[HN Gopher] The CRPG Renaissance, Part 3: TSR Is Dead
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The CRPG Renaissance, Part 3: TSR Is Dead
Author : doppp
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-02-21 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| theamk wrote:
| That's TSR as in "TSR. Inc", makers of Dungeons And Dragons
| tabletop game.
|
| Not Terminate and Stay Resident utilities for old MS-DOS systems.
| jhbadger wrote:
| While knowing either meaning of the abbreviation is dating
| oneself, it's weird that people remember the very obscure and
| short-lived meaning it to refer to a technique to allow fake
| multitasking on DOS such as in Borland's Sidekick.
| kubb wrote:
| Is there a point to this story? It appears to be a description of
| a sequence of events remarkably devoid of any conclusion, climax,
| conflict, struggle, character development or whatever we usually
| see in stories.
| duskwuff wrote:
| It's an entry in a long-running series about the history of
| computer and role-playing games.
| allturtles wrote:
| Erm, what? It's about the decline, fall and resurrection of an
| iconic company in the history of hobby gaming. The story arc
| seems pretty clear to me.
|
| The wider context is the series of articles on the resurgence
| of CRPGs in the mid/late-90s ("The CRPG Renaissance"), with
| this installment serving to set the stage for the arrival of
| Baldur's Gate (1998), in the last line:
|
| > What Adkison couldn't have envisioned on that day was that
| the resuscitation of Dungeons & Dragons would begin in the
| digital rather than the tabletop realm, courtesy of one of the
| most iconic CRPGs of all time -- a Pool of Radiance for this
| new decade.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The author likes articles about historically significant games
| to be mostly about the games, meaning that there is
| occasionally a chapter like this about background stuff, so he
| can dedicate the next one to the game itself.
|
| The title is:
|
| > The CRPG Renaissance, Part 3: TSR is Dead...
|
| And the last sentence is:
|
| > What Adkison couldn't have envisioned on that day was that
| the resuscitation of Dungeons & Dragons would begin in the
| digital rather than the tabletop realm, courtesy of one of the
| most iconic CRPGs of all time -- a Pool of Radiance for this
| new decade.
|
| What he is coy about, and what most of the people reading this
| know, is that the first D&D CRPG released under Adkinson's care
| was _Baldur 's Gate_. Which is one of the most influential
| games ever released. Not only was it very good (it still
| frequently features on lists of best games ever made) and a
| massive sales success, but it was also different, in a way that
| redefined its genre to this day. Many elements that people
| expect there to be in modern CRPGs became expected because they
| were there in Baldur's Gate. And its influence wasn't limited
| to CRPGs, because it sold millions of copies to people who had
| never even considered playing D&D, and acted as a gateway into
| the hobby for them.
|
| But if you have no idea about what the next chapter will be, I
| admit that this one seems a bit weird.
| soneca wrote:
| > _"In the past, it had been promoted as a game of free-flowing
| imagination, primarily a system for making up your own worlds and
| stories. In the future, the core rules would be marketed as a
| foundation that you built upon not so much with your own
| creativity as with other, more targeted TSR product"_
|
| I saw this happening with Lego as well. The free-flowing
| possibilities of buckets full of Lego bricks to created whatever
| you could imagine are now mostly gone. Kids and adults alike now
| buy Lego boxes with very specific bricks and a huge manual with a
| very exact step-by-step instruction. If you skip even one step
| the whole project is unfinishable. Those boxes actually punish
| creativity.
| posterman wrote:
| who needs creativity when you can have built small-scale
| versions of your favorite intellectual properties?
| creer wrote:
| Buckets of bricks are much more usable now than they used to be
| - because of the wealth of different shapes now available. You
| can still build crude blocky houses, but you don't have to stop
| there. There are still some incoming overly specialized parts
| but not all that many these days - and perhaps we have gotten
| more creative in how to use them.
|
| The current manuals assemble models with complex assembly
| methods (with the human kind of just a tool in the process).
