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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9427872" data-attributes="member: 7035894">In thinking more about some of the principal players in this drama, it seems to me like you can see some very distinct types of thinkers. Arneson was an innovator. The introduction of role playing to gaming has a convoluted and murky history, but David Wesely has a strong claim, and his buddy Arneson was an early adoptor who combined it with rules for fantasy gaming and added a number of crucial ideas, particularly levelling. Gygax was an iterator. He didn't invent the core ideas, but he was great at seeing potential and refining ideas. He put the work in, for a good decade or so, anyway, something that Arneson was unable to do on any project. Williams strikes me as a more conventional manager type, someone who shows up to work and plugs away at the boring stuff.Being a manager is not a super exciting role in the history of anything, so I can see why Williams doesn't have a lot of appeal in the legend of TSR. It's pretty hard to romanticize an administrator. But she's not a monster, even if D&D players are inclined to think in terms of heroic narrative. Based on everything I've read, she worked hard, was kind of in over her head in terms of not really understanding the hobby and its culture (as opposed to Gygax and the Blumes being completely in over their heads when it came to business), but stuck with it as long as she could. Some folks found her unpleasant, others found her kind. To a person, the ex-employees that Ben Riggs interviewed for Slaying the Dragon preferred working under her to the Gygax/Blume regime, though after listening to the podcast that seems like a "No, duh," kind of situation.My takeaway is that she doesn't deserve to be portrayed as a supervillain. Not a hero, either - she demonstrably did save TSR from implosion, but not out of altruism or anything. She saw it as a business that she thought she could better manage (again, no duh) and make profitable, and tried and ultimately failed to make that happen. In doing so, she did give it that extra decade, which I see as a good thing.</blockquote>

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