Lorraine Williams did... what?

[Xyxox]

Now, as far as fragmentation goes...back in the 2E heyday, they were releasing 4, 5, 6 D&D, products a month, every month, and not just (or hardly) little 64 page adventures. There is no way you don't start canibalizing your own sales at some point, and start to see product quality fall.

This was also a time when TSR faced a lot of competition, and lots of other mid-sized game companies where also churning out lots of product, using all sorts of disparate mechanics. The Dancy response: pull back what WoTC released (though in hindsight they still released a lot in 3Es early days), use the OGL to bring more unity in mechanics across the market as a whole, and let 3rd parties release all that supporting material and canabilize each other. It seemed to work, at least for a while.

Yep, in a high competition market TSR needed to drive down the total number of products released and concentrated on core competencies instead of coming out with the campaign setting of the month. My gosh, how many settings did we end up with?

Add on top of that numerous new games and you're setting yourself up for disaster.

 

[Echohawk]

My gosh, how many settings did we end up with?

Off the top of my head, the settings which had their own line of support products were:

• Greyhawk
• Dragonlance
• Forgotten Realms
• Mystara
• Planescape
• Dark Sun
• Ravenloft
• Spelljammer
• Al-Qadim
• Birthright
• Lankhmar
• Oriental Adventures/Kara-Tur

There were also a number of minor settings (Jakandor, Dragon Mountain, etc.) with only a few products, and several subsettings of the main settings (Red Steel, Horde, Maztica, etc.)

Or, put another way: "at least twelve".

 

[ProfessorPain]

I doubt it. Usually web sites are commissioned, but the client writes the copy. Since mistakes to the site are being written to Flint Dille's e-mail address, I'm sure he's at least aware of the error, and likely wrote the copy himself. (Flint tends to be the Linus to Lorraine's Lucy, from what I've heard. Nice guy, but I believe Lorraine makes most of the decisions for the family's business).
.

Sure, but just because her name is attached to the site, that doesn't mean she is actively involved. The person who comissioned it, may not have even been a member of the family. For all we know, they are living in semi-retirement and hired someone else to manage the website. I am not saying it isn't suspicious or the information shouldn't be corrected. And I am not saying it is minor. Just that there are other explanations that don't include her being a bad person. At the end of day, her name is attached to this thing, and it is her responsibility to have it corrected. But this isn't 1982, you can't get away with beefing up your credentials by lying. People find out and it comes back to bite you. Everyone knows if you say you created something that you didn't people will find out. So I suspect this was someone they hired, not understanding the history of TSR and Lorraine's role; and Lorraine either taking a hands-off approach to the web site, or not bothering to read the copy.

 

[kitsune9]

Accounts paint two very different pictures of her depending of who you were. She was apparently very dismissive and perhaps "haughty" of and towards her customers, yes. At the same time, she was also apparently very kind and caring towards her employees. While certainly TSR did not, well, flourish" under her guidance, I can't help but wonder if perhaps tabletop gamers at times deserve the dismissiveness.

I agree. Ms Williams may be an overall a good person (I don't know her, so I have nothing to say yay or nay about her). However, the politics of TSR and its eventually downfall has put a bad taste in many gamers for myriads of reasons that all of us know.

 

[Ranger REG]

Buck Rogers was the vehicle through which Lorraine Williams exported tons of cash from TSR Inc. into her family's personal trust fund, nearly destroying Dungeons and Dragons forever.

I never much cared for MAgic the Gathering as a game, but I love it because it put Peter Adkison into a postion to save the game from ruin. For that reason, I'll always despise Buck Rogers.

Besides, the Flash gordon serials were way better than Buck Rogers any way.

Despite the Maiden of Pain's strong [familial] link to Buck Rogers, I don't despise the IP. 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.

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.

 

[JohnRTroy]

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.

In this particular case, I'd rather have the creator's wishes followed than what the fans might want. JRRT didn't really want any of his stuff adapted to movies. And the movie industry has a way of (a) disrespecting the creators and (b) screwing them out of deserved royalties.

 

[kitsune9]

The rash of posts here that've been edited and reading through that thread only cements my position: Quite frankly, gamers deserve to be dismissed at times. Look at how we react to this, how we rip each other apart in edition wars, or the darkly humerous (VERY darkly) response to the charity fiasco at Gencon, where hundreds and hundreds of gamers sent angry and threatening emails to Gygax's charity of coice because of a stupid misunderstanding.

We aren't saints. We aren't wonderful golden rainbow people who never argue and never fight with one another.

People are allowed to look down on us just as much as we're allowed to look down on others. We deserve it. I'm not saying we're less then human. I'm saying that we're human, and people woh tweak our nose are going to exist.