| One things that's lacking from the current manuals is an
| isolation or demonstration of which parts are these clever sub-
| assemblies and how they can be used in more general situations.
| That is a problem. You end up with clever constructions methods
| that are explained on youtube videos and 3rd party books -
| rather than in the manuals. Missed opportunity.
|
| Another thing that's likely is that with "shelf models" like
| the botanicals or some Star Wars kits, the kits are bought and
| gifted to people who have no inclination to be endlessly
| disassembling and rebuidling different things with them. That's
| okay - eventually these bricks will end up in our buckets.
| allturtles wrote:
| There's nothing stopping you from still building random stuff
| from Legos. In fact there are Lego Classic boxes that are
| intended just for that.
|
| I think it comes down to personality and interest. One of my
| kids just buys the occasional Lego and builds it exactly per
| spec. The other will do that too, but also will dig into our
| buckets of extra legos from abandonded sets of the past to
| build cool stuff (a mech, a Magic card stand, a Minecraft sign
| for his room) or mod his sets by incorporating other Legos to
| add weapons or decorations, make the limbs longer, etc.
|
| I think the analogy holds quite well for D&D: there are people
| who just want to run a pre-written adventure, and other people
| who are crafting their own worlds and scenarios, but will
| happily mine published materials for ideas.
| soneca wrote:
| There is nothing stopping anyone. I am just saying that there
| is a clear change in behavior of playing with Lego from two
| decades ago to now. A look at the assortment of a Lego store
| should make that clear.
| kps wrote:
| The first LEGO set I had as a kid was
| https://brickset.com/sets/325-3/Shell-Service-Station (issued
| 1966) with a special-purpose baseplate, doors, sign, gas pumps,
| and entirely non-LEGO-compatible tank truck.
| baruz wrote:
| Peter Adkinson's fondness for _Dungeons and dragons_ and his
| Internet savvy was mentioned but not really expanded upon. In
| fact the first product that Wizards of the Coast produced was not
| _Magic: the gathering_ but a supplement for role-playing games,
| _The primal order_, rules for playing deities and demigods. He
| had done the TSR rules but wanted the broadest base possible, so
| he solicited advice from Usenet's rec.games.frp.* hierarchy (and
| rec.games.rpg?) for conversion to other systems. I made
| suggestions for GURPS.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| I probably owned 50 Dragonlance books by the time I graduated
| high school in 1999. Didn't get my first PC until 1994, but my
| search for Champions of Krynn led me down the classic CRPG rabbit
| hole so I had a chance to enjoy the classics before the "new"
| generation appeared with Diablo, Fallout, and Baldur's Gate.
|
| The deal between TSR and Random House was interesting. Williams
| literally got to print money and get paid for whatever she
| delivered, but at the cost of building up a loan balance that
| would eventually come due. I know we make fun of MBA culture and
| bean counters but it takes a lot of discipline to run a company,
| and I wonder how the "blank check" influenced planning and
| production. Was it hubris that drove up an $12M loan? Was it poor
| communication from Random House to TSR about sales and forecasts?
|
| It's also wild that if the TSR had lasted one more year it could
| have repaid its loan with the Baldur's Gate royalties and padded
| its war chest from the sequel and Neverwinter Nights. Business is
| a fickle beast.
| mmooss wrote:
| What was Wizards of the Coast's role in Baldur's Gate? Did they
| need to approve it? Help market it?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| BioWare acquired the license in 1995, before the acquisition.
| Wizard's role was to collect the royalty check. I believe
| they were otherwise at work on D&D 3rd Edition. Outside of
| the debt load it looks like the three games more or less
| recouped the acquisition cost in the first five years.
| floxy wrote:
| Not related to:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate-and-stay-resident_pr...
