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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9652835" data-attributes="member: 7035894">Obvious to you and me and obvious to a woman who literally came from a family fortune founded on Buck Rogers IP, and who really didn't understand the hobby she bought into, are two different things. I imagine that from her perspective, it would make sense that these nerd things would go together.As I've already stated, Williams' seeming disinterest in getting to understand her product and its fan base was a pretty massive business failure. I just don't think it was at all unethical to use the company she owned to keep pushing the IP that she owned. Just myopic and futile.And even there, Buck Rogers isn't why TSR went under. After they bought it, WotC commisioned a forensic review of its finances and cited the main reason being that it was essentially splitting its fan base with way too many product lines, mostly for AD&D, all while essentially using the Random House deal to build up more and more debt. A practice, incidentally, that started in the Gygax/Blume regime and was already a problem then, so Williams really should have known better. She probably did and felt like she had no other option - TSR basically survived those last few years by repeatedly kicking the can down the road until there was no more road.Ultimately, I think Williams was trapped and not the right person for the job, at all, though she managed to find enough revenue streams to keep TSR going long enough for someone who understood the business to finally buy it out. I give her credit for that - I really think she did save TSR in the 80s.</blockquote>

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