treated like any new venture; you test the waters with the first product and support it if it catches on. It didn't, but TSR flogged it like mad for 8 years; Wikipedia lists 39 Buck Rogers XXVc products, including ten novels, ten comics, and nineteen RPG books.

 

[keterys]

I actually remember enjoying the Buck Rogers SSI computer games when I was a kid (like all of those gold-box style games, let's be honest), but I'm not sure I ever saw anyone playing it.

And they later put out a whole 'nother box set version of it too. I remember a game store giving it to me in a grab bag of random RPG products.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

In general, I actually liked the Buck Rogers XXVc game, but boy did they produce way too many supplements for it. That said, I really liked some of those supplements - No Humans Allowed is one of my favorite critter books from TSR. Anyway, yeah, Buck Rogers is often pointed to as one of the things that helped contribute to TSR's fall, and I'd be interested in seeing some numbers on that.

I'm glad they didn't tie it into the TV show, which was garbage. I don't know how successful that would have been, anyway; there weren't a lot of successful media tie-ins at that time, and the TV show struggled to stay on for the two seasons it existed. Instead, they reached back to the old comic strips and serials of the 30s for inspiration, putting a more "modern" view of the future on it. I think the property could be the basis for a nice sourcebook for Gamma World, but after what happened with it at TSR I'd guess it's considered poison.

 

[Riley]

It would have to be a book that

a) was ubiquitous in 2ndhand book stores and

b) a book that TSR was giving out for free through the RPGA. What were those products Erik Mona mentioned as being in stacks of when he wa sin the RPGA?

Virtually every single book and box in the Planescape, Dark Sun, and Birthright series (as well as a decent number of Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, and of course all those Buck Rogers boxes) were available in large numbers at Half Price Books stores in Milwaukee during the massive warehouse purge.

I picked up half my D&D collection that way, and I wish I'd picked up more.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Actually, if this paragraph (which isn't sourced well) from Wikipedia is correct, it might explain a few things.

However, problems grew in the company's business practices. After the emergence of collectible card games, TSR released several new collectable game lines: Dragon Dice and Spellfire. Neither found great success in the market place. Their inventory control became virtually nonexistent, and their warehouse became packed full of unsellable product. At the same time, TSR began retaliating against fan fiction and other creative work derived from TSR intellectual property, which angered many long-time customers and fans. Other new entrants into the RPG genre introduced competing fantasy worlds, which fragmented the RPG community, further reducing TSR's already wilting consumer base. TSR itself introduced no fewer than six campaign settings over the 1990s (Al-Qadim, Birthright, Council of Wyrms, Dark Sun, Planescape and Ravenloft, in addition to the traditional five settings of Mystara, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Spelljammer), diluting its own fan base and creating competition between its expensive boxed campaign sets. Some campaign boxed sets (particularly Planescape) actually sold for less money than they cost to make. These and other factors, such as a disastrous year for its fiction lines in 1996 (over one million copies of tie-in books for various game lines were returned to TSR that year), led to TSR ending accumulating over $30 million in debt by 1996, and having to endure multiple rounds of layoffs.[10]

It says the fiction line in 1996 was disastrous for returns. What was published in 1996 in the fiction line. I suspect a lot of the fringe tie-ins (those less popular settings) might have had some poorly selling novels. Does anybody have the novel list from 1995 to 1996?

 

[AllisterH]

It says the fiction line in 1996 was disastrous for returns. What was published in 1996 in the fiction line. I suspect a lot of the fringe tie-ins (those less popular settings) might have had some poorly selling novels. Does anybody have the novel list from 1995 to 1996?

Paging Mr. Echohawk

"we have a request for STATS!!"

 

[Echohawk]

Does anybody have the novel list from 1995 to 1996?

Sure, although there were a lot of them...

