The recent conclusion of the excellent podcast series, When We Were Wizards (review here) brought up the topic of Lorraine Williams. Much like the book, Game Wizards (review here), the podcast presents Lorraine Williams and the ouster of Gygax from TSR in a very different light than what was commonly received before. For that reason, I am revisiting my earlier thoughts on her, and reworking and expanding on them. But in order to give people something to angrily argue against before they read this very long article, I am going to start with two thesis statements.
1. Lorraine Williams was a positive influence on D&D.
2. Most of the received wisdom about Lorraine Williams is colored by attitudes from that time, and should be reevaluated.
Let me start with the traditional narrative about Lorraine Williams (I'm just going to use "Lorraine" from here on out, because her first name is more distinctive) that many older gamers either say, or have been taught-
The Great God Gygax ran his kingdom of TSR, and all were happy. But one day, Gygax did the unthinkable- he allowed in a non-gamer by the name of Lorraine. And Lorraine did conspire in the darkness with the Brothers Blume and overthrew Gygax from his throne and banished him from his kingdom. It was only too late did Gygax realize that this person he had trusted was actually the Wicked Witch Lorraine, who hated all things good, gamer, and TSR.
And thus was the Golden Age of TSR ended. From then on, the Wicked Witch Lorraine belittled all the gaming citizens of TSR, and ensured that all of the great gold and treasures of TSR would go to her own treasuries, starving the kingdom. The Wicked Witch Lorraine did not even see that a new, goodly Kingdom of Carding Wizards was gaining power on her borders. This continued for interminable ages, until one day, with the treasury of TSR depleted, the Kingdom of Carding Wizards invaded and took over the Kingdom of TSR, and the Wicked Witch Lorraine fled, never to be seen again.
I exaggerate, but only slightly. There are some gaming circles were the name Lorraine is roughly akin to Voldemort.
But how true is that narrative? I would stipulate that the basic beginning and ending facts are true- yes, she ousted Gygax, and yes, she was the one forced to sell out to Wizards of the Coast. Is that it, or is there more nuance to the story?
A. The Good That Gets Overlooked.
This is the important part- I think that there is a lot of good that people tend to forget. Let's start with the most basic; if you read Game Wizards or listen to the podcast (When We Were Wizards), or even just have a passing familiarity with what happened, you understand that Lorraine was not the villain in the ouster of Gygax- she was the hero. Quite literally, she saved TSR. The sheer amount of details and the repetition of those details truly paint the picture, but in brief, TSR had massive debts, Gygax was ignoring the financial issues (and the banks), ignoring meetings, spending TSR's money on extravagances out in Hollywood, and also demanding (in his capacity as majority shareholder) that TSR begin dramatically increasing royalty payments to him- royalty payments that were already crippling even if they weren't increased, and royalty payments that Gygax had contractually signed away years before. To add to all of that, he negotiated a deal with the Brothers Blume to purchase their interest and then reneged on the terms. In short, Gygax was a disaster in terms of running TSR, and was quickly driving what was left of the company into the ground. Lorraine didn't pull this off by herself- all the people involved with TSR at senior levels except Gygax knew the score. If you are a fan of shows like Succession, the ouster of Gygax is like a scene where the person comes in to dictate terms believing that they hold all the cards, and realizes that no one is supporting him. Not a single person. More importantly, at the time there were a lot of outstanding liabilities other than just the terrible debts they already had due to poor projections and governance- such as the multiple suits due to the promise of stock options that TSR chose not to honor (settled under Lorraine's watch).
So she should get credit for saving TSR, in my opinion. Another interesting thing that gets ignored is that when Gygax filed suit against TSR, Lorraine offered him an incredibly generous settlement. But Gygax's hubris caused him to refuse the settlement, and then when he lost the case ... because of the facts ... he ended up with very little. To put it more plainly- Lorraine stepped in to save the company, and then offered Gygax an amazing settlement, which he refused.
The second thing is we should reflect on is the intellectual property that was developed during her tenure. Sure, you can't beat the original first years, simply because it developed a lot of the vocabulary (classes, levels, AC, etc.) and lore (Fighters, Clerics, Beholders, Mind Flayers, Githyanki etc.) that still resonate today. But let's do a quick check into what happened during her reign-
1. Signed the contract with Ed Greenwood and began developing Forgotten Realms as a D&D property.
2. Published the Manual of the Planes, the first major step in going from the prime material centric (with multiple planes) to the outer planes model we are used to today. (Yes, I have mixed feeling on this one).
