Synnibarr vs WotC

[jdrakeh]

The only RPG I've ever encountered that was more metal than Synnibarr was SenZar. These new pretenders to the throne like Mork Borg are weak by comparison. (I'm only kind of kidding. SenZar's one and only supplement was named after an actual Metallica song and included stats for gods that PCs were expressly intended to someday challenge for their domains.)

 

[aramis erak]

The idea that from the OP that Wizards did anything to crush Synnibarr (or cared about it at all, really) is pretty silly. That, more than the RPG itself, is where I hold my less lighthearted head-shaking for McCracken.

In the mid 1990's, WotC was buying up, and then shutting down, a number of RPG lines from various smaller publishers. If WotC bought your game, odds are it was going to be killed off. (Which is part of why the FTC was paying such close attention to the TSR purchase...)

To be blunt, if WotC were going to crush Synnibarr, it would have been by buying the copyright, then not using it. It's not implausible that a game would be whammied by WotC... but that was by buying the IP. It's plausible WotC offered an "insultingly low" offer which he refused...

 

[Staffan]

In the mid 1990's, WotC was buying up, and then shutting down, a number of RPG lines from various smaller publishers. If WotC bought your game, odds are it was going to be killed off. (Which is part of why the FTC was paying such close attention to the TSR purchase...)

That is a somewhat uncharitable view. My impression is that it went more like this:

1. Peter Adkison: "Man, look at all this money we're making!"
2. Peter: "This looks like a cool RPG. I wanna buy it. Hey RPG company, how about you sell the rights to me for this pile of money?" — RPG company: "Sure."
3. WOTC Beancounters: "What are you doing? We can get an ROI out the wazoo on Magic and Pokémon, and these RPGs you bought barely break even. It makes no sense to pay people to develop Ars Magica or Everway stuff. Stop that!"
4. Peter: "Awww. You make a good point. Let's see if we can't find good homes for these games with other companies."

That situation changed with the purchase of TSR which was big enough to be made reasonably profitable after some serious cuts to the product lines.

I think the only post-TSR purchase that went bad was Last Unicorn Games, and that was because Wizards hadn't checked in with Paramount before the purchase. Apparently Paramount didn't want Star Trek to be licensed by the same company that licensed Star Wars, so they pulled the license and that didn't leave LUG with much.

 

[aramis erak]

That is a somewhat uncharitable view. My impression is that it went more like this:

It was the view expressed by the FTC at the time. Either way, its net effect was monopolistic -- reducing competition -- and bordering on criminally so.

Your interpretation is just as uncharitable - it presumes Adkison is fiscally incompetent. Which is clearly not supported by his other actions.

Only a few games left WotC prior to HasBro buying WotC. Ars Magica being the only one coming to mind... At least now, if the creators wish to, they can engages the Copyright Recovery Act...

I think the only post-TSR purchase that went bad was Last Unicorn Games, and that was because Wizards hadn't checked in with Paramount before the purchase. Apparently Paramount didn't want Star Trek to be licensed by the same company that licensed Star Wars, so they pulled the license and that didn't leave LUG with much.

I was following that very closely at the time. LUG was at end of license term.
Paramount opted not to allow renewal, and immediately announced the new licensee... who took a bit over a year to get product out.
That they'd been sold is a correlation which cannot be shown as root causation. Dissolving LUG did allow Decipher to hire much of the LUG-Trek team...

 

[Alzrius]

It was the view expressed by the FTC at the time.

Would you mind citing a source for this?

 

[Staffan]

It was the view expressed by the FTC at the time. Either way, its net effect was monopolistic -- reducing competition -- and bordering on criminally so.

Your interpretation is just as uncharitable - it presumes Adkison is fiscally incompetent. Which is clearly not supported by his other actions.

This is my source. It's a pretty good explanation of the rise and fall of RPGs at Wizards. If Wizards had sought to kill the market for RPGs, they would not have spent any effort in trying to find good homes for their RPG portfolio when leaving the RPG market – they would just have canceled the product lines and left it at that.

Adkison was not a particularly good businessman. As he explains it himself, when founding Wizards he didn't know the first thing about business. He got better, but whatever business success they had in the early days should probably be credited to Lisa Stevens. At the time of the sale to Hasbro, Adkison owned about 4% of the company – and he worked himself up to that figure, because his "advisor" when forming the company didn't inform him about "founder's stock". And of course, there's the famous "Death to the Minotaur" article about how Wizards was run in the early days, which does not really show competent leadership. Adkison was a so-so businessman who lucked into two great decisions/deals (Magic and Pokémon) and a whole lot of bad ones. Fortunately, the magnitude of the good ones vastly overshadowed the loss from the bad decisions.

I was following that very closely at the time. LUG was at end of license term.
Paramount opted not to allow renewal, and immediately announced the new licensee... who took a bit over a year to get product out.
That they'd been sold is a correlation which cannot be shown as root causation. Dissolving LUG did allow Decipher to hire much of the LUG-Trek team...

