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Who Shot Elminster? No, It's the DALLAS RPG!
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<blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 8598463" data-attributes="member: 6669048"><p>This game is surprisingly important in the history of the industry. I'm going to start this off by saying these are all from first, second, and third hand accounts so put the words "allegedly" and "reportedly" as appropriate.</p><p></p><p>Simulations Publications Inc. aka SPI was a pretty big deal in the 1970s wargaming area and going head-to-head with Avalon Hill when this "roleplaying" thing started to take over. They were still strong in the market because they were making several magazines that were popular including Strategy & Tactics and Ares. But they wanted to get in on the RPG market and, taking a look around, saw a hole. TSR had fantasy down with the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing while Game Designer's Workshop had sci-fi locked with Traveller...but there weren't any for drama.</p><p></p><p>So SPI licensed Dallas to make an RPG because the television show was huge and high on melodrama, which seemed a good fit for a roleplaying game trying to stand out in the market. With RPGs slowly going more mainstream, it seemed like a good idea since other companies were focused more on pulpy genres and Dallas might tap into a large market that the other companies were ignoring. So how did SPI get the money to license one of the biggest hits on television? Venture capital firms! Yes, they existed before the internet. They got investments from a couple of venture capitalists and went hugely into debt to them in order to print Dallas.</p><p></p><p>So they took out the big loans (I've heard figures ranging from $150,000 to $600,000 but most settle more around $220,000 to $400,000) and shipped their big game that was going to put them on the map for tabletop roleplaying! To say it flopped would be an understatement. They printed 80,000 copies, which the art director later said was 79,999 too many. So SPI was stuck with a bunch of unsold Dallas games and a huge amount of debt and no real way to dig themselves out of it.</p><p></p><p>That's when Gary Gygax and TSR steps in to save the day! They offer to loan SPI the money to pay back the debt owed to the venture capital firms guaranteed by SPI's product stock and intellectual property. The deal was a godsend for SPI because, while they would be flat broke after the checks cleared and ink dried on the contracts, but being broke was better than being crushed under debt with no way to print any new products that might get them out of it. It wasn't great, but it was a light at the end of the tunnel.</p><p></p><p>Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just another train. It wasn't even weeks after the deal for the loan closed that TSR called in the debt. SPI had to pay them back or TSR would claim ownership of all unsold stock of all their products and rights to everything. They obviously didn't have the money - I mean that was the entire reason they took the loan from TSR - so TSR claimed all of SPI's assets.</p><p></p><p>This is also the first time TSR's business practices royally pissed off their fanbase, as TSR started printing Strategy & Tactics but refused to honor any subscriptions. They claimed they only bought the <em>assets </em>of SPI but did not by the <em>company</em>, so therefore were not responsible for any of their debts or legal obligations. Didn't matter if people paid for Strategy & Tactics years in advance, they had to buy them all over again if they wanted to get them from TSR. As you might guess, this annoyed many people. I've seen someone claim that the response to this was the first use of T$R to mockingly reference the company's greedy nature, but I haven't been able to confirm it.</p><p></p><p>TSR realized after they "bought" SPI that the wargame market was in full collapse (mostly because D&D was taking it over), so instead of getting a major company in that space so they could own both of the largest segments in hobbyist gaming, they ended up with a company whose assets were all in a style of gaming that wasn't selling anymore. TSR released a few games that were almost ready but SPI couldn't afford to print, then slowly canceled everything except Strategy & Tactics. They eventually sold everything off by the late 80s with almost everything going to Decision Games.</p><p></p><p>One final interesting note: There's debate on whether this is the first licensed tabletop RPG or whether it was the Heritage Models Star Trek game, but it mostly boils down to pedantic nitpicking over whether something was a roleplaying game that also had wargame rules or a wargame that happened to have some roleplaying elements.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Abstruse, post: 8598463, member: 6669048"] This game is surprisingly important in the history of the industry. I'm going to start this off by saying these are all from first, second, and third hand accounts so put the words "allegedly" and "reportedly" as appropriate. Simulations Publications Inc. aka SPI was a pretty big deal in the 1970s wargaming area and going head-to-head with Avalon Hill when this "roleplaying" thing started to take over. They were still strong in the market because they were making several magazines that were popular including Strategy & Tactics and Ares. But they wanted to get in on the RPG market and, taking a look around, saw a hole. TSR had fantasy down with the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing while Game Designer's Workshop had sci-fi locked with Traveller...but there weren't any for drama. So SPI licensed Dallas to make an RPG because the television show was huge and high on melodrama, which seemed a good fit for a roleplaying game trying to stand out in the market. With RPGs slowly going more mainstream, it seemed like a good idea since other companies were focused more on pulpy genres and Dallas might tap into a large market that the other companies were ignoring. So how did SPI get the money to license one of the biggest hits on television? Venture capital firms! Yes, they existed before the internet. They got investments from a couple of venture capitalists and went hugely into debt to them in order to print Dallas. So they took out the big loans (I've heard figures ranging from $150,000 to $600,000 but most settle more around $220,000 to $400,000) and shipped their big game that was going to put them on the map for tabletop roleplaying! To say it flopped would be an understatement. They printed 80,000 copies, which the art director later said was 79,999 too many. So SPI was stuck with a bunch of unsold Dallas games and a huge amount of debt and no real way to dig themselves out of it. That's when Gary Gygax and TSR steps in to save the day! They offer to loan SPI the money to pay back the debt owed to the venture capital firms guaranteed by SPI's product stock and intellectual property. The deal was a godsend for SPI because, while they would be flat broke after the checks cleared and ink dried on the contracts, but being broke was better than being crushed under debt with no way to print any new products that might get them out of it. It wasn't great, but it was a light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just another train. It wasn't even weeks after the deal for the loan closed that TSR called in the debt. SPI had to pay them back or TSR would claim ownership of all unsold stock of all their products and rights to everything. They obviously didn't have the money - I mean that was the entire reason they took the loan from TSR - so TSR claimed all of SPI's assets. This is also the first time TSR's business practices royally pissed off their fanbase, as TSR started printing Strategy & Tactics but refused to honor any subscriptions. They claimed they only bought the [I]assets [/I]of SPI but did not by the [I]company[/I], so therefore were not responsible for any of their debts or legal obligations. Didn't matter if people paid for Strategy & Tactics years in advance, they had to buy them all over again if they wanted to get them from TSR. As you might guess, this annoyed many people. I've seen someone claim that the response to this was the first use of T$R to mockingly reference the company's greedy nature, but I haven't been able to confirm it. TSR realized after they "bought" SPI that the wargame market was in full collapse (mostly because D&D was taking it over), so instead of getting a major company in that space so they could own both of the largest segments in hobbyist gaming, they ended up with a company whose assets were all in a style of gaming that wasn't selling anymore. TSR released a few games that were almost ready but SPI couldn't afford to print, then slowly canceled everything except Strategy & Tactics. They eventually sold everything off by the late 80s with almost everything going to Decision Games. One final interesting note: There's debate on whether this is the first licensed tabletop RPG or whether it was the Heritage Models Star Trek game, but it mostly boils down to pedantic nitpicking over whether something was a roleplaying game that also had wargame rules or a wargame that happened to have some roleplaying elements. [/QUOTE]
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