What did you do during TSR's dark days of '97

[Emirikol]

When TSR went bankrupt under Lorraine Williams, I was sure that it was the end of the hobby. TSR had been putting out absolute products for too long and most of the creative minds and normal gamers had already left the hobby (some of us came back).

I remember, I was camping when I read the issue of Dragon where they said, "Thanks for the memories folks. We won't be produced anymore."

I guess with the cancellation of Greyhawk already at the time, the world of D&D couldn't have sunk any lower. Most of us just tried to support Greyhawk as best we could online (you'll still find a LOT of resources out there).

TSR had pretty much wasted their resources on that Buck Rogers game and all the supplements that went with that, as well as production of the massive Birthright line. They just didn't have a clue what gamers wanted..and gamers didn't know what they wanted either. I remember the pessimistic, cheap-ass gamers griping about the cost of products (not that the quality was worth it either). Now that we all have $90,000 jobs it's no longer an issue

Man, was I ever glad when WotC picked it up and turned it into a 'real' hobby again.

jh





..

 

[mearls]

Oddly enough, TSR's near death is what got me back into gaming. I had given up on RPGs around 1993. The stuff coming out for 2e didn't interest me that much, and I think the last new game that I had been interested in playing was Shadowrun. When I left for college in '93, I gave up on RPGs after fall term. I still posted to Usenet once in a while, but I went about 4 or 5 years without buying a new book and playing perhaps once a year. I ran a short campaign in the summer of 1996, but it was easily the worst game I ever created and it really soured me on RPGs.

When I heard that TSR almost went under, I started poking around at RPGs again out of a morbid curiosity. Deadlands came out that year, I believe, and I liked it enough to try to run it. Unfortunately, all the gamers I knew were hardcore, Vampire or nothing types, so it didn't take off. After about another 2 years away from gaming, I started going to cons, met some people through the RPGA, signed up to write for the Living Greyhawk campaign, got a pre-release copy of the 3e rules, and started writing d20 stuff.

So, in summary, the death of TSR is what got me back into gaming in a sort of indirect way.

 

[Davelozzi]

How could this have been "news" to anyone? WotC started out making supplements for roleplaying games, supplements that were very obviously originally developed for D&D and later genericized.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but in those days, I didn't hang out much on message boards, and I was really the only gamer that I knew (other than my players) so I only knew WotC as the company that made M:tG. And the only industry news that I got was asking the guy at the store "why haven't there been any new releases lately?" and he answered "people are buying card games instead". In short, I wasn't really as clued into the industry as I am now (through this and other news sites).

 

[pogre]

I was out of 2e - so no effects.

1986-2000 WFRP baby!

 

[WayneLigon]

At the time, I was not getting Dragon regularly, and I was playing mainly HERO or .. hmm, something else. ShadowRun, or Call of Cthulhu. I didn't even notice TSR's troubles even occurred until I randomly picked up an issue of Dragon that said 'We're Back!'.

 

[Emiricol]

I'm another "I Skipped 2E" guy. Actually, I took a ten year hiatus from gaming, except Battletech the board game for a couple of years in there. I came back when 3E came out

 

[Grazzt]

I continued to play in my hybrid 1e-2e AD&D campaign.
Same ol' same ol'.

Yeppers. That's what we did as well. Wouldnt matter if D&D "ended" tomorrow, we'd still play. We've got all the stuff we need (OD&D/1e/2e/3e/3.5 rules, imagination, dice, etc.).

 

[Maggan]

WFRP and others

I was out of 2e - so no effects.

1986-2000 WFRP baby!

Well, I was laying a lot of WFRP instead of AD&D 2nd, so I likewise missed the whole TSR thing. Also in Sweden D&D has never been the dominant RPG, so we had our own crisis, we might call it the Target Crisis, where our dominant producer collapsed (and weren't saved). If there hadn't been a 3e... hmmm... I'd have stuck with WFRP as a basic fix for fantasy rpg:ing... and then I would have started picking up OD&D stuff, and running old classics.

M.

 

[Desdichado]

I was just getting ready to start my MBA program, was having my daughter (second kid) and so was buying (but not playing) a little bit of Werewolf material. I hadn't been particularly interested in D&D in ten years already at that point, and only later did I hear about TSR and their financial troubles. And I didn't get interested in D&D again at all until 3e was on the verge of coming out. The first D&D game I had played in, gosh, at least 12 years was a 3e game. With that, I realized what I had been missing by being an armchair World of Darkness gamer, and jumped into it full bore.

 

[diaglo]

...We've got all the stuff we need (OD&D...

you can say that again.