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

[Bayushi_seikuro]

The overprotectiveness of TSR's intellectual property may not have been new, but L. Williams tenure at TSR coincided with the rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. It was an exciting time and people wanted to make websites for their D&D games. From what I have read including in threads on this site, people received legal notices from TSR that they would have to take all D&D content off their website or face legal action. So there was the birth of a new medium combined with TSR's heavy-handedness in policing its IP in this new medium. I believe this generated considerable ill-will toward Williams among D&D players.

Very good point about the WWW. As a business person, Williams may have seen the strategy of suing websites and having C&D letters handy at all times as being part of the perceived/received wisdom that if you don't protect your IP at every step of the way, you could lose the ability to profit off it.

An interesting thought would be ... what if TSR had thought of something along the lines of the OGL back then? A way to get in, have some element of quality control, give out little scraps but keep tight reins on things like Beholders... I do agree with the general consensus that Gary was a gamer and not a business man, and she was a business person and not a gamer and that if they had found a way to work together...

But, then again, if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. YMMV

 

[Shiroiken]

In the end, neither Gygax nor Williams was well suited to running the company. They both ran it into the ground. One was a gamer who lacked strong business sense, the other a business person who lacked an understanding of the game.

Perhaps if they had figured out a way to work together, capitalizing on the others‘ strengths TSR would still be around today. That said, I prefer the direction D&D has taken under WotC (who’ve managed not to go bankrupt in a longer period of time), so I think its worked out.

This was kind of my thought. If ego had been put aside for the good of TSR, Gygax could have been a primary designer and still serving as the "face" of the industry, while Williams could have done the work behind the scenes to actually run the business. Instead of getting the best of the two, where Gygax kept the focus of TSR on the game and Williams made sure the focus also made money, we get events that disrupt the company (and gaming community) for years.

 

[MGibster]

So she should get credit for saving TSR, in my opinion.

She should. I've heard her described as "the adult in the room" in regards to TSR in the mid 80s. She knew how to run a business and was able to use her contacts and experience to leverage TSR's assets and make it profitable. A lot of people don't appreciate that a business can fail because of mismanagement even when they're making money hand over fist. And Gygax just wasn't prepared to run business the size of TSR (most of us probably aren't ready to run a business like that).

That's the common refrain in sports events- you can make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the game, the only thing that matters is the final score. And business is a lot like that. Sure, there's reasons. There's extenuating circumstances. There's bad economies. But at the end of the day, TSR collapsed under Lorraine's watch. That's the alpha and the omega the end.

Lorraine doesn't get the credit she deserves for saving the company but the blame assigned to her for TSR failing is totally fair. Lorraine made several bad decisions that rendered TSR incapable of adapting to a changing market or

1. Unrealistic sales expectations. TSR's fiction was doing great and they assumed it would always do great. Dragon Dice, if you remember that, actually sold fairly well. But Lorraine insisted on over-producing the game which led to a lot of unsold merchandise.

2. Weird arrangement with Random House. TSR shipped material to RH and would receive payment within 30 days. The payment was for shipped books not sold books. So when RH had unsold goods they returned them to TSR as asked for a refund along with a restocking fee. This presented a cash flow problem when TSR's books stopped selling as well as they did.

3. TSR alienated some of their most popular authors such as Hickman, Weis, and Salvatore as well as other companies including DC Comics and Random House.

4. They had some weird arrangement where TSR would receive a loan at the beginning of the year that would be paid off by the end of the fiscal year. This made it impossible for their to alter production in order to meet the demands of a changing market.

4. Misogyny. Not to put too fine a point on it, but female executives were not common in the 80s and 90s. And the gaming community could be rough. I'm not going to spell this out for you, I'm just going to say this- Lorraine was probably treated a lot worse than a comparable male executive would have been.

I don't think that's unfair at all.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Very good point about the WWW. As a business person, Williams may have seen the strategy of suing websites and having C&D letters handy at all times as being part of the perceived/received wisdom that if you don't protect your IP at every step of the way, you could lose the ability to profit off it.

An interesting thought would be ... what if TSR had thought of something along the lines of the OGL back then? A way to get in, have some element of quality control, give out little scraps but keep tight reins on things like Beholders... I do agree with the general consensus that Gary was a gamer and not a business man, and she was a business person and not a gamer and that if they had found a way to work together...

But, then again, if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. YMMV

Yes, that thought occurred to me as well. If they had, the D&D universe might look considerably different today. But at the time, Williams-era TSR did not see the potential. EN World itself would have surely received a C&D letter if it existed back in the 1990s. Can you imagine how the members of this forum would have reacted, lol.

Possibly WoTC's decision to create the OGL was in part a reaction to the mistakes of the Williams era.

 

[humble minion]

Possibly WoTC's decision to create the OGL was in part a reaction to the mistakes of the Williams era.

