What if... WotC hadn't bought TSR?

[Melan]

Someone would have picked it up. I mean, if you walk up to your average clueless Joe Everybody and ask him about his opinion on "roleplaying", he will just stand confused and say "Huh?". On the other hand, if you ask him about "Dungeons&Dragons", he will at least say something like "Oh yeah, is that the game you play in steam tunnels?"

White Wolf might have bought D&D, although I suspect Forgotten Realms would have been picked up by someone else - it is IMHO the second most valuable license in fantasy roleplaying.

Let's see... In an alternate reality, WW puts out 3e (maybe even the OGL), with all the demons, nasties, rule changes and so on. I bet the screaming would have reached the heavens. And I would have been laughing!

 

[Henry]

I look at it differently.

COULD anyone have bought them at the time??? Reading Ryan Dancey's essay on hs visit to TSR in 1997 reveals a lot. Namely, in order to shore up the rights, D&D's copyrights and trademarks had been tied up in very nasty knots:

"...And I read the details of the Random House distribution agreement; an agreement that TSR had used to support a failing business and hide the fact that TSR was rotten at the core. I read the entangling bank agreements that divided the copyright interests of the company as security against default, and realized that the desperate arrangements made to shore up the company's poor financial picture had so contaminated those rights that it might not be possible to extract Dungeons & Dragons from the clutches of lawyers and bankers and courts for years upon end."

Wizards of the Coast in 1997 (and today) have one hell of a legal staff. This is a staff that knows their stuff. I have to ask whether White Wolf, or Steve Jackson Games, or any other publisher at the time had both the cash on hand and the legal fire-power for hire to settle all of the convoluted agreements, securities, and contracts, in order to take claim to the property.

If so, we would have seen D&D live. If not, we would have seen D&D do what countless other properties have done over the decades: languish in legal limbo, with the actual owners wanting to take no chance with the property, and no one wanting to take the incentive to try.

Sometimes, it takes a combination of things to make an event happen, and I have to wonder if those things were necessarily present anywhere else in 1997.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

:: looking into crystal ball ::

Bruce Cordell would have been out of work, gone on to presue a physics degree, and have discovered warp drive, tabletop fusion, and kiwi-flavored licorice by mid-2005.

... but, frankly, isn't 3e worth it?

:: looks into his crystal ball ::

Sean K. Reynolds would have packed up and moved to Montana and opened up a llama ranch.

Monte Cook would have been out of work and spent the rest of his life begging on the streets of Seattle for bottles of Booze.

I would have had a GPA at least one point higher, I would have been accepted at USC or Cornell, and I'd be studying to be an international diplomat right now instead of stuck at a Lutheran college in South Dakota taking overstuffed pre-law classes.

 

[jester47]

WotC's purchase of TSR was a flippen miracle. The only reason we still have D&D today is because Peter Adkinson cared about D&D enough and had good lawyers, Ryan Dancy and Pikachu.

Its that last one that made it all possible.

In fact the OGL is probably a result of that situation. The OGL makes sure D&D survives in some form even if the same things were to get as bad at WotC as they got at TSR.

Adkinson and Dancy had a lot of foresight on that one.

Now its unstoppable. I think the "platnium age" of gaming will continue for a while (even if the economy gets worse).

Aaron.

 

[Xeriar]

I look at it differently.

COULD anyone have bought them at the time??? Reading Ryan Dancey's essay on hs visit to TSR in 1997 reveals a lot. Namely, in order to shore up the rights, D&D's copyrights and trademarks had been tied up in very nasty knots:

Wizards of the Coast in 1997 (and today) have one hell of a legal staff. This is a staff that knows their stuff. I have to ask whether White Wolf, or Steve Jackson Games, or any other publisher at the time had both the cash on hand and the legal fire-power for hire to settle all of the convoluted agreements, securities, and contracts, in order to take claim to the property.

If so, we would have seen D&D live. If not, we would have seen D&D do what countless other properties have done over the decades: languish in legal limbo, with the actual owners wanting to take no chance with the property, and no one wanting to take the incentive to try.

Sometimes, it takes a combination of things to make an event happen, and I have to wonder if those things were necessarily present anywhere else in 1997.

Yeah.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Largely, IIRC, it was tied up between them and their printer. WotC probably let go of a good deal of things for this reason as well.

I don't think SJG or White Wolf had the money, though I suspect they could probably get it on loan. I wouldn't fault them and say they couldn't do it, they have to have some smart people working for them or they wouldn't have lasted so long.

 

[Kilmore]

It would have been sold to somebody. I think it's probable that the Dark One had plundered the franchise enough that she felt it no longer profitable to hang on to, and perhaps she could make a buck off of selling it. WOTC was there to (thankfully) take it off her hands.

 

[seankreynolds]

Hasbro would have bought TSR, and the rounds of layoffs would have started several years earlier. D&D would not be as big as it is now, and you'd probably see a reissuing of the 3E PH, DMG, and MM every year with a few cosmetic changes.

 

[Zappo]

I guess it would have been locked in legal limbo for quite some time. After the horrible mess TSR created, and the terrible T$R poisoned brand identity, I can easily see small companies not wanting to touch D&D with a 3-meters pole.

Maybe another D&D-like fantasy system would have risen.

 

[dave_o]

I sorta resent the stab at White Wolf, but I guess it's in good fun (and deserved, for their main line of WoD).

Anyway.

It'd be nice if WW bought DnD, and did it up as well as they did Exalted.

But I love d20. You can't beat the customizability.

 

[V_Shane]

What if a Japenese Corperation bought TSR? Could you imagine what all the fantasy art would be like now? And you thought Beholders had big eyes

And the Monster Manual would be filled with Pokemon characters eeeeiigghhhg!

whew that was scary.