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

[Snarf Zagyg]

2. When I opened this thread I thought it was going to be about Robertta Willaims of Sierra fame. I'm still a little disappointed.

Well, that just means you need to set up the Infocom v. Sierra On-Line deathmatch thread.

 

[Nikosandros]

I bet you don't even look anything like your avatar. What are you trying to hide?

What?? Next you'll tell me that Snarf is not a real name??

There are two things I've picked up from this thread.

1. People really, really hate Lorraine Williams still. Like on a personal visceral level I find quite surprising.

Yes, she has a very bad rep and it's proving hard to reevaluate that, I believe.

Personally, back in '85-'86, I was just getting into D&D and Gygax was little more than a name to me (and a face in the photo that was on some miniature box). At some point, I noticed that his name was no longer on the new books and later still a guy in a store told me that he had been ousted from TSR. I was curious about that, but I didn't have much of an emotional response to it.

Much later, when I was active on DF, I "learned" more, but it was a purely "gygaxian" version. He was a saint and the Blumes first and Williams later had been the monsters and the inept ones.

The recent years have been quite interesting and informative for me.

2. When I opened this thread I thought it was going to be about Robertta Willaims of Sierra fame. I'm still a little disappointed.

I believe that there is (or maybe it just finished?) some crowdfunding campaign for a book about the Williams of Sierra fame.

 

[Nikosandros]

Well, that just means you need to set up the Infocom v. Sierra On-Line deathmatch thread.

It's dark and your are likely to be eaten by a grue. You quickly leave the location, but you enter a desert zone and, without any warning, a scorpion stings you and you die.

 

[billd91]

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.

I'm not too sure of that. There is a reference in Game Wizards that they had maintained warehousing of some sort in the city of Lake Geneva, outside of the Hotel Clair basement. So, I'm betting there was already inventory hanging around - though, of course, that would mount further in the later 80s and into the 90s.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

1. People really, really hate Lorraine Williams still. Like on a personal visceral level I find quite surprising.

In fairness, I used to be one of those people. It was only when I kept seeing that the histories were disproving the received wisdom I had been told that I had to reevaluate my position.

None of this, by the way, is about some of the actual (and real!) mistakes that she did make. But this hatred for her? When I revisited those stories that are passed around, I can see now that there are a lot of implicit attitudes contained in them. And I also see that a lot of people say that their own personal dealings with her were always pleasant.

Again, knowing what I know now about gender dynamics in the '80s and '90s (and, sadly, sometimes today) I can't keep unthinkingly villainizing her. Especially when we keep getting facts that contradict what we were told.

Anyway, I wanted to add something. I think the podcast, by having a voice actor read her testimony, humanized her. In addition, the new fact which I was unfamiliar with ... the settlement offer to Gygax ... was further proof to me that she really wasn't trying to hurt him, but that the problem at that time was Gygax and his hubris. Which (along with all the other information in the podcast and Game Wizards) really changed the whole dynamic of the story about Gygax's ouster that had been told in all the grognard circles for decades.

 

[Clint_L]

What?? Next you'll tell me that Snarf is not a real name??


Yes, she has a very bad rep and it's proving hard to reevaluate that, I believe.

Personally, back in '85-'86, I was just getting into D&D and Gygax was little more than a name to me (and a face in the photo that was on some miniature box). At some point, I noticed that his name was no longer on the new books and later still a guy in a store told me that he had been ousted from TSR. I was curious about that, but I didn't have much of an emotional response to it.

Much later, when I was active on DF, I "learned" more, but it was a purely "gygaxian" version. He was a saint and the Blumes first and Williams later had been the monsters and the inept ones.

The recent years have been quite interesting and informative for me.

I believe that there is (or maybe it just finished?) some crowdfunding campaign for a book about the Williams of Sierra fame.

