A brief history of the legendary dumpster fire called TSR | RPG book recap

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[@DaveThaumavore]

ERRATA: Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were not married to each other. TSR was incorporated in 1975. Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Sign up for my newsletter! bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter

[@OldtimerOfSweden]

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman where actually married. Just not to each other. 😁

[@queenannsrevenge100]

@@OldtimerOfSweden- and Tracey and his wife Laura created the iconic Strahd von Zarovich and Ravenloft!

[@TheoEvian]

@@OldtimerOfSweden I remember somehow making the same mistake when writing like a high school literature essay on Dragonlance. My teacher had no idea what I was talking about so nobody noticed anything.

[@nilus2k]

I posted in a seperate comment but Babbages never went out of business. It was restructured and merged with several different companies in the next 5 years and became GameStop. It semantics because is a company the same company’s after a merger but in the GameStop/Babbages case the Babbages investors and leadership stayed in charge for decades after.

[@ttrpg_nthusiast8709]

2:53 This is the second Basic D&D set by Tom Moldvay. You want the blue box with the red dragon for Holmes.

[@reidurbjorn]

Every time I hear about TSR,I just think "Poor Arneson. They did him dirty." Now I'm like "Wow! They did everyone dirty!" Now WotC is trying their damnedest to recreate this bs. I guess it's cyclical.

[@jefffisher1297]

Lorrain Williams...Cynthia Williams, mmmm almost sounds like something fishy..

[@strangeyoungman]

Capitalism, baby. Hasbro is doing what any big company would... just more clumsily.

[@doelbaughman1924]

Yeah, I wanted to say "Poor Gygax", but as you said Arneson got straight the f*k up hosed unfairly.

[@friarlawless]

Interesting how history repeats itself with the recent Hasbro/WOTC Christmas firings.

[@AdamWhistle1]

It's almost as if its endemic of corporate culture.

[@blinkonceonsunday1325]

Yeah, I wonder who's going to buy Hasbro after all these layoffs? Probably Disney. Disney is the borg of the corporate world. "You will be assimilated!"

[@TheLyricalCleric]

Disney will end up doing it too-look at how HBO just cannibalized itself and became “Max” and is now beholden to new owners who don’t respect its long legacy of good productions like The Sopranos and The Wire. Once money and shareholders start dictating terms rather than creativity and quality, the system is doomed.

[@meerkatx]

Pre Xmas layoffs are a corporate ritual, not unique to Hasbro/WotC.

[@satori2890]

Another channel did discuss Hasbro's lack of DnD history and the Lawful Evil Cycle

[@orgixvi3]

This is just tragic. It's literally a miracle that DnD is even as big as it is today.

[@artistpoet5253]

due only to it's fans. if we had found something else to spend our time and money on, D&D might be nothing more than the blip Spellfire was.

[@orgixvi3]

@@artistpoet5253 TTRPGs may not even exist as they do today had it not been for us, our parents, and grandparents.

[@cernunnos_lives]

And no thanks to WOTC. It was 3rd party content creators and people like us (who grew up with it).

[@PalleRasmussen]

Critical Role plays a huge role in that. The series with the kids playing also. And the fact that 5e is easy to introduce people to.

[@whitleypedia]

WOTC did a great job 20 years ago. Not so much now.

[@evanhalverson993]

Yeah, it sounds like TSR didn't support their star employees and failed to pivot when a strategy was failing.

[@GregPrice-ep2dk]

More than that, once Willians took over, they actively turned AGAINST their customer base via bad attitudes and exploitation.

[@Iulian111]

Lorraine Williams was a disaster for D&D and now Cynthia Williams does all her best to live up to that name.

[@mirtos39]

As bad as Lorraine Williams is, she did do some things right. Cynthia Williams not at all.

[@Iulian111]

​@@mirtos39Neah. All the good things that happened happened despite of her, not thanks to her.

[@samurguybriyongtan146]

Gotta say, Cynthia Willams is doing great by corporate standards. Even if the VTT only keeps 10% of their current subscribers, they profit. That means they have monetized the players and are making money by luring folks into the walled garden. It’s more short sighted thinking, though. Yes, they will make money, but it wont grow the hobby, which they need to keep people interested in the long term.