It was certainly a reaction to the legacy of the Williams era, where TSR was being pulled in so many different directions by different creditors that it was a real possibility that the D&D IP would end up a minor line item on some bank's register of assets (or worse, split between several different banks) and would have never escaped from legal hell. D&D as a brand could very realistically have died right there if WotC didn't choose to buy out the whole package..

I think a lot of the WotC people (Dancey one of the more prominent ones, or at least one of the more vocal) got spooked by the possibility and the OGL sprang from that. Future-proofing D&D against any future financial/legal shenanigans. And it had the bonus of hiving off the less-profitable bits of TSRs D&D output - the thrown-together adventures and hyper-niche sourcebooks - onto third party publishers, so the D&D ecosystem as a whole benefited from them being out there, but WotC didn't have to lay out money on them. And mind you, this was the 2000-era, when open licences and open information and tech-utopianism and the free, equal, democratic internet were still a thing that people actually believed in.

 

[Zardnaar]

My 2 cents:

Lorraine Williams both saved TSR from bankruptcy and drove it into bankruptcy. She ensured the company survived, and made long term deals that crippled it for years. She was good at playing the financials, but bad at understanding gamers. She made good business decisions that ensured TSR made money, and made shady business deals that ensured she made more money than she otherwise would have.

She deserves both: all the credit for the good she did, and the blame for all the bad she did. There is no contradiction in saying she was both a good and bad influence on the history of D&D.

This is pretty much my view and it's not like TSR was well run before her.

Also got 2E the settings, RC and Dungeon magazine under her era. There's very little of the earlier stuff I care that much about.

Pretty much all of my favorite D&D stuff dates from her era hmmnn.

 

[LordEntrails]

But its also okay to enjoy the good things these people gave us, without feeling shame about their misdeeds.

Really? how many threads do we have on this forum about people the community has mostly ostracized because of their statements and actions outside of the gaming aspects?

I'm not passing judgement one way or another. But let's not pretend that "we" treat everyone equally.

 

[MGibster]

Keep in mind that a reevaluation does not necessarily entail exoneration. The dominate narrative has painted Lorraine as the bugbear of our story while ignoring that she was also the cavalier who saved the kingdom at one point. I've said this in other threads, but the more I've learned about how TSR was run over the years the more surprised I am that they managed to last for as long as they did. While it's fair to lay the demise of TSR at Lorraine's feet, she should also get credit for saving the company in the 80s.

 

[Mistwell]

And an example of why one should be skeptical of the narratives around Williams: It's widely claimed that she banned playtesting. This has been floating around for ages. However, a former TSR employee (scroll down to the comments) asserts that it's a flat-out, bald-faced lie:

"Lorraine never banned playing games. In fact, all of us played games daily at TSR and conducted playtesting of upcoming products. That includes all the members of R&D (from the VP down to the newest editor or designer), sales, marketing, warehouse staff, and more."

And correlated by another:

"I don't recall any official policy about no gaming handed down from Lorraine, not at least while I was there. We certainly playtested the wargames we put out under the SPI label, on company property and company time."

(The latter goes on to note that a lot of stuff didn't get playtested because there simply wasn't time, due to TSR's attempts to outrun bankruptcy through sheer volume of product. The blame for that doomed strategy certainly rests with Williams as CEO. But that is light-years away from forbidding playtesting.)

So... yeah. How many other "well documented" things that "everybody knows" were, in fact, just not so?

We have a TSR employee reporting as copied here at ENWorld that they didn't playtest most of what they put out in those years.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Keep in mind that a reevaluation does not necessarily entail exoneration. The dominate narrative has painted Lorraine as the bugbear of our story while ignoring that she was also the cavalier who saved the kingdom at one point. I've said this in other threads, but the more I've learned about how TSR was run over the years the more surprised I am that they managed to last for as long as they did. While it's fair to lay the demise of TSR at Lorraine's feet, she should also get credit for saving the company in the 80s.

Now that would be an interesting character backstory. A female bugbear folk hero cavalier that saved a kingdom from being destroyed/destitute by its previous ruler, ruled happily for a decade, and then was banished and mocked for making some bad decisions that ended up with the kingdom being conquered by a new, magocratic rival nation ruled by wizards that live on the continent's western coast.

 

[Malmuria]

We have a TSR employee reporting as copied here at ENWorld that they didn't playtest most of what they put out in those years.

How much do they play test what they put out now?

 

[Deset Gled]

Really? how many threads do we have on this forum about people the community has mostly ostracized because of their statements and actions outside of the gaming aspects?

I'm not passing judgement one way or another. But let's not pretend that "we" treat everyone equally.

I'd like to clarify two points.

First, I'm talking about people who are no longer active in creating content (e.g. dead, incapacitated, or removed from the industry and public eye). It's a different story for people who are currently trying to sell their product while also espousing venomous rhetoric. And even in cases where someone does continue down the bad path, I don't think you have to feel shame for enjoying the works before they went there. It's okay to say you enjoyed "Vornheim: The Complete City Kit" while also vowing you'll never buy anything from that author again.