Lorraine was a bad manager, yes, there's no doubt about that, but was she a bad person? Those two are not connected. Yet from how people react to the woman they've never met, who never really touched their lives, they make it sound like she abused their goldfish. You could make arguments she's a bad person. You could make arguments she's a good person. There's nothing to back up either save from second hand information. For every story of this maniacal witch-hag that mistreated her employees and hated the world, there's a story of her employees being treated just fine with animal charities and bring your pet to work days. Yet so many people choose to side with the worst of the two.

Good post Professor. Society is well-within its rights to look down upon us when we publicly display our fan-boy dork rage either against one another or against less-eccentric people.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Good post Professor. Society is well-within its rights to look down upon us when we publicly display our fan-boy dork rage either against one another or against less-eccentric people.

Hey, my view is that everyone is well-within their rights to look down on anyone when they go into dork mode ;p. I have just as much - if not more - irritation towards sports fans, my, ah, slight fan boy-ism for hockey aside

Fan is the shortened form of fanatic, as the saying goes.

 

[Wolfspider]

In this particular case, I'd rather have the creator's wishes followed than what the fans might want. JRRT didn't really want any of his stuff adapted to movies.

Which is why he sold the film rights for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1968, no doubt.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Which is why he sold the film rights for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1968, no doubt.

No, if you read scholar's and Christopher's own writings, he sold the rights to pay a tax debt, a rather stupid mistake, based on his own wishes and the fact that the family now has limited control over that stuff.

And despite complaints about that, Christopher was named by Tolkien as the sole executor of his rights, so he's left the decision up to his son, who from what I've seen and read respects his father's wishes.

I mean, I'm critical of Lorraine, but I don't think they should lose the rights to Buck Rogers. Flint's a good guy, and even if the RPG stunk, I believe he tries to work as much as he can on the creation.

 

[Ranger REG]

In this particular case, I'd rather have the creator's wishes followed than what the fans might want. JRRT didn't really want any of his stuff adapted to movies. And the movie industry has a way of (a) disrespecting the creators and (b) screwing them out of deserved royalties.

Perhaps, but was he cocky and greedy to have sold the Hobbit and LOTR film rights to Saul Zentz (of Tolkien Enterprise), believing it was "unfilmable" or did he thought it was ... until he have seen the Rankin-Bass animated version?

EDIT: a tax debt? How'd he got into a tax debt when he's reaping profit from all of Tolkien's works, including Hobbit and LOTR?

 

[M.L. Martin]

Perhaps, but was he cocky and greedy to have sold the Hobbit and LOTR film rights to Saul Zentz (of Tolkien Enterprise), believing it was "unfilmable" or did he thought it was ... until he have seen the Rankin-Bass animated version?

EDIT: a tax debt? How'd he got into a tax debt when he's reaping profit from all of Tolkien's works, including Hobbit and LOTR?

The rights were sold in 1968/69, so it would have been by JRRT--and while the references in the sources I briefly consulted (Carpenter's biography, Schull & Hammon's Reader's Guide) were sketchy, I came away with the impression that it was his publishers, Allen & Unwin, who really pushed the deal. And the rights were sold to United Artists and only later wound up with Zaentz. Tolkien was willing to consider film adaptations, but vetoed several proposals beforehand. (Some of his reasons were unique to those; others are still applicable to the Rankin-Bass and Jackson films.)

 

[Orius]

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.

In this particular case, I'd rather have the creator's wishes followed than what the fans might want. JRRT didn't really want any of his stuff adapted to movies. And the movie industry has a way of (a) disrespecting the creators and (b) screwing them out of deserved royalties.

I have to agree with Troy here. Tolkien himself was leery of film adaptations, and I believe he in no way wanted to see Disney do an adaptation of his books. As for Christopher Tolkien, he has some sentimental feeling for his father's works, and that's why he can be so unbending.

I don't see it as similar to the Dille family trying to milk a fairly dated space opera IP. Sci-fi doesn't always age well, and Buck Rogers probably hasn't.

 

[JLowder]

To complicate matters further, the character was not called "Buck" Rogers until the comic strip. I'm not sure that the brand would have the staying power it does if it had been called "Anthony Rogers," which was the character's name in the original Amazing Stories tales.

Absolutely. And moving the character from prose to a comic strip, where the art (no matter how crude compared to some of the competing strips) could sell the SF concepts, was vitally important to the success, too. Dille deserves credit for those things. But to say he "created" the character is, at best, a stretch.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[AllisterH]

You know, here's a question....

Why was Buck Rogers unsuccessful?

I mean, the Futurama guys proved that the concept would work in satire and even after Trek and Wars, I thought it was a given that Buck (& Flash) were the main influences on the general population with regard to science fiction.

Yet apparently the RPG was never as successful as even Traveller or Shadowrun much less the Star Wars RPG.

