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

[PHATsakk43]

Looking back, it really seems that TSR didn’t realize what it had.

These days, IP is king. Lorraine (I’m assuming it was her) put Zeb Cook in charge of the 2E game—which is still my personal favorite iteration with 5E a close second. They had extremely good fiction—Ben Riggs stated it being 50% of company revenue in the early 90s. Two magazines which were also extremely good.

Then the IP itself. Video games really should have been the focus. It’s all licensing. Other media should have been looked into as well.

Look, I’m happy to have shelves of 2E boxed sets in my basement, but they made no sense given the market. Honestly, if they had TSR consolidated, cut staff, and focused more on non-TTRPG products, they likely could have weathered the storm.

 

[Staffan]

These days, IP is king. Lorraine (I’m assuming it was her) put Zeb Cook in charge of the 2E game—which is still my personal favorite iteration with 5E a close second. They had extremely good fiction—Ben Riggs stated it being 50% of company revenue in the early 90s. Two magazines which were also extremely good.

Huh. Was that actual profit/revenue, or was it getting advances from their distributor that would then have to be paid back when the books didn't sell? Because my recollection is that book "returns" (not actually returns, book stores just send them off to be pulped minus the cover) was the killing blow for TSR.

Then the IP itself. Video games really should have been the focus. It’s all licensing. Other media should have been looked into as well.

Video games in the early 90s weren't anywhere near the big business they are today. And still, I remember there being quite a few of them. Most used the engine from Pools of Darkness, but you also had the real-time proto-3D Eye of the Beholder series, the more action-adventure-y Al-Qadim game I can't recall the name of, and the two Dark Sun games. Oh, and Hillsfar, but I never got my head around that.

But the game that really got D&D computer games going was Baldur's Gate. It was released in 1998 (post-WOTC), but development started in 1995 (pre-WOTC).

Look, I’m happy to have shelves of 2E boxed sets in my basement, but they made no sense given the market. Honestly, if they had TSR consolidated, cut staff, and focused more on non-TTRPG products, they likely could have weathered the storm.

Ryan Dancey's post-mortem of TSR indicated that (at least in his eyes) while there were many direct causes of TSR's near-bankruptcy, pretty much all of them could be traced to the lack of market research. TSR had no idea what the market wanted, so they made a huge number of books and boxed sets that didn't sell, and just took up space in a warehouse somewhere.

 

[MoonSong]

Ryan Dancey's post-mortem of TSR indicated that (at least in his eyes) while there were many direct causes of TSR's near-bankruptcy, pretty much all of them could be traced to the lack of market research. TSR had no idea what the market wanted, so they made a huge number of books and boxed sets that didn't sell, and just took up space in a warehouse somewhere.

It is quite cool to have so much lore and material to enjoy. But in hindsight, it wasn't close to being profitable. Nowadays WotC can earn a pretty penny with ebooks and the occasoonal reprint because they got them for a pittance. But losing TSR is the price we as a community had to pay. A TSR that was responsible enough to survive to this day wouldn't have produced so many beloved products, and would possibly get all of the scorn and criticism that WotC/Hasbro draws today.

 

[PHATsakk43]

Video games in the early 90s weren't anywhere near the big business they are today. And still, I remember there being quite a few of them. Most used the engine from Pools of Darkness, but you also had the real-time proto-3D Eye of the Beholder series, the more action-adventure-y Al-Qadim game I can't recall the name of, and the two Dark Sun games. Oh, and Hillsfar, but I never got my head around that.

But the game that really got D&D computer games going was Baldur's Gate. It was released in 1998 (post-WOTC), but development started in 1995 (pre-WOTC).

Yeah, I know they weren’t making the money they do today, but the possibility was there. The digital team at TSR really did great work. The Core Rule CD-ROMs are still the best digital assistant for any TTRPG to date, even if they are dated.

I guess my main point was, they probably should have fired basically all the staff, pared down the catalog to something manageable, think the 5E rollout but with 2E as basis. One or two products a year. The Zeb rework was a far better game than 1E AD&D ever wanted to be.