[@Iulian111]

@@samurguybriyongtan146 indefinite growth is unreasonable and hurts the quality of the products because it dilutes them to generic grey goo with a little colouring on top to differentiate them. The 5e Spelljammer is an example of what happens when you get lazy and try to cater to the "wider audience". An approach where such a company focuses on strong products to cultivate a core and slowly grow from there is far more organic and good on the long term. Unfortunately they serve shareholders and not fans, so they have to go for infinite growth. As for the VTT, I don't think it will that successful. She worked in gaming and that industry is full of suits that want to cut corners and get the most out of doing the least possible. 0 passion and respect for the craft and the people that make it happen. It will fail because they are greedy cheapskates and people will understand that this shit is far more limiting than anything their imagination can create for free.

[@cernunnos_lives]

Lol the Curse of the two Williams & a Cock

[@GregPrice-ep2dk]

And the fact that Williams' family owned Buck Rogers and was paid a royalty UP FRONT for each unit printed (NOT sold, PRINTED) had nothing to do with the overprinting through RH...nope, nothing to see there, citizne...

[@theravenousrabbit3671]

TSR had a LOTR rpg on the table and they ignored that?! Oh my god that is... so dumb.

[@Michael-bn1oi]

@@williampalmer8052 No, it is usually a whole board of greedy people who may be smart but don't care *AT ALL* about the product itself. Rarely, if ever, is a single person actually to blame for massive companies screwing up so hard.

[@nifftbatuff676]

LoTR wasn't so popular back then.

[@theravenousrabbit3671]

@@nifftbatuff676 LOTR was the greatest fantasy monolith back then. It is to this day. To say that LOTR doesn't hold massive market sway is ridiculous.

[@shawn7336]

MERPG was brilliant

[@nifftbatuff676]

@@theravenousrabbit3671 The mass market arrived after the movies. Before that the appeal of LotR was way more niche. It is easy to miss this aspect if you were born after 2000.

[@sargonixofur1234]

Gary was clearly Chaotic Neutral when it came to business. Lorraine was Chaotic Evil.

[@John-nf9jn]

Also she was chaotic dumass

[@vonether]

On bit that wasn't covered is that Lorraine also got a license fee for the Buck Rogers' products. With her CEO salary, she was double dipping and adding to TSR's debt. In that way, she was ahead of her time in trying to find ways to squeeze as much out of a company before selling it off as a debt-ridden wreck.

[@Dndditches]

Planescape would never have seen the light of day if TSR was competent. And we would never have gotten the amazing high quality boxed sets of Planescape Dark Sun and Birthright. The financial blunder was a creative golden age for D&D.

[@VictorumGaming]

This!

[@justicar347]

That certainly is part of the irony. Its like a parasite that gives you super strength while slowly killing you.

[@VladamireD]

I mean, we might have, and they might have been better and around longer had TSR had competent leadership not pissing away money and talent left and right and trying to make Buck Rogers a thing again to line their pockets. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those settings (or Ravenloft, which also came out around that same time), it was the business practices of the company that hurt their sales.

[@ElDaumo]

Nice to see WotC continue the tradition of oversaturating the market with mediocre products. They keep the spirit alive!

[@TroySpartan247]

Product after product after product... and the only thing anyone wants to run is Strahd. 😂

[@ElDaumo]

@@TroySpartan247 I also love how everyone excited for running Dragon Heist seems to feel the same kind of frustration when finally getting the hands on it. Really unifies the community

[@MrFrateTrane]

AND! Firing essential creatives at Christmas.

[@TroySpartan247]

@@ElDaumo my time running heist went really well, but I forgot how I fudged it to make it awesome. Actually, I brought back the characters at Level 12-ish to take on xanathar head on

[@AngelusNielson]

@@TroySpartan247 That's not true. I don't even want to play 5e. I'm a pathfinder player.

[@onecalledchuck1664]

The moral of the story: you can only treat your employees, creatives, customers, vendors, publisher and sales channel like shit for decades before selling out to a like-minded company. 😕

[@iremainteague5653]

Well when you put it that way....

[@moderncrusader5128]

Now they should write a book about the acquisition onward. Including the more recent drama regarding WotC

[@DaveThaumavore]

Ben is actively working on that book right now!

[@BobtheOdd]

Williams catches a lot of blame for the mess that was TSR's business decisions, which she earned, but all the leadership there was garbage.

[@mirtos39]

Couldnt agree more.

[@GregPrice-ep2dk]

TSR made a lot of mistakes, but it was because they weren't businessmen. Williams was a frakking VAMPIRE that sucked the life right out of the company.

[@Scarbonac]

@@GregPrice-ep2dk That Bitch shouldn't have been running a lemonade stand, let alone a company like TSR.

[@Sensko]

@@GregPrice-ep2dk What life? The company was about to go tits up when she took over.