I was a Gygax fan in the way that only a 12 year old kid in 1980 could be, devouring every issue of Dragon magazine and basically memorizing 1e. By the time he lost control of the company I had moved on a bit, but it still upset me and felt like a personal betrayal. I was all too ready to believe every bad thing I heard about Williams and the Blumes. But as I've aged I've come to reevaluate a lot of my assumptions about the world in general, and about my own beliefs in particular. Now I'm pretty skeptical of received wisdom, I understand a lot more about how memory and belief systems work, and am a lot less confident that I know the Truth. The truth almost always turns out to be a lot more complicated than younger Clint thought.

Knowing what I know now, I'm not a fan of any of these people on a personal level - none of them sound like someone I would particularly enjoy hanging out with. I am still a massive fan of what Arneson and Gygax brought into the world with RPGs, and I think that contribution is by far their most important contribution to humanity. It's a bigger contribution than most people make, by orders of magnitude, and you can't take that away. But it's hard to learn about how Gygax treated other people, and how he treated TSR as his personal fiefdom.

I have respect for Williams for doing her best in a tough situation, especially in such a male-dominated industry, even though she ultimately failed. And even though I think I would have found her personally disagreeable, I don't think she deserves anything like the abuse her reputation has received.

My opinion of the Blumes hasn't shifted a whole lot, except for now it seems like Kevin Blume deserves most of the blame between the two of them, while Brian comes across as a genial failure.

Ultimately, I now think TSR was a spectacular train wreck of a company under Gygax and the Blumes, and then Williams turned into a more conventional corporate failure.

Edit: I'm a big music fan, and I really enjoy reading rock biographies. But you have to know going in that you are VERY likely to come out with a tarnished opinion of your idols as human beings. We tend to put people up on pedestals, but humans are complicated. Learning about what was happening behind the scenes at TSR feels like reading a fascinating rock biography, because to 12 year old Clint, Gary Gygax was absolutely a rock star.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Ultimately, I now think TSR was a spectacular train wreck of a company under Gygax and the Blumes, and then Williams turned into a more conventional corporate failure.

Well said! Although, can you say this in 10,000 words?

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm not too sure of that. There is a reference in Game Wizards that they had maintained warehousing of some sort in the city of Lake Geneva, outside of the Hotel Clair basement. So, I'm betting there was already inventory hanging around - though, of course, that would mount further in the later 80s and into the 90s.

I imagine there was SOME, but as the podcast repeatedly emphasizes, they really didn't have a lot of space until they got the hotel. And it wasn't until Sheridan Springs that they had a warehouse with 50' ceilings a la Raiders.

 

[Count_Zero]

I should clarify my viewpoint about Lorraine Williams a little bit. I intensely dislike her, but it's a dislike at the level I have for Phil Ballmer, or other corporate executives whose actions, while beneficial to their company, were harmful to the industry (and in this instance art form at large). I would not respond to her passing like I will when Harvey Weinstein kicks the bucket - not even close. But while the negatives of her time at TSR overshadow the positives more than is fair, they should still overshadow the positives some. Is this mainly because of the GDW lawsuit, and to a lesser degree the 92 Mayfair Games lawsuit, plus the legal threats against fansites, and the self-dealing over Buck Rogers - absolutely.

Do other companies in other industries do that? Yeah, they do, and the executives who do that should be excoriated publicly as much as Williams does. Being no worse a bad actor than other bad actors doesn't make you not a bad actor.

Succeeding a pair of even worse actors may make you better by comparison, but you're still a bad actor.

Kevin Blume - yeah, he's freaking Satan. He deserves far more scorn than he's gotten, even from Snarf.

 

[Nikosandros]

Which (along with all the other information in the podcast and Game Wizards) really changed the whole dynamic of the story about Gygax's ouster that had been told in all the grognard circles for decades.

Yes, the first time that I read about it, it was a story about a fiendish and cruel betrayal against Gary*. Of course, there was also the part about how the Blumes had ruined everything and Gygax had to rush back to Wisconsin (abandoning all the great things he was doing in Hollywood) in order to right the ship.

* At this point, I wonder if the story about Gygax being suddenly locked out of his office is accurate.