TSR Lorraine Williams, unfairly lambasted?

[Deset Gled]

Based off of what I've read, Lorraine Williams gets blamed for a lot because Lorraine Williams made sure everyone knew she was in charge of TSR. She was the final word. The head honcho. She thought of the company as "hers". A lot of stories show that she stuck herself into places where she probably shouldn't have. And she took credit for the things that made money. Consequently, there was no one to share responsibility with when things eventually went south. All of the blame got focused on her, because she put effort into making the company focused on her.

The fault in TSR's failure may not be all hers. But the focus on her seems to be at least partly her own doing.

 

[Umbran]

Sorry, you don't get to call someone immoral and then tell them they aren't allowed to respond back.

Mod Note:
Just recently, in a less official voice, I noted how things would not go well. I am sorry to see that I was prescient.

So... in the real world, if someone asks you to leave them alone, and you persist in bothering them... that's harassment.

In our small electronic world, we generally don't think in such heavy legal terms. But, we do have some notion of propriety. When someone asks you to leave them alone, we expect you to do as they ask, so long as they don't engage with you. We have an ignore feature, but it isn't foolproof. Continuing to badger people who have clearly said they no longer want converse can become actionable.

So, please, don't take it further - just leave each other alone, already.

I expect this to conclude the argument between @Sacrosanct and @lowkey13 . If either of you feels a need to discuss it further, take it to PM. Moderators will expect this thread to be clean of this argument going forward, and deal with either of you should you re-engage. I hope that's clear.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

So where is the credit for turning TSR around in 1985 (she was originally brought in because TSR was failing)?

Again, she didn't turn it around. The company simply staved off collapse. For four years after she took over it the game was still all 1E. Even after 2E was released and made money the company financial structure didn't really improve. It was still deep in debt and cash-strapped, and even became so desperate in releasing more material to get more cash while blind to the fact that such action only made them LESS cash.

For all of the great products released during her tenure? Where is that credit?

Burned up with her inability to run a company that improved financially with all those great products. And credit for those products being great or poor really belongs to the people that WROTE them, not the CEO of the company they worked at.

Finally, Gary screwed himself over. I love EGG as much (if not more) than the next person, but if he had not been forced out, TSR would have folded before the 90s came around.

I would agree. But Gygax wouldn't have deliberately schemed to drive others out just to be vengeful. Williams did. 1E was becoming crushed under its own bloat by the time Gygax was forced out. However, it is sheer fanciful speculation what Gygax's version of 2E would have really looked like. His next RPG was Dangerous Journeys (?), which was rules-lite and thus more like original D&D, but also skills-heavy which was what late 1E and then 2E was becoming even though skills were optional. How would any of that have been translated into a stronger company if NOT run by Williams? Impossible to say.

Your timeframe a little off- Gygax was trying to wrest control from the Blumes (he was the one that got Kevin exiled as CEO) so the idea that the Blumes turned around and did the favor back to Gygax is hardly surprising. At least, it wouldn't be to anyone with half a business brain.

As I understand it, Kevin Blume was asked to step down as President/CEO by the three outsiders insisted on by TSR's creditors. It would have technically been at the request of the entire board, which was those three (Huber, Kiden, and Sommers), along with the two Blumes and Gygax. Not sure how Gygax was "trying to wrest control" from the Blumes with that. Gygax didn't want Huber, Kiden, and Sommers involved in the first place because he didn't want the company controlled by outsiders. Brian Blume on the other hand, was not an outsider and had provided the money needed to publish original D&D on its own rather than getting another game company to buy it.

Yeah, no. But I don't think I'm going to convince you, or your italics.

Well, score one for you. If you can get forums to enable readers to hear emphasis by some other means you'll be rich. Meanwhile you'll just have to burn your eyes on italics.

I'm not saying I'm unquestionably wrong, but accusations aren't proof. For example, HOW did Gygax try to wrest control from the Blumes? Really, all he'd need to do is buy more shares than they had and he'd have HAD control and could have kicked them all out - which is what Blume did. If you want to simply say that Gygax was too stupid to realize that's what he'd need to do, maybe you're right. But what I've read has only ever suggested a slight change of perspective - that he was just too naive to believe that people that close to him could be such creeps.

Again, there is blame to share in Gygax being ousted, but little of it was because Gygax was a scheming, ruthless jerk who had it coming. He was a fair-to-poor businessman and too naive to realize he needed to protect himself and the company he co-founded against vengeful business associates.

There is blame to share in the demise of TSR as a company. Gygax, however, shares virtually none of it. He'd been gone 10 years, and Williams - who was also only fair-to-poor at business (having no interest in playing or tolerance for the game her company produced and the players who DID play it) - had been in full charge during that decade. The blame there is hers.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I would agree. But Gygax wouldn't have deliberately schemed to drive others out just to be vengeful.

