D&D General Melf's Guide to Greyhawk: The Shield Lands

[bedir than]

People don’t apologize when no harm has been done.

No harm was done in the book upon which you insist Dan is apologizing to Luke for. Luke certainly wasn't harmed. Dan and WotC didn't publish the book.

Quoting the words of someone isn't harming them.

 

[VashVet]

Sure and he could have apologized for Santa forgetting Luke’s Star Wars figures that Christmas and leaving him with a redeemable gift card instead.
My hypothesis has much more credibility than anything you listed above. You are just upset because it is likely true. People don’t apologize when no harm has been done.

One thing that we do know is true. You are interested in this course of discussion because it makes you feel personally vindicated. We know this because it’s what you said earlier here:

D&D General - Melf's Guide to Greyhawk: The Shield Lands

In other words, it’s less about the substance of the apology and more about wanting to crow about thinking you’re “right” because someone said you were “wrong” before.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sure and he could have apologized for Santa forgetting Luke’s Star Wars figures that Christmas and leaving him with a redeemable gift card instead.
My hypothesis has much more credibility than anything you listed above. You are just upset because it is likely true. People don’t apologize when no harm has been done.

I'm not upset at all. But if they thought it was any of your business, they would have been more explicit.

 

[wizard71]

Why would he apologize about the book? There's nothing to apologize for.We’ll, that is your opinion. It’s not an opinion shared by some of the ceteran

Why would he apologize about the book? There's nothing to apologize for.

His book contains some facts it there is also exaggeration, bias and an agenda. Gygax is portrayed as a bumbler who happened to catch lightning in a bottle. While his board partners the Blume brothers and Lorraine Williams largely escape blame. The company failed during Lorraine’s watch she hardly gets mentioned. Gygax was a poor financial manager for sure but the Blumes were burning through cash and Lorraine saddled the company with Buck Rogers merchant that no one wanted. Quite a few of TSR’s successes such as Temple of Elemental Evil and the D&D cartoon are the direct work of Gary. If the book wasn’t to blame Aggy then why did Dan apologize to Gygax’s son? Why did Luke feel the need to air his forgiveness publicly?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If the book wasn’t to blame Aggy then why did Dan apologize to Gygax’s son? Why did Luke feel the need to air his forgiveness publicly?

If the apology was what you think it was, why didn't anyone say so explicitly?

Also, you really need to listen to When We Were Wizards.

 

[mamba]

His book contains some facts it there is also exaggeration, bias and an agenda. Gygax is portrayed as a bumbler who happened to catch lightning in a bottle.

sounds pretty accurate, although I grant him hustle when it comes to his wargaming hobby, and by extension the invention of D&D

While his board partners the Blume brothers and Lorraine Williams largely escape blame. The company failed during Lorraine’s watch she hardly gets mentioned.

isn’t the book mostly focusing on OD&D, then Lorraine should not show up at all. The Blumes certainly deserve some blame too, none of them (Gary and the Blumes) were any good at running an actual company

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

isn’t the book mostly focusing on OD&D, then Lorraine should not show up at all. The Blumes certainly deserve some blame too, none of them (Gary and the Blumes) were any good at running an actual company

The book stops before Gods, Demigods & Heroes is published, in fact. So yes, it is pre-Blumes, which one would assume @wizard71 knows, if he read the book, as he says he did.

 

[Mannahnin]

His book contains some facts it there is also exaggeration, bias and an agenda. Gygax is portrayed as a bumbler who happened to catch lightning in a bottle. While his board partners the Blume brothers and Lorraine Williams largely escape blame. The company failed during Lorraine’s watch she hardly gets mentioned. Gygax was a poor financial manager for sure but the Blumes were burning through cash and Lorraine saddled the company with Buck Rogers merchant that no one wanted. Quite a few of TSR’s successes such as Temple of Elemental Evil and the D&D cartoon are the direct work of Gary. If the book wasn’t to blame Aggy then why did Dan apologize to Gygax’s son? Why did Luke feel the need to air his forgiveness publicly?

What book are you even talking about? Slaying the Dragon? A) That book talks a ton about Williams and the mistakes she made as well, and B) Why would WotC apologize for a book not written or published by them?

Also, you really need to listen to When We Were Wizards.

No kidding. Listening to folks who were there at TSR give both their own perspectives and first person confirmation for a lot of what's in Slaying the Dragon and Game Wizards is pretty nice.

 

[Mannahnin]

isn’t the book mostly focusing on OD&D, then Lorraine should not show up at all. The Blumes certainly deserve some blame too, none of them (Gary and the Blumes) were any good at running an actual company

Depends which book you're talking about.

The one WotC published is The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977. It doesn't really talk about Gary's or the Blumes' virtues or flaws as people, businessmen, or designers. This is a big lavish coffee table reproduction of OD&D and its supplements (except the last one, Gods, Demigods & Heroes), a prepublication first draft of OD&D, as well as parts of Chainmail and a bunch of precursor and contemporary materials from when OD&D was being created and the years leading right up to that. Including correspondence between Gary and Dave, club newsletters and fanzines from their wargaming days including an issue of Thangorodrim which introduced dragon concepts later used in D&D, etc. This one has almost no editorializing. It's mostly a 575 page loving reproduction and presentation of a bunch of historical materials in chronological order and factual description thereof. There are about a paragraph and a half of disclaimers / content warning in Jason Tondro's preface. Talking about a few problematic/unsavory elements in the reproduced texts, and not naming any names or denigrating any persons, living or dead. These have been mischaracterized by some misguided or genuinely delusional folks as attacking Gygax or other original creators or old-school fans. Jon Peterson, one of the primary researchers and compilers of the above volume, includes a few even milder words in his Foreword to the book as well. He also quotes two sentences of the legacy content disclaimer that WotC has on the old school TSR stuff on DM's Guild. These passages clarify that the writers and publishers aren't endorsing the instances of sexism in the text or making light of slavery; that this stuff is in there in a few places and the modern reader should be aware going in.

On the topic of the origins of D&D, Jon Peterson also wrote Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons, a carefully-researched work on the origins and history of TSR as a business and the publishing of D&D, including the legal struggles between its various creators and stakeholders, up through Gary's ouster in 1985. This book does minimal editorializing. Peterson is a stickler for sourcing and backing up the things he writes in contemporaneous written documentation. He largely avoids making judgmental statements about anyone, usually preferring to let their own words and actions be judged by the reader. This one is from MIT Press.

The journalist Ben Riggs wrote an unrelated book, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons, which is a pretty solid history of D&D as well, and overlaps with Peterson's history and documents much of the same stuff (albeit in less detail) from the early 70s to '85, but differs in extending his coverage through the Lorraine Williams years until and for a bit after WotC's acquisition of TSR. As well as in relying more on supplementary personal verbal accounts and interviews with some of the people involved many years after the fact. This one is from St. Martin's Press.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What book are you even talking about?

He's theoretically mad about The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977, although he seems to think it says stuff it doesn't.