TSR Lorraine Williams, unfairly lambasted?

[lowkey13]

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[Blue]

Williams took over in 1985. So here's the thing. Think of everything from 1985 (or, if you prefer, from Jan 1, 1986) through 1997.

Forgotten Realms. Second Edition. The Gold Boxes. The Novels. The MANY SETTINGS (from Al Qadim to Planescape). The art. Everything.

From some of the financials articles, the many settings was actually a direct part of the problem. They were splintering their user base, and making products that would only appeal to a fration of them at a time, but still had all the costs of making something that could appeal to them all.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Quartz]

The point being that no one excoriates other CEO/owners quite like this;

She was there at the fall. The problems started before her time, sure, but she had the opportunitiy to stop the rot and she did not. It was up to her and she failed.

 

[Parmandur]

getting on board the stupid card game train too late

On this point, TSR didn't get on the train too late: Spellfire was the second CCG to market, from what i heard, after Magic invented the field. And I hear it was good, too?

And who was there to pull the trigger to make that happen?

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Parmandur]

I have to admit, my knowledge of stupid card games is limited.

I'm not a big aficionado myself, really. Spellfire seems to have been interesting for it's use of decades of top D&D art for the cards, which helped it sell well at the time. Not sell as well as M:tG, but Magic is something truly extraordinary.

 

[darjr]

This thread has made me reevaluate my understanding and feelings about this topic. I agree with more of the OP than I did originally. I absolutely do think that she was disproportionately hated because she is a woman.

 

[jayoungr]

Lorraine Williams is often attacked to this day of single handily destroying TSR. Whenever people talk about the TSR failing, it's always, and only, Lorraine they talk about. (snip)

I guess it just makes me crinkle my eyebrows whenever I hear how she got blamed for everything, and is the only one ever blamed.

I don't think the blame is that one-sided, at least not these days. I've never read up on the whole thing in detail, but what I've gotten from osmosis is that a lot of bad decisions happened over a course of several years, and the combined effect of all of them dragged the company down.