3. Successfully launched 2e. There's a lot more to this- but this is already a long post.
4. Launched campaign settings we continue to be familiar with today (other than FR!), such as Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Hollow World, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Birthright, and Planescape.
5. Drizzt. sigh Okay, whatever your feelings about Drizzt specifically, or about the quality of writing in TSR's books in general, there was a massive explosion of titles and fantasy novels in the D&D world that brought new people to D&D.
6. Healed a lot of the rifts caused by Gygax and the Blumes, such as bringing Rose Estes back into the fold. She had left after TSR (Gygax and the Blumes) refused to honor her stock options that they had promised.
Overall, and without going too far into the details, that's a pretty solid track record! What about the other side?
B. What About the Bad?
Well, here (without getting into the "not a gamer" thing, which I'll address later), I'll put it simply-
SCOREBOARD.
That's the common refrain in sports events- you can make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the game, the only thing that matters is the final score. And business is a lot like that. Sure, there's reasons. There's extenuating circumstances. There's bad economies. But at the end of the day, TSR collapsed under Lorraine's watch. That's the alpha and the omega the end.
...and yet, businesses fail all the time. It's sad, but true, that a lot of businesses fail (or have issues) and the CEOs/owners get fat payouts. I mean, don't look at what happened with WeWork. Seriously, don't. More importantly, we don't usually have a specific level of vitriol toward the person running the business. I mean, it's not like "Blume" is a dirty name in the gaming community! Let alone Gygax! Again, TSR would have collapsed if she had not stepped in.
I would start by looking at why TSR failed the second time. Unfortunately, we don't have the full account yet with the details of the book and the podcast, but there have been scattered accounts here and there (there is a post by Ryan Dancey that goes into some of the issues). I think that the failure of TSR is like the old saying .... it happened slowly then all at once. There were warning signs- the rise of computer games, the rise of Games Workshop (which made money with miniatures, a market TSR was not in), and most importantly, the rise of WoTC, which was making insane profits off of a ... card game. The industry itself was having issues, with many major distributors suffering and going under. TSR tried to adapt (Dragon Dice, for example) and tried to expand (pushing out more profitable fiction hardcovers), but, much like the 80s, they were in a trap of their own creation. The success of the many of the 2e supplements had saturated the AD&D market, and their attempts to expand through Dragon Dice other means were not successful (not to mention much more costly than the cards WoTC was making). That, plus the Random House contract which had certain terms, meant that a company that looked like it was going gangbusters, or at least okay, in the early 90s, faced a cash crunch in '95, and was decimated and sold to WoTC in '97.
Not great, Bob. But ... understandable.
Oh, the Buck Rogers thing?
C. Buck Rogers- Not a Reason to Hate on Lorraine Williams
When Lorraine comes up in conversations, you will often hear that she "stole" from TSR since she licensed Buck Rogers as an IP, which she had an interest in. So let's talk about this. Lorraine was the majority (overwhelming majority, if not sole) owner of TSR. TSR is a closely-held corporation. This makes it very different than a public corporation, or even a private corporation with numerous shareholders. Let's use a quick example to understand why.
Start with the premise- what is purpose of a corporation. Why, to maximize profits. Why? To increase the value to the shareholders. Corporations exist to make the owners (shareholders) money. We all understand that.
So, public corporation will have executives making decisions on behalf of the owners. If that executive is making a decision to enrich himself (let's say, by diverting money to his other business interests) instead of the corporation, that's bad and unlawful. Because it's not going to the owners of the company.
On the other hand, imagine you own a company. If you make a decision to enrich yourself (say, by increasing your dividends instead of the salaries of the employees), that might or might or not be a good business decision, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. The entire purpose of the corporation is to make money for ... the owners of the company.
The takeaway from the first part of this is that we view interested transactions of closely-held (or owner-controlled!) corporations differently.
Obviously, that's not the end of it- there's a further fiduciary issue with self-dealing (aka, interested transactions). Basically, it is fair dealing (think of this as transparency) and at a fair price? The fair price matters even more, because there are additional tax implications.