I think perhaps you need to read Rob Kunz's recent posts on the whole Gary vs Dave things

Williams did. 1E was becoming crushed under its own bloat by the time Gygax was forced out. However, it is sheer fanciful speculation what Gygax's version of 2E would have really looked like. His next RPG was Lejendary Adventure, which was rules-lite and thus more like original D&D, but also skills-heavy which was what late 1E and then 2E was becoming even though skills were optional. How would any of that have been translated into a stronger company if NOT run by Williams? Impossible to say.

Gary did two RPGs before Lejendary Adventure: Cyborg Commando, and Dangerous Journeys. The former which resulted in TSR suing him and him settling. So we know what 2e would have looked like. It would have been Dangerous Journeys.

 

[Count_Zero]

1: She was invited to work at the company by Gygax and she ultimately had no moral or ethical qualms about screwing him over in a huge way. "It's just business," only goes so far to justify one's actions.

2: She hated the game that was the reason the company existed and despised the customers who bought and played it.

3: She apparently thought herself as quite the businessperson but in 10+ years of running TSR she DID NOT solve its clearly precarious financial position when she took over, and instead - REGARDLESS of the success/popularity of TSR products - only made the company's finances worse. Gygax may not have been able to do any better, but he sure as heck couldn't have done much worse.

I'd suspect in addition to all of these, TSR's lawsuits against Gary Gygax's attempted successor companies and products (Dangerous Journeys, Lejendary Adventures) aggravated the issues. I believe the Mayfair Games/Role Aids lawsuit was under Williams's leadership as well.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'd suspect in addition to all of these, TSR's lawsuits against Gary Gygax's attempted successor companies and products (Dangerous Journeys, Lejendary Adventures) aggravated the issues. I believe the Mayfair Games/Role Aids lawsuit was under Williams's leadership as well.

I suspect this is a big part too. A lot of people did diefication of Gary, and it wasn't bad enough Lorraine ran him out of town, he also kept harassing him (in their minds). So I'm sure that had an impact on the level of vitriol directed her way. She became the perfect villain to the hero Gary Gygax when the truth was a bit more muddied.

 

[Count_Zero]

I suspect this is a big part too. A lot of people did diefication of Gary, and it wasn't bad enough Lorraine ran him out of town, he also kept harassing him (in their minds). So I'm sure that had an impact on the level of vitriol directed her way. She became the perfect villain to the hero Gary Gygax when the truth was a bit more muddied.

That, plus the takedown notices against fansites, plus the Role-Aids lawsuit, pretty much put Williams right in everyone's crosshairs - and those things in combination would have earned the vitriol of fans no matter what, whether it was Lorraine Williams or Jim Herd in charge of the company

 

[Sacrosanct]

To get back on track to the main topic, I guess I kinda look at it like this, to use a sports analogy. If the Cleveland browns collapsed, it would be like blaming Jim Haslam for it just because he was the last person in charge when they failed. But the reality is that several owners before him all had the same failures, but they don't get much blame for running a failing franchise.

Sometimes, the issues are bigger than the one person in charge can fix. Especially in a corporation where you have a board and stakeholders you have to answer to. And it's much harder to fix when you're given a crappy hand from the beginning as opposed to a great hand to work with. Also factor in the value of hindsight? Yeah...

 

[billd91]

I suspect this is a big part too. A lot of people did diefication of Gary, and it wasn't bad enough Lorraine ran him out of town, he also kept harassing him (in their minds). So I'm sure that had an impact on the level of vitriol directed her way. She became the perfect villain to the hero Gary Gygax when the truth was a bit more muddied.

Thanks to legal technicalities, the truth may be more muddied, but corporate lawsuits tend to chafe people's sense of fairness. What was Gygax expected to do after being ousted from TSR? It's not like he isn't going to use the ideas he had in developing D&D to develop other games. Trying to stop him from doing so would be keeping him from pursuing his chosen career - and that never seems like fair play. It reminds me of Saul Zaentz's lawsuit against John Fogerty for basically sounding too much like Creedence Clearwater Revival on some newer songs. Well, duh, of course they do. They're both in his style - John Fogerty is going to write songs like John Fogerty.

Similarly, Gygax was going to design and write games like Gygax, using the experience he acquired in doing so for TSR for any new game he wrote. The lawsuits looked like they were hounding him out of the business.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Thanks to legal technicalities, the truth may be more muddied, but corporate lawsuits tend to chafe people's sense of fairness. What was Gygax expected to do after being ousted from TSR? It's not like he isn't going to use the ideas he had in developing D&D to develop other games. Trying to stop him from doing so would be keeping him from pursuing his chosen career - and that never seems like fair play. It reminds me of Saul Zaentz's lawsuit against John Fogerty for basically sounding too much like Creedence Clearwater Revival on some newer songs. Well, duh, of course they do. They're both in his style - John Fogerty is going to write songs like John Fogerty.