The magazines were great likely easy to make. That should have been their core revenue. It was all freelance writers, so little staff overhead beyond the production and editing team.

There isn’t any reason the 2014 5E model couldn’t have worked in 1989.

 

[michaeljpastor]

Looking back, it really seems that TSR didn’t realize what it had.

These days, IP is king. Lorraine (I’m assuming it was her) put Zeb Cook in charge of the 2E game—which is still my personal favorite iteration with 5E a close second. They had extremely good fiction—Ben Riggs stated it being 50% of company revenue in the early 90s. Two magazines which were also extremely good.

Then the IP itself. Video games really should have been the focus. It’s all licensing. Other media should have been looked into as well.

Look, I’m happy to have shelves of 2E boxed sets in my basement, but they made no sense given the market. Honestly, if they had TSR consolidated, cut staff, and focused more on non-TTRPG products, they likely could have weathered the storm.

They never have. They still don't. At least in the C-Suite.

And it was 100% the fiction (well, maybe 80%) - that's what Zeb was so genius at producing, despite being saddled with a revised 1e engine, again by C-suite fiat. The fiction produced in the campaign settings alongside the books was just as rich. The whole R&D team was the little IP engine that could, despite the Sisyphean boulder it constantly had to push uphill.

 

[PHATsakk43]

The fiction produced in the campaign settings alongside the books was just as rich. The whole R&D team was the little IP engine that could, despite the Sisyphean boulder it constantly had to push uphill.

It would be interesting to see what the cost breakdown was of this stuff.

Like, how much was development, how much was art & layout, and how much was production.

I wonder if Ben Riggs or someone has enough data to delve this deeply into the company finances. From my understanding, a lot of the stuff was being done by freelancers at this point and only development and editing was in-house.

Like, there could be a world where all this stuff was done, it just wasn’t published in boxed sets that were more expensive than the sale price.

In a way, TSR had sorta worked in this model. UA was, in a lot of ways the first example where mostly pre-published articles in TSR periodicals were compiled and published in a single text. Several 2E publications were similar—especially in the Forgotten Realms line, where books and boxed sets were edited compilations of Greenwood articles in Dragon and Polyhedron. Even in 5E the bulk of stuff in the core game expansions are from online UA or pulled from various adventures.

Again, I’m just playing the “what if” game of could TSR held out with a leaner team and far smaller publication schedule.

 

[JLowder]

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-

Quite a lot of what you say about Lorraine's tenure at the company is excellent and needs to be said, repeatedly, especially about the misogyny underlying some of the criticism aimed at her and the ways in which critics use different standards for the pre- and post-takeover company. More than anything, Lorraine understood the importance of creating worlds and characters. She understood the importance of reaching different audiences through different media (games, fiction, comics, etc), too. Not a shock since the family money came from owning and exploiting the Buck Rogers IP. If you look at what IP Wizards has been using for cross-media products over the past fifteen years, it's largely stuff from Lorraine's tenure. One of the biggest stumbles WotC made after buying TSR was diminishing the importance of creating new characters and developing settings--building new IP or at least exapnding what they owned. Good thing they have all the material from the 1980s and 1990s to stripmine.

Two things to mull over, though:

Buck was treated differently at the company. Products were placed on the schedule with no regards for sales or demand from Random House or the hobby market. Sales did not matter. The fact the products were taking space on the schedule from Realms or Dragonlance or other things that would have sold better did not matter. Random House was particularly salty about that, as I heard firsthand from their reps at the company distribution/sales conference in 1991.

TSR also pressured licensees to license Buck along with properties they wanted to license; I saw that firsthand, too, in some of the meetings with Mike Gold and others from DC when they visited Sheridan Springs Road. DC refusing to do a licensed Buck comic after a relentless hard sell from TSR was the root cause of the break with them. This cost TSR years of substantial and largely passive income, as well as a licensing deal that was growing the D&D brands in the wider pop culture. The license was also on the verge of expanding into at least three additional regular comics, including Ravenloft and Greyhawk.