Whew.
That's the basic layout. Now, how does this work in practice? Well, let's start by looking at what TSR was doing before Lorraine took over. I'm just going to illustrate some examples-
A. TSR would identify properties to buy, then the principals (Gygax+Brother Blume) would buy those properties and TSR would rent from them. The upshot, of course, is that the G+BB would end up with a steady stream of income to pay off the mortgage that they got for the properties in question.
B. Dragon Magazine (owned by TSR) would use Gygax's wife's company for ad sales, which was an incredibly lucrative business.
C. TSR would acquire companies owned by Blume relatives, such as the infamous and money-losing crafts company.
D. TSR had the entire Gygax family on the payroll.
E. TSR had the entire Blume family on the payroll. And the Blume extended family on the payroll. And the extended, extended family.
...and so on. Literally, there's more. The amount of self-dealing before Lorraine would make a cheating poker player blush. And I haven't even discussed Gygax's adventures in Hollywood!
Let's start by acknowledging that none of this is uncommon for closely-held private corporations. Family on the payroll? Check. Doing business with other family businesses? Check. In fact, things such as (A, buying property to have the corporation rent it) are so common, and so advantageous for various reasons, that it is somewhat uncommon not to see it.
In my opinion, none of the above is bad in of itself. A is common. B is fine so long as it was at a fair price. C might have been okay (but ... yeah, that wasn't a fair price and it wasn't a good purchase). D & E weren't egregious necessarily, except for the fact that the favoritism and lack of ability of some of these individuals destroyed morale, really hurt the company (the Purchasing Dept. saga and hiring Blume family members who somehow did terrible jobs while never showing up to work because they were playing golf) and led to one incident that was beyond the pale (paying one Blume's college tuition and full TSR benefits and a stipend while they were attending college so they could be qualified for the job they were previously holding!).
Now, let's compare this with the Buck Rogers saga. Yes, Lorraine had a pecuniary interest in Buck Rogers IP. Yes, TSR paid for it. That's always the end of the analysis. Seriously, it's always, "BUT BUCK ROGERS!" Fine. Show me the receipts. Show me that Lorraine was not paying the correct ("fair") price for it. Show me that it was treated differently. Because otherwise, we have the usual situation-
Lorraine owned one company. Lorraine was familiar with another product she had the rights in. Lorraine may have thought she could leverage the two together, and she did. At the time, it wasn't unthinkable (the TV show had just ended in 1981, and was incredibly popular in syndication in the early 80s along with BSG). There's nothing wrong with that. Could it have been wrong? Sure! The thing is, I've done a lot of work with closely-held corporations and licensing ... and this (alone) isn't remarkable. So if you want to say this is bad ... where are the receipts?
To say that this caused TSR to fail doesn't match up with the timeline. Did the 1988 boardgame or RPG make it fail? Or was it the 1993 game? And did it fail because it was Buck Rogers, or because it was a non-D&D product? Did Amazing Engine (released at the same time) save TSR? .... Dragonstrike (HA!)?
Whenever Gygax is brought up, do people reflexively say "OH MY GOD, LOOK AT ALL THE SELF-DEALING!" Because that was a heckuva lot worse. Nope. Do they bother producing receipts? Nope Because Lorraine is evil, it must have been bad. Even though ... and I can't believe I have to say this ... it was well-known that she actually had this interest, and because she wasn't a fool, I can't imagine that she didn't engage in a market-rate transaction. And unlike the Gygaxes and Blumes, she wasn't busy stuffing the company with her relatives and friends.
D. So ... why the Hate?
I have a few theories I'd like to throw out about why Lorraine is so hated-
1. Lorraine ousted Gygax. This is the most simple. Gygax was, for many people, D&D. So she was always going to be the villain in any morality play.
2. Lorraine wasn't a gamer. This is a little more nuanced, especially considering that, for example, Kevin Blume wasn't really a gamer either. But Lorraine never cared much about the "community" in the sense of gamers. She wanted to run TSR as a company, with products. This tends to be a reciprocal thing- you don't care about us, we don't care about you.
