I was wondering if TSR hadn't died like it did and still owned TSR where do you think it would be today.

Gary Gygax was still part of the business in one form or another until he ultimately died (perhaps in charge of creative) and Lorraine Williams never happened and the backstabbing never happened.

Would it be as popular as it is today?  As big as it is today?

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Things would be worse, IMO.

There would be no OGL and no major 3rd party D&D products - no Kobold Press for example. Anybody making a clone or something "too close" to D&D would get sued. He was extremely jealous and protective of his IP. You wouldn't be able to play D&D unless you were playing *his* D&D. And because he loved the money, that would mean whatever D&D "official" version TSR was currently selling. Anything else you'd have to buy used on the secondary market, and he'd make that as hard to get as he could.

This would be a boon to alternate non-D&D systems. The late 80s and 90s were a hey day for GURPS, WoD, Hero, Iron Crown et al.

TSR bowed to extremists on the right just as WotC is bowing to extremists on the left today, stripping out anything that wasn't PG-13 or offended its critics. - demons, devils, anything adult. We didn't use the term "canceled" back then, but the concept was the same.

In spite of their recent attempt to take it back, WotC's decision to go "open source" (not just the OGL, but also the abandonment of litigation as a business strategy) 20 years ago was a huge boon to *D&D* - every edition, every 3rd party publisher.

Gygax and Arneson created a whole new hobby. But they weren't great stewards of that hobby. Gygax losing TSR and then TSR going bankrupt were probably a good thing for the hobby overall.

I did finish reading "slaying the dragon" recently. The book covers D&D from the beginning up to the point where WoTC purchases the game and wraps things up by signing deals with Gygax and others to secure the rights without question.

I guess one thing Loraine Williams did was separate the sales figures of RPG products from the people making them, so the market signals weren't getting back to the people making stuff in order to adjust to the market demands.  They also treated authors/creatives as interchangeable cogs with the brand being the important thing rather than the people behind them making stuff.  Also many products they made would lose money for each copy that was sold because they cost more to make than what they sold them for. Also the deal Gygax had originally made for getting distribution in book stores meant that TSR was paid via a loan for delivering product, and then had to pay back the book store for unsold products, so Lorain was using that for a revenue stream to try and keep the company going.

I don't know if there is a way to tell how TSR would have gone if Gygax had stayed in control.  I think even Gygax and the Blooms expanded the growth of the company too far while they were in charge.

The biggest shame, I think, is that WoTC didn't hire Gary to be in charge of D&D when they purchased everything.

Probably not the 700 pound gorilla it is now, the OGL was a huge boon for D&D it gave them market dominance, it gave them brand recognition because even games that aren't retroclones of them use their license which has it's name on it.

I disagree that this would have been bad for the hobby, because D&D isn't the hobby, it's just a brand serving it.

It would mean a healthier market (probably?) with more competition near the top, maybe with different publishers rising and falling from it.

It would also mean you'd have a much harder time breaking into the market as a small unknown fish, so maybe IT WOULD BE bad for the hobby after all.

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on April 12, 2023, 03:50:31 PM
I don't know if there is a way to tell how TSR would have gone if Gygax had stayed in control.  I think even Gygax and the Blooms expanded the growth of the company too far while they were in charge.

The biggest shame, I think, is that WoTC didn't hire Gary to be in charge of D&D when they purchased everything.

Presumably if Gygax was hired in the 1990s to take over D&D again, the game would look more like his works of the 1990s - namely Dangerous Journeys (1992) and Lejendary Adventure (1999).

It sounds like Gygax would have made things worse for D&D but better for other games.

Interesting.

Quote from: jhkim on April 12, 2023, 04:17:12 PM

Presumably if Gygax was hired in the 1990s to take over D&D again, the game would look more like his works of the 1990s - namely Dangerous Journeys (1992) and Lejendary Adventure (1999).

Oh god, does that mean that Cyborg Commandos would have been a TSR product?

It's an interesting question. Remember that Gygax lost "control" of TSR not long after it was founded. First his friend Kaye died, then Brian brought in his brother Kevin. Two Blumes (financed by daddy's money) versus one Gygax. Gary remained the face and spokesperson for the company, but "control" was not a thing he had. He was ousted to California while TSR was busy mishandling money. When he got back he engineered a financial recovery. Then the backstab and he was out, and the company tanked.

So what if he had actually been in control, and remained there? There were plenty of competitors as the RPG industry boomed. TSR wouldn't have Hasbro's ability to market the hell out of an IP, so I'd say that D&D wouldn't be the juggernaut it is today. I expect it'd still be the leader in the gaming hobby.

