D&D General Lorraine Williams: Is it Time for a Reevaluation?

[Bolares]

Haven't read the book but anyone can write them. Has the author got an agenda, who did they interview, did they interview Lorraine and Gary isn't here to put his perspective in with any new information.

The few things that are clear are TSR was never run will, there's a lot of bad blood there and people involved are still salty decades later and the two main characters ones dead the other is silent.

The book is FILLED with documentation backing up its claims. I bet there is more evidence backing up the book than the decades of internet gossip...

 

[Willie the Duck]

What's the new primary source?

Sorry, wrote too quickly. A book which uses primary sources, not new primary source (although a lot of the primary sources JP uses are ones no one previously unearthed and distributed, so I suppose those are new to us). I will edit to make the distinction.

 

[Mannahnin]

What's the new primary source?

Are you joking?

Jon Peterson, the famously thorough researcher who brought us Playing at the World and The Elusive Shift, has written a new book, Game Wizards, digging deeply into the business side of TSR and the development of D&D, from the very beginnings of TSR through Gary's ouster in 1985.

Peterson, as usual, is fanatically dedicated to primary sources. Letters to and from Gary and Dave and the Blumes, for example. The actual TSR business and financial records, still retained by WotC. The minutes of TSR meetings, internal memos, etc. He's scrupulously limited in expressing personal opinions, instead focused on letting Dave and Gary's own words show what they were like and what they did.

Did you not read the first post of the thread before commenting?

That's the entire premise of this discussion. That with the new info we now have that Peterson is showing us, it casts Gary and TSR's management prior to the ouster in a much more thoroughly-documented negative light. And gives reason for doubting some of the accepted narratives about Williams.

 

[Blue Orange]

My vague understanding is that Gygax, like a lot of creative people, wasn't great at business so they brought Williams on, who didn't understand the industry all that well, and things continued to go south.

But Gygax gets a lot more goodwill because his name's on the original rulebooks.

It doesn't seem like there's any real 'good guys' here. In business disputes, there rarely are--everyone's fighting over money.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Haven't read the book but anyone can write them. Has the author got an agenda, who did they interview, did they interview Lorraine and Gary isn't here to put his perspective in with any new information.

The few things that are clear are TSR was never run will, there's a lot of bad blood there and people involved are still salty decades later and the two main characters ones dead the other is silent.

Uh .... um ....

So, this may help.

1. Read the first post in the thread. Here's the opening-
Ahem. Anyway, if you read my review of Jon Peterson's new book, or better yet read his book (Game Wizards, now on sale!), you probably see that it presents the ouster of Gary Gygax from TSR and the takeover by Lorraine Williams in a very different light than what was commonly received before

2. Read my review of the book.

D&D General - Review: Jon Peterson's Game Wizards

Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World, Art & Arcana, and Heroes' Feast, has a new book out ... Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons. If you read my posts, you know that I giddily announced when I received my copy in the mail, and promised that I would post my review-...

www.enworld.org

3. Listen to the podcast recorded with the author.

Podcast #173: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons with Jon Peterson

This week, Morrus and Peter are joined by Jon Peterson to talk about his new book on the history of roleplaying games, Game Wizards. In the news, Paizo recognizes the Paizo Workers United labor union, Edge Studio announces more Star Wars on the way, more information about the Cowboy Bebop RPG...

www.enworld.org

4. Or ... read the book.



Edit- or you can read the very abridged medium post here-


You have options! A lot of options!

 

[Mannahnin]

All this being said, it's still not entirely clear to me that Williams' negative reputation can justly be put entirely down to SCOREBOARD, as Snarf put it in the OP.

I do think there's a meaningful difference between Gary and the Blumes going after small press home-based publishers for trying to sell D&D or D&D compatible-products and TSR in the Williams era going after fans putting up unofficial material on websites for free.

As far as I'm aware we do not have numbers to confirm whether the Buck Rogers publishing deal(s?) were for above-market rates. Snarf convincingly argues that such deals to enrich the owners are common and unremarkable in closely-held companies, but leaves open the door that if the terms of the deal were out of whack with normal rates, it could still be considered corrupt/mismanagement. Someone here cited something about the royalty rates being based of the print runs, rather than sales figures, which itself sounds unreasonable. Do we have confirmation of that from a primary source somewhere?

This was also the era when TSR was getting huge cash advances from Random House based on printed materials shipped, putting themselves functionally into a lot of debt for unsold product which eventually was returned and nearly killed the company, a deal which has been documented and discussed elsewhere, and definitely factors into SCOREBOARD. The element of being paid based on materials printed rather than actually sold seems in common between this and the Buck Rogers deal.

I do think we've got some stories from TSR veterans which support the theory that Williams didn't like or care for gamers, and that her management style may have been abrasive. Williams no doubt was viewed with some misogyny and with some contempt simply for being an "outsider" and not a gamer. Mike Breault's post quoted in this thread:

Mike Breault on Lorraine Williams

...does come off as him being a hostile and non-objective witness. His laughing about her being fat is gross, and his whole tone gives us reason to doubt his account.

This kind of thing certainly casts the objectivity and accuracy of some later stories about her into some doubt. Someone like Jim Ward doesn't come off as having the same kind of axe to grind as the previously-quoted poster here, but again, it may factor in. I want to dig into other first-person accounts a bit more and see how much of the commonly-accepted narrative about Williams looks different in retrospect.

Here's a quick one, from Jim's "Walking Around the Building" post from April 2020.