[@gonzoengineering4894]

​@@Sensko more soul than life. Pre Williams TSR was a a terminal patient. Post Williams TSR was a a shambling undead abomination

[@RSBurgener]

I knew there was a problem when I got ALL the Dark Sun stuff at a salvage store for maybe ten bucks. I thought it was a great game. In the mid-90's, you could look at all these settings for sale and think "who the hell is playing all of this?!". Maybe the most painful thing for me was watching Ravenloft go from an amazingly detailed set of products, with great art, to one hardback book with about half the effort put into it.

[@stephendavis7327]

The DragonStrike video was the best! "Cleric, heal me with your magic!" "I want to grab his stinger and sting him!" Classic. Gold.

[@kostas225cmp]

Williams may have overseen the company that made all of those classic d&d settings and products that we know and love today, but that doesn't mean she gets credit for it. The writers, artists, editors, game testers, marketers, and hell, even the janitors of their office buildings are the ones responsible for creating the brand through their own hard work and imagination--all of these being people Williams and other heads of TSR mistreated and cheated at every turn so make an extra dime for themselves.

[@theantithesis1]

You left a detail out of the Buck Rogers discount. The acquisition was just about done, so Atkinson was considering what to do with TSR's product lines and one of the first things was to kill the Buck Rogers lines because they didn't sell. And then what you said happened.

[@nilus2k]

The Buck Rogers deal was questionable. Basically Williams family(The Dills) owned the property so TSR licensed it from them. Every product they made, they also had to pay the Dills to publish. So Williams drove TSR into the ground but still profited from the royalty payments. It also came out that TSR prioritized paying royalty payments out first before paying suppliers or employees. Which seems rather telling.

[@MrFrateTrane]

What's truly amazing is over 50 million co-adventures world wide still venture (shoulder to shoulder) into the dark dangerous dungeons of the collective imagination opened by Gary and Dave! RIP you 2 geniuses. Two legged hyenas viciously battling over piles of money will never erase that gift.

[@ajaxplunkett5115]

ERRATA Cont. -- J. Eric Holmes wrote the 1977 D&D Basic set with the Blue cover , the one show was Moldvay 1981.

[@bookbagfox]

Some of this stuff is just unbelievable. I’m amazed they lasted as long as they did.

[@arcady0]

"I'm sorry but Buck Rogers is not going to be a part of the deal." "Oh, how tragic... woe is me, that was so important to us." :P

[@HeavyTopspin]

It really all came down to lack of business sense across the board, most spectacularly in "how about hiring my sister?" rather than headhunting a legitimate candidate. Easy to say in today's world, I know, but considering that the company was doing business with "real" companies, you'd have thought Gary would have reached out to the likes of Random House for advice.

[@DaveThaumavore]

The big sales in the late '70s really went to Gary's head.

[@londoninflames]

@@DaveThaumavore The cocaine in the late '70s really went to Gary's head. :D

[@jakubjanicki3989]

Oh wow, TSR and Gygax were an even bigger shitshow than I thought.

[@DaveThaumavore]

That was my takeaway after reading the book, and why I felt compelled to make this video.

[@ernesto906]

i think that this is bigger than a shitshow, Lorraine Williams was so incompetent and greedy that I'm tempted to think that it was pure malice and not plain incompetence, and how is legal what she did with Buck Rogers? It looks that she just funnel license money from TSR to his family

[@jeremyrichard2722]

