TSR Lorraine Williams, unfairly lambasted?

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.
 

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Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
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.
 

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.
 
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Sacrosanct

Legend
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

Adventurer
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

Legend
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

Adventurer
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

Legend
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

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
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

Legend
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 ;)
 

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