 September 13, 2011 - 6:42pm | RE: http://paizo.com/store/sale/americanEagles/august/buckRogers For those that don't know, the game company Paizo bought a large collection of unsold RPG materials from a distributor called American Eagle. This company had a TON of 20+ year old RPG material sitting in a warehouse!! Paizo has been releasing these NEW, NEVER SOLD gems a bit at a time since the stat of summer. Also look for the Top Secret material. NOTE: this is not a true endorsement of BR by me as I'm usually the first to dump on "she that shall not be named" for killing SF in favor of BR so she could line her pockets after forcing gygax out of TSR. But rather its an endorsement of obtaining vintage sci-fi material to rip off ideas for Star Frontiers. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 13, 2011 - 7:06pm | By all means, endorse and rip on "she that shall not be named"... |
September 13, 2011 - 7:34pm | You know the more I learn about her the less I feel bad about "pissing" on her. Scratch that I never really felt bad about "pissing" on her. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 14, 2011 - 6:42am | Without the dark lady we migh not have this great site, a fanzine and an upcoming d00 RPG. /me sings, "There's always a bright side to life..." as the spaceship slowly enters the suns corona. |
September 14, 2011 - 8:02am | There he goes, Mr positive. You just have to rain oil on my parade while I'm enjoying dumping on her. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 14, 2011 - 12:41pm | Without the dark lady we migh not have this great site, a fanzine and an upcoming d00 RPG.
How so? If it weren't for her, Star Frontiers might still be published for purchase today./me sings, "There's always a bright side to life..." as the spaceship slowly enters the suns corona. May the idea of not crapping on her burn with you, traitor! Burn the traitor! Burn the traitor! Burn the traitor!... View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 September 14, 2011 - 6:41pm | Just to comment Mr. G's son was in my unit in Germany. I generally got the impression he (the dad) while disappointed over the whole mess took the high road and got back to what he loved. Creating great games. There will never be another game like D&D and it was only natural others would try and steal it. You decide if spending all your energy fighting them or moving on and starting again. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 14, 2011 - 8:06pm | I dont think anyone can say I'm not involved in creating material for Star Frontiers. I spend a lot of time producing and promoting, I think about SF everyday but then I'm deeply involved in the SFman. And I enjoy it. But I also enjoy pissing on the un-named person. Maybe I'm bad, maybe I hold a grudge, maybe i walk low paths? Simple fact is that she axed my favorite game to line her pockets with cash. She ranks with Enron just on a smaller scale. But while I despise a company like Enron it wasn't personal. With her its personal, to me and I'm not quick to forgot. I may forgive but it takes a while to forget. So what the hey, I enjoy dissing her. I dont spend a lot of time on it but every once and awhile something comes up, like this sale, and I vent a little spleen. Piss on her. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 14, 2011 - 11:23pm | And I enjoy watch you diss LW (there, I almost said the name that shall not be named). Having only learned of what transpired in recent years, I had always wondered what happened to my two favorite games (D&D being the other one). Mein freund, I'll not stop you from Lambasting Wonderfully. To paraphrase what Val Kilmer said in his role as Doc Holiday in Tombstone "You have yet begun to defile her self". I'll even start a new thread for it if you like.  |
 September 15, 2011 - 4:12am | Justice does come in MANY forms. She-whom-should-not-be-named has her own millstone about her neck, and that IS a form of justice. Her Bio says she's a financial planner - not like a Fugger, but a Kamakazi... Thank God that breathing is automatic, or she'd muff that up too... "If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -A Einstein |
September 15, 2011 - 5:32am | She's a smart woman, brought in by Gygax to fix the mismanagement of the Bloom brother (giving family members jobs and providing them with limos kind of crap). Somehow she convinced them to sell out to her which led to Gygax selling out in disgust. She made boat load of money off the novels which may have been what kept the company afloat for longer than it would have survived otherwise. So no doubt she's smart. But the thing that gets me is that she considered people who played role playing games beneath her socially and yet here she is the CEO of a huge company and she goes around in frumpy hand made clothes looking like some hill billy out of the mountains with possible inbreeding in her lineage. I've seen the picture, if I had been a TSR employee back then I would have avoided being seen in public with her like the plague lest someone asked me, "She's your boss?" I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 15, 2011 - 12:28pm | Lorraine and the First Lady must shop at the same thrift stores... |
