Lorraine Williams did... what?

[AllisterH]

By the by, if you look around the official Buck Rogers site, the place that started the whole discussion, you'll also find the claim: "Buck Rogers is known as the birthplace rockets, robots, and ray-guns!" (see: http://www.gohero.com/buck_rogers/buck_rogers_influence.htm)

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

Actually, this one I might give Buck Rogers some claim to....For example, the use of ZAP for the sound effect of the ray gun was created by Buck Rogers.

As well, among the older generation (a.k.a anyone pre Wars or Trek), science fiction WAS Buck rogers for the common populace.

 

[Beginning of the End]

You know, I was recently struck by a problem with the "fragmenting their own fanbase" part of the narrative. If your problem is that there's so much D&D material on the market that fans aren't able to keep up with all of it and are thus becoming distant from each other . . .

. . . then what are you doing creating an Open Game License that is going to absolutely flood the market?

There was never any mystery here: Those products drove sales of the core D&D rulebooks. The only problem with them was that they were not particularly profitable for a company of TSR's size. Dancey's strategy with the OGL was always to off-load the non-core products and turn WotC into a company that produced evergreen core rulebooks.

Dancey left the company and the strategy died with him.

In some ways, this is unsurprising. You can't support a design team with an evergreen marketing approach. Hasbro doesn't keep a huge Stratego design team on staff, after all. So it's in the design team's best interests to jump on the supplement bandwagon.

OTOH, the failures of execution in the painfully flawed Psionics Handbook and Epic Level Handbook (which were supposed to be the first evergreen core books) pretty much torpedoed any chance the strategy ever had.

I'm still pretty convinced that this, more than anything, prompted the rapid launch of 3.5: The new edition allowed them to reboot their splatbooks, which had previously been treated as throw-away products under Dancey's business plan, as the core sales vehicles for the company. Around this same time, you saw WotC beginning to publish adventure modules again (which Dancey's plan had specifically eschewed).

From that point forward, WotC's business plans were in direct conflict with the OGL. Their eventual decision to torpedo it with the release of 4th Edition was eminently predictable and perfectly consistent with the post-Dancey business plan.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Dancey's strategy with the OGL was always to off-load the non-core products and turn WotC into a company that produced evergreen core rulebooks.

Dancey left the company and the strategy died with him.

Neither part of this is completely true.

In the first part, you conflate two separate strategies: Driving growth of the D&D player network (and core rolebook sales) through the OGL; and avoiding marketplace fragmentation through a strategy of limiting releases and not supporting a plethora of game worlds.

In the second part, you imply that the strategy was abandoned when Ryan left WotC in 2000/2001. While that might seem true in the context of your assumptions, it's worth noting that the release schedule through 2002 was laid down under Ryan's tenure.

It is certainly true that strategic focus evolved after Ryan left (as it almost certainly would have had he remained--every successful business strategy evolves), but the core of the two strategies remained in place throughout the 3rd-edition period and, as far as I can see, remain in place to this day.

I'm still pretty convinced that [the failure of early hardcovers], more than anything, prompted the rapid launch of 3.5: The new edition allowed them to reboot their splatbooks, which had previously been treated as throw-away products under Dancey's business plan, as the core sales vehicles for the company.

The reason given at the time was that 3E had a number of relatively small but significant flaws that were detrimental to game play; a lot of lessons had been learned and the only way to implement them cleanly was through a reissue of the core books. I wasn't in Brand at the time, so I can't swear that there weren't also business drivers behind the decision (in fact, I'm pretty confident there were). But I can say that we in R&D were very, very sincere in our belief that the 3.5 edition was necessary and was being done for all the right reasons for the game.

Around this same time, you saw WotC beginning to publish adventure modules again (which Dancey's plan had specifically eschewed).

Again, a conflation of the facts. First, Ryan's plan did not specifically eschew adventures; at least ten were published on the product schedule he developed. More generally, the strategy did identify adventures as the sort of lower-volume, lower-margin products that were likely to be widely supported by the OGL, and hence less likely to be profitable for WotC.

Secondly, WotC's return to adventures did not occur "around the same time" as 3.5, but about two years later (2005ish), under my watch. The reason had nothing to do with abandoning the precepts of Ryan's strategy, but simply to address a strategic need for a type of product that had all but disappeared from the marketplace. With the OGL failing to produce adventures and little competition in the category, adventures could generate enough profit to make them worthwhile. And, as I said, they were strategically important--all the rules in the world don't matter if there's nothing for people to play.

 

[Storm Raven]

Actually, this one I might give Buck Rogers some claim to....For example, the use of ZAP for the sound effect of the ray gun was created by Buck Rogers.

As well, among the older generation (a.k.a anyone pre Wars or Trek), science fiction WAS Buck rogers for the common populace.

Well, the origin of robots (the term) probably traces to Kapek's RUR, which predated the first published appearance of Buck Rogers by seven years. This doesn't even begin to consider creatures, such a Frankenstein's monster, who could be considered "robots" even if the term wasn't applied to them.

As for rockets, I think some guys with names like Goddard (designed a liquid fueled rocket in 1909, launched one in 1926) and Tsiolkovskii might have some opinions on whether Buck Rogers was their "birthplace".

