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

[Willie the Duck]

I mean - granted, it's a firsthand account and we don't have many of those.

But jeez, reading the interview, I wouldn't trust that guy with bus fare. He talks like every resentful, self-aggrandizing blowhard I've ever heard. He craps on everyone else and minimizes his own failings - he does admit that the D&D movie wasn't a good movie, but he quickly segues into the unforgivingness of Hollywood and how nobody would cut him a break afterward. And oh, he had James Cameron lined up to direct! He had Francis Ford Coppola lined up! It was Lorraine's fault he couldn't get those guys on board... yeah, right. Sure it was.

I do not disagree. However, we're back at dueling credibilities, which is the problem we had in the first place. Gary and a bunch of people who invented/worked directly on the game we love had more effective credibility with a lot of us that trust-fund heiress; but now 80s female CEO has more effective credibility than self-promoting Hollywood guy.

 

[Deset Gled]

But jeez, reading the interview, I wouldn't trust that guy with bus fare. He talks like every resentful, self-aggrandizing blowhard I've ever heard. He craps on everyone else and minimizes his own failings - he does admit that the D&D movie wasn't a good movie, but he quickly segues into the unforgivingness of Hollywood and how nobody would cut him a break afterward. And oh, he had James Cameron lined up to direct! He had Francis Ford Coppola lined up! It was Lorraine's fault he couldn't get those guys on board... yeah, right. Sure it was.

Another article posits 'It should be noted that Cameron never said he’d direct; he was willing to take a hands-on producing role." But Dan Jolin doesn't give his source for that.

I think it's particularly interesting to note that (according to Soloman) all Williams cared about was the merchandising. I find this very believable. It's also a place where I think Soloman was dead wrong. From a business/finance perspective, merchandising makes a lot of sense. As the brand owner, that's where TSR actually stood to make the most money. Unfortunately, it seems like Williams didn't know how to actually capitalize on it (i.e., push a movie through, insist on characters/designs that make good toys, etc). It shows an area where her brand management skills were lacking.

 

[Dausuul]

I do not disagree. However, we're back at dueling credibilities, which is the problem we had in the first place. Gary and a bunch of people who invented/worked directly on the game we love had more effective credibility with a lot of us that trust-fund heiress; but now 80s female CEO has more effective credibility than self-promoting Hollywood guy.

Lorraine's credibility doesn't really come into it, because she hasn't said anything. There have been reams of commentary about her, but I am not aware that she has ever commented in public on her time at TSR.

As far as the D&D movie goes, I have zero faith in Solomon's account, but I certainly would not be surprised if TSR was making a mess of things as well. As a number of folks have observed, TSR had an unbroken run of bad leadership from first to last. Lorraine was not a villain, but she was hardly a great CEO.

And it's not like we need any special explanations for why a bad movie was made. There is a kind of unspoken assumption that the default state of a typical movie is good--so if it's bad, somebody must have messed it up, and we go looking for the person to blame. But in fact, the default state of a typical movie (or book, or TV show, or pretty much anything) is lousy, which is why the vast majority of movies that get released sink without a trace. It's the good ones that call for explanation.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Lorraine's credibility doesn't really come into it, because she hasn't said anything. There have been reams of commentary about her, but I am not aware that she has ever commented in public on her time at TSR.

As far as the D&D movie goes, I have zero faith in Solomon's account...

What I am saying is that I am now not taking as credible, nor have much faith in, any retroactive personal account of how things went down, particularly if we're relying on our own instincts about the credibility of the person telling us the account. We've spent far too long believing the side that fits with our preconceived notions and biases.

Williams has not made public comments, but she has contributed to the firsthand documentation, which is the (relatively) trustworthy sources, in my book, at the moment.

 

[darjr]

Williams has not made public comments, but she has contributed to the firsthand documentation, which is the (relatively) trustworthy sources, in my book, at the moment.

I hadn’t realized this. Good to know and good on her.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I understand that you're trying to discredit Soloman's statements.

Nope.

Not it at all, again.

Here's something from a prior comment I made-
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.

Before that-
Look, if you don't read some of those accounts with fresh eyes, I don't know what to tell you.

Before that-
I'm just no longer comfortable parroting the opinions I have heard about Lorraine Williams. When I look back at a lot of the stories about her, I find that many of them are either completely untrue on closer examination, are contested by other people, or are hearsay. More importantly, looking back at some of the "ha ha she's an evil witch and fat too" stories makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Follow?