Debatable, I get that Dave liked it enough to do a video on it, and obviously thinks the research was good, but I'll put it this way. I was around at the time and dealing with people in the industry like most gamers "online" were and a lot of this doesn't jibe. At least according to this video the case is made in a way that ignores a lot of variables. I'd advise looking at a product and licensing timeline before assuming the author's sources were fair, accurate, and unbiased. For example when looking at the claims of what happened with Random House, remember one thing this doesn't seem to mention beyond the novels in my essay based on what I was told from people at the time, is the massive success of all those SSI produced gold box games. I mean understand they started making those in like, what 1989, and they were huge successes being released for every system under the sun when there were multiple computer times. From the gold box games they went right into "Eye Of The Beholder" which got a full trilogy itself and those games were also classics. I think the last of those was in like 1993. So according to the claims this guy was getting somehow TSR was doing massive layoffs in 1996, and being thrown out of it's offices over what is allegedly like 8 million dollars in debt they couldn't pay due to a buyback agreement before the Waldenbooks thing I mentioned. Now 8 million is a lot of money, to be fair, but under stand TSR had a bunch of licensed games at that point, and I can't see them having blown through that much money just from the SSI games which were huge successes that quick. Even if they were holding debt to random house, I just cannot see how they would have been unable to pay it after all those video game sales, and the fact that even after SSI they were renting the license. It just makes zero sense to me to have gotten a cut of all that, and then having employees scavenging officer decor from a landfill. Sounds like some of their former employees might be talking a bit of shit. One of the reasons why nobody knows much about this is because it was pre-internet, and even at the time it was sudden. TSR had no signs of decline, it was the dominant market force in the industry, and one of the only RPG companies doing that kind of licensing. They did make some stupid stuff I bet they did take a bath on, but if you look at where and when their successes were, this just seems like a hard sell, I mean even if you don't believe there were employees and writers screaming about it all over the forums of the time, and all kinds of investigations by those who had agents (as many novelists wrote for people other than TSR) and then telling their fans what was going on via AOL and stuff because they were pissed they wrote stuff under contract and were now now going to be paid, and were trying to get the fans going after the new owners if nothing else.... pretty typical if you really think about it, so I have no real reason to doubt it given the amount of that going on. Literally nobody in any section of that mess had any idea, the biggest drama was fears they were going to dump Alternity because all the writers wanted to do Star Wars, and people being pissed at how utterly crappy the "Starcraft" supplement was for Alternity given that it was turned into a really terrible adventure mini-box rather than what was promised in part because of the people assigned to it deciding "I want to be doing Star Wars"... yeah when they collapsed they were buying the rights to Blizzard properties, they also got a Diablo license and published TWO D&D Diablo books, one for AD&D2, and one for D20. That's not the kind of thing a company does when it's supposed to be in some kind of dire financial jeopardy now is it? Nor is you know... buying the RPG rights to Star Wars, or juggling multiple game lines, novel lines, and computer game lines. I doubt Lucas took an IOU because TSR was broke.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

TSR = They Sue Regularly

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 “Sued”

[@braxxian]

As an old time gamer from the 80’s we all knew that for some reason TSR had collapsed. Great info into why that happened. 👍

[@MajorSebbaa]

It's hard to hear of so many bad decisions, so much wasted potential in just one video. Also, I got the feeling Hasbro is trying to recreate the TSR success story.

[@milesnorsworthy946]

Whoa whoa whoa. You can't tell me that the Dragonstrike VHS isn't a masterpiece.

[@Jabroniville]

"The Man-Thcorpion!"

[@michaelpinkston2602]

Some of the similarities of this book and what's going on now at WOTC headquarters is scary.

[@cyberdystopia3403]

I was a loyal consumer of TSR products in the 1980's and knew something had gone wrong by the late 80;s and early 90's. TSR was facing some stiff competition from games like Shadowrun and the like. But, they never seemed to adapt very well to the changing rpg environment. This was in informative video.

[@ClayHales]

I remember a game store employee around that time referred to TSR as Terribly Silly Rules.

[@lifeafter-cm7mz]

@@ClayHales That's a good one!

[@jameshinds2510]

How bad could it possibly....OH DEAR LORD HOW DID THEY NOT OPEN UP A BLACK HOLE WITH THIS LEVEL OF INCOMPETENCE?!?!

[@Torile0]

They reacted to the satanic panic by ignoring the idiots completely. How can you stop from loving TSR? And by the way, the products which were produced in those crazy times, are of incredible quality, much higher than today products from WOTC. Yes, I'm talking about Planescape.

[@izegrimcreations]

Incredible quality? The books in the mid 80s were atrocious quality. UA and OA are notorious for falling apart after only months of use. If you're talking about quality of content, you seem to forget about All My children boardgame and romance novels....

[@johnh4948]

The problem is they didn’t, eventually they dropped demons, creating tanarri and bazutu to replace them in I think 2E.

Fun fact: The best known RPG (and until ~2005 nearly the only RPG) in the Czech Republic - Dračí doupě - came about because of TSR. The creators of Dračí doupě (shortened as DrD) came across D&D at some games conference or another in Germany shortly after the fall of the communist regime (so most likely sometime in 1990) and quickly contacted the publishers to see about translating it and publishing it in Czech. TSR refused, so they pulled Bender Bending Rodriguez and made their own, albeit without the blackjack and others. Just think of the lost royalties...

