I stopped reading any of their novels years ago because the quality seemed to be on a steady decline.  Considering it started, at best, as "Kind of, sort of, if you overlook a few screw ups, a decent yarn," there wasn't a whole lot of room in which to decline and still be worth my time to read it free from the library, let alone pay for it. 

Did it improve at all in the last, say, decade?  If not, what is there worth saving?

Quote from: Omega on October 28, 2020, 01:11:49 PMAs for the book situation. Seems weird as wouldnt they have known WOTC had a book branch when they acquired them? Seems more likely its just WOTC being WOTC and trying to deflect blame.

Hasbro bought WotC in 1999 but didn't make this book deal until 2016, 17 years later. It seems to me far more likely that D&D books weren't selling all that well in 2015 and Hasbro didn't see the point in WotC having their own book branch. From what happened to Dragonlance, it's more likely than not that Hasbro made the right move.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 28, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
Basically, as the laws are currently set up, a publically held corporation can be sued by its shareholders for not doing everything possible to maximize their profits. It's not enough to just be profitable; you have to prove you're making the shareholders as much money as you can possibly make or you are in violation of the regulations and can be sued for outrageous sums.

Big corporations are literally not allowed by government regulations to do what's best for their customers or longevity of their product lines unless those things also make the shareholders more money.

If this was true then you could sue Hasbro for not producing novels and therefore not doing "everything possible to maximise their profits"

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 03:48:53 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 28, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
Basically, as the laws are currently set up, a publically held corporation can be sued by its shareholders for not doing everything possible to maximize their profits. It's not enough to just be profitable; you have to prove you're making the shareholders as much money as you can possibly make or you are in violation of the regulations and can be sued for outrageous sums.

Big corporations are literally not allowed by government regulations to do what's best for their customers or longevity of their product lines unless those things also make the shareholders more money.

If this was true then you could sue Hasbro for not producing novels and therefore not doing "everything possible to maximise their profits"

Maximizing revenue would say you must produce novels (and everything else that can be sold). Maximizing profits may not. Corporate officers in a public company don't have a duty to maximize revenue. Their duty is to maximize shareholder wealth via stock prices & dividends.

Quote from: Bren on October 28, 2020, 05:05:10 PM

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 03:48:53 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 28, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
Basically, as the laws are currently set up, a publically held corporation can be sued by its shareholders for not doing everything possible to maximize their profits. It's not enough to just be profitable; you have to prove you're making the shareholders as much money as you can possibly make or you are in violation of the regulations and can be sued for outrageous sums.

Big corporations are literally not allowed by government regulations to do what's best for their customers or longevity of their product lines unless those things also make the shareholders more money.

If this was true then you could sue Hasbro for not producing novels and therefore not doing "everything possible to maximise their profits"

Maximizing revenue would say you must produce novels (and everything else that can be sold). Maximizing profits may not. Corporate officers in a public company don't have a duty to maximize revenue. Their duty is to maximize shareholder wealth via stock prices & dividends.

If you can not make profit from selling your IP then you are not doing "everything possible" and therefore should be sued to remove you from the company and replaced with some one who can.

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 07:26:07 PMIf you can not make profit from selling your IP then you are not doing "everything possible" and therefore should be sued to remove you from the company and replaced with some one who can.

This is irrelevant to my point and unrelated to your earlier comment. Also, just plain wrong. Good luck trying to prevail in that lawsuit.

Quote from: Bren on October 28, 2020, 09:08:28 PM

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 07:26:07 PMIf you can not make profit from selling your IP then you are not doing "everything possible" and therefore should be sued to remove you from the company and replaced with some one who can.

This is irrelevant to my point and unrelated to your earlier comment. Also, just plain wrong. Good luck trying to prevail in that lawsuit.

Which brings us around quite nicely to my earlier comment:

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 03:48:53 PM
If this was true then you could sue Hasbro for not producing novels and therefore not doing "everything possible to maximise their profits"

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 07:26:07 PM
If you can not make profit from selling your IP then you are not doing "everything possible" and therefore should be sued to remove you from the company and replaced with some one who can.

Making value for the shareholders (the obligation) does not equal making a profit with a specific, given IP.

Ask GM where Pontiac, Saturn, and Oldsmobile went...and why.

Hasbro just not giving a crap and letting the inmates run the asylum at WoTC does not surprise me at all.  So many large companies are horribly mismanaged, but coast on the strength of their brand anyway.

As for DnD, the last time I can think of that DnD was under competent management was when Gary Gygax and Don Kayne were running TSR out of Gary's basement in Lake Geneva Wisconsin.  It's a testament to the strength of DnD as a brand that it has managed to survive some truly epically bad management over the years.  Remember Lorraine Williams?