Would there have been an OGL or whatever? I don't even know whose idea it was, so maybe, maybe not. All of TSR's competitors in the 20th century would still be there publishing games, so I don't know that lack of an OGL would mean fewer non-TSR gaming products out there. Maybe not such a cottage industry as we have today.

OTOH, what would we have gained with Gygax in charge of TSR up until his death in 2008? Certainly more Greyhawk, which would make me damned happy. No Realms. PC games set in Greyhawk. A Greyhawk movie. The same creatives working at TSR for all those years, the ones that Gygax valued. Who can say what might have been produced?

Quote from: jhkim on April 12, 2023, 04:17:12 PM
Presumably if Gygax was hired in the 1990s to take over D&D again, the game would look more like his works of the 1990s - namely Dangerous Journeys (1992) and Lejendary Adventure (1999).

Gygax' "works of the 1990s" were his attempts to launch a new line that didn't get him in legal trouble with TSR. If he was still at TSR I doubt he would've been wracking his brains to try and come up with something new.

Quote from: Baron on April 12, 2023, 04:29:34 PM
Gygax' "works of the 1990s" were his attempts to launch a new line that didn't get him in legal trouble with TSR. If he was still at TSR I doubt he would've been wracking his brains to try and come up with something new.

That's true.  His creative energy would be focused towards making Dungeons and Dragons better so who knows what would have happened if he had still been there.

The OSR probably wouldn't exist as TSR was extremely litigious...I remember the Usenet days and how they went after people over netbooks. You make a website with alternative AD&D classes? Here is a letter from our lawyer. Also, they would probably be cranking out dumbass novels and card games, much like WotC is doing now. I also think the hobby itself would be way way less popular, which is funny because before the Satanic Panic D&D was almost a phenomenon then got crushed, never did fully recover. WotC buying TSR sort of removed the stain of the brand for the most part which allowed it to be renewed. I don't think that would have been possible with TSR simply because of all the bad publicity.

Mmm, in 2009 Hasbro/WOTC pulled access to all legitimate PDFs. They didn't backpedal on that until 2013. Anyone can get proprietary about their intellectual property. Chaosium was known for going after online writers too, they still do today. And don't get me started about the Tekumel Foundation. Dave Morris, who'd released the Tirikelu rules set years back for free online, updated his downloads with a re-formatted version for printing. He was immediately threatened and had to pull it. So would TSR have calmed down? Hard to say. The online world grew and attitudes changed, who's to say how TSR might've evolved?

The sweet spot timeline is one where Gygax is retained as Creative Lead, with full control over game decisions; while someone who is financially savvy but actually cares about the hobby (this is essential to avoid the post-70's short term profit version of corporate Capitalism) steering the ship.

TBH, the only good things I can think of if TSR was still around today is that classic D&D settings would still get proper support, more original settings might have been developed than what they have now, and there would still be regular releases of novels (and perhaps other media) based on D&D worlds. But there would have been no OGL or major 3rd party products, as some have already pointed out, but contrary to what some have said I don't think that this would have been a good thing for the hobby or the rest of the industry.

The OGL allowed for a massive explosion of 3rd party content from small publishers and even competitors from other game companies that published OGL products as well, which helped revitalize the industry and allow people to share content and ideas using a recognizable game engine familiar to everyone without needlessly having reinvent the wheel to avoid litigation. This allowed hundreds of people share content compatible with existing rules, as well as experiment and take those rules to new directions, create alternative materials like new classes and such, create new games based on different genres and game worlds using a familiar ruleset, or even revisit old games to have a new take on them.

Some might complain and say that this stifled creativity and forced people to shoehorn D&D mechanics into settings those mechanics don't emulate well, and to an extent that might be true. But the unfortunate reality is that most regular people don't care about the game rules or genre emulation, they just want to play in the worlds they love or genres they like without having to learn a new system. And normies are more likely to pick up a game based on a ruleset that they know than get something with wonky new mechanics that are just different for the sake of being different, which is what you often get when people have to reinvent the wheel to not get sued by a sue happy company like TSR.

But the OGL not just allowed for people to share or publish content based on recognizable rules, but also created a mindset of open content that spread to other rules systems as well, creating a slew of open source rulesets that facilitated the sharing of content based on other game engines as well. Without the OGL, I wonder if everyone would still be making artificially different game rules instead of just picking an existing system that already worked the way they wanted to and making any necessary changes.

As bad as WotKKK might be, the demise of TSR was probably a good thing.

You need to go back to the full product offering, for 1st Edition AD&D; and brainstorm what Gary would have done, or what he would have allowed trusted writers to do with that.  Forget about everything that came after his departure from TSR.  None of what followed counts, for this discussion.  1E AD&D was Gary's big splash.  Although, I'm curious what he would have done with B/X D&D?