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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8437602" data-attributes="member: 7026594">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:<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/mike-breault-on-lorraine-williams.661642/" target="_blank">Mike Breault on Lorraine Williams</a>...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.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/at-tsr-walking-around-the-building.670316/[/URL]</blockquote>

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