Who Killed TSR? Can it happen again to WOTC? (Ep. 295)

Professor Dungeonmaster presents reviews "Slaying The Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons" by Ben Riggs and offers his expert analysis based on the book and his personal experiences with TSR.

[SSkorkowsky]

Slaying the Dragon was a fantastic book. Highly recommended (at least for the type of people who'd be interested in a Gaming History book).
It worked very well as a back-to-back with Game Wizards by Jon Peterson, which covered the 1970's until Gygax was ousted, and then Slaying the Dragon picked the story up from there.

[tripp]

As a Grognard it brought back fond memories of the excitement in see the D&D Cartoon coming on the TV on what felt like endless Saturday mornings, bottomless bowls of cereal and playing D&D with childhood friends. Good times...

[craigforest]

This is the best D&D channel on YouTube! Just retired and started playing again after 30yr absence…I REALLY miss the old days and AD&D. Great content here!

[kennetth]

As a person who lived through these times, I have long cast blame on the bloom brothers.
Mismanagement guts many a company.

[Snoil]

WotC isn't murder, it's suicide. Deathbringer knew this for years and kept it under wraps for money! 8>D PS- Deathbringer is now an NPC and potential 'encounter' in my latest world build. I cannot POSSIBLY thank Professor Dungeonmaster enough! Long live Moldvay!

PS-as a former Gateway employee, the early adaptation phase is all too often considered 'sustainable growth'.

[laurelhill]

I think Hasbro needs to be careful, as they are heading down the same road as not only TSR but Marvel Comics. Over printing and artificially high sales for a few years leads to stupid decisions because there is no idea what is really going on. Like any boom, there will be a bust and you cannot overextend, and Hasbro is close to doing that.

Especially in a game where I can still play my 45 year old 1e books just as well as i can One D&D.

[dukeguineapig]

I think you really underplayed Williams contribution to the bankruptcy of D&D.

She instituted a "no playing on company time" rule which meant play testing almost never occurred.

The buck Rogers thing was her siphoning money to her family. To be fair though, early D&D makers hired family members and spent way too much on Gygax in Hollywood, so perhaps it's just different flavors of the same corruption.

[terratorment]

TSR made excellent games and horrible business decisions

[EvilArtifact]

My greatest regret is that I got rid of my AD&D CD-ROM set back in the mid-2000s because I hadn’t used it in several years and digital UIs were outgrowing the windows help file system. It was amazing. It had a digital dice roller, mapping software for both the overworld and dungeons. And it had every core AD&D book including all the class books that everybody loves to this day. It was an incredible product and I paid so little for it. After my parents succumbed to the satanic panic in the 90s(!?) and burned my books and dice, that CD-ROM kept me connected to the hobby in a meaningful way.

[themiddleagednerd]

I remember the old times. Historically when Wizards had an issue in one IP they were able to bank on the stability of the other. The problem they are currently facing is both IP's are facing major backlash at the same time. I believe that this is less a WOTC issue and more a Hasbro one. Hasbro has been using WOTC to make up for its losses in other areas. Until Hasbro backs off of WOTC and lets the markets become stable they are going to only make this backlash worse as the recession deepens.

[seanmayer]

I remember going to my local hobby store back in 94 to purchase the Ruins of Zhentil Keep. The owner said that it wasn't going to be printed until the following year because TSR was financially in dire straits. This news hit me and my gaming group hard.

[frontline]

Man as a kid born in 1983 I really loved Dragon Strike. That video was super cheesy but I still have fond memories of it.

[sorenandersen]

Thanks! I don’t normally enjoy your posts on the business side and predictions for the future of D&D, but the extra backstory here was largely new to me a very interesting. It’s striking how Gary Gyggax, Lorraine Williams, and the Bloom brothers all came from non-business backgrounds and rode waves of monetary success and then later drove TSR into financial woe. Of the group, it seems like Gygax had the best head for business until he became undone with hubris and substance addiction.

[TheLordWinter]

I am *SO* excited to see the Dragon Strike video again. Also, the CD-ROM was AMAZING! It had all of the 2nd edition books, an in-app character creator that was friendly and easy-to-use and even had DM-ing tools like random table generators, loot tables and map makers. If I still could, I'd be usin' that to this day.

[davedujour]

I listened to this book (after you mentioned it on a previous video!) on my Thanksgiving weekend drive to family. It has wonderful insight into how much management kept things secret from the employees of TSR. I almost started crying listening to the layoffs just before Christmas 1996 and finding the storage unit full of GenCon miniatures that were eventually destroyed.

[thecreepers]

It's always possible for even well-informed and invested executives to misread a consumer base in pursuit of greater profits, but I doubt thats the case this time. OneD&D may succeed or fail ('fail' in this instance meaning making fewer buckets of money than was expected) but Hasbro has enough fingers in enough pies to keep going on its own. D&D and Wotc will be fine for the near future if there's no major changes. The big danger is from shareholders/the board panicking after a extensive downturn, bringing in people who are focused on the short term and then burn the company down in the name of the holy quarterly report +5. Look at what happened to Toys R Us for an example.

[MrCaptainStuff]

Interesting note on the Dragon Strike video. The Barbarian/Fighter was played by Deron McBee, who at the time was better known as the American Gladiator called Malibu. He would later star in the horrible Mortal Kombat: Annihilation as Motaro.

[drewneedsmoresleep]

Some of those IPs were crazy but I still to this day love the TSR Marvel. Everything is decided by percentile dice. It’s great, I still get to run it every now and then.

[devildham]

7:45 WOW what a change a month makes. That statement hits different

[cavemanbum]

I worked for Waldenbooks between 1989-2000, and from what I understood, my company had a hand in TSR's downfall. In the late 1990s, TSR had released a large number of products which just didn't sell, and Waldenbooks, via its distributor Random House, had returned literally millions of dollars of unsold TSR product. This forced TSR to lose much of its cash position and liquidity, making it ripe for a takeover by WotC.