D&D General Not the Wicked Witch: Revisiting the Legacy of Lorraine Williams

[MGibster]

I also don't hold to the idea that EGG was some kind of business genius either, it was pretty obvious early on that he wasn't (the craft company screw up you mentioned in your first post is one example)... another bad idea was trying to publish some of SPI's defunct games. I can remember way back in 80 or 81 one of EGGs editorials in Dragon talking about how they looked around and found a way to print modules cheaper than they had been, and wondered why they hadn't before. I always had the idea that neither EGG nor Williams were all that sharp as business leaders....

Early TSR made money in spite of themselves. The more I've learned about TSR, the more I've been amazed they stayed in business. They were lucky to have captured lightning in a bottle allowing them to make more than enough cash to keep TSR viable despite the many bad business decisions made.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This has been the impression I’ve gotten. Though by the 80s, Gygax wasn’t into writing either. UA was nowhere near as interesting as his earlier material and much of it was pulled from earlier sources. OA only had his name on it but was largely Zeb Cook’s. Temple of Elemental Evil was a bunch of notes that Frank Mentzer had to decode and rework…

I would go even farther than "largely" Zeb Cook's work. I think of OA as a Zeb Cook book. hmmm... that sounds weird.

But yeah, while alluded to, I think that we can say that the '80s, for Gygax, were a time for (there isn't a good way to put this) ... rolling on the random harlot table and um ... Bolivian marching powder? Snowbarding? Disco dust? White Girl, interrupted? Forrest Bump?

...do you want to build a snowman?

 

[David Howery]

Early TSR made money in spite of themselves.

that is probably the most succinct and accurate way of putting it. Kudos...

 

[Mannahnin]

C. Buck Rogers- Not a Reason to Hate on Lorraine Williams

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.

Going back to the OP for a moment, I appreciate your expanding on your previously-expounded thesis. I am generally convinced by your arguments that...

A) By comparison with Gygax and the Blumes, Williams was definitely more restrained in self-dealing.
B) In a closely-held company it's really not a big deal in the first place.

I will still maintain my quibble that IMO you're overselling and overestimating the value of the Buck Rogers franchise.

The TV show got two seasons ending in 1981. The 1988 board game wasn't based on the show, and had a completely different aesthetic and concept, so tying the two together purely on the character name is a bit of a stretch, IMO, and using the show as evidence of market demand for the board game similarly dubious.

As far as "show me the receipts" goes we know that the board game was a big flop, and that when they tried again two years later with an RPG that was a big flop too, though it still got at least a dozen supplements and ten novels. Which my recollection is didn't do well either, but maybe @JLowder can recall details, if we're lucky.

We'd need internal numbers to express any kind of definitive judgement on whether it was a market-rate transaction, but I think the data we have does generally support the position that the whole idea was kind of dubious from the start and more than dubious later, shoveling good money after bad.

 

[MoonSong]

If those lawsuits had not happened, the OGL would not have needed to exist as an olive branch, nor would the suspension of the OGl by Hasbro been cause for such distress. It made clear that publishers, and the publishers of D&D in particular, can and would take competitors to court to seek to destroy them and - in the case of the GDW suit - have a court case that would imply that anyone else in the industry could be next. Downplaying them, pretending they didn't happen or claiming that they weren't that bad denies the realties of everyone in the industry who were active in that period, especially those who left the industry after the lawsuits.

You really sound as if you thought the OGL was a bad thing...

In general, I'm not sure why you are so focused on being mad about the Buck Rogers deal. Why was it a crime for a woman to use her personal property in a way that could prop up other part of her personal property in a way that would also benefit the rest of her family? Besides, from reviews, the whole product line was "not exceptional" at worst. The system was more or less good, the setting was deep, and it was beloved enough it has actually received a retroclone. Its crime was not being exactly a money maker, yet very few TSR products were actual money makers.

Maybe you have a right to be mad about the caretakers of a beloved popculture icon acting in self serving ways. It is not funny seeing something you love being caught in the middle of business dealings. In that way it is perhaps correct to be mad. I'm sure you also hate Ron Perelman with a passion, right?

 

[Velderan]

Regarding the Buck Rogers license, is there any actual evidence that suggests the license negatively impacted the company in a significant way? It frequently comes up as a con for her tenure at the helm of the company, but I've yet to see it explained as anything more than "the company was out of touch with what people wanted" example. Was there Buck Rogers merchandise clogging the warehouse like Dragon Strike and such?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Going back to the OP for a moment, I appreciate your expanding on your previously-expounded thesis. I am generally convinced by your arguments that...

