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

[BOZ]

three cheers to cardboard crack for saving D&D!

 

[Zaruthustran]

I switched to Vampire.

-z

 

[MerricB]

three cheers to cardboard crack for saving D&D!

And hopefully plastic crack will keep it alive!

(Having another successful product tied to the D&D brand is a good thing, IMO).

Cheers!

 

[Keith Strohm]

Inspired by MerricB's thread "TSR's Comics and the Buyout by WotC", I started thinking about the dark days of 1997 when TSR was floundering and stopped printing new products for a period of roughly 7 months. Even if you had a subscription to Dragon or Dungeon, nothing came for months.

At any rate, I know that there's a lot of folks here that are D&D fans from way back, and I'm wondering what happened in those days for you. How did you get your D&D fix? Did you just keep playing the game, unphased by the lack of new material? Did you use it as an opportunity to check out some of the other games on the market?

I was coming in to work every day in Lake Geneva wondering--along with my carpool mates--whether or not my key card would actually work that day. :O

Seriously, those were some very stressful times. The camaraderie and friendship in the office were the things that really kept me going. Seems like a lifetime ago.

Keith Strohm
Vice President
Paizo Publishing, LLC

 

[Silver Moon]

I'm wondering what happened in those days for you.

Hell, that's where I was in those days. My wife (Kriskrafts) and I were the RGPA Coordinators for two of New England's largest gaming conventions when the bottom fell out. For the first Con we actually got the modules, but only because we paid for them very early on. None of the authors of these official modules ever got paid for their efforts, I know, my wife and I had written two of them. No product arrived from TSR to use for prizes, and we actually had to do a last minute walk through the dealer's room and buy up whatever we could get on a shoestring budget to give out. By the time the Con rolled around the rumor mill was running wild about TSR going under, and as RPGA coordinators the general public expected us to have all of the answers for them. During the two weeks leading up to the con we called TSR and got nothing but voice mail.

The second con was worse. No new modules were available. We ran about half of the modules that we had run from the other Con again and the rest were ones written for the con that had been submitted to the RGPA for approval but we never heard back, so we pretended they were approved and official. We were verbally beaten up by con attendees wanting to know the status of their RGPA memberships, as well as Dragon, Dungeon and Polyhedron Magazines. Once again we had no product for prizes, but we at least had enough advanced notice this time to hit up other manufacturers and publishers.

 

[Davelozzi]

Keith & Sean,
It's great to have a couple of guys that were actually experiencing this stuff first hand contribute to the discussion.
Thanks!

 

[Treebore]

My group an i kept on playing. We also knew, and know, that the company did not make the game. We do.

 

[RyanD]

At any rate, I know that there's a lot of folks here that are D&D fans from way back, and I'm wondering what happened in those days for you.

Went to TSR.

Determined what needed to be done to get product flowing again.

Got that done.

Ryan

 

[baradtgnome]

'blink' There was something between AD&D and 3rd edition? 'blink'

This may sound a bit familiar. Basic D&D for a short while, AD&D for a very long while becoming house ruled up the wazoo over time. Perfectly happy to continue on indefinitely. 2e held no power over us. It was alien and unnatural. A thing best left alone in the abyssal pits that spawned it. Unearthed Arcana was the last purchase, and it only added a few of our house rules and some spells. However, over time, the trouble began....

Several of the old players stopped playing. Heresy you say! Couple lost interest and one (the other DM) moved away. Fell below critical mass. Tried to fill the gaps with our fledgling young ones, but it was not the same. We hungered for an adult game. In that last terrible year B.E.N. (Before Eric Noah's website) we played maybe six times. And it was hard to find new players. I ached to game, but I couldn't get the group together and my craving could only be assuaged by continuing to build upon my home brew. My campaign went unused, my fantasy milieu become despondent.

Then I came upon a web page rising out of the obscurity of that mass of millions of monkeys typing what we call the web. Eric Noah to the rescue! And he brought glad tidings, and a fun web site with a community. And then the teaser! How to start playing 3E now! I was shocked, there right on my screen were many of our house rules almost verbatim! Dare I hope, perhaps there is salvation! I can hardly bring my self to type about it, my hands shaking like this...

So anyway. The renewed interest means I was able to find some more players. I like the new rules better. But I didn't and don't need them. I needed players. We could have house ruled for another generation. So really the beginning of the dark days were much earlier, when the hobby stopped bringing in new players. Perhaps that year just brought it home. Remember that when we whine about T$R and WoTC greedy ways. They bring players. We need players. now get outta here and roll some dice you kids

 

[diaglo]

Went to TSR.

Determined what needed to be done to get product flowing again.

Got that done.

Ryan

Best Post by someone in the business EVAR.