3. Surprise. I'm not sure I agree with this, given there was a lot of hate even before the collapse, but ... I think a lot of people were genuinely shocked that TSR collapsed suddenly, and, moreover, it was sold to a "mere" card company. It's more difficult to understand now, but there was a sizeable number of people that thought that D&D was it, and M:TG was just some kids playing a silly game. Kind of like how, way back when, wargamers thought what they were doing was it, and D&D was just kids playing a silly game. Anyway, the collapse and sale of TSR was shocking to a lot of people, and Lorraine was a convenient target to blame.
4. Misogyny. Not to put too fine a point on it, but female executives were not common in the 80s and 90s. Lorraine was treated a lot worse than a comparable male executive would have been. I think that this, either overt or embedded in the attitudes of the time, are so prevalent that it requires a separate section.
E. The Stories About Lorraine Seem A Lot Different Today When You Hear Them Again
A brief interlude. When I was growing up, it was common to bike everywhere. I remember it as a time of unfettered freedom. Think of it like Stranger Things (maybe a little earlier time, but same gist). Day or night, I could be on a bike, out somewhere. Anywhere. Sometimes in packs of kids, sometimes alone. It was awesome. That freedom is one of my most treasured childhood memories.
So I was talking to a friend of mine. She grew up in the same place. Same time. And we were discussing biking. And she agreed it was great, but she said that she never, ever, biked alone at night, and wouldn't even bike alone in remote areas. And I was kind of stunned- because, you know, it was safe, right? But she explained that there were older men in some areas that would catcall and harass girls. Middle school girls. And she just felt that lack of safety. Thing is- I never knew that. I had no idea. I just assumed everything was the exact same, because ... why wouldn't it be? But from a young age, her experience was already very different than mine.
And now I think about Lorraine. And I think about all the comments that people point to as definitive evidence of how bad she was. Most of them don't look so great from the modern perspective. Let me use this one as an example, by Mike Breault.
"This is rather cruel but I will pass it along, considering my audience. One Christmas party, Lorraine announced she was eight months pregnant. While we all politely applauded, you could see all the stunned looks in the room; almost no one knew. Did I mention she was a large woman?
"
She was fat! Get it? In her list of horribles that he is producing, no one liked her, and so it was funny when she told the company at a Christmas Party that she was pregnant, because she was so fat! Ha! That's so funny!
Once you start to see these sorts of things, you can't unsee it.
And that's where we get to the root of the issue I'm having. We have a female executive in the 80s and 90s. That's not easy. And ... she was the executive of a gaming company! I mean... a gaming company. Okay.
Now, let's imagine, for a second, just imagine ... that the gaming community back then was somewhat male-dominated. Somewhat insular. Maybe just a little unwelcoming to women ... I know it's hard, but work with me. And the head of THE gaming company is a woman.
Imagine the pushback she would have received. After a while, I think she might not have been very fond of all those people mocking her. Talking down to her. "Man"splaining things about the business. And yet, when you read many accounts that discuss individual and personal dealings with Lorraine, you usually see something along these lines (by Jose Freitas)-
These are my opinions based on stuff I heard from a lot of the insiders, they may not be entirely true and as usual one's perception of reality is skewed by the people we know, those we call friends and so on. To me, Ms. Williams was always unfailingly nice and polite, even though the 2000 or 3000$ royalties per year my company was sending her were probably close to insignificant.
It always appears that when we get first-hand accounts, we see a different picture. When we finally got the actual details of Gygax's ouster, we learned that it was completely different than what we had been told. Over and over, we see that Lorraine may have had faults, but we need to push back on some of the received wisdom about her.
Please note- this isn't a blanket accusation of sexism. But it's also saying that we can't ignore that things were different back then, and we probably need to be mindful of that when evaluating anecdotes about her. Especially ones that always make the (male) gamer look great and the (female) boss look like an evil person.
F. Conclusion.
Look, I think two things can be said- first, Lorraine wasn't a great owner. I wouldn't say that. In the end, SCOREBOARD is a valid argument. She might have saved TSR the first time, but she was at the helm when it went bust in the 1990s.
But I think it's important, especially in light of the more accurate histories we get that always seems to portray her in a better light, that we re-think the vilification of her. Of course, Lorraine has chosen not to speak about these times, so in that absence, this narrative has taken hold. Hopefully, she will speak to all of this, in her own words, in the future.