Second, well, these are all just my opinions. There's a reason I said "we should" and not "ENWorld unanimously agrees".

 

[Deset Gled]

How much do they play test what they put out now?

I'm not sure how you would quantify the details, but 5e was playtested for about two years before it was released.

 

[Malmuria]

I'm not sure how you would quantify the details, but 5e was playtested for about two years before it was released.

Not 5e — how much was, for example, descent into avernus playtested? Then take into account the sheer volume of what tsr was putting out in the 90s

 

[TerraDave]

That is a monumental understatement and whitewashing which shows extreme bias in your spin.

This.

There are multiple accounts of the self dealing--and how else do you explain it? They kept coming up with Buck Rogers stuff no one was buying. But her family was certainly getting paid for it.

There are so many stories about her bad management, so many. Some are now in this thread. But certainly not all.

TSR under her released a few good things, and so much crap. Just so much. I don't think that people that came into the game later can understand the amount of crap. And eventually the company did crash, hard.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

We have a TSR employee reporting as copied here at ENWorld that they didn't playtest most of what they put out in those years.

That's not what Dausuul was refuting, which is why their second link says the same thing as your link, which is that a lot of stuff wasn't playtested but not because Lorraine banned it. That's what Dausuul was pointing out.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

This.

There are multiple accounts of the self dealing--and how else do you explain it? They kept coming up with Buck Rogers stuff no one was buying. But her family was certainly getting paid for it.

There are so many stories about her bad management, so many. Some are now in this thread. But certainly not all.

TSR under her released a few good things, and so much crap. Just so much. I don't think that people that came into the game later can understand the amount of crap. And eventually the company did crash, hard.

Snarf's comments about the Buck Rogers issue does sound like spin and handwaving, but they're right that Lorraine initially did a far better job than Gary which significantly prolonged the existence of the company. That's especially critical because it meant that by the time TSR did fail WotC was wealthy enough to buy the whole company, thus saving D&D as well as providing the resources to keep it the top RPG. If TSR had crashed in the late 80's or early 90's there may not have been such savior and D&D could have gone up in smoke.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

She was both hero and villain, but it had nothing to do with her being a woman, it was because she was the boss and as such the buck stops at the top.

She took out Gygax who was a hero to many I guess, taking his throne, it's natural that those who lionized him would be angry at whoever was the face of that.

And if she was as nasty to gamers as some say, then some of the hate would simply be her own reflected back at her.

BUT she also was responsible the golden age of D&D, all the best settings except Eberron came from this era, the novel lines, most of the best D&D games, like the Gold Box games, her era was the reason why I became a D&D fan.

So I like Lorraine, but I wouldn't pretend she didn't contribute to her own unpopularity.

Lorraine Williams was the Rick Berman of D&D, often vilified, but they made the choices that saved settings and created the golden age of their franchises.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I am not gonna waste my time trying to defend Gygax, as I think you are probably right. However, I just read that whole last chapter + epilogue last night and he makes it clear no one else was there and knows for sure. This is a point Peterson makes sure to mention more than once. While I think the judgement you mention is a reasonable conclusion, I think the Blumes' own sketchiness and nepotism requires that we preserve at least a little doubt.

I would totally agree about their sketchiness and nepotism! The whole Purchasing Department saga ...

But ... I guess I read Peterson a little differently I read it as, "No one can ever know .... but let's lay this out ...." I don't think there was any other conclusion?

It's the way that Peterson does the "show, don't tell." Let me explain why I read it the way I did. You have the accumulation of details that paints Gygax as not being truthful (why would the Blume settle without the commitment? why were they sending the letters without the commitment? and so on).

And then, right at the end of the chapter, was this-

"The court also considered the question of whether Gygax had promised to buy the Blume family position in the solarium at Rexnord on April 16, and finally ruled on the basis of testimony from the independent board members that Gygax had 'agreed to buy their stock, and the Blume and {Gygax} reported that commitment ... to the other directors." p. 310 (emphasis supplied)

So yes, only they were in the room, but other people testified under oath that right afterwards, Gygax said he was going to buy it (which makes sense, since that's what led to the settlement).

Anyway, I think we are definitely in general agreement. Such a good read! There have been a lot of good comments in this thread, so I'm going to write one long and more general comment regarding the rest of it in a little while when I get the chance.

 

[Mistwell]

This.

There are multiple accounts of the self dealing--and how else do you explain it? They kept coming up with Buck Rogers stuff no one was buying. But her family was certainly getting paid for it.

There are so many stories about her bad management, so many. Some are now in this thread. But certainly not all.

TSR under her released a few good things, and so much crap. Just so much. I don't think that people that came into the game later can understand the amount of crap. And eventually the company did crash, hard.

Her brother was also brought in at times, because of the Buck Rogers stuff.