D&D General When We Were Wizards: Review of the Completed Podcast!

[Cordwainer Fish]

the absolute graveyard of relationships and friendships left behind this path to wealth and success. The battle of egos. The lawsuits...

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death Hasbro held illimitable dominion over all."

 

[Jahydin]

Very late to this party, but just finished the podcast over the holidays and have all sorts of mixed emotions. I don't think I've ever been more proud and more disappointed in a single person.

Some thoughts:

• Although not dived into deeply, the inference of how creative Gary was and how well respected he was by the team, despite his bad business decisions and overbearing personality, cemented his importance to TSR for me. This was shown by the sense of relief from the design team when he came back to help get new product out (Unearthed Arcana, Legends of Lore, and Oriental Adventures) and also by Rose Estes, who had every right to pop champagne when he was ousted, commenting sadly that she felt like they killed the heart of the company.
• I can't stop thinking about the game's trajectory if Gary wised up sooner on how damaging his Hollywood period was and got back into the trenches with his team, rolled up his sleeves, and channeled all his energy into building back his close relationships and working on his game. Similarly, if he just took the sweet deal Lorraine was offering and did the same.
• Like others have mentioned, I knew about the lavish rockstar lifestyle he lead, but something about hearing it first and second hand in detail really sickened me. The lack of responsibility, morality, and humility was unbearable. Also, hearing Ernie gleefully recount that period gave me the impression he didn't leave that lifestyle by choice...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Rose comes off as the best person to have worked there in that period.

I'm not sure Gary was capable of straightening up and flying right. No matter how creative he might have been, he was always going to be focusing on how he could double-dip on benefitting financially at the expense of everyone who helped him build the brand.

Which is crazy: If the staff was never anyone than members of the Gygax and Arneson families, it would never have grown to what it was at either its TSR or WotC heights.

 

[billd91]

I'm not sure Gary was capable of straightening up and flying right. No matter how creative he might have been, he was always going to be focusing on how he could double-dip on benefitting financially at the expense of everyone who helped him build the brand.

And I doubt he would even think of it as gaining for himself at other people's expense. From everything I've seen, listened to, and read, virtually any gain anybody else could have gotten would have been at his expense in his mind. After all, he was TSR and TSR was him, right? EVERYTHING anybody gained from working for TSR was because of HIM and the game HE wrote. And that's true to some extent because D&D was the cash cow for TSR, but it sure is a self-centered way of looking at things.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And I doubt he would even think of it as gaining for himself at other people's expense. From everything I've seen, listened to, and read, virtually any gain anybody else could have gotten would have been at his expense in his mind. After all, he was TSR and TSR was him, right? EVERYTHING anybody gained from working for TSR was because of HIM and the game HE wrote. And that's true to some extent because D&D was the cash cow for TSR, but it sure is a self-centered way of looking at things.

It's the kind of mindset that ultimately ends up in failure. Unless he could personally do every part of the production supply chain, he was always going to need other people to succeed. That doesn't take anything away from him. And acknowledging that is what makes a good leader and teammate.

 

[piper909]

It's the kind of mindset that ultimately ends up in failure. Unless he could personally do every part of the production supply chain, he was always going to need other people to succeed. That doesn't take anything away from him. And acknowledging that is what makes a good leader and teammate.

I worked at TSR Hobbies in 1980-81 and saw firsthand much of what has been reported since. I will say in brief that by that time (if not long before) Gary's manuscripts were slapdash at best and he left it to the TSR Product Development dept. to churn out a professional game or module. E.g., the GW1 module "Legion of Gold" (I wish I still had my edit-marked copy of this original ms.; sold it to Aaron Leeder back in 1998, now one of the Noble Knight shop owners): this was handed over to the TSR staff designers as a half-baked series of encounters and a crude map and some tables and it was left to designers and developers like Paul Reiche III and myself to flesh this all out into a marketable product (plus the artists, of course). Paul wrote out two of the three mini-adventures on his lonesome and I did the final copy editing and hammering of parts to make it all into a seamless adventure scenario. This was a typical experience of that stage of TSR's creation process. And Gary had to put Luke's name on the credits despite his being a child at the time and his input was some "ideas" about, you know, some guys in golden armor being big bad enemies. Nothing against Luke, he was something like 8 or 10 at the time, but in no way was he any sort of co-writer of this module back in 1980-81. And handing off rough notes or ideas like this was part and parcel of Gary Gygax' modus operandi by that time. It wasn't a new habit; only by this time, he had a staff of underlings to finish up his half-ideas. (And he had the clout to make them toe the line, or else.) -- Kevin Hendryx, as heard on those "When We Were Wizards" podcasts.

 

[Jahydin]

I worked at TSR Hobbies in 1980-81 and saw firsthand much of what has been reported since. I will say in brief that by that time (if not long before) Gary's manuscripts were slapdash at best and he left it to the TSR Product Development dept. to churn out a professional game or module.

This makes me think I might have misinterpreted their desire to have Gary around. Maybe it was more to clarify what he wanted rather than a need for his brilliance.