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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8692111" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Well yes, obviously. When a company is tiny and just starting out records tend to be more minimal, and they get more extensive as they get bigger, employ actual accountants, get more organized, etc. Before you hire an actual accountant, obviously the founders have all that documentation, because they're doing the accounting work.But you're saying that AFTER a company has gotten bigger and started using professional accountants, you still expect the owners to personally retain all the earliest records, rather than giving them to the accounting and finance team once those are formed? I wouldn't be shocked if Gygax or the Blumes had retained copies, but the idea that TSR's actual legal and accounting departments wouldn't have the most complete records going back to the beginning seems highly implausible to me.  Especially once they started overextending their credit and the banks got involved in oversight and putting people on the board in the early 80s.And again, we've seen actual copies of some of these documents (like the original TSR publishing and royalties contract with Gygax and Arneson for D&D) in books like Game Wizards and places like Jon's blog.Yes, Peterson in particular is famous for his devotion to primary source documentation. He's been criticized more than I think is reasonable for not relying more on oral accounts in writing his books.A lot of older fans have opined that he should do more just asking surviving TSR staffers and early creatives like Rob Kuntz. And it's clear that he has interviewed and spoken with most of those people, but that he strongly prefers to reference contemporaneous documentation in his books wherever possible, rather than relying on someone's memory forty or fifty years after the event.Riggs I've only learned of recently, and I don't know if his standards are as rigorous, but the folks I know who've seen him speak at GaryCon and followed his podcast and material so far seem to think he's credible. I don't know for sure yet.But I do know, based on reading Peterson's work and seeing the materials that he's shared, that original paper documentation for quite a lot of stuff clearly does still exist. And in places other than Gary Gygax's personal effects and records. In the hands of private collectors and, most especially, in WotC's collection of TSR documents.Yes, the files of TSR's legal and accounting departments. Which were overseen by Williams during the period when she was RUNNING the business, so I'm baffled by the idea that she wouldn't have access to the records of the company for which she was CEO.  The period during which she could have just walked into those file archives and perused those records at will was more than ten years.Anyway, leaving that aside, the copies of those records would, in the normal course of business and acquisition, have been handed over to WotC in 1997. And retained ever since. What makes you think they weren't?Ok, so you're saying you know people who used to work at TSR (or friends thereof) who have retained copies of some of the financial records, but who are telling you that none of the folks writing books about TSR in the last few years have approached them.Even if that is true, doesn't that make it MORE plausible that Ben Riggs could have met OTHER such people who ALSO retained records?Apologies if this feels like going in circles, but some of the assertions you've made honestly confuse and baffle me. Others seem to indicate that you didn't read or understand parts of what I shared with you, so obviously there's a disconnect happening.Who ever said we don't want to know the sources? There's a difference between not CARING about the sources, and reading the author's words and acknowledging the reality that he claims he's protecting the confidentiality of his sources (like you're doing with yours). Whether or not we believe him, if he's stated that, badgering him for those sources is obviously not going to be a productive exercise.</blockquote>

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