[@kgoblin5084]

I know that there are other nationally-colored D&D like games out there too... most famously the Dark Eye from Germany. Wonder if it was a similar story where TSR/Williams was being dumb & obstinate about licensing

[@David_Apollonius]

@@kgoblin5084 I know at least the Basic line of D&D got translations to multiple languages. I know, because I own the Dutch translation of the red box. I've met a player who showed me the Hebrew translation of the red box.

[@paul6925]

I’m glad I didn’t know about any of this drama back when I was a kid and utterly absorbed by this game. Great memories

[@lluewhyn]

Yeah, graduated High School in 1995 here and grew up with a lot of these products. Really fascinating to hear about all of the stuff going on behind the scenes.

[@paul6925]

@@lluewhynVery!

[@TroySpartan247]

OBJECTION!!! Dragon Strike was a phenomenal VHS! Long live Malibu the Fighter!

[@ticklezcat5191]

"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tehehe"

[@neilharbott8394]

Back in the day, I worked for a large music retailer, which had a large hobby game department. Ordering TSR products was my responsibility. The novels were the big thing at that time, a case was 72 books, and we were ordering 5+ cases of a new novel in a series AND backfilling the series books previously released to 2-3 cases a time. You just could not go wrong, and for the most part the estimates were dead on (for a supply of about 6 weeks) just long enough to fill until the rep returned. Then one day the hardbound Buck Rogers encyclopedia(?) came out, I just didn't have a clue. How many were our central warehouse (supplied the rest of the chain) ordering? 24? I guess we should follow suit, so we went with that. Shortly after my career path took a different route, and I left. I later inquired how many BR books were sold. ONE. The warehouse sold none, and they were able to return all the unsold books, to TSR... but the novels: Dragon Lance, Forgotten Realms, they were absolute gold mines... and TSR suffocated that revenue stream.

[@blockmasterscott]

Even back in the mid 80s pre internet TSR had a hard time covering up what was going on. Word got around in the gaming magazines.

[@andrewarcana]

There's a familiar story at 21:04 -- "48. The Christmas Firings." Then 49, the company's leaders treating themselves. If this story offers any hope it's that someone competent might be able to buy the property again. Hopefully the next owner will be a lot smarter for a whole lot longer.

[@KeithGigliotti]

WotC isn't going to sell it. But I'm with you.

[@Theinvalidmusic]

As somebody who works peripherally in the publishing / distribution industry for a day-job, those revelations about TSR attempting to stiff... basically everybody in the 90s were absolutely toe-curling. Just a total snowball of the absolute worst business decisions all compounding on top of one-another and Williams learning nothing from it.

[@keithdonohue4631]

A company is only as good as how it treats its employees. Well put

[@antonblake1476]

Its so sad and wild to see quite a few of these general screw ups being repeated by WotC now. Management hating the gamers they sell to, disrespecting creatives, letting go staff just before christmas, tumultuous relationship with random house, massively losing out from large quantities of clearance secondary products they had bet big on.

[@nERVEcenter117]

TSR's prioritization of brands over creators seems to be a common pattern in publicly traded companies nowadays, and is leading ironically to the erosion or implosion of previously cherished brands. Star Wars and Marvel come to mind as Disney prioritizes marketing the brand, while hiring people who hate those brands to helm creating new shows and movies. Thus their viewership is dropping like a rock. Wizards seems to be making the same mistake. They're using Magic as a crossover brand extravanganza while firing all the creatives who make the game great. And don't get me started on video games. Brands like Halo, Far Cry, and Battlefield get their core creative talent culled because the board sees the brand itself as invulnerable while the staff are supposedly disposable (don't want to keep those expensive salaries around!), instead of critical to the vision that makes those brands appealing in the first place. The absolute abundance of hopeful labor out the door and around the corner is too enticing of a deal to bean counter quarterlies.

[@manicpixiedreambuoy]

What a rollercoaster! You’ve convinced me to buy the book. Excellent video, as always :)

[@bugslayerprime7674]

Ousting Arneson by Gygax. Ousting Gygax by Williams. TSR Christmas layoffs. WOTC Christmas layoffs. "Time is a river, and history repeats."

[@walterw9829]

Wow. Excellent review. The disdain of customer and creators, coupled with the intricacies are greed are not old stories. So much more to D&D than Gygax. Williams is a common name, but it would be fascinating to know if Loraine and Cynthia are related. Crazy.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

Same happened to Atari in early 1980s, bringing the end of Golden Age of Videogames.

[@kgoblin5084]

"Williams is a common name, but it would be fascinating to know if Loraine and Cynthia are related" No, people pretty much immediately checked LOL. On that topic though, the Dille family has a very, very checkered history. For example they didn't actually create Buck Rogers... rather one of Lorraine's ancestors was the publisher & finagled the rights from the actual author.