Until then, I would only say this- treat her like any other CEO. She was neither evil, nor good. She saved TSR, and then she was the one who led to its demise. She greenlit a lot of beloved products. She made some good decisions and terrible decision. But she is not the villain in any morality play.
1. Lorraine Williams was a positive influence on D&D.
2. Most of the received wisdom about Lorraine Williams is colored by attitudes from that time, and should be reevaluated.
Let me start with the traditional narrative about Lorraine Williams (I'm just going to use "Lorraine" from here on out, because her first name is more distinctive) that many older gamers either say, or have been taught-
The Great God Gygax ran his kingdom of TSR, and all were happy. But one day, Gygax did the unthinkable- he allowed in a non-gamer by the name of Lorraine. And Lorraine did conspire in the darkness with the Brothers Blume and overthrew Gygax from his throne and banished him from his kingdom. It was only too late did Gygax realize that this person he had trusted was actually the Wicked Witch Lorraine, who hated all things good, gamer, and TSR.
And thus was the Golden Age of TSR ended. From then on, the Wicked Witch Lorraine belittled all the gaming citizens of TSR, and ensured that all of the great gold and treasures of TSR would go to her own treasuries, starving the kingdom. The Wicked Witch Lorraine did not even see that a new, goodly Kingdom of Carding Wizards was gaining power on her borders. This continued for interminable ages, until one day, with the treasury of TSR depleted, the Kingdom of Carding Wizards invaded and took over the Kingdom of TSR, and the Wicked Witch Lorraine fled, never to be seen again.
I exaggerate, but only slightly. There are some gaming circles were the name Lorraine is roughly akin to Voldemort.
But how true is that narrative? I would stipulate that the basic beginning and ending facts are true- yes, she ousted Gygax, and yes, she was the one forced to sell out to Wizards of the Coast. Is that it, or is there more nuance to the story?
A. The Good That Gets Overlooked.
This is the important part- I think that there is a lot of good that people tend to forget. Let's start with the most basic; if you read Game Wizards or listen to the podcast (When We Were Wizards), or even just have a passing familiarity with what happened, you understand that Lorraine was not the villain in the ouster of Gygax- she was the hero. Quite literally, she saved TSR. The sheer amount of details and the repetition of those details truly paint the picture, but in brief, TSR had massive debts, Gygax was ignoring the financial issues (and the banks), ignoring meetings, spending TSR's money on extravagances out in Hollywood, and also demanding (in his capacity as majority shareholder) that TSR begin dramatically increasing royalty payments to him- royalty payments that were already crippling even if they weren't increased, and royalty payments that Gygax had contractually signed away years before. To add to all of that, he negotiated a deal with the Brothers Blume to purchase their interest and then reneged on the terms. In short, Gygax was a disaster in terms of running TSR, and was quickly driving what was left of the company into the ground. Lorraine didn't pull this off by herself- all the people involved with TSR at senior levels except Gygax knew the score. If you are a fan of shows like Succession, the ouster of Gygax is like a scene where the person comes in to dictate terms believing that they hold all the cards, and realizes that no one is supporting him. Not a single person. More importantly, at the time there were a lot of outstanding liabilities other than just the terrible debts they already had due to poor projections and governance- such as the multiple suits due to the promise of stock options that TSR chose not to honor (settled under Lorraine's watch).
So she should get credit for saving TSR, in my opinion. Another interesting thing that gets ignored is that when Gygax filed suit against TSR, Lorraine offered him an incredibly generous settlement. But Gygax's hubris caused him to refuse the settlement, and then when he lost the case ... because of the facts ... he ended up with very little. To put it more plainly- Lorraine stepped in to save the company, and then offered Gygax an amazing settlement, which he refused.
The second thing is we should reflect on is the intellectual property that was developed during her tenure. Sure, you can't beat the original first years, simply because it developed a lot of the vocabulary (classes, levels, AC, etc.) and lore (Fighters, Clerics, Beholders, Mind Flayers, Githyanki etc.) that still resonate today. But let's do a quick check into what happened during her reign-
1. Signed the contract with Ed Greenwood and began developing Forgotten Realms as a D&D property.
2. Published the Manual of the Planes, the first major step in going from the prime material centric (with multiple planes) to the outer planes model we are used to today. (Yes, I have mixed feeling on this one).
