In his new book Kill the dragon, Ben Riggs delves into the history of TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons. The book, based on countless insider accounts and leaked documents, presents a surprising new perspective on the demise of TSR.
“I think the story will work out,” said Wizards of the Coast Magic: Gathering … And it just sucks all the oxygen out of the room and kills the TSR,” Riggs said in episode 521 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy audio file. “That’s the story I was expecting. That’s not the story I was told at all. The story I was told was one of mismanagement and mistakes and mistakes, and the death of thousands of cuts, and failure to scale, and failure to find new people to play D&D. . “
TSR products are beautifully illustrated, have great production value and are affordable. Unfortunately, they are not all profitable. An example is a visionary Planescape campaign settings. “The whole company never made money,” says Riggs. “While that’s an artistic high point for the company – and possibly for the Dungeons & Dragons franchise – it’s not making any money.”
Bizarre business decisions abound at TSR, including a practice called “factoring,” in which TSR pressures retailers to close their orders for an entire year in May. January. This led to severe deadline pressure on TSR writers like Jim Ward, who was given only 10 weeks to design. Spellfire Collectible card game. “It makes the TSR incredibly versatile,” says Riggs. “You can’t take any more time to create the product, because if you do, you’re breaking the contract. This is a real problem, because it means that the TSR can no longer react with any degree of sensitivity or ability to market changes. “
Many of TSR’s woes stem from a fundamental problem with tabletop role-playing games — how do you make money selling a product that encourages players to use their imaginations? “I think what you’re going to get out of this is that the role-playing business is hard work,” says Riggs. “If you’re going to make a role-playing game — it’s good forever and you can play it for decades — the economics of that game will allow the existence of role-playing game creators like how? Because we can certainly agree that role-playing games are something worth making, but how do we ensure that the people who make them make a good living? “
Listen to the full interview with Ben Riggs in Episode 521 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Ben Riggs on the Dungeons & Dragons novel:
At one point TSR claimed to be the largest fantasy fiction publisher in North America. They claim that there are millions The Forgotten Realm and Dragonlance print novel. There was a time in the ’90s when the TSR novel line grossed more than all the TSR role-playing games combined, and the novel series essentially helped keep the company afloat. Fiction is considered to be such a success within the company that it is rumored that one day people will come to work and they will no longer be making a game called Dungeons & Dragons, they will be making novels set in the world. world of Dungeons & Dragons, and all game designers will now be writers, all game editors will now be fantasy editors, and that will be TSR in the future.
Ben Riggs on marketing:
Ravenloft sold 50,000 copies in the first year. 50,000 is a pretty big number. Attracting 50,000 Dungeons & Dragons newbies by creating a gothic horror setting seems like a good plan. But not 50,000 people just bought that setup. It turned out to be mostly people who played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. In fact, they’re not looking for new fans, they’re just taking their existing fan base and shredding it. And every setting will be a different tight. You’ll suddenly have people buying 200,000 copies of Forgotten Realms until the final release of Forgotten Realms, which sold 30,000 copies in the first year. And every setup seems to take their sales and cut them and cut them and cut them.
Ben Riggs on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
I thought I would tag 3rd Edition as a chapter of my book. I think the chapter is going to be, “I’ve talked to everyone who’s done the 3rd Edition, and they all say this is a huge hit and everyone is a genius.” But it had to be the right amount of time, because people were like, “I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll tell you about how there was backstabbing, betrayal, and lies in the making of Dungeons & Dragons 3, and how controversial it was, and how the TSRs who moved to Seattle weren’t real. compatibility with the Wizards, and there is this internal rivalry between the TSRs and the Wizards.
Ben Riggs on Lake Geneva:
Lake Geneva didn’t really lean into their history as the birthplace of board role-playing games. At first they considered the TSR as “strange long hairs”, 23 years later it disappeared, and now the reality is that people feel so strongly about it that they want to go to Lake Geneva and see these things happen. where is still unclear. on the city elders. I am sure that within the next 50 years you will see a lot of former TSR properties being acquired and restored to some extent. Currently, the location of the Hobby Store in the original Dungeon is a Kilwins Ice Cream shop, where you can go buy an ice cream and say, “Yeah, it all happens here.” But man, I definitely think that if you can get an RPG store in that location, it would be very very very good.
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