| hackthemack wrote:
| I do not think many fans of D&D realize how lucky it is that
| Peter Adkinson bought TSR. If TSR went under, the various
| properties of TSR would have been split up and used to pay off
| debts to various creditors. Of course, such things leads to
| alternate realities that we do not live in, so I am sure some
| will say it would not have been that bad. I just have my doubts
| that Random House would have resuscitated the D&D brand in the
| way that WotC was able to in the 2000s. Seems unlikely any other
| company would have come up with the OGL, which enabled many 3rd
| parties to use the D&D rules and creations in their own rules.
| jltsiren wrote:
| I still find "fans of D&D" something like a category error.
|
| Back when I was more involved in the local RPG community and
| started dealing with the SF community, I found their choice of
| terminology weird. While we were talking about role-players and
| the hobby, their corresponding terms were fans and the fandom.
| To me, fans were fundamentally consumers, while role-playing
| was a creative activity. An RPG fan could be someone who
| collects games and sourcebooks and reads them without a real
| intention to play them. (I've known a few of those.) I also
| associated fans more with liking a specific artist or band
| rather than with an entire field or genre.
|
| Also, I don't know if the revival of D&D was good for RPGs,
| except commercially. By reviving D&D, Adkison also revived
| concepts such as classes, levels, hit points, and XP, which
| gamify role-playing. That was not how we were playing RPGs at
| the time.
| mmooss wrote:
| Very interesting tale.
|
| > "But why not just let TSR go bankrupt, and then buy it without
| assuming all that debt?" Adkison asked.
|
| That would have saved Adkinson $30 million of a $55 million
| purchase; it seems that must have been significant money to his
| tabletop gaming company.
|
| The answer in the OP is that Adkinson might lose the _Dungeons &
| Dragons_ trademark, which had been pledged to Random House as
| collateral. I expect Random House would have been happy to sell
| it to Adkinson - in return for paying off TSR's debt, though
| maybe Adkinson could get a discount. The question is, how much
| was that trademark worth on the market?
|
| Still, I wonder if Adkinson made that decision with head or
| heart.
|
| > Peter Adkison held an all-hands meeting with the understandably
| nervous remaining staff of TSR on June 3. At it, he told them
| that he had bought the company for two things: for Dungeons &
| Dragons, yes, but also for the very people who were gathered in
| that room, the ones who made the game. TSR's Lake Geneva offices
| would be closed, marking the end of Wisconsin's unlikely tenure
| as the center of the tabletop-RPG universe, but most employees
| would receive an offer to move to Seattle and work in Wizard's
| headquarters. With Magic doing such gangbusters business, Wizards
| of the Coast had the time and money to rebuild the Dungeons &
| Dragons brand carefully and methodically, even if it took years.
| They would soon begin work on a third edition of the rules, the
| most sweeping revision ever, intended to make the game
| understandable and appealing to a whole new generation of players
| without losing the core of what had made it such a sensation in
| the first place. The future of Dungeons & Dragons was bright,
| Adkison insisted.
|
| Most acquisitions seem to begin with these assurances and then a
| year later it's all forgotten. Adkison seems to have actually
| meant it, at least somewhat. Did almost everyone get job offers
| in Seattle?
| mmooss wrote:
| > The answer in the OP is that Adkinson might lose the Dungeons
| & Dragons trademark, which had been pledged to Random House as
| collateral. I expect Random House would have been happy to sell
| it to Adkinson - in return for paying off TSR's debt, though
| maybe Adkinson could get a discount. The question is, how much
| was that trademark worth on the market?
|
| Responding to myself, I missed the obvious when I posted above
| ...
|
| Random House's extension of debt to TSR is a bit mysterious -
| why did they let a seemingly poorly managed, fading company run
| up a growing, already unpayable bill?
|
| Possibly, Random House wanted the _D &D_ IP all along and if
| TSR wouldn't sell, it was RH's way of acquiring it. Effectively
| RH would acquire the IP for $30 million - less than Adkison's
| $55 million.
|
| OTOH, RH could have bid against Adkison. Maybe TSR never gave
| them the chance; maybe Adkison required an immediate decision;
| but I'd expect the shareholders to look for better offers.
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