What if. . .WotC never bought TSR?
- Thread starter wingsandsword
- Start date
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
mythusmage said:
What is the Dille Family Trust?
Also, many posters said that SJ games might have bought D&D... I'm not really sure that they would have been interested in that (even if they had the cash).
trancejeremy
Adventurer
Actually, it's my understanding (though I'm not a lawyer so take it as a grain of salt) that if TSR had actually gone bankrupt, their various games rights would have gone back to the original authors.
However, they probably would have sold to just about anybody for anything before that had happened.
However, they probably would have sold to just about anybody for anything before that had happened.
King of Old School
First Post
My "experience" is that there are fewer companies producing less product. FASA is gone, replaced by a company that doesn't produce RPGs but licenses its properties to a company that produces product at a fraction of its predecessor's rate. WEG went bankrupt, was bought by a company that produced little during its tenure, and then sold to an enthusiast who is still trying to get his footing. SJG produces less product. Palladium is pumping out exactly the same product for exactly the same market demographic as the mid-90s. AEG just more-or-less closed up shop on its RPG production wing. Pinnacle produces product at a snail's pace compared to the height of Deadlands' popularity. R. Talsorian is all but dead. Dream Pod 9 is all but dead.BardStephenFox said:
There's still D&D, and there's still White Wolf. Pretty much every other company, d20 or not, will tell you that right now is one of the toughest periods for the RPG industry.
And yet, those two companies consistently are listed in the top 5 of sales by every major ranking, credible or not. That's why we don't use anecdotal evidence...
WEG went bankrupt because the owner used the company's profits to shore up his parents' faltering shoe import business, thus driving his own company into Chapter 11. They would have subsequently lost the license in any case.
I think Mike Pondsmith would have found Microsoft's job offer hard to resist even in a universe where Wizards never bought TSR.
KoOS
BSF
Explorer
However the actual finacial state of many companies does not necessarily reflect the full "popularity" of RPG's.
Mongoose Publishing and Green Ronin are just two companies that have come along. Bastion Press, Necromancer Games, Malhavoc, Ronin Arts and others exist as well. Yes, most of these companies primarily support D20. Yes, many of them have also seen a decline in sales. But that does not necessarily correlate to a loss of popularity of RPGs.
Bad business decisions can kill a company. Fluctuations with the market can adversely affect a company. Loss of interest can kill a company. Players can go years without buying new product while still introducing new players to the game. In the '80s I ran a game with 7 people and only 2 of us had a PHB. I have a father-son team at my table that shares resources. My wife uses my books. One of my friends wants to introduce a new player to gaming and she doesn't have any intention of buying a book at this time.
I can refer to people I know that think quite highly of certain companies, but are not in a position to support those companies with buying new product. Or they might love older products, but newer products don't fill a need for the person at the time. Or they might love a new product from both company X & Y, but can afford to only buy one of the two products. There are any number of factors that contribute to the sales for product that don't necessarily reflect on the popularity of the games that are still being played.
Are we discussing the fiscal health of the gaming industry or are we discussing the fluctuations in popularity of gaming? You don't want to lend any credibility to "Dancyist propoganda" and we understand that anecdotal evidence is sketchy, at best. How are we then to quantify how popular gaming really is?
I believe the two questions are related. Obviously if the popularity of gaming wanes too much, it will affect the industry. But the industry can fail for other reasons as well.
Mongoose Publishing and Green Ronin are just two companies that have come along. Bastion Press, Necromancer Games, Malhavoc, Ronin Arts and others exist as well. Yes, most of these companies primarily support D20. Yes, many of them have also seen a decline in sales. But that does not necessarily correlate to a loss of popularity of RPGs.
Bad business decisions can kill a company. Fluctuations with the market can adversely affect a company. Loss of interest can kill a company. Players can go years without buying new product while still introducing new players to the game. In the '80s I ran a game with 7 people and only 2 of us had a PHB. I have a father-son team at my table that shares resources. My wife uses my books. One of my friends wants to introduce a new player to gaming and she doesn't have any intention of buying a book at this time.