I'm almost entirely certain that I've read an interview with Peter Adkison (or possibly Ryan Dancey or Lisa Stevens or someone else who was fairly high up in the Wizards business hierarchy at the time) where he said that buying LUG was a fumble on Wizards' behalf because they hadn't gotten Paramount to sign off on the license being transferred along with the purchase. But it's not easy finding stuff from the early 00s online, particularly when you don't know exactly where they were to begin with.

I did find this quote from Designers & Dungeons: "Though the Last Unicorn Star Trek license was due to expire at the end of 2000, Wizards hadn’t bothered to negotiate with Paramount about an extension; they just assumed that they’d get it. Now Decipher was announcing that they’d licensed the rights to all Star Trek gaming — supplementing a CCG license they’d held since 1994. Wizards tried to negotiate with Paramount afterward, but it was too late. More than a dozen Star Trek supplements Last Unicorn had in process were never printed."

Given that LUG had so many products in the pipeline, it would seem that they had at least gotten an unofficial go-ahead from Paramount about an extension, but whether Decipher just offered a better deal or whether Paramount objected to having Star Trek under the same roof as Star Wars is perhaps better left to historians.

 

[darjr]

I find the idea that wizards, pre TSR purchase, and post Magic, was hunting down RPGs to eliminate competition hilarious. Regardless of what the FTC may have been thinking, it’s really a strikingly profound misunderstanding of what was going on. They were not doing that.

 

[RivetGeekWil]

I find the idea that wizards, pre TSR purchase, and post Magic, was hunting down RPGs to eliminate competition hilarious. Regardless of what the FTC may have been thinking, it’s really a strikingly profound misunderstanding of what was going on. They were not doing that.

I've basically ignored them for most of their existence, but I agree it's not well-grounded in the reality of the RPG industry even back then. I suspect that awareness of Microsoft's tactics, who did pull this sort of crap, colored people's views of what was occurring with WotC acquisitions.

 

[darjr]

I've basically ignored them for most of their existence, but I agree it's not well-grounded in the reality of the RPG industry even back then. I suspect that awareness of Microsoft's tactics, who did pull this sort of crap, colored people's views of what was occurring with WotC acquisitions.

I do remember a rant from many moons ago on some podcasts now long gone forum. Someone wrote pages and pages of a rant about the evils of WotC and their hostile takeover of …. Five Rings Publishing ….

 

[Willie the Duck]

In the mid 1990's, WotC was buying up, and then shutting down, a number of RPG lines from various smaller publishers. If WotC bought your game, odds are it was going to be killed off. (Which is part of why the FTC was paying such close attention to the TSR purchase...)

To be blunt, if WotC were going to crush Synnibarr, it would have been by buying the copyright, then not using it. It's not implausible that a game would be whammied by WotC... but that was by buying the IP. It's plausible WotC offered an "insultingly low" offer which he refused...

That may be what happened to some games that WotC purchased. I'd need to know more of the specifics of what did go down. And I will believe that selling your stuff to WotC in the 90s may have turned out to be a way to make sure it wasn't made. However, the idea that WotC actually was buying up RPG IPs in an effort to shut them down because they wanted to stifle the competition just doesn't seem plausible to me.
Synnibarr in particular. I don't think it was much of anyone's sole RPG played, and I'm certain WotC wouldn't have been worried about the dozens of people for who that was the case (plus, there's no guarantee that those people would then turn to a WotC game instead of leaving the market completely). They would have been much more concerned with finding the next big thing, and the biggest competitors with their RPG properties at that time would have been White Wolf RPGs, their own collectable card games, and all other forms of entertainment (including things like computer/video games). Synnibarr as a competitor would not have made sense

I find the idea that wizards, pre TSR purchase, and post Magic, was hunting down RPGs to eliminate competition hilarious. Regardless of what the FTC may have been thinking, it’s really a strikingly profound misunderstanding of what was going on. They were not doing that.

I've basically ignored them for most of their existence, but I agree it's not well-grounded in the reality of the RPG industry even back then. I suspect that awareness of Microsoft's tactics, who did pull this sort of crap, colored people's views of what was occurring with WotC acquisitions.

Computer companies, car companies, communication companies, even entertainment companies in terms of movie studios and the like -- there have been several industries where this kind of thing has happened. The thing is that they generally are industries serving a need where a set group of people generally will always buy the thing but no more than a set number of things (or have a specific budget for such things), so if someone buys an X it means a Y is not bought. I doubt very much this is even usually true for TTRPG companies whose competition is D&D -- in general a rising tide lifts all boats in this market and getting more people gaming (buying their product X and then wandering over to the shelf where your product Y sits while in the store, so-to-speak) is generally beneficial.