D&D General Www.tsr.com is dead after all these decades

[marv]

It looks like a couple posters didn't get that memo.


Eh, I started in 86, so I'm not significantly younger than you. I have pleny of nostalgia for the D&D of yesteryear, many of the old products, and even for TSR itself (even if it were post-Gygax). I still don't understand the sentimentality over a domain name, but I guess everyone's got their thing.

Thank you Azzy. Nice post. Perhaps I should have been more clear. It is unfortunate how easy it is for people, even if the same gaming tribe, to quickly turn to outrage on boards like this.

I didn’t think I’d care about the URL either. Perhaps it’s failing was a symbolic end of TSR for me and caused some morning inside me I didn’t know I had. For me 1978 and my very first game still feels like just yeasterday due to the immersive nature of the game.

Your started with 2E, I assume. I still covent my magic item (Ecyclopia Magica) and spell compendium paperback volumes they published near the end of 2E. Completly comprehensive. Wish other editions had them.

 

[Azzy]

Your started with 2E, I assume.

No, 2e was a couple years away when I was introduced to the game. I started with the Mentzer Basic Set, and quickly moved to 1e. When 2e came out, my group played a bastardized version mixing 1e & 2e. I played that until about 96-97 and then came back in 2000 with 3e. Aside from skipping 4e (my group continued to play 3.5), I've continued to play each edition since.

 

[MGibster]

I even have a soft spot for Palladium games. Whatever happened to Palladium....it's a mystery we'll never solve.

 

[marv]

No, 2e was a couple years away when I was introduced to the game. I started with the Mentzer Basic Set, and quickly moved to 1e. When 2e came out, my group played a bastardized version mixing 1e & 2e. I played that until about 96-97 and then came back in 2000 with 3e. Aside from skipping 4e (my group continued to play 3.5), I've continued to play each edition since.

In so many ways 2E was just a clean up and simplification of 1E. So good mix.

 

[Zardnaar]

I played BECMI ten years late in 1993-95 then went to 2E.

 

[wingsandsword]

TSR had a website for no more than a year before they went bankrupt anyway, before that they glommed onto AOL IIRC. They were a bit slow with the web thing. I wasn't online yet then. And their domain pointed to tsrinc to show everyone how soulessly corporate they were. WotC dropped in inc part.

I was just thinking the other day that TSR's website was www.tsrinc.com . . .and wondering what kind of company actually put an "inc" at the end of their domain name. Nowadays it's unthinkable unless that "inc" is really a key part of their brand, even in the 90's it was stuffy and uptight.

It's just interesting that I was musing on the quirk of 1990's TSR using "tsrinc.com" as their webpage was just another way they were painfully out of touch with the internet era.

I think it was thinking about TSR's fan-hostile policies in the 90's before the WotC buyout that made me think of that, about how they seemed to be one of those companies in the mid-to-late 90's that really, seriously did NOT understand how to deal with fans (Paramount was another, they were just about as hostile to Star Trek fan pages circa 1996 and 1997 as TSR was).

 

[Stormonu]

If there had been actual content on the TSR website, I could totally agree about saving that content and auctioning the site off to keep up. With it having just been a redirect (and looking like that's been the case since at least 1997), I'm fine with it going back into the wild for someone to reuse. Though I wouldn't be against someone putting up an internet TSR museum (something like the Acaeum - The Acaeum), I'd be all for them reusing the TSR domain.

I'm 50 now, and started playing back in about '80, long before all the digital stuff started to appear, so that may be why I don't have as much nostalgia for the URL, forgive me. But I've seen the game go through a lot of change and I'm just happy that where the game has settled right now is something I really, really enjoy. Really, when 4E came out, I thought the company was through with grognards like me, with 5E I feel like I'm back in the family again. And there's an amazing number of on-line tools (by the publishing company no less!) that takes a lot of the sting and prep time out of keeping up a modern game.

BTW, 3E did have something similar to the 2E compendiums - there was a Magic Item Compendium, Spell Compendium and a Rules Compendium. I have them in storage, but I'm not 100% sure they were quite as exhaustive as the 2E versions.

 

[Azzy]

BTW, 3E did have something similar to the 2E compendiums - there was a Magic Item Compendium, Spell Compendium and a Rules Compendium. I have them in storage, but I'm not 100% sure they were quite as exhaustive as the 2E versions.

Oh, no, they were nowhere close. 2e's compendiums were multiple volumes for each topic and collected everything that was printed in a prior source—including Dragon magazine—back to the very begining). I kick myself for not ever picking them up.

 

[Orius]

I was just thinking the other day that TSR's website was www.tsrinc.com . . .and wondering what kind of company actually put an "inc" at the end of their domain name. Nowadays it's unthinkable unless that "inc" is really a key part of their brand, even in the 90's it was stuffy and uptight.

It's just interesting that I was musing on the quirk of 1990's TSR using "tsrinc.com" as their webpage was just another way they were painfully out of touch with the internet era.

I think it was thinking about TSR's fan-hostile policies in the 90's before the WotC buyout that made me think of that, about how they seemed to be one of those companies in the mid-to-late 90's that really, seriously did NOT understand how to deal with fans (Paramount was another, they were just about as hostile to Star Trek fan pages circa 1996 and 1997 as TSR was).

Like I said soulless.

Now, TSR is a pretty short string for an URL, and there's the possibility that someone bought out the rights before TSR finally roused itself to get a website. But TSR was the kind of company that went out of its way to slap the (C)s, (R)s, and TMs all over everything, so throwing Inc. on the end of their name was just more of the same. Sure, it's important for a company to protect its branding, but TSR would shamelessly sink to Disneyesque levels on these things.

 

[wingsandsword]

Oh, no, they were nowhere close. 2e's compendiums were multiple volumes for each topic and collected everything that was printed in a prior source—including Dragon magazine—back to the very begining). I kick myself for not ever picking them up.

The 2e spell compendiums are the 2e sourcebooks I still use the most.

I'll sometimes go to an old Realms book for some lore, or some book for setting material, but the only "crunch" books from the AD&D era I go to are those.

Yeah, you have to convert and update them to fit them into 3.x (or later editions), but they are an absolute goldmine, the mother lode, of spell ideas. ~25 years of every single official spell for D&D (even pretty dang obscure stuff) all in 7 volumes.