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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JLowder" data-source="post: 5055194" data-attributes="member: 28003">I know of very few writers who do not end up battered by deadlines, no matter how long those deadlines are. Some writers do much better work with a lot of pressure. It forces them to stop dithering, to stop tinkering with every sentence, and just write. Many, many writers still operate on the college deadline model.From 1990 to about 1993/1994, there weren't a lot of problems. Post-Avatar, I pushed for projects like the Harpers and the Realms anthology series, which didn't feature world-shaking stories. We actively avoided those sorts of epics, in fact, and ran calls for submissions where the writers proposed plots and created characters. The initial Ravenloft books were mostly stand-alones. Even the bigger roll-outs during that time, like Dark Sun, were creator-centered. I edited the first five Dark Sun novels, and they were easy because Troy Denning had been involved in the world's creation. In fact, the Dark Sun fiction had been conceived in tandem with the setting, not as an add on. The content wasn't dictated by marketing or some other office unconnected to the creative aspects, though; the people who were going to write and edit the material generated the core concepts and crafted the line's identity.There were individual novels during that time that were problems, and the Buck line had its own issues (like any license), but overall, things ran pretty smoothly for the first couple years of the 1990s.Around 1992/1993, there were changes in management -- both in books and at the VP level. The book department staffing changes led to a weird, almost schizophrenic approach to fiction. Some novels were totally creator driven, even to the point where they openly contradicted the game material, while others were corporate concepts to the point of being little more than overt marketing or copyright/trademark protection. (The creator-owned TSR Books line also vanished in the mid-1990s and there was even a return to the Avatar-style house name with the "T.H. Lain" books, both of which are pretty clear indications of the corporate mindset about creator control.)I left the company as a fulltime employee in 1992 and continued as a satellite/contract employee working mostly on TSR projects until 1994. I left in 1994 in large part because of the ways in which the changes in corporate philosophy were negatively impacting what I was writing and editing. (My last work for the company until after WotC bought it would be a "First Quest" column for Dragon -- #208, I believe. The title I chose for the column was more than a little ironic. For a while, "First Quest" columns seemed to be the last thing longtime TSR employees did on their way out the door.)Avatar's success completely surprised the company, particularly when the third book hit the New York Times bestseller list. (In fact, it was only around 1990 that TSR realized just how much the fiction releases were contributing to the bottom line -- and just how thoroughly the books were dominating the trade bestseller lists. The increase in book ads and book-related content in Dragon at this time reflects the realization that the fiction was an integral part of the company's success.) There wasn't a lot of thought put into detailed crosspromotion for Avatar ahead of time, and what was done once the series started selling well was usually cobbled together on the fly. So it's no surprise that PR in the magazines lagged on Avatar.As for the Empires interview, I was certainly stressed when I gave it. That wasn't because of unreasonable deadlines. (It had more to do with fact that the book lines were exploding in popularity and I was putting in a lot of very long days.) I have never written a novel where I did not just want to type "...and the bus jumped the curb and killed them all. The End." at some point, usually about a month before the deadline. As I said, I think the piece is colored by the writer's dislike of shared world fiction and the Realms in particular. TSR certainly went through phases where it was more deserving of the T$R tag than others, and for different reasons, depending upon your perspective and interests. In the mid-80s, for example, the moniker seemed to be used most often by people unhappy with Gary's departure. It was more about personalities than specific products or business practices.When I started in '88, we got very little interference from the higher ups in day-to-day projects. In the book department in particular, we had a very small staff compared to the number of books we were publishing and we did a wide range of jobs. It was a fantastic learning experience, and I got a lot of opportunities because I could work with both games and fiction. Yes, there were times when a project would draw the attention of Lorraine and everyone would have to react accordingly, but, really, we were largely left to do our jobs as we saw fit. With rare exception, the people who worked at the company understood the games pretty well and liked working for a hobby game company.Around 1992 or 1993, TSR started seeing more VPs who thought of the products as widgets, who couldn't tell the difference between the Realms and Ravenloft and Dragonlance, and didn't really care about that sort of nuance. Middle managers started gearing up to pursue MBAs (a trend that would culminate in many mid- to late-90s panels at Gen Con with TSR managers talking about product "synergies" to fans whose eyes were glazing over and rolling back in their sockets). The creative staff started seeing a lot more interference in things like book covers from marketing and sales, and sign-off sheets got longer and longer, with more and more names in the loop. Shortly, this would begin impacting everything from the shelf life of product lines (which got shorter and shorter, as the company became more desperate for an immediate hit) to the way in which the legal office would recommend the company deal with fans online and even its employees. (If your legal staff understands the hobby market at all, they know that ham-fisted bullying is counterproductive; if they are familiar only with standard corporate legal practice in other industries, they fire off threatening letters at the slightest hint of a problem.)The difference between TSR and T$R -- for me anyway -- can be found in the identity of the people making the majority of the decisions about the products published, their connection to the hobby and the products themselves, and the way in which the company structure and the contracts it offers promote or denigrate individual creative vision. And even in the incarnations most deserving the T$R tag, there are individuals within the company fighting the good fight and published products that somehow manage to reflect a personal vision.In any case, thanks for all your efforts for this series. It's been very interesting reading your comments and your perspectives.Cheers,Jim Lowder</blockquote>

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