Quote from: Torque2100 on October 29, 2020, 06:51:00 AM
Hasbro just not giving a crap and letting the inmates run the asylum at WoTC does not surprise me at all.  So many large companies are horribly mismanaged, but coast on the strength of their brand anyway.

As for DnD, the last time I can think of that DnD was under competent management was when Gary Gygax and Don Kayne were running TSR out of Gary's basement in Lake Geneva Wisconsin.  It's a testament to the strength of DnD as a brand that it has managed to survive some truly epically bad management over the years.  Remember Lorraine Williams?

The real irony of Williams's tenure was that the Buck Rogers IP wasn't a bad one. We probably could've gotten a decent RPG out of it, but the silly bint didn't want to actually playtest anything.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on October 29, 2020, 08:13:12 AM

Quote from: Torque2100 on October 29, 2020, 06:51:00 AM
Hasbro just not giving a crap and letting the inmates run the asylum at WoTC does not surprise me at all.  So many large companies are horribly mismanaged, but coast on the strength of their brand anyway.

As for DnD, the last time I can think of that DnD was under competent management was when Gary Gygax and Don Kayne were running TSR out of Gary's basement in Lake Geneva Wisconsin.  It's a testament to the strength of DnD as a brand that it has managed to survive some truly epically bad management over the years.  Remember Lorraine Williams?

The real irony of Williams's tenure was that the Buck Rogers IP wasn't a bad one. We probably could've gotten a decent RPG out of it, but the silly bint didn't want to actually playtest anything.

"What? You want to PLAY GAMES on company time?!  Absolutely not!  'Playtesting' my ass!  Board games don't NEED to be tested."

Yep Lorraine was a piece of work.  Part of me wonders how she managed to run anything with management skills like those.  It's a big reason why I believe the conspiracy theory that Mrs Williams actually knew exactly what she was doing and she was just using TSR and the Buck Rogers IP to launder money.

As an IP Buck Rogers isn't terrible but I still question the timing of the RPG.  The Television show had been off the air for nearly a decade by the time the RPG came out.  As far as I know, there really wasn't much happening with the Buck Rogers IP in 1988.  Literally the only reason the game was to be made was because Mrs. Williams owned the copyright.

Quote from: Torque2100 on October 29, 2020, 08:25:44 AM

"What? You want to PLAY GAMES on company time?!  Absolutely not!  'Playtesting' my ass!  Board games don't NEED to be tested."

Yep Lorraine was a piece of work.  Part of me wonders how she managed to run anything with management skills like those.  It's a big reason why I believe the conspiracy theory that Mrs Williams actually knew exactly what she was doing and she was just using TSR and the Buck Rogers IP to launder money.

As an IP Buck Rogers isn't terrible but I still question the timing of the RPG.  The Television show had been off the air for nearly a decade by the time the RPG came out.  As far as I know, there really wasn't much happening with the Buck Rogers IP in 1988.  Literally the only reason the game was to be made was because Mrs. Williams owned the copyright.

Probably.  This wasn't the era of 'reboot ALL the things!' that would come along a decade or two later. But I have no objection to someone making money off something they own. Just... try not to burn down the rest of the fucking business while you do it.

Looking at the dates, I wonder if Larry Elmore had seen the writing on the wall when he jumped ship from TSR in '87 to work freelance.

Personally, I wonder if many of the stories about Williams' tenure at TSR have been exaggerated by either fan demonization or sources with an axe to grind. I expect we'd find out that she was someone who was fairly ignorant about the hobby and never bothered to learn much about it, but was trying to make a go of the business and just made some unwise decisions, especially at the end.

Surprised that no one seems to have mentioned the usual cause for stuff like this:  bureaucratic turf battles.  Almost as likely there's some VP somewhere who figures on becoming some sort of publishing house mogul in Hasbro and wanted to eliminate or take over publishing from a branch of the company he doesn't control.

Petty shit like this is 99 out of 100 times the cause for any irrational decisions in a company.

Quote from: Shasarak on October 28, 2020, 03:48:53 PM
If this was true then you could sue Hasbro for not producing novels and therefore not doing "everything possible to maximise their profits"

You still seem to be missing my point. Sure the novels would generate some revenue. We know the novels sold and would still sell. We don't know how profitable that was. You can't just say, "I'm going to sue you because you're not producing novels that some people would buy" and hope to prevail.

The plaintiff must prove that printing and selling the novels is likely to generate more profit than anything else Hasbro could do with the money required to maintain the IP and to produce the novels. That's not an easy thing to prove. Especially since the plaintiff isn't likely to have access to the revenue and expenses and other inner workings of Hasbro and its companies.