lorraine williams (includes opinions from Gygax et al)

[Sheyd]

See, most of this I didn't learn till WELL after the fact. A simple 'Thanks for making the game' email to Gary Gygax in '01 was the first I'd ever heard of him getting kicked out of TSR. (Yeah no internet till '98 for me) I knew the quality of the settings really took a nose dive and then abruptly I stopped receiving my monthly Dragon. I gave it a couple months then called. Jesse Decker was answering the phones then and told me it would be a while. That's when I started buying up all the stuff I could find... then 6 months pass and BOOM a new dragon magazine appeared in my mail box! All was right with the world again! What's this? TSR was sold? picked up by Wizards of the Coast?? Don't they make that card game? These were my thoughts at the time but ultimately I didn't care because I had my Dragon back and new products were hitting the shelves... That was the sum total of my knowledge at the time. I still think it's funny that Jesse Decker was answering phones in the subscription department then.

 

[Orius]

From what I've heard of the history behind events at TSR, Gary originally brought Williams on to counter the influence of the Blumes, who had a controlling share in the company and were driving things into the ground. Then supposedly the Blumes cut a deal with Williams and left the company in her control, and that's what prompted Gary to leave. His side of the story makes it seem like she stabbed him in the back, but I don't know what happened ans it's really not my place to judge anyway.

I'd say she did seem to manage things badly, there were no customer surveys, so they had no idea what was working beyond going by sales. And she apparently felt gamers were stupid enough to buy anything. The whole campaign setting stratey which propelled 2e was bad, but it might actually have been better than what the Blumes were doing, since they made some really bad decisions. Essentially, I think they saw the game as a fad, and tried to milk it for all it was worth (and if that point about ET was true, that makes them even DUMBER).

Then there's "T$R"'s infamous lawsuit threats with the internet. I didn't get to to net until after WotC took over, so I missed that, but I can understand how some people would be pissed.

Anyway, it doesn't matter any more. It's been almost 11 years now since TSR crashed and burned, and there's lots of new gamers these days who weren't even playing back then. So I'd say she's largely been forgotten. These days when we want to bitch about suits ruining the game, Hasbro makes a far better target.

 

[Spell]

I still think it's funny that Jesse Decker was answering phones in the subscription department then.

totally OT, but i have to share this:

when Dave Gross was the editor of the magazine, i submitted an article on adding background music to AD&D games. i was 17, i think, and i wanted nothing but being published in the magazine (i managed, some time later... too bad it was only a letter in D-mail! ).

anyway, after eight weeks from my submissions, i still received no news from the magazine. i started freaking out because, you know, italian post service used to be pretty bad. if my article wasn't good enough, ok... but what if they never received it?

so i dug the magazine office phone number, and i called. the secretary was ultra nice, and told me that "Dave is in a meeting right now... maybe if you leave your number, he will call you back".

maybe she was just being polite and thinking: "what a loser!", but she was ultra nice, did find out that they got my submission and they were thinking about it. to this day i am still amazed that she didn't just say: "are you joking, kid?!?! we have better things to do!!".

...
i still wonder if Dave Gross was seriously in a meeting, and what would have happened if he was in!

 

[Steel_Wind]

I think most gamers could care less about events that took place more than a decade ago.

I don't disagree. I think you are right.

However, the answer as to how it was that the online world came to form this view about Lorraine Williams is entirely wrapped up in the Gygax lawsuits and the cease and desist letters of the mid-90s. As noted elsewhere in this thread, TSR became T$R to many fans who were online back-in-the-day. The cease and desist letters were, in a sense, viewed as a RIAA style intimidation tactic used against the game's own fans. If you were online in the mid-90s and a gamer - she therefore became "the Enemy".

When you essentially declare war against your fans - that has consequences. I'm not saying that's what she, in fact, did. I'm saying that is how the cease and desist letters came to be viewed in the online world at the time - and that view of her, once formed in that crucible of online public opinion, has never changed at any time thereafter.

That cease and desist period cemented the view of Lorraine Williams vs. Gygax as the Uber-Hag.

Because that attitude pervaded the online RPG community, it became a sort of "received knowledge", an "accepted canon" concerning Lorraine Williams that was passed on to the community as it grew over the years. That attitude persists to this very day. Someone posted that it was "group-think" to some degree - and I don't disagree with that analysis very much either.

Mismanagement at TSR and its financial difficulties were not known to the online world when Lorraine Williams came to be reviled online amongst gamers, generally, and so I discount it as having any effect on how that view came to be.

Add to it the later disclosure of mismanagement at TSR and the revelation that Lorraine Williams appeared to have thought very poorly of TSR's customer base (she thought gamers were not her social equals and reportedly held most of us in contempt)... well....

Not hard to see how and why that original "online view" of Lorraine Williams nurtured in the mid-90s has been maintained over the years, is it?

The fact that your personal dislike may be motivated by other factors does not change the genesis of the "canon view", nor does it explain why that "canon view" has persisted for so long.

I think the above explanation comes a lot closer to a reasonable understanding of the legend of the Wicked Witch of the Mid-West

 

[Spell]

by the way, Grumpy Celt, that's a great posting... maybe i can talk my supervisor into making this musical my master project...

 

[Spell]

just a question... how exactly became known that williams had such a low opinion on gamers? all i know about the subject comes from hearsay, or from magazine articles dating 1996 or so, with very little attribution.

 

[The Merciful]

just a question... how exactly became known that williams had such a low opinion on gamers? all i know about the subject comes from hearsay, or from magazine articles dating 1996 or so, with very little attribution.

I do know Gygax has mentioned this in his QA threads here on EN, but I can't recal if he stated that was something he heard Williams say, or if it was all hearsay to him too. :\

 

[roguerouge]

Speaking as someone who's played every edition since the 1980s as a casual and intermittent gamer, I have to say that all of this history interests me. A history of the hobby produced by an independent author would find this stuff a gold mine.

To answer the OP, based on the evidence of the thread, this manager's problems seemed to be in the areas of playing well with others, sharing, and demonstrating tolerance for creative autonomy. Those are pretty much the core values of this hobby, so it's understandable that the reaction is intense.

As to the thread's implication that unacknowledged sexism might play a role in driving the vehemence towards this person, I have no knowledge of the history of women's roles in the gaming industry to be able to talk intelligibly about whether that's a factor. Perhaps someone else could talk about that issue?

 

[Maggan]

Not all other gamers hate Williams or even care about what she did or didn't do anymore.

My guess is that most other gamers don't even know who Lorraine Williams is/was. I've met many gamers who don't even know who Gary Gygax is or what part he played in creating D&D, so I think that the feeling most gamers have regarding Lorraine Williams is indifference.

/M

 

[Silver Moon]

I have a different take on the situation as my wife and I were the RPGA Co-ordinators for two large New England gaming conventions at the time that TSR was falling apart - with us only receiving around half of the modules ordered even though they took full payment - and nobody would return any of our phone calls.

First we had do a lot of last minute scrambling to deal with the games canceled due to the modules they hadn't sent. We were the ones on the front-line dealing with the public who were paying TSR annual dues to belong to the RPGA, and not getting their promised membership cards, module playing points, and Polyhedron Magazines. Lastly, we had several authors whose modules were submitted and accepted by TSR but never paid.

At one of these conventions TSR promised to send somebody out to explain the situation, but the representative sent (partially at the con's expense, as we had to provide him a hotel room and meals) claimed to know nothing and was only interested in teaching select people who he knew how to play 'Dragon Dice'.