Monday, January 9, 2023

You enter a tavern and cast magic missle at the darkness

 In another Goodreads selection, I finished Slaying the Dragon by Ben Riggs today on lunch. 

As compared to last week's, this one was a lot better.

Mr. Riggs, who does geeky journalism, has basically gone and written a story to TSR from its inception to the buyout by Wizards of the Coast; which is very interesting, with a few drawbacks, which we'll come to. 

Now, much of what he reports is known, like Gary Gygax founding TSR in his Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, basement, and the general growth and domination of the RPG marketplace. We hear about the hiring of various talents, and how people were paid. I finally found out what the heck the entire D&D vs AD&D was. (I think my first D&D campaign was in 1980. Much of this would have gone over my head at the time.) We hear about Gary Gygax losing control of the company to Lorraine Williams. We hear of the highs of sales, and the novel department. And we watch as two California expansions crash and burn, and finally find out how the financials were crashing and why no one really knew. We learn of talent developed and alienated.

Frankly, accounting isn't my strong point, so much of the later discussions on why TSR nearly went bankrupt went over my head, but he does an OK job of explaining what was going on, particularly in the 90's when many of the geek industry (comics, RPGs) went into a major slump. (Something about the contract with Random House meaning they would get loans on royalties for everything shipped to them. Having financial issues? Over print and ship more than you'll ever sell, then collect the money. Which works well, until the sales slump, everything gets returned, and suddenly you owe the distributor more than you ever going to be able to pay. And it worked ok, particularly during the Reagan era.) We hear about Williams, who own the rights to Buck Rogers, trying as hard as she could to get any sort of game/novel/comic done with a character she owned. We hear of TSR managing to screw themselves by deciding to compete against DC comics, who had happily been publishing D&D comics prior to TSR deciding to make comic modules. 

So, there are a few problems, which he does his best to work around. The biggest one is that Williams declined to be interviewed, and Gygax died before he got started on the book. This means we're missing input from two very major people around whom this all revolves. The other problem is that the prose goes beyond purple into magenta at a few points. However, Riggs obviously loves the game as much as the rest of the player base, and that love shines through the entire book. There are conclusions he reports from WotC that while I see what they're saying based on the numbers (basically, the conclusion they came to from the sales numbers was that multiple settings are competing against each other, and a generic rule book sells better than a specific setting book, and therefore games are turning their noses up at an setting which isn't their very specific favorite...), in my experience, while I may not like certain settings, there are a few I love, but like every other gamer, finding a group to play with and choosing a setting tends to influence what I'm inclined to buy. 

By far the best parts of the books are when his love of the game is front and center, discussing different settings, authors, artists, and designer, and making me want to go look up the evidently really bad video on how to play DragonQuest. Or Riggs waxing poetic about the really underrated Planescape setting. I was sad to read that most people used SpellJammer as a was to switch settings in a hurry, since the whole setting was so much MORE than that. 

I'm also happy he cut off with the production of 3rd Edition, and the less said about DragonLance 5th Age and the SAGA rules, the better. 

IF you're a gamer, it's worth a read. You won't find the whole story here, but you'll at least get a fairly good rendition of one.

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