[@jamesnell1999]

If you had asked me when I was 17 what I was "passionate about" I would have said, LotR, D&D, and music. Having no great music talents, one might have encouraged me to be an RPG adventure writer. Fortunately, I never went down that path. I knew that Tolkien had tenure and spent much of his life developing Middle Earth. One could smell the half-baked faux business acumen of the Bloom Brothers and Lorraine the Witch thru the shrinkwrap of their half-baked products. Fortunately, I had just enough exposure to "small business" to know that there were many wannabes out there in the deindustrializing economy of the late 1970s-80s. No education. No real management training. Willing to stiff creatives as if they where a lower caste of humans, and happy to settle up on the eve of holidays with firings. It's amazing that RPGs have survived. Gary Gygax was a creative genius, but he also chose to work with this people, and he paid dearly for that. That is a tragedy.

[@hakdov6496]

You missed one- TSR was really shitty towards fans posting their own D&D stuff on the internet

[@Kiaulen]

Ah, the nintendo approach 👍

[@scottlemiere2024]

So what the book is saying is that TSR hired an unqualified person to run the company and she proceeded to make a massive series of mistakes that drove the company into the ground. Sounds about right.

[@TwilightxKnight13]

I have always wondered what would have happened if Gygax and the Blumes could have worked out that deal for him to buy them out, thus preventing Williams from getting involved. Gary may not have been a good businessman, but he was not firing people on Christmas, actively manipulating his production partners, nor screwing his content creators. He was just a gamer, like most of us, who just wanted to tell fun and exciting stories. Too bad they didn't have the medical advancements we have now. Maybe Don Kaye would have survived and TSR would have been sustainable. Gygax would have never needed the second Blume to buy in for an infusion of cash and thereby lose his controlling stake in the company.

[@danepatterson8107]

Really glad the great algorithm in the sky sent me your content today. Newly subscribed: this was a really great summary of a book I won't make the time to read due to real life. Thanks! You taught me a ton!

[@johnwalsh4857]

yah I remember in the early 90s TSR really flooded the market with lots of different RPG games and books, yep I was in living in Manila Philippines at the time and I remember the flooding even reached there with a major hobby store having massive amounts of TSR products, also TSR bought the board wargame company SPI and reprinted a bunch of their games and Strategy and tactics magazine, that was a good thing, I still play those games to this day and still collect and buy Strategy and tactics magazine, I even wrote many historical articles for them 10 to 15 years ago.

[@panderson9561]

Started playing D&D in 1976...just 2 years after it came out. Played it to somewhere around 1990. I remember the big push to flood the market with products. At the time I had no idea they were in financial trouble. We just assumed they were getting greedy. It was at that point that I decided that that was enough. Haven't touched it since. Still have all the books, character sheets, dice, miniatures.

[@weirymplays]

I have been playing D's for a little while now. I had no idea of the mismanagement of TSR. It is amazing how something so ballsedup survived.

[@HeribertoEstolano]

A new Dave video allways put a smile on my face.

[@cameronpearce5943]

More proof that D&D isn’t the company that owns it, it’s the community that plays it. If it wasn’t for the fans keeping the game on life support it wouldn’t be around for Hasbro to try and bungle again

[@enriquekahn9405]

Oh this book combines two of my favorite subjects: TTRPG's and business disasters. I'm definitely reading it soon. On the subject of business disasters, I really like "From Industry to Alchemy," which combines chronicles an American machine tool company that squandered an early lead in CNC machinery and heavy connections with the US government through the Air Force and in aerospace industry and failed so thoroughly that even most machine tool nerds like me have never heard of it.

[@Skroorsk]

Great summation, my guy! Thanks for bringing this book to the attention of the masses. Glad to see your channel getting more traction, too!

[@DaveThaumavore]

Much appreciated!

[@Whalewraith]

I loved D&D back when it was 1st introduced but it always Puzzled me why there was so much product. The nature of the game was once you had the core set up you just went and did your own thing. By the mid 80's our group had gutted the game to the point where we were using a mash of 4 different systems and never felt the need to buy any scenarios character sheets or whatever. We did however really like R A Salvatore.

[@Murph_.]

The biggest single problem is that Gary Gygax didn't get anyone to either teach him to run a company or get someone trustworthy that knew how to run a company. You need to know how to run a company and do whatever you had to do to keep the majority share of your company. Mr Gygax was very structured in how he wanted people to play his game, you'd think he'd be the same in business.