Similarly, Gygax was going to design and write games like Gygax, using the experience he acquired in doing so for TSR for any new game he wrote. The lawsuits looked like they were hounding him out of the business.

While I agree with your overall point, I don't know how much that applies to Gary. After all, Cyborg Commando was his first game after TSR and Lorraine left him completely alone on that one. It wasn't until he started designing a game that looked a lot like D&D did he start going after him.

I've designed a lot of games. And they are all pretty different. Different enough to not look like one of the others anyway. In fact, I'd posit that game designers are pretty creative and want to try out different systems (like Cybog Commando's 2d10 multiply result mechanic). Experimenting is most of the fun. So I'm sure Gary could have written games that didn't resemble D&D so closely. Because he did

 

[The Glen]

I talked to quite a bit of the old guard about Jean Wells and the Palace of the Silver Princess, as well as TSR under Lorraine Williams when I was doing my review channel. There were a lot of things they talked about that weren't mentioned in most of the articles about the topic.

1. The S&M art wasn't the reason the module was recalled, it was the Errol Otis art, specifically the Ubues (pictured below). Those heads are the heads of TSR's upper management at the time. Gary was not thrilled with the art at all. Wells warned about the art but was told it was too late to change it. Only when Gygax saw the final product after it shipped did he recall the modules.

2. Wells main reason for leaving TSR was because of game design differences. She wanted to create modules like In Search of the Unknown, where the players filled in the blank. Gary wanted modules filled out like Keep on the Borderlands. The original Palace was along the fill in the blanks line, but when they rewrote the module they went with the fleshed out that Gary wanted. Wells didn't want to create modules like that so she stopped making modules.

3. Williams initially turned TSR around with 2nd edition. The game sold quite well and she started releasing more product to increase sales. Problem was with this approach she released too much and flooded the market. Books were released almost weekly, and the quality dropped precipitously. The mid 90s TSR was just releasing crap.

4. She killed profitable lines because of politics. She wanted TSR scrubbed of all things Gary related. Greyhawk and Mystara were phased out despite solid sales. (Spelljammer was never a big seller). Arneson was brought in to create the DA series (Blackmoor) and according to all accounts, sales of that line were massive. They were easily the best selling TSR supplements of the year, but Dave was forced out as it became obvious that he wasn't welcome in the new TSR.

5. Buck Rogers wasted a lot of money on a line nobody wanted. Williams' family had the rights to Buck Rogers, so she bought the rights from her own family to make the game. Total conflict of interest. Buck Rogers didn't sell, despite a relaunch and board and computer game tie ins.

6. Too much focus on secondary games that lost money was probably the biggest symptom of the mid 90's death spiral. They flooded the market with the poorly designed Spellfire game, as well as producing more Dragon Dice than they could ever possibly sell. Through in gimmicks like audio CDs in the boxed sets that raised the production costs sometimes over the sale price. They were losing money on their own products.

Williams was able to turn around TSR from the initial mismanagement, but her business decisions afterward reversed the upward trends and led to the company's demise. TSR flooded the market with games nobody was buying, drove out most of the original talent over both the spat with Gary and her disdain for the original employees. TSR couldn't adapt to the changing market in the 90's, and it became obvious in the years that followed.

 

[Xenonnonex]

I talked to quite a bit of the old guard about Jean Wells and the Palace of the Silver Princess, as well as TSR under Lorraine Williams when I was doing my review channel. There were a lot of things they talked about that weren't mentioned in most of the articles about the topic.

1. The S&M art wasn't the reason the module was recalled, it was the Errol Otis art, specifically the Ubues (pictured below). Those heads are the heads of TSR's upper management at the time. Gary was not thrilled with the art at all. Wells warned about the art but was told it was too late to change it. Only when Gygax saw the final product after it shipped did he recall the modules.

2. Wells main reason for leaving TSR was because of game design differences. She wanted to create modules like In Search of the Unknown, where the players filled in the blank. Gary wanted modules filled out like Keep on the Borderlands. The original Palace was along the fill in the blanks line, but when they rewrote the module they went with the fleshed out that Gary wanted. Wells didn't want to create modules like that so she stopped making modules.

3. Williams initially turned TSR around with 2nd edition. The game sold quite well and she started releasing more product to increase sales. Problem was with this approach she released too much and flooded the market. Books were released almost weekly, and the quality dropped precipitously. The mid 90s TSR was just releasing crap.

