Quote from: GhostNinja on March 15, 2023, 03:51:14 PM
So I was watching this video by J. Scott Garibay who called Kelsey Dionne of Shadowdark RPG the Lorraine Williams of OSR and Says that Lorraine Williams kept D&D valuable and if you do not agree your are a misogynist

A women who hated gamers was the savior of D&D.  What a maroon this guy is.

*I removed the link to the video.  Don't want to help his monetization *

He talked about Revisionist history.   He is right but he sure is aiming it at the wrong people.  Not to mention he talked about racisms in the OSR and called Venger out specifically.

Scott Garibay is what we used to call back in the day "mentally retarded" (air quotes), and should not be taken seriously. In fact, he should be shunned, admonished, and out and out told to "shut he fuck up you retard"

Wait, I apologize...

Calling Scott Garibay "retarded" is an insult to retarded people, and again, I apologize for my verbiage.

He's simply an asshole...

Carry on...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on March 15, 2023, 08:42:58 PM
I haven't watched the video, but Lorraine Williams did keep TSR afloat for another decade after it nearly went under, and many well-remembered products were produced under her regime. Also, the 'hated gamers' bit appears to be rumor or urban legend.

What I've heard wasn't that she hated gamers per se, but she refused to allow for playtesting on later products (which resulted in some very questionable balance decisions). She also heavily overemphasized trying to push the Buck Rogers IP (which she had a stake in) over, well, everything else.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 16, 2023, 12:04:34 PM
What I've heard wasn't that she hated gamers per se, but she refused to allow for playtesting on later products (which resulted in some very questionable balance decisions). She also heavily overemphasized trying to push the Buck Rogers IP (which she had a stake in) over, well, everything else.

Per Jim Ward at a bar when he had been drinking a bit, she apparently HATED Gygax with a passion, but also ran TSR like a normal corporation, which is to say poorly. There were some questionable decisions made to irritate Gary. Further, she didn't really understand the gaming industry or gamers; I think she would have fit right in at Hasbro. But again, this is from a drunk Jim Ward (and his first hand knowledge), which could arguably be better or worse than third-hand accounts depending on who you ask due to his personal beef with her.

Quote from: Brad on March 16, 2023, 12:13:41 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 16, 2023, 12:04:34 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on March 15, 2023, 08:42:58 PM
I haven't watched the video, but Lorraine Williams did keep TSR afloat for another decade after it nearly went under, and many well-remembered products were produced under her regime. Also, the 'hated gamers' bit appears to be rumor or urban legend.

What I've heard wasn't that she hated gamers per se, but she refused to allow for playtesting on later products (which resulted in some very questionable balance decisions). She also heavily overemphasized trying to push the Buck Rogers IP (which she had a stake in) over, well, everything else.

Per Jim Ward at a bar when he had been drinking a bit, she apparently HATED Gygax with a passion, but also ran TSR like a normal corporation, which is to say poorly. There were some questionable decisions made to irritate Gary. Further, she didn't really understand the gaming industry or gamers

OK, so both those seems to confirm that the "hated gamers" thing is a false rumor.

I don't have any personal inside scoop on this, but from accounts that I have read, at the time of her takeover, TSR was in a huge amount of debt and sales had tanked. RPGs in general shrank during the 1980s, after the early peak of popularity around 1980. Williams was a business person, and she kept the company together for 12 years in a more difficult market than in the initial D&D boom. That's longer than the company had existed prior to her tenure. My impression is that she wasn't particularly successful, but also not terrible - so yeah, like a normal company.

For product quality, I never played 2E D&D, though I enjoyed a few products from then - esp. the historical sourcebooks and Council of Wyrms. I hated the boxed text storyline modules that became common, but that was already a trend before Williams took over with Dragonlance. To be fair, I also didn't like the 1E tournament module format.