3. Successfully launched 2e. There's a lot more to this- but this is already a long post.
4. Launched campaign settings we continue to be familiar with today (other than FR!), such as Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Hollow World, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Birthright, and Planescape.
5. Drizzt. sigh Okay, whatever your feelings about Drizzt specifically, or about the quality of writing in TSR's books in general, there was a massive explosion of titles and fantasy novels in the D&D world that brought new people to D&D.
6. Healed a lot of the rifts caused by Gygax and the Blumes, such as bringing Rose Estes back into the fold. She had left after TSR (Gygax and the Blumes) refused to honor her stock options that they had promised.
Overall, and without going too far into the details, that's a pretty solid track record! What about the other side?
B. What About the Bad?
Well, here (without getting into the "not a gamer" thing, which I'll address later), I'll put it simply-
SCOREBOARD.
That's the common refrain in sports events- you can make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the game, the only thing that matters is the final score. And business is a lot like that. Sure, there's reasons. There's extenuating circumstances. There's bad economies. But at the end of the day, TSR collapsed under Lorraine's watch. That's the alpha and the omega the end.
...and yet, businesses fail all the time. It's sad, but true, that a lot of businesses fail (or have issues) and the CEOs/owners get fat payouts. I mean, don't look at what happened with WeWork. Seriously, don't. More importantly, we don't usually have a specific level of vitriol toward the person running the business. I mean, it's not like "Blume" is a dirty name in the gaming community! Let alone Gygax! Again, TSR would have collapsed if she had not stepped in.
I would start by looking at why TSR failed the second time. Unfortunately, we don't have the full account yet with the details of the book and the podcast, but there have been scattered accounts here and there (there is a post by Ryan Dancey that goes into some of the issues). I think that the failure of TSR is like the old saying .... it happened slowly then all at once. There were warning signs- the rise of computer games, the rise of Games Workshop (which made money with miniatures, a market TSR was not in), and most importantly, the rise of WoTC, which was making insane profits off of a ... card game. The industry itself was having issues, with many major distributors suffering and going under. TSR tried to adapt (Dragon Dice, for example) and tried to expand (pushing out more profitable fiction hardcovers), but, much like the 80s, they were in a trap of their own creation. The success of the many of the 2e supplements had saturated the AD&D market, and their attempts to expand through Dragon Dice other means were not successful (not to mention much more costly than the cards WoTC was making). That, plus the Random House contract which had certain terms, meant that a company that looked like it was going gangbusters, or at least okay, in the early 90s, faced a cash crunch in '95, and was decimated and sold to WoTC in '97.
Not great, Bob. But ... understandable.
Oh, the Buck Rogers thing?
C. Buck Rogers- Not a Reason to Hate on Lorraine Williams
When Lorraine comes up in conversations, you will often hear that she "stole" from TSR since she licensed Buck Rogers as an IP, which she had an interest in. So let's talk about this. Lorraine was the majority (overwhelming majority, if not sole) owner of TSR. TSR is a closely-held corporation. This makes it very different than a public corporation, or even a private corporation with numerous shareholders. Let's use a quick example to understand why.
Start with the premise- what is purpose of a corporation. Why, to maximize profits. Why? To increase the value to the shareholders. Corporations exist to make the owners (shareholders) money. We all understand that.
So, public corporation will have executives making decisions on behalf of the owners. If that executive is making a decision to enrich himself (let's say, by diverting money to his other business interests) instead of the corporation, that's bad and unlawful. Because it's not going to the owners of the company.
On the other hand, imagine you own a company. If you make a decision to enrich yourself (say, by increasing your dividends instead of the salaries of the employees), that might or might or not be a good business decision, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. The entire purpose of the corporation is to make money for ... the owners of the company.
The takeaway from the first part of this is that we view interested transactions of closely-held (or owner-controlled!) corporations differently.
Obviously, that's not the end of it- there's a further fiduciary issue with self-dealing (aka, interested transactions). Basically, it is fair dealing (think of this as transparency) and at a fair price? The fair price matters even more, because there are additional tax implications.
Whew.