Now, as you say, Lorraine had every right to do all this. It was a private company. It's also not unusual for companies to have "pet" lines they want to succeed and which they support even though sales are not great. They sometimes even bundle these "pet" IPs with attractive IPs for licensing. This happens more than people realize--but with company-owned IP. TSR did not own Buck outright. TSR licensing deals were being used to forward an IP the company did not entirely own. TSR was also locked into creating and releasing licensed products themselves even when they knew those products were not selling. That's not normal.

Working on Buck projects caused a lot of grief for staff and freelancers, too, because of the whim-driven way in which the trust (Flint and Lorraine) reviewed and approved/rejected material. Again, this grief is not uncommon when working with IP holders. But it was a major problem with Buck and burned relationships with some freelancers completely to the ground. (e.g. the anthology Arrival, which lost multiple name SF writers before release; two of the stories eventually published were even ghostwritten by Book Department staff over a weeked, for no pay, because the licensing review was so destructive veteran writers were still bailing the week before the book was headed to the printer.) The channels through which staff might resolve the licensor problems were closed off, as well, since ownership was the licensor being capricious. If Flint were being a huge problem, Lorraine would sometimes reel him in, but staff knew where sympathies fell.

All that said, was Buck a significant reason TSR failed? Internally it squandered resources, but not to a fatal extent. It even produced some good material, like the Pondsmith RPG and the board game, which was fun and years ahead of its time. The way Lorraine handled Buck products undermined staff trust in management to make reasonable and not whim-based decisions, but not to a fatal extent there, either. The greatest damage was, I think, to relationships with licensees and potential licensees. The bundling of Buck with TSR properties could be a deal killer and what happened with DC provided a huge red flag for anyone looking to do business with the company. Buck certainly didn't help TSR, but it was not a core reason for the failure.

The other thing I would caution you on is the assessment of creator treatment. Yes, Lorraine did some good things for Rose after the previous adminstration had screwed her over, but Rose also ended up walking away from TSR under Lorraine—with TSR angry at her because she went elsewhere. Lorraine also did some amazing things for individual employees, especially Bill Conners (as covered in Slaying the Dragon). But the company leadership as a whole under her often reveled in being bullies. Stomping on creators and detaching creators, especially fiction writers, from things they had created for the company became a stated internal priority by the mid-1990s. For example, management was unhappy Christie Golden was being identified by fans as a motive force behind Ravenloft's success so the head of books refused to even consider her for more fiction after 1993. She was banished (and went on to great success elsewhere). They went after Bob Salvatore over Drizzt for much the same reason. (That's covered pretty well in Slaying the Dragon, too.) There was all kinds of destructive crap like that. Really nasty, salt-the-earth kinds of things. Petty and mean and spiteful.

TSR management under Lorraine regularly bullied people—staff and freelancers—with those problems accelerating as the finances started to really sour. I personally tried to raise this with Lorraine and management before I left, but was repeatedly shut down. They knew what they were doing. They did a lot of damage to people, including people who had made them a lot of money.

Was this bullying, anti-creative behavior a reason TSR failed, though? No.

It diminshed the quality of work they received and published, especially with the fiction line; the talent market there had less tolerance in the 1990s for creator mistreatment. But the overall goal of separating/erasing the individual creators from their creations is pretty much standard practice now, especially in TTRPGs. Even when Wizards stripmines older material, they are not going out of their way to trumpet the fact I created Artus Cimber or Aramag or Jergal or Caradoc or any of the other characters or world elements or plots I created and they continue to use and license. Lorraine was looking back to the way her family had capitalized on Buck for the model there—and she was known to threaten people who pointed out John Dille had popularized, not created Buck, as I found out firsthand. Lots of current TTRPG companies agree with her on how these matters should be handled. The company is the real creator, not the individuals.

Hope you find all that helpful in honing your thoughts on all these matters. Thanks again for the terrific posts. Great stuff.

 

[PHATsakk43]

@JLowder thanks for chiming in.

I suppose with the insight that you’re providing, it does add some much needed clarity to the discussion.

