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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoonSong" data-source="post: 8438737" data-attributes="member: 6689464">TSR was born tainted. The seeds of its own destruction were planted from the moment Gygax lacked the means to publish it on his own, and its fate was sealed with <s>David</s> Don Kaye's unexpected passing. These two facts opened the door for the Blumes to get involved and from that point onward there was never a time where it wasn't being mismanaged. During the early days it was uncontrolled and unfocused diversification made worse by nepotism. (Edit: I'm not saying Gary on his own wouldn't have mismanaged the company, but with the Blumes on board there were three more people to take bad decisions and twice the number of relatives in the payroll. And well, I don't think TSR would have bought a needlework company under Gygax alone!)  Under Loraine, it was explosive unsustainable growth, with future expected returns being used to fuel current production and competing product lines cannibalizing each other while splitting the consumer base. Eventually it overextended into unprofitability and the business collapsed.Yeah. I don't doubt Lorraine was devoted to TSR, after all, it was her company. However, she wasn't on it for the love of the game. From her actions it is evident she approached it as a publishing gig first. If she had had the opportunity to save the company by getting rid of D&D, she would have. Because her baby was the company, not D&D itself. In the end the company fell, but I'm sure she made her money back by a tenfold. So, still a win?--------------------------In general, I hold no strong emotion towards Lorraine. She evidently mismanaged TSR and could have done an effort to understand her product and her market better. Are the tales about her true? I don't know, all we have is incomplete fragmentary hearsay. Is she seen in a worse light due to misogyny? I don't doubt there is a component to it. In general society punishes women who aren't all-kind-all-nurturing at all times. And being in a managing position demands taking harsh actions and doing power moves. While men do take heat for acting in these ways, women receive far more of it when they do it.Was she a snob who resented her own customer base? I hope not. Was she an early advocate of feminism by denouncing the misogyny in the hobby? I hope so. Whatever the case, we don't have enough hard data to know with any certainty and even less to make an informed judgment of her actions. But, do we really need to judge her actions let alone her person?What I know is that under her, TSR produced a huge catalog of books, novels and supplements that are beloved by many. I mean I still consider 2e and RC the best editions of the game to date. Yes, she didn't know how to handle an RPG publisher in the long run, but it seems nobody did back then. It would take a long time before anybody had any idea how to manage one. And yet, many seem to have taken lessons from TSRs failure, so not even that is a net negative. TSR went under, but the game is still around and in good hands -and in a better spot than ever before-. We even got the OGL out of the deal!</blockquote>

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