TSR - At TSR: Walking Around The Building

Let me give you a little background. I became the Director of Creative Services at TSR. Upper management wanted me to have that title so when I tried to manage the editors and designers my words carried a bit of weight. I had edited, designed, and worked on many types of production projects at...

www.enworld.org

I remember the day I made my managerial decision like it was yesterday. Lorraine Williams was the president of the company having taken over TSR in a hostile stock takeover. She came up to my cube and read me the riot act for many products being late.

I didn't like being reprimanded for something I was working hard to fix. Although it was true the company was late on a few projects, I was on top of those and we were catching up to the posted schedule. I really didn't like everyone and their mother hearing me get reprimanded. She could have summoned me down to Mike Cook's office. He was my immediate supervisor at the time. I felt she had deliberately chosen my cube so that others could hear her displeasure at the entire department. I was fuming. Several of the editors and designers came into my cube later, to try and make me feel better. Their efforts didn't work.

From that moment I decided that my experience would not be felt by the people I managed.

I think it was Zeb Cook who got the first “walk around the building.” As I remember it, he had made comments to Lorraine about things he was working on in a disparaging way. Naturally, she spoke sharply to Mike Cook and he spoke sharply to me. Zeb's comments weren't a problem, but he hadn't given me a chance to fix his issue. We walked around the outside of the building and I calmly talked about his problem and what he had done that caused me grief.

In all the times I took people around the building for a walk, I tried hard to sound calm and reasonable.

 

[amethal]

The first, well, I disagree with Snarf on this -- I don't care if you are majority stakeholder in a closely held corporation, as long as there is one other shareholder who doesn't have a financial interest in this other thing, it is ethically questionable to buy with your shared assets this thing only you have an interest in.

To home in just on this bit, it's perfectly normal practice in a private company. If you have a property that has potential as an RPG, and are also running an RPG company, it makes sense to combine the two. Obviously, the interest has to be declared to the rest of the board.

The way it was done, however, seems to have seriously disadvantaged TSR, which might still be legal but I think is unethical - if true.

 

[Bolares]

All this being said, it's still not entirely clear to me that Williams' negative reputation can justly be put entirely down to SCOREBOARD, as Snarf put it in the OP.

I don't think Snarf meant that her reputation should be entirely down to SCOREBOARD. As I understood it, Snarf was saying that even if all else was justified, in the end... SCOREBOARD. Abusing IP laws was shifty then and continues to be shifty now, and she IS responsible for that.

Saying that Gygax was as responsible for this practices in his time doesn't exonerate her, just shows us the double standards.

 

[Mannahnin]

Here's another post where Jim talks about TSR management being against playtesting. Though his use of the word "evil" could be taken as hyperbole or indicative of a grudge, he does not call out anyone specific by name:

TSR - Jim Ward: Interplanetary War (TSR)

You won't be surprised to know that the highly creative people at TSR often did amazing things in their game playing. I can distinctly remember having a fun lunch with Gary Gygax and he told me that he was very jealous of a few of the designer types at TSR because they ran their own home games...

www.enworld.org

I had experience with other game companies and I knew that often the people that put together games never played them anymore. This wasn't healthy in my mind so I acted on it. When I became Vice President I enacted the Thursday afternoon gaming session. My editors and designers got together and played games. It didn't matter what they played, I just wanted them to enjoy themselves. Often they would play-test what they were working on and that always improved the product. My evil company masters often growled at me for this process. They didn't want people being paid good money to be goofing off every week on one afternoon. Twice I carefully explained to them what was happening in those gaming sessions. I talked about learning the competition's games. I detailed the benefits of editors playing games with designers so the editors could better understand the game designs. No matter what I said they weren't buying it. They told me to stop those sessions. I didn't and they never knew I didn't because they thought themselves too high and mighty to go back into cube-land to check things out.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

All this being said, it's still not entirely clear to me that Williams' negative reputation can justly be put entirely down to SCOREBOARD, as Snarf put it in the OP.

That wasn't what I meant; only that while I think that there are a lot of reasons to re-visit stories the stories people say about her and reconsider how we view her, in the end, she was in charge when TSR spiraled down the drain and was sold off.

For example, in Jim's "Walking Around the Building" post from April 2020.

I love Jim Ward for his many contributions to D&D (if not what he has been involved with recently). But take this story - if you really boil it down, here's what we have-

Jim calls out Lorraine for taking him to task in public. He admits that he was behind schedule.

Now, notice what else he says. Zeb was the one who told Lorraine in a disparaging manner about his work, behind his back. Lorraine then "spoke sharply" to Mike Cook, and Cook then spoke sharply to Jim.

So, we have-
1. Zeb going behind Jim's back and making disparaging comments about his work to the boss.
2. Cook taking Jim to task.
3. Lorraine taking Jim to task.

But what lingers? What couldn't be cured with a "man-to-man" talk? Was it going behind his back? Was it being taken to task? Was it being called out (even correctly) by both Cook and Lorraine?

I keep circling back to the same point- these stories seem different now. Again, I wasn't there. I don't know what really happened. But I am very skeptical of these stories, especially given that a lot of these self-serving stories don't seem to hold up in the light of day, and in light of what we now know about gender dynamics in the workplace.

(Which is to say I don't even know that Jim is incorrect in his own view of the matter, but if a male CEO called him out, maybe he would have considered that inspiring and leadership, and not abrasive, or, at a minimum, been comfortable speaking privately with the CEO ... it's just a subtle thing.)