 

[Beginning of the End]

I just despise the way it was handled, or rather despise the person currently controlling it. It's the same sentiment I have of Christopher Tolkiens of Tolkien Estate, who controls all of the other JRR Tolkien's works. I mean, the only time we will ever see the Silmarilion adapted to motion picture is when he and his supporters are dead. Not that I want it to come true too soon, it's just wishful thinking.

J.R.R. Tolkien was very unhappy with the deal he made regarding the film rights for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There's solid, meaningful written evidence that Christopher Tolkien is simply following his father's wishes in regards to the licensing of his work. Despising him for that seems radically inappropriate.

It's particularly ironic that you should feel that way, given the fact that Christopher's handling of his father's literary legacy has been so completely and utterly exemplary. He was being strongly influenced in the '70s to cash-in on the legacy and allow sharecroppers to root through Tolkien's work. He resisted those influences, and has instead gifted us with one of the most extraordinary presentations of an author's finished and unfinished work in the 20th century. He has made visible literary gems which would have otherwise been completely lost to history. Certainly some of this material is only of scholastic interest, but even that is a remarkable achievement.

Compare this to the treatment of Frank Herbert's legacy by his son, who continues to cash in on the Dune IP with cheap pastiche novels co-written with a tie-in hack. Or the absolutely horrid treatment given to Robert E. Howard by his literary heirs -- L. Sprague de Camp trashed both his personal and literary reputation; rewrote his works; and then kept Howard's own Conan stories out of print for the better part of two decades while continuing to push pastiche novels out the door.

Sometimes I wonder if the current IP law is beneficial. Sure, Lorraine Williams is just a handful of bad inheritors/trustees of IP being passed on from their parent creators. But not all IP trustees are that bad.

I think the incredibly long term of copyright after the death of its creator often leads to situations in which heirs who the creator never even knew are allowed to wield tremendous influence over the creator's reputation and the legacy of their work.

I think a creator should be capable of leaving a legacy for his family. (If, for no other reason, than to account for tragic circumstances like those around the creation of RENT -- in which the creator dies just before the work is published.) But I think life + 20 years is a more than reasonable term.

Allowing work to flow into the public domain is an absolutely essential part of our cultural history and the process of cultural creation.

 

[JLowder]

Actually, this one I might give Buck Rogers some claim to....For example, the use of ZAP for the sound effect of the ray gun was created by Buck Rogers.

As well, among the older generation (a.k.a anyone pre Wars or Trek), science fiction WAS Buck rogers for the common populace.

Buck was very influential. It popularized lots of SF tropes and conventions. It was not the birthplace--as in the place where they originated--of rockets or robots or the like.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

I actually wrote Flint Dille a respectful letter informing him of the inaccuracy and got the following letter back:

Now I know what this is about. I received a bizarre email from some guy last week saying, 'your sister did not create TSR.' I was unaware of any such claim until this moment. It is a mistake. As an attender at GaryCon two weeks ago, and having in fact made the introduction between Lorraine and TSR at an endangered time in the company's history, I'm well aware of TSR's creation story nearly a decade earlier. Its my fault that it is misleading on the site. I had not checked it, and will ask Steve of Go-Hero to fix it.
It was an honest mistake. Conversely, the record should be set straight about Lorraine on WikiPedia. She wasn't a gamer, but there is no concrete reason to believe that she looked down on gamers. In fact, she granted them more creative freedom than I've ever experienced in Hollywood or anywhere else for that matter. And, it should be noted that she gave the company 15 more years of intact life than it would have had (the WOTC TSR was a very different animal). They were at chapter 10.5 when she entered the scene. And, anybody who has studied the history of TSR is well aware that Lorraine and I had our fair share of disagreements.
The strange trivia fact is that Lorraine was the only person with an actual degree in Medieval History (Berkeley, '71 I think).

I also got this one from the webmaster of Go-Hero:

Please accept my apologies as this WAS my mistake. I have made the
appropriate edit to the site. I did not intentionally misrepresent the
facts or to rewrite history. This was a simple mistake of me mishearing an
interesting factoid that I thought was noteworthy. No harm intended!

Anyhow.. the correction has been made, and the Gygax name is once again in its rightful place.

 

[JLowder]

I actually wrote Flint Dille a respectful letter informing him of the inaccuracy and got the following letter back: {snip} "In fact, she granted them more creative freedom than I've ever experienced in Hollywood or anywhere else for that matter."

Indeed. One of the things that can be said in Lorraine's favor was the amount of creative freedom the staff had on many, many projects. So long as products made the money they were supposed to make, the staff had a fairly free hand with content. There were individual products that saw too much micromanagement, and, as the 1990s wore on, a management structure that was much more rigid and creator-unfriendly started to take hold. But in the late 80s and early 90s, TSR was a creatively rewarding place to work.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[Ranger REG]

Allowing work to flow into the public domain is an absolutely essential part of our cultural history and the process of cultural creation.

That depends. Trademarks don't have expiration date, so long as the current IP owner can vigilantly protect them.

 

[billd91]

That depends. Trademarks don't have expiration date, so long as the current IP owner can vigilantly protect them.

True, but trademarks aren't literature either. They're more equivalent to mottos and logos for commerce, useful targets of satire for sure, but of considerably less use in development of culture than copyright-appropriate IP.