As an aside, it does look like Hollywood and TVland is interested in resurrecting the Buck Rogers franchise. I mean, if Battlestar Galactica can be reimagined into such a great show, who says Buck Rogers cant be?

 

[wingsandsword]

You know, here's a question....

Why was Buck Rogers unsuccessful?

I mean, the Futurama guys proved that the concept would work in satire and even after Trek and Wars, I thought it was a given that Buck (& Flash) were the main influences on the general population with regard to science fiction.

On an academic level, you could say that the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon stories laid much of the foundation for modern science fiction, building on works of earlier novelists like Jules Verne and Mary Shelley. . .

However, to the general public, Star Trek and Star Wars is Science Fiction.

Other than a pretty die-hard sci-fi geek, who knows anything about Flash Gordon other than what little they remember from that cheesy old 80's movie? Does anybody around remember anything about Buck Rogers other than the 70's TV series and Daffy Duck parodying the older serials (the parody is better remembered to many modern audiences).

The names "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers" are about all that is remembered, and that they were some kind of sci-fi spaceman heroes, but that's about it.

Take Star Trek, Star Wars, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers. From a perspective of making a licensed RPG look at the fanbase to draw from:

Star Trek: 40+ years, of which the majority of which has had movies or TV series in production, all in one continuity (more or less), and it still plays on TV nightly in one form or another across the world. Warp drive, transporters, Starfleet, Klingons are all concepts known in fandom and beyond.

Star Wars: 30+ years of being the most famous Space Opera of them all. Six main movies (and several minor movies like Clone Wars and the Ewok movies), TV series (Clone Wars), novels, comic books, action figures, and a billion-dollar merchandising machine. Jedi, Sith, Lightsabers, Star Destroyers, Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, everybody knows who they are.

Flash Gordon: Aside from one movie ~25 years ago it's mostly forgotten serial films from a half century ago or more. Besides the character of Flash Gordon, does the general public know anything about this?

Buck Rogers: The serials of a half-century ago or more are pretty much forgotten, now I'd say the series from the late 70's is remembered more (South Park was able to do a 2-part episode a few years back as a huge parody of it with Cartman frozen for 500 years, right down to the opening theme music and a shot-by-shot redo of the opening). However, unlike Star Trek or Star Wars it doesn't have those memorable images, characters and concepts that have really stuck into the collective consciousness.

 

[Orius]

However, unlike Star Trek or Star Wars it doesn't have those memorable images, characters and concepts that have really stuck into the collective consciousness.

I'd say that's it and add that Lucas did Star Wars with a certain style that let it become popular. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon for whatever reason just weren't able to maintain popularity for some reason. Also, from what I know of it, some of the elements of the villains of Flash Gordon have elements to them which might very well seem racist to a modern audience and that certainly doesn't help that franchise.

 

[Ranger REG]

You know, here's a question....

Why was Buck Rogers unsuccessful?

I mean, the Futurama guys proved that the concept would work in satire and even after Trek and Wars, I thought it was a given that Buck (& Flash) were the main influences on the general population with regard to science fiction.

Yet apparently the RPG was never as successful as even Traveller or Shadowrun much less the Star Wars RPG.

As a proud owner of XXVc RPG, I think it could have been successful. I just didn't like the way it was marketed.

BTW, besides the TSR version, were there any previous Buck Rogers licensed RPG?

 

[Ranger REG]

I'd say that's it and add that Lucas did Star Wars with a certain style that let it become popular.

It is? He borrowed heavily on serial films, of which both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were first adapted to motion picture, alongside western serials like Cisco Kid.

 

[JohnRTroy]

As a proud owner of XXVc RPG, I think it could have been successful. I just didn't like the way it was marketed.

One weird thing about it is that the XXVc game was copyright TSR, so it's mechanics, and perhaps some elements of the setting itself, are still owned by WoTC. The game had the Buck Rogers license, and royalties were using it, but IIRC they always made sure to keep the copyright and trademarks separate. I'm not sure if TSR owns the so-called "fluff" created for the game, like Black Barney and elements of that particular future.

I have a feeling Buck Rogers might have not been as featured in the game and novels for two reasons.

1) Learning from the past, having BR in the game can make the other players seem like sidekicks. It was one of the larger flaws in the Indiana Jones RPG they had released, and the company had also learned the lessons from DragonLance that people want to play their own characters in the shared world, not the "big guys". I think they were trying to feature the
setting in the RPG more than the character.

2) There was an emphasis on it being a "shared world", which I guess means that other creators wanted to put their own stamp on the series, which means "feature the world".

There's some sketchy information here:

Buck-Rogers.com - Buck Rogers XXVc TSR Games, Books, Etc.

(Not the official site, a fan site really going into detail).