[@r4z0rv1n3]

I was always so into the fact that TSR was constantly printing new stuff for D&D settings, books, boxed sets... But in hindsight, it makes sense that wasn't actually very profitable for the company.

[@lluewhyn]

Yeah, as a kid in the 90s there was SO MUCH content coming out. And as a kid, you had time to read all of that crap, but not the actual money to buy most of it. And now as middle-aged adults where we can actually afford this (much more expensive) stuff, we just don't have the time to buy and read it.

[@TheRedneckGamer1979]

I actually own the buck rogers boxed set and *most* of the supplements (some of them are thousands of dollars today as collectors items) and all in all the game itself is actually really fun, it's whacky and zany with good additions and expansions on the rulesets. Loraine Williams can go pound sand but that game was ACTUALLY good, they just paid WAAAAAAAAAY to much for it.

[@andrewmichaelschaefferXIV]

The Prism Pentad from the Dark Sun Setting is one of the best fantasy bodies of literature

[@patrickgaron1728]

Really good book. I listen to the audiobook and learned a lot from that book. I a few years ago, I read the TSR story by Kent David Kelly. I think the book is not well know but I recommend it. The author seems to have dig deep in forums and dragon magazines to write the history. I remember that he had chapters on how the game was played. HAWK & MOOR TRILOGY - The Unofficial History of Dungeons & Dragons.

[@wylde_hunter]

Very informative. Thanks Dave.

[@Ragmon1]

This could be made into a Game of Thrones like TV series with all the backstabbing and dealings behind peoples backs.

[@tomkerruish2982]

Thankfully, history never repeats itself.

[@Ellowyn13]

But it does frequently rhyme.

[@CapnSnackbeard]

"Not listening to moms" is code for "not allowing popular, conservative censorship." That was a total win. Until they caved later.

[@bigblue344]

And now its happening again but with left leaning no sexualization of women and trying to create safe spaces.

[@kalashnikovdevil]

Bowing to any populist censorship from any direction's a massive fail. If it's part of your artistic vision, like demons and devils seem to be for DND, then they should remain.

[@arachnofiend2859]

Imagine the ripple effect down the line if angels and demons had been excised from D&D... Pathfinder's Golarion setting wouldn't exist as it does. Would it set a precedent that would have prevented Diablo from being made? Scary stuff.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

Yeahm, and now they're listening to the vocal minorities/modern-audiences, and the censoring has skyrocketed.

[@keithwinget6521]

Should have added even more demons and stuff in response to the satanic panic, so I think they really did drop the ball on that one.

[@NuttySquirrel_8]

Dave, most of this is news to me! Holy cow! Thank you for the history lesson. Very interesting!

[@NemoOhd20]

Amazing how incompetent the TSR management were from Blooms to Williams.

[@willardplaysgames6060]

Thank you very much for the TL;DR. As someone looking into making a game and a company, this is really helpful.

[@danzaiyamaxanadu6213]

I feel like the raising a ship out of a lake which seemingly has nothing to do with tabletop games or publishing needs a bit of a elaboration?

[@UliTroyo]

This is crazy! I used to follow a lot of the ex-TSR writers’ blogs, so I know these names, but not this aspect of their backstory. Lorraine sounds like a charming person.

[@lachlanmcneill5488]

I remember picking a few starter packs and boosters of spellfirw and thought it was fun. Disappeared so quickly that i simply couldnt collect it shame to know its because the perosn responsible for planning was a real troll.

[@sifayun6336]

$14 to $30 million in debt?! How does the Lorainne Williams not end up in jail over that?

[@brianinthepark5429]

300 employees in 1983? Even at $10 an hour. Fed min wage in 2007 was $8. That's $12k weekly. Almost $2 million over three years to 1985 when they find out sales are down? SMH. ~Brian

[@sty0pa]

It's hard to see the old white box, knowing I sold mine to a used game shop in 1986. Even as a 15 yr old, I smelled something amiss with TSR when at Gen Con 82(?) @ UW Parkside, they were selling AD&D beach towels. LW was an ass; she gets NO credit for anything TSR created, it was artistically creative despite her, not for any reason because of her.

[@GamemastersHobby]

Great review Dave! Thank you!

[@DaveThaumavore]

Glad you liked it!

[@michaelmullenfiddler]

I wonder if anyone else made this connection: TSR fired a bunch of employees right at Christmas (Merry Christmas--you're fired!!), and then a couple decades later, Hasbro/WOTC did exactly the same thing... What is it about the people/companies that own the DnD IP?...

