The History of Dungeons & Dragons Isn’t What You Think

 

Ben Riggs takes a deep dive into the history of TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons. The book, which draws on a wealth of insider accounts and leaked documents, presents a surprising new perspective on the downfall of TSR.

“I thought the story was going to be, ‘Wizards of the Coast made Magic: The Gathering … and it just sucked all the oxygen out of the room and killed TSR,'” Riggs says in Episode 521 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “That was the story I was expecting. It was not at all the story I was told. The story I was told was one of mismanagement and mistakes and errors, and a death by a thousand cuts, and a failure to expand, and a failure to find new people to play D&D.”

TSR products were lavishly illustrated, had great production values, and were affordably priced. Unfortunately, they weren’t all profitable. One example was the visionary Planescape campaign setting. “The whole line never made any money,” Riggs says. “Even though it’s an artistic high point for the company—and maybe ever for the brand of Dungeons & Dragons—it didn’t make any money.”

Bizarre business decisions abounded at TSR, including a practice called “factoring,” in which TSR pressured retailers to lock in their orders for the entire year in January. This led to severe deadline pressures for TSR writers like Jim Ward, who was given just 10 weeks to design the Spellfire collectible card game. “It made TSR incredibly inflexible,” Riggs says. “You couldn’t take more time to make the product, because if you did you’d be in contractual violation. This was a real problem, because it meant that TSR could no longer react with any degree of alacrity or fleetness to changes in the market.”

Many of TSR’s woes stemmed from a fundamental issue with tabletop role-playing games—how do you make money selling a product that encourages players to use their own imaginations? “I think the thing you would take away from this is that the role-playing business is a difficult business,” Riggs says. “If you’re going to make a role-playing game—which is good forever, and you can play for decades—how are the economics of that going to allow for the existence of role-playing game creators? Because we can certainly agree that role-playing games are something worthy of being created, but how are we going to make sure that the people who create them make a decent living?”

Listen to the complete interview with Ben Riggs in Episode 521 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.