[size=-1]1995
American Knights (Endless Quest #7)
The Kagonesti (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #1)
Rogues to Riches (First Quest #1)
Test of the Twins (paperback reissue) (Dragonlance - Legends #3)
The Darkness Before Dawn (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #2)
The Giant Among Us (Forgotten Realms - Twilight Giants #2)
The Second Generation (paperback) (Dragonlance - Second Generation)
Time of the Twins (paperback reissue) (Dragonlance - Legends #1)
War of the Twins (paperback reissue) (Dragonlance - Legends #2)
The Unicorn Hunt (First Quest #2)
Baroness of Blood (Ravenloft)
Knights of the Crown (Dragonlance - Warriors #1)
Night of the Tiger (Endless Quest #8)
Shadows of Doom (Forgotten Realms - Shadow of the Avatar #1)
Once Around the Realms (Forgotten Realms anthology)
King Pinch (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #1)
Pawns Prevail (Quest Triad #1)
The Broken Blade (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #3)
Son of Dawn (First Quest #3)
Cloak of Shadows (Forgotten Realms - Shadow of the Avatar #2)
Death of a Darklord (Ravenloft)
The Irda (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #2)
Cinnabar Shadows (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #4)
Dragonking of Mystara (Mystara)
Galactic Challenge (Endless Quest #9)
Maquesta Kar-Thon (Dragonlance - Warriors #2)
Masquerades (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #10)
Siege of Darkness (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Legacy of the Drow #3)
Suitors Duel (Quest Triad #2)
The Seventh Sentinel (Dragonlance - Defenders of Magic #3)
Bigby's Curse (Endless Quest #10)
The Titan of Twilight (Forgotten Realms - Twilight Giants #3)
All Shadows Fled (Forgotten Realms - Shadow of the Avatar #3)
Dark Knight of Karameikos (Mystara)
Knights of the Sword (Dragonlance - Warriors #3)
The Dargonesti (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #3)
War in Tethyr (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #2)
Curse of the Shadowmage (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #11)
Summerhill Hounds (First Quest #4)
The 24-Hour War (Endless Quest #11)
The Iron Throne (Birthright)
Elminster - The Making of a Mage (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Elminster #1)
Realms of Magic (Forgotten Realms anthology)
Scholar of Decay (Ravenloft)

1996
Blood Hostages (Planescape - The Blood Wars #1)
Land of the Minotaurs (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #4)
Escape from Undermountain (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #3)
Greatheart (Birthright)
Immortal Game (Quest Triad #3)
King of the Dead (Ravenloft)
Theros Ironfeld (Dragonlance - Warriors #4)
Realms of the Underdark (Forgotten Realms anthology)
The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #5)
The Veiled Dragon (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #12)
Sword Play (Forgotten Realms - Netheril #1)
The Dragons at War (Dragonlance - Dragon Anthologies #2)
Abyssal Warriors (Planescape - The Blood Wars #2)
Silver Shadows (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #13)
The Gully Dwarves (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #5)
The Hag’s Contract (Birthright)
Knights of the Rose (Dragonlance - Warriors #5)
Murder in Cormyr (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Mysteries #1)
Dragonmage of Mystara (Mystara)
The Black Vessel (Mystara)
The Mage in the Iron Mask (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #4)
Daughter of the Drow (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Starlight & Shadows #1)
The Dawning of a New Age (Dragonlance - Dragons of a New Age #1)
The Spider’s Test (Birthright)
To Sleep With Evil (Ravenloft)
Stormlight (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #14)
The Dragons (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #6)
Dangerous Games (Forgotten Realms - Netheril #2)
Dragons of Summer Flame (paperback) (Dragonlance - Second Generation)[/size]

 

[Dausuul]

Cross-posting from a spin-off thread, this link is instructive.

Notice the sales figures across time. Dragon Magazine, for example, shot up like a rocket in the three years from '79 to '82 (circulation increasing more than sevenfold in that brief interval), but seems to have peaked out around '84; the print runs for '84 and '92 are virtually the same. Adventures in the 1980s are quoted as selling 50K to 150K copies, compared to 7K-15K (!) in the 1990s. Yes, you read that right... adventure sales, on a per-adventure basis, fell by an order of magnitude. You're supposed to increase economies of scale as your company grows, not go the other way!

This strongly supports the contention that the real D&D boom took place in the early '80s. That was the Golden Age*. The early to mid '90s I would characterize as more of a Silver Age; TSR cranked out loads and loads of stuff, and there were, as I said earlier, bound to be some gems in that pile. Call it reverse Sturgeon's Law--if 90% of everything is crud, there's still 10% of everything which isn't. Nevertheless, everything I've read about the era suggests that TSR's approach was harming the community more than helping it, and from a business perspective it was merely squandering the fruits of the Golden Age's successes.

[size=-2]*Note: I started gaming around 1987 and didn't get really into it until 1989 or so. Nostalgia is not tinting my view of the early '80s here.[/size]

 

[Echohawk]

Paging Mr. Echohawk
"we have a request for STATS!!"

Must... resist... urge... to... create... graph...

Arrrgh... here's a comparative plot of the number of D&D RPG products versus the number of D&D novels/gamebooks released each year, up to 2009.