4. She killed profitable lines because of politics. She wanted TSR scrubbed of all things Gary related. Greyhawk and Mystara were phased out despite solid sales. (Spelljammer was never a big seller). Arneson was brought in to create the DA series (Blackmoor) and according to all accounts, sales of that line were massive. They were easily the best selling TSR supplements of the year, but Dave was forced out as it became obvious that he wasn't welcome in the new TSR.

5. Buck Rogers wasted a lot of money on a line nobody wanted. Williams' family had the rights to Buck Rogers, so she bought the rights from her own family to make the game. Total conflict of interest. Buck Rogers didn't sell, despite a relaunch and board and computer game tie ins.

6. Too much focus on secondary games that lost money was probably the biggest symptom of the mid 90's death spiral. They flooded the market with the poorly designed Spellfire game, as well as producing more Dragon Dice than they could ever possibly sell. Through in gimmicks like audio CDs in the boxed sets that raised the production costs sometimes over the sale price. They were losing money on their own products.

Williams was able to turn around TSR from the initial mismanagement, but her business decisions afterward reversed the upward trends and led to the company's demise. TSR flooded the market with games nobody was buying, drove out most of the original talent over both the spat with Gary and her disdain for the original employees. TSR couldn't adapt to the changing market in the 90's, and it became obvious in the years that followed.
View attachment 114911

Nice analysis.

What the actual F is up with that image? Who in their right mind commissioned it? Hell. Who in their right mind drew it?

 

[The Glen]

Nice analysis.

What the actual F is up with that image? Who in their right mind commissioned it? Hell. Who in their right mind drew it?

That's classic Errol Otis art.

 

[Parmandur]

Nice analysis.

What the actual F is up with that image? Who in their right mind commissioned it? Hell. Who in their right mind drew it?

Nobody commissioned it, absolutely nobody, that was part of the problem. And it wasn't drawn by someone in their right mind, it was drawn by Erol Otis.

 

[Zardnaar]

Gary avoids a lot if gate because he invented the game and wasn't in the driver's seat at corporate.

Blumes and Lorraine both saved D&D but Lorraine destroyed TSR.

Random House was a big reason TSR went to nder but the reason they didn't have the cash flow was a combination of producing crap.

The multiple lines were a problem, there's a reason WotC killed them.

Some were being sold at a loss (Planescape) and each line got a novel line, adventures and other tie in material.

If WoTC ever brings then back expect 1-2 books and an adventure that's it roughly.

Lorraine also gets the heat for forcing Gary out, gamers like him not her. No other designer since has the same relationship with the fans although Monte might be close. Gary's name is in all of the big selling modules and forwards on the books.

Gary designed product that sold, the suits messed it up.

Even in the frog sites never encountered comments about Lorraine's gender she's hated because if what she did and because of 2E.

If you want real gate there was Knights and Knaves which was bad blood dating back to the 70s. That was personal with people picking sides.

Not saying Jean and the others didn't suffer from sexism, it was a different time and done of the guys sound like asshats.

But yeah that art in 81 or whatever it's a problem. Notice 5E has sanitized art there's a reason and it was in 2014.

They got away with it when D&D was small the original art on OD&D covers.

 

[Xenonnonex]

It sounds like a combination of complicated issues, and especially of people mismanaging and managing well in some areas. And generally being asshats to one another.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, I actually have the module, so I've read it...

And you've completely missed the point. That orange cover was recalled. Because of how it was made. The warning bells were sounded by the people in that article I linked, and they were ignored because Jean and Gary were friends and she told Gary to tell everyone else to lay off. So they did. And guess what happened? Total disaster. It had to be recalled and dumped in the landfill.

There was no good reason to recall the module. The 'disaster' was entirely self-inflicted.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, I actually have the module, so I've read it...

And you've completely missed the point. That orange cover was recalled. Because of how it was made. The warning bells were sounded by the people in that article I linked, and they were ignored because Jean and Gary were friends and she told Gary to tell everyone else to lay off. So they did. And guess what happened? Total disaster. It had to be recalled and dumped in the landfill.

But hey, keep attacking the people that were there instead of looking at the actual facts of what happened to that module. Ad hominems never go out of style.

You're the one calling Wells a pornographer!!

 

[S'mon]

So yeah, by 1980, it is entirely reasonable and likely that the people in that aforementioned article (and TSR management) did not want B3 to be released with the art that it had depicting S&M ritual torture since at the time, D&D was being linked to rituals, witchcraft, and deviancy thanks to that exposure the news was doing in the Egbert case.

Your supposed 'art depicting S&M ritual torture'

https://media.wired.com/photos/5b1ec6190da4a86262ab0a64/master/w_1716,h_1146,c_limit/The%20Illusion%20of%20the%20Decapus.png

The module text just describes some ugly humanoids poking their female captive with sticks. This is well within the traditional S&S fantasy mainstream.

 

[Zardnaar]

Remember B/X was aimed at kids. No demons, devil's etc.