[@tubebobwil]

This is an excellent summary of the book.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Empires of Imagination is another great read. I have read it 4-5 times at this point. It tells the life story of Gary Gygax and therein covers the rise and fall of TSR. It takes a bit of artistic license with some of the scenes, but also does transitions from the point of view of a fantasy character experiencing key moments from Gary’s life. Great video!

[@VorpalDerringer]

22:06 Wow, what an opportunity to use your own magazines to advertise the sale of all these items! Imagine an auction at GenCon or other conventions of TSR miniatures and terrain! Or, uh, don't take advantage of this resource at all and let it go to waste...great job, Lorraine!

[@z2ei]

The sad thing? I'd still take TSR over WOTC/Hasbro the last 20+ years. As badly mismanaged as it was, at least it was still recognizably D&D and got some damned good content.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Agreed. I can't endorse or get excited about virtually ANY WotC 5e books, even purely on the merits.

[@BillAllanWorld]

Great recap. I'm definitely interested in buying the book.

[@andrewmcgraw4811]

It sounds like D&D (and by extension, the very hobby of TTRPGs in totale) succeeded *despite* the leadership behind it, rather than because of it. Puts the weird and wacky world TTRPGs into new perspective when this kind of behavior was the foundational example of success.

[@Shiyaku93]

Great video and an insane story. Time is a flat circle...

[@tomyoung9834]

It’s kind of remarkable DnD ever became anything at all, considering how TSR ran the business!

[@SkyrekGaming]

I've had this book on my to buy list and now I am even more interested in getting a chance to read it.

[@markpowell5228]

In spite of corporate sins, it's the creators and the players that keep rpgs going.

[@geoffgreen2105]

Damn right. The corps might own the IPs and publishing, but the games belong to US.

[@srpad]

The TSR Buck Rogers setting was actually pretty good. They even made a really good PC RPG in the vein of the "Gold Box" games based on it.

[@spaceranger7683]

It's a shame this product has been and still is plagued by leadership who dislikes their customer base, doesn't appreciate the product, and/or would rather lose money than share success with contributors to its brand (authors, third-party creators, etc.). I guess the real story here is that D&D is a product that thrived in spite of, rather than because of, the people running it.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Yeah, good point. It's a product that is still coasting on its success from 40 years ago despite multiple companies handling it with greed and ignorance. Pretty incredible.

[@russellharrell2747]

@@DaveThaumavoreI’d say the last several years of success has little to do with its legacy and much more to do with the marketing of social media and youngsters being ‘nostalgic’ for a time period they weren’t alive for (Stranger Things). Do any grognards even own the 5E core books?

[@Zr0din]

Worth watching. Thanks!

[@pptemplar5840]

The most important thing about this video is now I jeed to know what tf Heartquest was like,

[@pptemplar5840]

After a quick google... I feel like it's pretty obvious why this failed. They tried to capture a female market that honestly probably didn't even exist. Like I'm sure *some* girls would have found this interesting, but where would you even sell these books? a comic book store? those are known for crawling with women, I guess you could just sell them in a normal book store but even then these look a lot more boring than their description sounds, I feel like if you are going to force the reader into a role where they can't just self insert you should probably just write a normal book. You would probably have better luck just selling strait up "girly" D&D where the apex predator is an ancient pink dragon and beholders have eye shadow. It would be pandering, but at least it sounds like it could still be exciting.

[@andrewrockwell1282]

Pay your workers and creative people, value them. Pay your publishers and printers and don't count on money before you make the sales.

[@666lupine666]

Actual boardroom transcript: "Look, it's a dungeons and dragons ride." "Wow. Neat," "Gimme a break." "I don't like this!" "Woah. What's happening?" "Woah." "Where are we?"

[@Michijere77]

This was fascinating

[@robertfellrath4935]

Weis and Hickman weren't married.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Good to know. I'll add that in an Errata in the pinned comment!

[@alexmacdonald1998]

And the Hickmans were responsible for some of the better modules and, it could be argued, pioneered the concept of story based game play.

[@johnwalsh4857]

yep bought my basic set back in 81 from a San Fran toys R us of all places. classic love the covers also bought a dragon magazine with it.

[@TheWizaard]

For point 2: it makes bad business sense to ignore moms, but in the cultural sense it was absolutely the right move. The satanic panic should not have been catered to or bargained with, like it was a faction of cultural terrorism.

[@MaunoMattila]

Why do you love satanic culture?