September 16, 2011 - 4:25am | I don't see it that Gygax intentionally screwed his former company over. He made a decision to get out rather than fight and I can't fault him for that. Then he went to work at another company producing a new game but what brought on the suit was a decision by him or GDW to run an ad for the game as Gary Gygax's Dangerous Demensions- which was purely a strategy to lure the customer base over to a game who's initials were D&D and had Gygax's name on it. TSR had a fit and they blinked and quickly changed the name to Dangerous Journeys. As for Gary screwing TSR with the settlement- he didn't bring the lawsuit in the first place. And while he may not have been a saint (though he's probably the closest thing this hobby has to a patron saint) he would have been an idiot to say, "No that settlement is too high, I don't want to screw over my old company." I did read a quote from him that the settlement was far more than what he would have sold the game for outright. Sad fact is that under Williams the company threatened teenager with fan sites on the new fangled thing called the internet and tried to assert copyright of words like dragon. These activities as well as the policy that she got paid for every BR product that was printed (not sold) . Ruined TSR. The company churned out a dizzying array of BR product that never sold and sat on warehouse shelves, why? Because she ordered it. Sorry, but I have to take issue with the characterization of Gygax being in the same boat as Williams. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 16, 2011 - 5:04am | There's a big difference between forgiving and forgetting. While the cousin who got hooked on drugs and robbed everyone in the family might be forgiven you can't forget what happened and you certainly don't give him the chance to rip people off again saying its all water under the bridge and past. No that's a bit of enabling. I'll chit chat with him at a get together and talk about good times from our youth, might even give him a car to help him out with a ride for work. Same with a public figure that behaves badly. I Williams case her greed didn't have an impact the rocked the US's economy it just brought TSR to its knees. I find nothing praise worthy in it and her name will probably always be mud with me. You don't always have some one person that can be blamed for something but in this case she clearly fits the role of villain of the piece. Besides this is an open discussion thread an I can diss her or someone like Dick Chenney just as much as I like. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 16, 2011 - 9:10am | I expected to be called-out on making the patron saint look foul... I was just pointing out that he was just as liable to making errors of management. If he was able to 'run the company better than they could' the other interests in the company would have been able to support him over those who supposedly were out to martyr him. Instead he 'took his toys and went home' after (with obvious regret to be fair) damaging old friendships, and being the cause of such rumors. On the other hand, while there is a lot of slander being pointed out toward Williams (who, like it or not was operating with the best interest of the company and it's employees by protecting the companies claims), those who were there have made statements that no such specific harassment was intended, but the feud did escalate more than it should have, after encounters that were taunting from GDW and Gygax. Furthermore, the policies of a corporation are much like the policies of any governmental body, any new president has to have time to adjust the body of the organization from old tactics and strategies, to new ways... many of the early unjustified legal actions taken by TSR in the 80's were already 'in motion' and supported by such older policy... tactics DID change over time under the Williams administration... again, just like in government, benefits of such reform is always credited to the next on the throne. So it is a little ironic that Gygax was treated heavy-handed by [his] TSR, when he was part of the process that set up the precedent for such treatment, and continued to perpetuate such policies in his later enterprises and projects, even as TSR was softening and becoming more aware of it's fan-base. The reason TSR went under was because Dragon Dice (a new and partially successful, but experimental game) failed to be marketed to it's proper audience, and unexpected lack of sales caused a drained funding due to returned unsold product. One bad year is all it takes to ruin a company, working from an 80's business model, no matter how well managed that company might be. It was not poor management, it was faulty information input into the risk assessment, and most companies work with risk assessment strategies that can kill them in just one bad year. 50's to 90's business models were notorious for operating in risk assessment environments, and serious changes to that model have only come into fruition since about 2000, as they were being developed in the 90's. Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
September 17, 2011 - 5:11pm | This is not against anyone but everytime a company fails and not just game companies you can never get a real answer as to what happened. I have heard 4 different versions of how FASA owners of Battletech and the Star Trek RPG lisence went bankrupt. I also am a volunteer Firefighter so have been present when police are taking witness statements after an accident. Lots of versions there too but with a company there should be a paper trail to show just what the heck happened. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 17, 2011 - 6:34pm | This is not against anyone but everytime a company fails and not just game companies you can never get a real answer as to what happened. I have heard 4 different versions of how FASA owners of Battletech and the Star Trek RPG lisence went bankrupt. Very true, and there is a number of things that could be pointed to that hurt TSR: settlements and legal fees, failed products like dragon dice, the fleecing of the company through the Buck Rogers product, and the fracturing of the customer base through offering a multiplicity of settings. Under Williams the company began offering multiple settings and products produced in each setting cost the same to develop and produce. How ever not every customer bought every module anymore but rather began to focus on 1 or 2. Settings. Under this model TSR was paying three times the development cost to sell the same number of modules. I think the truth os that all these thing contributed. The sad fact is that all these things happened on William's watch so she bears the blame.I also am a volunteer Firefighter so have been present when police are taking witness statements after an accident. Lots of versions there too but with a company there should be a paper trail to show just what the heck happened. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