A) By comparison with Gygax and the Blumes, Williams was definitely more restrained in self-dealing.
B) In a closely-held company it's really not a big deal in the first place.

I will still maintain my quibble that IMO you're overselling and overestimating the value of the Buck Rogers franchise.

The TV show got two seasons ending in 1981. The 1988 board game wasn't based on the show, and had a completely different aesthetic and concept, so tying the two together purely on the character name is a bit of a stretch, IMO, and using the show as evidence of market demand for the board game similarly dubious.

As far as "show me the receipts" goes we know that the board game was a big flop, and that when they tried again two years later with an RPG that was a big flop too, though it still got at least a dozen supplements and ten novels. Which my recollection is didn't do well either, but maybe @JLowder can recall details, if we're lucky.

We'd need internal numbers to express any kind of definitive judgement on whether it was a market-rate transaction, but I think the data we have does generally support the position that the whole idea was kind of dubious from the start and more than dubious later, shoveling good money after bad.

I think we aren't disagreeing, but we have a slightly different take on the issue.

I am pushing back against the people who mindlessly reiterate Buck Rogers as if that, alone, was evidence of how terrible Lorraine Williams was. I don't think that's true. Absent receipts- the actual licensing information (which would include amounts) we will never know. Assuming it was a licensing deal that gave the licensee some percentage of the revenue / profits of the products sold, it would appear that the deal didn't work out for either. But licensing deals such as this are not bad per se. Again, receipts.

I also think that the possibility that Buck Rogers might do well was not as far-fetched at that time as it seems now. It was in heavy syndication on TV in the 1980s.

However, the core issue is the same as a number of other problems- TSR kept trying to diversify. Those attempts at diversification almost always failed. Meanwhile, they were pushing out more product for their core brand (D&D) but they weren't accurately accounting for the cost/profit for some of those (great for consumers, not so much for the company). Finally, they never pivoted to take into account the sudden rise of crack ... Magic: The Gathering.

 

[Mannahnin]

Regarding the Buck Rogers license, is there any actual evidence that suggests the license negatively impacted the company in a significant way? It frequently comes up as a con for her tenure at the helm of the company, but I've yet to see it explained as anything more than "the company was out of touch with what people wanted" example. Was there Buck Rogers merchandise clogging the warehouse like Dragon Strike and such?

My understanding is that it was indeed a substantial overinvestment on the order of the unsold Dragonstrike sets. With huge numbers of boxed sets and board games eating up warehouse space until they went on $1 clearance, being dumped to Half Price books and other remainder outlets, or sitting on pallets until Ryan Dancey famously came through marking pallets of them in a ledger as "value = $0". "Why, when it was so desperate for cash, had it invested in a million dollar license for content used by less than 10% of the marketplace?"

I agree with Snarf that it's probably OVERstated as a strike against Williams because people misunderstand the nature of self-dealing with closely held companies.

I think the thing that makes it still stand out a bit is the combination of:

A) It being licensing money going directly into Williams' pockets.
B) The whole product line being a giant flop.
C) The sheer volume of products printed for it despite them all selling terribly.

Even with the factoring arrangement meaning they could only respond to sales on an annual basis, two years between the boardgame and the RPG meant they had time to see that no one was interested, but kept pushing a couple of dozen more products.

 

[Mannahnin]

However, the core issue is the same as a number of other problems- TSR kept trying to diversify. Those attempts at diversification almost always failed. Meanwhile, they were pushing out more product for their core brand (D&D) but they weren't accurately accounting for the cost/profit for some of those (great for consumers, not so much for the company). Finally, they never pivoted to take into account the sudden rise of crack ... Magic: The Gathering.

Well, plus the factoring setup cutting twenty percent off the top of their revenue and making them unable to pivot and print to demand mid-year if a given product sold better or worse than expected.

And the factoring and the Random House deal being used badly to cover core operating expenses without fixing the underlying financial problems.

And the failure to listen to the voice of the customer and give the designers feedback on what products were selling well or badly.

And the failure to properly account for the production costs of expensive boxed sets and price them adequately so they didn't lose money hand over fist on them.

 

[TiQuinn]

I would go even farther than "largely" Zeb Cook's work. I think of OA as a Zeb Cook book. hmmm... that sounds weird.

But yeah, while alluded to, I think that we can say that the '80s, for Gygax, were a time for (there isn't a good way to put this) ... rolling on the random harlot table and um ... Bolivian marching powder? Snowbarding? Disco dust? White Girl, interrupted? Forrest Bump?

...do you want to build a snowman?

God that movie was hilarious