I can refer to people I know that think quite highly of certain companies, but are not in a position to support those companies with buying new product. Or they might love older products, but newer products don't fill a need for the person at the time. Or they might love a new product from both company X & Y, but can afford to only buy one of the two products. There are any number of factors that contribute to the sales for product that don't necessarily reflect on the popularity of the games that are still being played.
Are we discussing the fiscal health of the gaming industry or are we discussing the fluctuations in popularity of gaming? You don't want to lend any credibility to "Dancyist propoganda" and we understand that anecdotal evidence is sketchy, at best. How are we then to quantify how popular gaming really is?
I believe the two questions are related. Obviously if the popularity of gaming wanes too much, it will affect the industry. But the industry can fail for other reasons as well.
King of Old School said:
"We" don't? I wish. (Gizmo scrolls for footnotes....umm....no).
Ok, so obviously this is one of those edition-war posts masquerading as something about RPG sales. Mid-90s RPG material is the worst material that was ever produced for a game since people carved their own chess sets out of blocks of mammoth tusk. My opinion on this is consistently ranked in the top 3 by every major opinion verification authority out there, credible or not. One can naturally assume that RPG sales will reinforce my opinions on value.
Nikosandros said:
The Dille Family Trust is composed of the descendents of the man who created Buck Rogers. One time president of TSR, Lorraine Williams, is a member of the Dille Family Trust. Essentially, the DFT was sponsoring TSR, providing financial support. It was when the DFT withdraw its support that TSR's decline became a collapse. For all intents and purposes it was pressure from the Dille Family Trust and Wizards of the Coast that led to TSR's sale to Wizards.
harmyn
First Post
gizmo33 said:
As for worst game period ever, that is a matter of opinion, not fact and you do acknowledge it as such. To refute your opinion I give you White Wolf games (innovative and popular), Shadowrun's expansion, d6 Star Wars massive expansion, and a boom of books from SJ Games making for an amazingly huge reference library for gaming if you wanted to pony up the cash. Many lesser companies were about and have come and went much like current companies do. Only AD&D was beginning to hit into difficult times (and then only in the later 90's did it become a BIG problem). The internet was as saturated and gaming wasn't as in-your-face online as it is now, and so we do see it more now than before. Think of it like statistics on violence, teen pregnancy, and crime. Their lower now than decades ago, but everyone is more freaked out and worried now. Gotta love the media.
The above statement is not meant to argue that sales were better then than now, just that the games market was different back then.
As to the original post's topic
Steve Jackson would NOT have bought D&D/AD&D of that I am sure. You must remember that they are typically a company of between 18 and 25 full time employees in their games offices (mostly editors) who work a great deal with reliabe freelance writers (often on a recurring basis) to produce their books. Only at the height of a bankruptcy liquidation would they have had the liquid assets available for such a move. And given their own financial woes they had a time a wee bit later (bad accountant at the turn of the decade) it would have been very hard on them.
White Wolf might have bought them, but I don't know about that either. They were going through their own corporate shakedowns at the time.
I do believe that gaming would be very different. I think that for better or worse Palladium would have streamlined some of their rules a bit and expanded their sales base. Possibly even a complete relaunch of Rifts or something wholely new.
West End Games would have still gone belly-up and they would probably be somewhere near where they are now, but the game would be greatly expanded because its a flexible system and wouldn't be in the d20 shadow.
7th Seas/Legends of the Five Rings would probably still be around.
I doubt there would be any single massive giant like the d20 brand is now. And all the really great talents in game design would have probably developed something else. Maybe even rpg's licensed from console/computer games as a reversing trend? Just imagine the following --- Fallout, World of Warcraft, Ultima, and Sims all as licensed rpg's (the last as something from the ghost of Avalon Hill no doubt).
Similar Threads
