TSR TSR's War on Fans

[Azzy]

I forget the award show, but seeing the head guy of Napster (pre-iPod music-sharing site) come out wearing a Metallica shirt was awesome.

Ah, Napster. I miss it—it introduced me to a lot of bands that I wouldn't have heard otherwise (and lead to me buying their albums) and allowed me to track down out of production songs. Without it, we wouldn't have iTunes or other places to purchase digital music.

 

[Stormonu]

All the D20 crash did was reroute traffic away from the questionable 3pp products back to the original publisher (WotC). The market shrinkage was an inevitable killing off of the "everybody and their brother" putting out products and a simple correction that moved individuals back to more "trusted" companies - and the realization that not every game worked best under the d20 engine.

As for Pathfinder, that was the SRD working as intended by Dancey, even if WotC didn't like it. The SRD was created to protect D&D itself from too radical (or too little) of a change that was rejected by the consumer. Basically, if WotC had kept the customer base happy, Pathfinder would have never been a factor. Besides, Pathfinder only exceeded WotC when WotC put a halt on releasing new product, otherwise it was simple an alternative/competitor and could only survive on the perceived quality given to it by consumers.

 

[jasper]

me. 1994 The year I got married, had a kid, bought a house, and some more dice. Have two those still.
I'm.... really sorry to hear about your house and your dice?

The kid is an adult who be 26 In October. Got rid of first wife. DARN I freaking old. Please send large 1 inch dice to old folks home.

 

[Longspeak]

The kid is an adult who be 26 In October. Got rid of first wife. DARN I freaking old. Please send large 1 inch dice to old folks home.

I feel you. My kids are about to be 30 and 27. Still have the wife & most of the dice. I can still see my dice... but I can't carry all the gaming stuff anymore. I have a nice bag I make my son carry to games.


On the TSR front, I wonder how much of TSR's behavior in the day was because of lessons learned of their own. I recall the problems over Deities and Demigods, and the copyright infringement issues, and I recall at least one case where TSR was super gunshy about trademark infringement when my brother was forced to change the name of something in an RPGA adventure because the name was too reminiscnet of "Toys 'R Us" and TSR's legal team was all "No, you have to change it."

So they learn these lessons from that side, and just apply them outwardly willy nilly? Maybe? I dunno, I was pretty young in those days.

 

[Rabulias]

I recall the problems over Deities and Demigods, and the copyright infringement issues

See post #4 in this thread for this link: The True Story of the Cthulhu and Elric Sections Removed from Deities & Demigods
From that it sounds like TSR had nothing to be gunshy about.

 

[Voadam]

See post #4 in this thread for this link: The True Story of the Cthulhu and Elric Sections Removed from Deities & Demigods
From that it sounds like TSR had nothing to be gunshy about.

Which makes the lack of Cthulhu and Melnibone pantheons in the Deities & Demigods PDF more frustrating.

 

[oreofox]

As for Pathfinder, that was the SRD working as intended by Dancey, even if WotC didn't like it. The SRD was created to protect D&D itself from too radical (or too little) of a change that was rejected by the consumer. Basically, if WotC had kept the customer base happy, Pathfinder would have never been a factor. Besides, Pathfinder only exceeded WotC when WotC put a halt on releasing new product, otherwise it was simple an alternative/competitor and could only survive on the perceived quality given to it by consumers.

The only reason Pathfinder did so well as they did, was because WotC was waffling about making an OGL for 4e in time for Paizo to switch over to that. So they had one of their people put together his house rules of 3rd edition and made the Pathfinder game. WotC's marketing and other flubs with 4th Edition helped propel Pathfinder into the #1 spot. Also the fact 4e was such a radical change from 3e didn't help.

WotC has practically made it to where another Pathfinder doesn't happen when the inevitable 6e comes out, unless it's a slight change, like 1e to 2e. They didn't include everything into the SRD like they did with 3e. This is not intending to start an edition war.

 

[rogueattorney]

I think there were two big issues involved in TSR’s actions in the 90s.

The first was simply the newness of the Internet and a lack of understanding of what it was and the potential it had for bringing people with similar interests together.

But the second bigger issue was that I think there was a disconnect between the managers at the tip top of TSR and the gaming world. The top managers at that time came from the publishing world and they treated D&D as a way to create intellectual property. Their main products at the time were campaign worlds and novels to be set in those worlds. They treated the D&D consumers on the internet like publishers of derivative product Much like JK Rowling and her war on Potter fan-fic.

Of course, D&D at its heart is not a work of fiction. It is a game, the main activity of which is having one player create an adventure in which the other players use Magic Missiles and Vorpal Blades, meet Elminster, fight Mind Flayers and explore Waterdeep. The game explicitly asks players to use D&D’s intellectual property to create derivative product and share with other people. That’s the entire point - creating your own characters, dungeons, worlds, etc. derived from the D&D products and then relating these to other people.

So, when D&D players started to use the Internet to do what they’d always done, the managers at TSR who didn’t understand the main activity associated with the products they were selling reacted with hostility. And that’s how you got They Sue Regularly.

The OGL and etc was an effort by WotC - a game company made up of gamers who knew the activity that went along with the products they sold - to regain trust of their customers who’d been alienated by TSR.

 

[GreenTengu]

So deal harshly with that, if you feel it's necessary. It doesn't follow that you have to deal equally harshly with the other 95% of the fan works that are/were out there. The stuff you're describing certainly existed (indeed, there's more of it, and more easily accessible, now than there was then), but it was only a small fraction of what got C&D letters.

I would venture to guess that, as the internet was new in those days, that TSR simply hired a law firm to slap down copyright infringement and the law firm was quite zealous in sending out such letters as they would ultimately get paid based on how many cases they generated.

It seems like TSR only had so many employees at the time and the idea that an executive or even an employee would spend their time scouring the internet to find any potential cases of infringement and send out those letters seems unlikely.... unless they hired an employee whose entire job was to do just that and the only way they could keep their job was to keep sending out letters to any potential violators.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While I wouldn't rule out an in-house lawyer (has anyone come across the actual name on the Cease & Desist letters other than Rob Repp?), it's entirely likely that yes, the lawyer(s) just didn't understand the internet and didn't understand the company they were representing.

I would venture to guess that, as the internet was new in those days, that TSR simply hired a law firm to slap down copyright infringement and the law firm was quite zealous in sending out such letters as they would ultimately get paid based on how many cases they generated.