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

[Nikosandros]

Person other than grunt. A derogatory term used in the American military to describe a member of the armed forces whose MOS is not combat arms.

I think that in this case it is used as "person ousting Gygax" or something like that. I remember seeing this on Dragonsfoot years ago.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Snarf Zagyg has a hard-on for Williams. Look at how they champion the PoG in this thread and THIS thread and THIS thread and who knows how many more. There's definitely a pattern of Gygax-bashing disguised as "yall know I luv Gary as much as yall, but Lorraine was the REAL genius".

If she was such a blessing to the hobby why do so many people who worked for TSR like Frank Mentzer and Mike Breault describe her as trash?

So I'm so curious: what's the agenda here, Snarf?

Mod Note:

You’ve been on ENWorld more than a year. You know or should have known that “don’t make it personal” is one of the most important rules of conduct. But everyone messes up occasionally, and needs a reminder.

Here’s yours: you’re booted from this thread, with a WP cherry on top.

 

[jdrakeh]

Ryan Dancey famously came through marking pallets of them in a ledger as "value = $0".

"Them" refers to many products dating back to the 1980s, not just Lorraine Williams era product.

 

[Mannahnin]

Had I known the game existed (Buck Rogers RPG) I would have bought it. We devoured just about every RPG we could get our hands on in the 80's (Star Frontiers, Gang Busters, Top Secret, Tunnels and Trolls, RuneQuest, ElfQuest...)

The Buck Rogers RPG didn't come out until 1990, and it clearly didn't sell. There were a lot of other games on the market, though sure, a few people bought it.

""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?" quoth the Dancey.

"Them" refers to many products dating back to the 1980s, not just Lorraine Williams era product.

Let me expand that quote from Dancey you're taking issue with my interpretation of.

"I toured a warehouse packed from floor to 50 foot ceiling with products valued as though they would soon be sold to a distributor with production stamps stretching back to the late 1980s. I was 10 pages in to a thick green bar report of inventory, calculating the true value of the material in that warehouse when I realized that my last 100 entries had all been "$0"'s"

Which products from prior to 1986 (Gygax's ouster from control being in the Fall of 1985), that you're aware of, were famously poor sellers? I'm happy to stipulate that Gangbusters and The Indiana Jones RPG didn't do very well, but TSR had no need to overprint for cash up front from the Random House deal until much later- the early 90s. When the Random House deal was struck in '79 it allowed TSR to meet demand for the bestselling AD&D hardcovers. From what we read in Game Wizards and elsewhere, it wasn't until years after Williams took over that the core financials went bad enough again that they started using the RH deal that way.

 

[LordBP]

Person other than grunt. A derogatory term used in the American military to describe a member of the armed forces whose MOS is not combat arms.

Somewhat related to the REMF.

 

[GuardianLurker]

@Mannahnin

Something to that you might have missed - Dancey was doing the audit in the late 90's (Late 2nd Ed). So all that product from the late 80's? That was for (most likely) 1st Ed. Which was out of print and no longer supported by TSR. So it's value to a distributor (i.e. for end sale at a bookstore or similar) - would of course be $0. Regardless of how well that late 80's product sold in its heyday.

Now it's value on the secondary market would be higher, but that was a lot harder to access in the late 90's, and wouldn't really be a viable outlet at the kind of scale Dancey implies.

 

[Mannahnin]

@Mannahnin

Something to that you might have missed - Dancey was doing the audit in the late 90's (Late 2nd Ed). So all that product from the late 80's? That was for (most likely) 1st Ed. Which was out of print and no longer supported by TSR. So it's value to a distributor (i.e. for end sale at a bookstore or similar) - would of course be $0. Regardless of how well that late 80's product sold in its heyday.

Now it's value on the secondary market would be higher, but that was a lot harder to access in the late 90's, and wouldn't really be a viable outlet at the kind of scale Dancey implies.

No, while 1E books were part of what Dancey found in the warehouse, that's not what I'm talking about.

Dancey wrote, and I directly quoted...

"I toured a warehouse packed from floor to 50 foot ceiling with products valued as though they would soon be sold to a distributor with production stamps stretching back to the late 1980s. I was 10 pages in to a thick green bar report of inventory, calculating the true value of the material in that warehouse when I realized that my last 100 entries had all been "$0"'s."

Bold mine.

Have you read any of the history on this? Have you read Slaying the Dragon?

Famously, most of the products we're talking about here are boxed sets, books and games which were overprinted in the 90s when TSR was desperate for operating capital and misused the terms of their Random House distribution agreement which allowed them to get paid up-front before those products ever sold. And which was the killing blow to the company when Random House finally invoked the clause allowing them to return unsold unwanted product and ask for their money back.

DragonStrike, Buck Rogers, unpopular 2nd ed setting boxed sets like Al Qadim and Birthright (much though I liked the latter), Spellfire, Alternity, The Amazing Engine, Dragonlance SAGA edition, a million units of Dragon Dice...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Which products from prior to 1986 (Gygax's ouster from control being in the Fall of 1985), that you're aware of, were famously poor sellers? I'm happy to stipulate that Gangbusters and The Indiana Jones RPG didn't do very well, but TSR had no need to overprint for cash up front from the Random House deal until much later- the early 90s. When the Random House deal was struck in '79 it allowed TSR to meet demand for the bestselling AD&D hardcovers. From what we read in Game Wizards and elsewhere, it wasn't until years after Williams took over that the core financials went bad enough again that they started using the RH deal that way.

Given that you've just listened to the podcast and read the book, I think you can recall the many, many, many financial issues with TSR prior to Lorraine. I mean, there is a reason that they were about to go bust!

It was just that all the many terrible decisions were papered over, at least for a time, by the amazing success of D&D during the Egbert explosion through 1983.

But there are so many stories, from ordering the wrong board size for a game (and having to destroy them all and re-order new one) to products that didn't sell. We just don't get the "End of Indiana Jones" warehouse story because it didn't go bust back then.

 

[Mannahnin]

Given that you've just listened to the podcast and read the book, I think you can recall the many, many, many financial issues with TSR prior to Lorraine. I mean, there is a reason that they were about to go bust!

It was just that all the many terrible decisions were papered over, at least for a time, by the amazing success of D&D during the Egbert explosion through 1983.

But there are so many stories, from ordering the wrong board size for a game (and having to destroy them all and re-order new one) to products that didn't sell. We just don't get the "End of Indiana Jones" warehouse story because it didn't go bust back then.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, except I guess your conclusion. The large offices at Sheridan Springs weren't acquired by TSR until 1984. They had only recently gotten that big ol' warehouse space the first time they nearly went bankrupt, so had not had a chance to fill it with hundreds of pallets of unsold and unsalable product.

The "End of Indiana Jones warehouse" scene Dancey's tale invokes wasn't possible until later.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, except I guess your conclusion. The big space at Sheridan Springs wasn't acquired by TSR until 1984. They had only recently acquired that big ol' warehouse space the first time they nearly went bankrupt, so had not had a chance to fill it with hundreds of pallets of unsold and unsalable product.

The "End of Indiana Jones warehouse" scene Dancey's tale invokes wasn't possible until later.

I agree! Which is why we only have the stories of either products that "didn't sell" or were destroyed. If they had a warehouse, it's possible it might have had more than few products in it.

Except those boards. Man, so many bad decisions.