That's the basic layout. Now, how does this work in practice? Well, let's start by looking at what TSR was doing before Lorraine took over. I'm just going to illustrate some examples-
A. TSR would identify properties to buy, then the principals (Gygax+Brother Blume) would buy those properties and TSR would rent from them. The upshot, of course, is that the G+BB would end up with a steady stream of income to pay off the mortgage that they got for the properties in question.
B. Dragon Magazine (owned by TSR) would use Gygax's wife's company for ad sales, which was an incredibly lucrative business.
C. TSR would acquire companies owned by Blume relatives, such as the infamous and money-losing crafts company.
D. TSR had the entire Gygax family on the payroll.
E. TSR had the entire Blume family on the payroll. And the Blume extended family on the payroll. And the extended, extended family.
...and so on. Literally, there's more. The amount of self-dealing before Lorraine would make a cheating poker player blush. And I haven't even discussed Gygax's adventures in Hollywood!
Let's start by acknowledging that none of this is uncommon for closely-held private corporations. Family on the payroll? Check. Doing business with other family businesses? Check. In fact, things such as (A, buying property to have the corporation rent it) are so common, and so advantageous for various reasons, that it is somewhat uncommon not to see it.
In my opinion, none of the above is bad in of itself. A is common. B is fine so long as it was at a fair price. C might have been okay (but ... yeah, that wasn't a fair price and it wasn't a good purchase). D & E weren't egregious necessarily, except for the fact that the favoritism and lack of ability of some of these individuals destroyed morale, really hurt the company (the Purchasing Dept. saga and hiring Blume family members who somehow did terrible jobs while never showing up to work because they were playing golf) and led to one incident that was beyond the pale (paying one Blume's college tuition and full TSR benefits and a stipend while they were attending college so they could be qualified for the job they were previously holding!).
Now, let's compare this with the Buck Rogers saga. Yes, Lorraine had a pecuniary interest in Buck Rogers IP. Yes, TSR paid for it. That's always the end of the analysis. Seriously, it's always, "BUT BUCK ROGERS!" Fine. Show me the receipts. Show me that Lorraine was not paying the correct ("fair") price for it. Show me that it was treated differently. Because otherwise, we have the usual situation-
Lorraine owned one company. Lorraine was familiar with another product she had the rights in. Lorraine may have thought she could leverage the two together, and she did. At the time, it wasn't unthinkable (the TV show had just ended in 1981, and was incredibly popular in syndication in the early 80s along with BSG). There's nothing wrong with that. Could it have been wrong? Sure! The thing is, I've done a lot of work with closely-held corporations and licensing ... and this (alone) isn't remarkable. So if you want to say this is bad ... where are the receipts?
To say that this caused TSR to fail doesn't match up with the timeline. Did the 1988 boardgame or RPG make it fail? Or was it the 1993 game? And did it fail because it was Buck Rogers, or because it was a non-D&D product? Did Amazing Engine (released at the same time) save TSR? .... Dragonstrike (HA!)?
Whenever Gygax is brought up, do people reflexively say "OH MY GOD, LOOK AT ALL THE SELF-DEALING!" Because that was a heckuva lot worse. Nope. Do they bother producing receipts? Nope Because Lorraine is evil, it must have been bad. Even though ... and I can't believe I have to say this ... it was well-known that she actually had this interest, and because she wasn't a fool, I can't imagine that she didn't engage in a market-rate transaction. And unlike the Gygaxes and Blumes, she wasn't busy stuffing the company with her relatives and friends.
D. So ... why the Hate?
I have a few theories I'd like to throw out about why Lorraine is so hated-
1. Lorraine ousted Gygax. This is the most simple. Gygax was, for many people, D&D. So she was always going to be the villain in any morality play.
2. Lorraine wasn't a gamer. This is a little more nuanced, especially considering that, for example, Kevin Blume wasn't really a gamer either. But Lorraine never cared much about the "community" in the sense of gamers. She wanted to run TSR as a company, with products. This tends to be a reciprocal thing- you don't care about us, we don't care about you.
3. Surprise. I'm not sure I agree with this, given there was a lot of hate even before the collapse, but ... I think a lot of people were genuinely shocked that TSR collapsed suddenly, and, moreover, it was sold to a "mere" card company. It's more difficult to understand now, but there was a sizeable number of people that thought that D&D was it, and M:TG was just some kids playing a silly game. Kind of like how, way back when, wargamers thought what they were doing was it, and D&D was just kids playing a silly game. Anyway, the collapse and sale of TSR was shocking to a lot of people, and Lorraine was a convenient target to blame.
