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How Gygax Lost Control of TSR and D&D
An anonymous reader writes "Sunday was the birthday of the late great Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and Futurama guest star. With the fifth edition of D&D soon to come out at Gen Con this year, Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World, has released a new piece to answer a historical question: how was it, back in 1985, that Gary was ousted from TSR and control of D&D was taken away from him? Drawn from board meeting minutes, stock certificates, letters, and other first-hand sources, it's not a quick read or a very cheery one, but it shows how the greatest success of hobby games of the 1980s fell apart and marginalized its most famous designer."
From the way the article reads, it's more like everyone else made their save vs spell... Or perhaps that he lost his save vs PPDM. Seems like after he made his initial critical mistake (allowing investment options to bypass his majority ownership), he couldn't recover without just divesting himself from TSR and starting over before the flagship D&D product was born, which, as a primary creator, he might have been able to pull off.
The behind closed doors shenanigans, manipulations and backstabbery are about right for any D&D game I've ever been in.
That SOUNDS a lot easier than you think.
Firing a relative or friend has repercussions outside of your business relationship. It simply isn't easy for most people who love and cherish their family and friends to toss them out on the street along with their kids.
Do you really think that a nasty money fight between friends and relatives with contractual obligations in a business would not affect the personal relationships between them?
The Blumes exercised their options to buy more shares, which reduced Gygax's interest below 50%. They then sold all of their shares to Williams, who now controlled the company.
The key issue is that the company was in a downward spiral at that point in time, losing money and having just laid off a huge percentage of their employees. Boardroom politicking like that often happens when a company is in that sort of situation. The knives all come out when the company has trouble finding the cash that it needs, and people see the opportunity to redress old slights. It's unclear to me whether the company structure was fatally flawed from the beginning, or if things would have turned out better if Gygax had kept his eye on the ball better as far as the company went.