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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8684775" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I disagree. I covered this exact subject in a series of posts after Game Wizards was released.Here's the big post-[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://www.enworld.org/threads/lorraine-williams-is-it-time-for-a-reevaluation.683454/[/URL]Here's the salient section-This is the important part- I think that there is a lot of good that people tend to forget. Let's start with the most basic; if you read Game Wizards, or have a passing familiarity with what happened, you quickly understand that Lorraine was not the villain in the ouster of Gygax- she was the hero. Quite literally, she saved TSR. The sheer amount of details and the repetition of them truly paint the picture, but in brief, TSR had massive debts, Gygax was both ignoring the financial issues (and the banks), ignoring meetings, spending TSR's money, and also demanding (in his capacity as majority shareholder) that TSR begin dramatically increasing royalty payments to him. To add to all of that, he negotiated a deal with the Brothers Blume and then reneged on the terms. In short, he was a disaster, and was quickly running what was left of the company into the ground. Lorraine didn't pull this off by herself- all the people involved with TSR at senior levels except Gygax knew the score. If you are a fan of shows like Succession, it's like a scene where the person comes into dictate terms, and realizes that no one is supporting him. Not a single person. More importantly, at the time there were a lot of outstanding liabilities other than just the terrible debts they already had due to poor projections and governance- such as the multiple suits due to the promise of stock options that TSR chose not to honor (settled under Lorraine's watch).So she should get credit for saving TSR, in my opinion.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 8684775, member: 7023840"] I disagree. I covered this exact subject in a series of posts after [I]Game Wizards[/I] was released. Here's the big post- [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/lorraine-williams-is-it-time-for-a-reevaluation.683454/[/URL] Here's the salient section- This is the important part- I think that there is a lot of good that people tend to forget. Let's start with the most basic; if you read Game Wizards, or have a passing familiarity with what happened, you quickly understand that Lorraine was not the villain in the ouster of Gygax- she was the hero. Quite literally, she saved TSR. The sheer amount of details and the repetition of them truly paint the picture, but in brief, TSR had massive debts, Gygax was both ignoring the financial issues (and the banks), ignoring meetings, spending TSR's money, and also demanding (in his capacity as majority shareholder) that TSR begin dramatically increasing royalty payments to him. To add to all of that, he negotiated a deal with the Brothers Blume and then reneged on the terms. In short, he was a disaster, and was quickly running what was left of the company into the ground. Lorraine didn't pull this off by herself- [I]all the people[/I] [I]involved with TSR at senior levels except Gygax [/I]knew the score. If you are a fan of shows like [I]Succession[/I], it's like a scene where the person comes into dictate terms, and realizes that [I]no one is supporting him. Not a single person.[/I] More importantly, at the time there were a lot of outstanding liabilities other than just the terrible debts they already had due to poor projections and governance- such as the multiple suits due to the promise of stock options that TSR chose not to honor (settled under Lorraine's watch). So she should get credit for saving TSR, in my opinion. [/QUOTE]

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