I will make this explicit- if the issue I have been having is people trotting out the same, tired stories that almost always have the same, tired sexist comments that make me cringe reading them, why do you think that digging up another cringe-y comment is going to be better?

What? If you find a person who say, "Oh, she was evil, and REALLY fat" am I going to feel better about this? I don't think so.

Point being that there are precious few receipts; so googling additional sexist and uncorroborated comments isn't helpful. I


If you are comfortable digging up these comments and producing them as evidence ... hey, good for you. I can't.

 

[MGibster]

By putting names and a faces on early D&D -Gygax and Arneson- and to a lesser extent on "modern" D&D -Dancey and Adkinson- they opened the door for the public to put a name on the recently gone 2e era. More so, by putting up a hero, they left a void open for a villain to be cast.

Okay. I can't really blame WotC for this as recognizing Gygax, Arneson, and others wasn't not a malicious act designed to thrust Williams into the forefront as the villain. Assuming for a moment it did create an open void, Williams' own actions is what allowed her to so easily fill that void.

And well, why the double standard? either Lorraine was a driving force in TSR or she wasn't. You can't say she had nothing to do with the good and everything to do with the bad then say that because her actions she was indeed a villain. Yes, the boat sunk with her at the helm. Yes, under her TSR took many questionable actions, but do we know to what extent the bad actions where decided by her? Why blame her for failing to save a sinking ship when it was sinking before she was brought in instead of praising her for keeping it gong for longer than it would have otherwise?

What double standard? I've already acknowledged that Williams saved the company in the 1980s. I've even argued for a re-evaluation of her legacy on the grounds that she's been cast as a villain while her role in saving TSR has largely been ignored. And I hold Williams responsible because she was the one in charge. She set up the financial structure of the company that made it impossible for TSR to make changes based on external market forces, it was her decision to over produce Dragon Dice, it was her decision to antagonize both DC Comics and Random House, it was her decision to alienate authors include RA Salvatore and the Hickmans. She saved the ship, ran it well for a few years, and then sailed right into the rocks. I'm blaming her because she was the CEO and the buck stops with her.

 

[humble minion]

it was her decision to alienate authors include RA Salvatore and the Hickmans.

To be fair, Salvatore only got to write D&D fiction at all while she was running TSR. Gygax was pushed out in 1985, Salvatore only published his first Drizzt novel in 1988.

I never had a dog in this fight at the time, I only really got into D&D in the mid 90s and all this was ancient history even then. But that sums her tenure up in a nutshell really, to me. A few competent organisational decisions early to stem the bleeding from late-Gygaxian chaos, then an era of extraordinary creative output (the degree to which she is responsible for that is of course debateable, but she is as responsible for TSRs successes in that era as she is for its failures) followed by a long slow crunch into insolvency as whole lot of poor strategic decisions came home to roost.

 

[Deset Gled]

I will make this explicit- if the issue I have been having is people trotting out the same, tired stories that almost always have the same, tired sexist comments that make me cringe reading them, why do you think that digging up another cringe-y comment is going to be better?

What? If you find a person who say, "Oh, she was evil, and REALLY fat" am I going to feel better about this? I don't think so.

I'm posting the quotes and links here to add information, not to make anyone feel better. AFAIK, these quotes from Corey Soloman have not been brought up in any of the previous threads about Williams, so they're not the same old tired stories. And even if you want to write off Soloman as nothing but a bigoted hack, the story of how Williams handled the movie license for D&D is a decades long, multi-million dollar saga that was felt in the company from the finance level down to the Drangonlance rules set. If you want to honestly re-evaluate Williams, it's an important chapter to consider that hadn't been addressed yet in this thread.

 

[Bolares]

I'm posting the quotes and links here to add information, not to make anyone feel better. AFAIK, these quotes from Corey Soloman have not been brought up in any of the previous threads about Williams, so they're not the same old tired stories. And even if you want to write off Soloman as nothing but a bigoted hack, the story of how Williams handled the movie license for D&D is a decades long, multi-million dollar saga that was felt in the company from the finance level down to the Drangonlance rules set. If you want to honestly re-evaluate Williams, it's an important chapter to consider that hadn't been addressed yet in this thread.

but this makes her at worst a bad business executive. The villification goes waaaay beyind that.