4. Misogyny. Not to put too fine a point on it, but female executives were not common in the 80s and 90s. Lorraine was treated a lot worse than a comparable male executive would have been. I think that this, either overt or embedded in the attitudes of the time, are so prevalent that it requires a separate section.
E. The Stories About Lorraine Seem A Lot Different Today When You Hear Them Again
A brief interlude. When I was growing up, it was common to bike everywhere. I remember it as a time of unfettered freedom. Think of it like Stranger Things (maybe a little earlier time, but same gist). Day or night, I could be on a bike, out somewhere. Anywhere. Sometimes in packs of kids, sometimes alone. It was awesome. That freedom is one of my most treasured childhood memories.
So I was talking to a friend of mine. She grew up in the same place. Same time. And we were discussing biking. And she agreed it was great, but she said that she never, ever, biked alone at night, and wouldn't even bike alone in remote areas. And I was kind of stunned- because, you know, it was safe, right? But she explained that there were older men in some areas that would catcall and harass girls. Middle school girls. And she just felt that lack of safety. Thing is- I never knew that. I had no idea. I just assumed everything was the exact same, because ... why wouldn't it be? But from a young age, her experience was already very different than mine.
And now I think about Lorraine. And I think about all the comments that people point to as definitive evidence of how bad she was. Most of them don't look so great from the modern perspective. Let me use this one as an example, by Mike Breault.
"This is rather cruel but I will pass it along, considering my audience. One Christmas party, Lorraine announced she was eight months pregnant. While we all politely applauded, you could see all the stunned looks in the room; almost no one knew. Did I mention she was a large woman?
She was fat! Get it? In her list of horribles that he is producing, no one liked her, and so it was funny when she told the company at a Christmas Party that she was pregnant, because she was so fat! Ha! That's so funny!
Once you start to see these sorts of things, you can't unsee it.
And that's where we get to the root of the issue I'm having. We have a female executive in the 80s and 90s. That's not easy. And ... she was the executive of a gaming company! I mean... a gaming company. Okay.
Now, let's imagine, for a second, just imagine ... that the gaming community back then was somewhat male-dominated. Somewhat insular. Maybe just a little unwelcoming to women ... I know it's hard, but work with me. And the head of THE gaming company is a woman.
Imagine the pushback she would have received. After a while, I think she might not have been very fond of all those people mocking her. Talking down to her. "Man"splaining things about the business. And yet, when you read many accounts that discuss individual and personal dealings with Lorraine, you usually see something along these lines (by Jose Freitas)-
These are my opinions based on stuff I heard from a lot of the insiders, they may not be entirely true and as usual one's perception of reality is skewed by the people we know, those we call friends and so on. To me, Ms. Williams was always unfailingly nice and polite, even though the 2000 or 3000$ royalties per year my company was sending her were probably close to insignificant.
It always appears that when we get first-hand accounts, we see a different picture. When we finally got the actual details of Gygax's ouster, we learned that it was completely different than what we had been told. Over and over, we see that Lorraine may have had faults, but we need to push back on some of the received wisdom about her.
Please note- this isn't a blanket accusation of sexism. But it's also saying that we can't ignore that things were different back then, and we probably need to be mindful of that when evaluating anecdotes about her. Especially ones that always make the (male) gamer look great and the (female) boss look like an evil person.
F. Conclusion.
Look, I think two things can be said- first, Lorraine wasn't a great owner. I wouldn't say that. In the end, SCOREBOARD is a valid argument. She might have saved TSR the first time, but she was at the helm when it went bust in the 1990s.
But I think it's important, especially in light of the more accurate histories we get that always seems to portray her in a better light, that we re-think the vilification of her. Of course, Lorraine has chosen not to speak about these times, so in that absence, this narrative has taken hold. Hopefully, she will speak to all of this, in her own words, in the future.
Until then, I would only say this- treat her like any other CEO. She was neither evil, nor good. She saved TSR, and then she was the one who led to its demise. She greenlit a lot of beloved products. She made some good decisions and terrible decision. But she is not the villain in any morality play.
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