As someone who got into the game around 1990, it really felt like TSR was a juggernaut. I was completely blindsided by the bankruptcy and acquisition by WotC a few years later. That said, compared with a lot of the other folks like yourself who’s name was easily recognized by players, I never Lorraine Williams name until that acknowledge in the back of Volume IV of the Encyclopedia Magica which said that Williams was who provided the impetus to expand the project scope to what it would be. I’ve got probably half of everything TSR put out in my library and it’s the only mention of her I can find.

From what you’ve said, it does sound like she wasn’t completely divorced from the operations as some have accused her. I suppose my question is, did she really have disdain for the customer base?

 

[Staffan]

All that said, was Buck a significant reason TSR failed? Internally it squandered resources, but not to a fatal extent. It even produced some good material, like the Pondsmith RPG and the board game, which was fun and years ahead of its time. The way Lorraine handled Buck products undermined staff trust in management to make reasonable and not whim-based decisions, but not to a fatal extent there, either. The greatest damage was, I think, to relationships with licensees and potential licensees. The bundling of Buck with TSR properties could be a deal killer and what happened with DC provided a huge red flag for anyone looking to do business with the company. Buck certainly didn't help TSR, but it was not a core reason for the failure.

TSR management under Lorraine regularly bullied people—staff and freelancers—with those problems accelerating as the finances started to really sour. I personally tried to raise this with Lorraine and management before I left, but was repeatedly shut down. They knew what they were doing. They did a lot of damage to people, including people who had made them a lot of money.

Was this bullying, anti-creative behavior a reason TSR failed, though? No.

As someone who has been following discussions on the topic for near 30 years now, but doesn't have any first-hand insight, I often see people say "TSR went under because of X." There's the book returns thing, which as far as I can tell was the actual killing blow. There's the stuff you write about here, which I think can be simplified to "burning bridges with creatives." There's the stuff Ryan Dancey has written about, which can be boiled down to "too much stuff", "too many settings", and "no market research" (which I'd argue are related issues, but not precisely the same).

So as far as I can tell, there was no one thing that killed TSR. It was a large number of poor decisions that, in aggregate, did it in. The book returns may have been the final blow, but if TSR had been in better shape they could have weathered that (or possibly not gotten in that position in the first place).

 

[JLowder]

From what you’ve said, it does sound like she wasn’t completely divorced from the operations as some have accused her. I suppose my question is, did she really have disdain for the customer base?

From what I saw, Lorraine and the parts of TSR upper management who had come into the company from "the business world" didn't understand the customer base. Some showed disdain, some confusion, many condescension. I disagree on a core philosophical/ethical level with the destructive way Lorraine and her management team treated creators, including me, so I know that colors things. Setting that aside, I mostly got the impression Lorraine did not understand the gamer community, including the staff, and her baseline way of interacting with people could easily be read as disdainful. But it would be a mistake to assume that is actual disdain. They are not the same things.

The folks I knew who had the best interactions with her, like Bill Conners over his family crisis or the staffers who played cards (bridge?) with her at lunch sometimes, were dealing with her outside the game/gamer context. It seemed to me she was most comfortable there, and I take those accounts from Bill and others seriously, as that was never the context in which I dealt with her. I was never going to see that.

Lorraine was not divorced from the day to day operations. She was, however, inconsistent about what projects she was going to take an interest in and how she was going to show her interest. Sometimes her interest meant you got extra resources and more time. Sometimes it meant she swooped in to micromanage details on a level that would grind a project to a halt. (Like obsessing over the color blue to be used on the Dark Sun maps, for example, for which I ended up a prop because I happened to be walking in the hallway at the wrong time.) None of that is unusual with game publishing management, though, or even other management of other types of companies.

Running a successful creator-reliant company is incredibly difficult, a hobby-focused company doubly so, with being a woman and being from outside the hobby community all multipliers for difficulty too. The toxic public and media attitudes still swirling around TTRPGs in the 1980s and early 1990s made it even tougher. As I said, I could not disagree more strongly with how she ran the company, but the original post was spot on in identifying many of the things for which she should get credit and many of the ways cultural attitides (then and now) color the way she is discussed in the TTRPG community.