Book Review
Title: Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs
Genre: Non-Fiction, Games, History
Rating: 4 Stars
Slaying the Dragon is a book that centres on D&D beginning with its creation. D&D or the early concertos is what wills become Dungeons and Dragons was created by Gary Gyrax and Dave Arneson. There were several different early versions of D&D including Blackmoor which were expanded upon before slowly becoming the same were know today but it wasn’t a smooth transition. Gary had to publish the game himself because no one would take it up and founded the company TSR with Don Kaye in order to do so. As the game became popular it was played with issues like being too complicated for new players leading to the creation of the basic set and the roles being too expensive leading to the three different guides needed to play. However, while the game did very well early on it ultimately fell victim to simpler games like Magic: The Gathering which was simpler but no less expensive than D&D.
However, as fast as the company become famous it’s sales began to decline rapidly as they hadn’t accounted for the slowdown in new players. During this time they were kept afloat by certain individuals. Jeff Easley came on board as an incredible talented artist, Bruce Nesmith was crucial in the RPG department and the couple Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman came up with the idea of the Dragonlance novels which became an overnight success. Despite this nobody’s job was safe and eventually Bruce was given the cuts leaving the RPG team down a vital member but throughout all this time the creator was nowhere to be seen. During this time Gary was in California living it up with women and drugs while also getting a D&D cartoon put on air. However, when he learnt that the Blume brothers were looking to sell the company he returned and gained control once more.
However, this slight era of peace wouldn't last since Gary needed money to keep his company alive and partnered with Lorraine Williams. Williams was a non-gamer and didn’t understand many of the stances and choices Gary made leaving the pair in almost constant conflict. Eventually Lorraine gained majority shares in the company and removed Gary as CEO meaning in one blow Gary had lost everything but he still had quite a lot of money. It is claimed that Williams repeatedly threatened to Sue Gary when he stepped into the ROG world even in projects unrelated to D&D. As the author states we have to be aware that Gary is an unreliable narrator since he claims to have been ignorant to the Blume’s decision when he clearly wasn’t and even endorsed some of them. This did however spell the end of Gary’s era and the beginning of William’s era but while she would advance the company she will also run it into the ground.
The William’s era has both ups and downs as they advanced the company but failed to hold onto key members of staff. On the one side they treated employees like William W. Connors extremely well, after his wife became ill he attempted to resign. His resignation was denied as he was a key member of the team but they offer him unlimited leave and continued to pay him as normal even though at times he was only there once or twice a week. However, on the other hand, they lost Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and Larry Elmore to Bantam books. This occurred because Weis and Hickman wanted to write more books but were denied and they took Larry with them as their cover designer meaning they lost two exceptional writers and an artist in one go. They did have some successes when Jeff Grubb and Ed Greenwood used the character Elminster and created a whole new campaign, universe and lore for it but profit sales were still slowly declining despite this.
The company attempted to go back to their last success, Dragonlance. Mary Kirchoff was assigned the task of finding a new author from the submissions they had received and she found it in Robert Salvatore. While he has compelling characters and settings it was his writing that drew Mary in but he has never heard of the Forgotten Realms and has no idea how to write a D&D novel. Robert and Mary worked together, bouncing ideas off each other and eventually came up with a workable draft for the Icewind Dale series. When this series was published or performed amazingly and the company was looking into more books in the various world but it was around this time the games department was in serious trouble. They had realised that their best sellers, the handbook, players guide and monster manual were dropping sales quickly and they had to find a way to reinvent D&D to pick them back up.
In planning the second edition, the first edition with Gary as the lead, someone else had to be chosen and that was David “Zeb” Cook. Zeb encountered numerous issues when planning out the second edition for rearranging the existing content, updating it and adding new content. By the time the release came it made some money but the sales were nowhere near what was predicted however, the true sales data was kept from the games department meaning they didn’t know how to improve or change what they were doing. Many realised that there was a consumption issues but Williams refused to buy out Anderson, the co-creator of D&D to acquire those rights in addition to AD&D which wasn’t a good move and she was pushing content that the public clearly didn’t want. Eventually it was decided they would branch out into comic with TSR West but this might have been a last ditch effort to make money again and boost sales the way the novels did.
Flint Dille along with Steven Grant were to head up the new comic book department but this caused issues from the beginning. TSR has several products licensed under DC comics and this move out them in direct competition which caused alienation from their more successful counterpart. To avoid being sued by DC they claimed these new products were comic modules not comic books but this only created market confusion and led to the products being effectively hidden from the target audience. Ultimately TSR West was dead in the water after only a year in person and the management decisions were to blame for this as they would have had more success working with DC rather than working against them.
At the same time Bruce Nesmith was hired back to TSR in order to work on the Ravenloft products. This marked a shift from the fantasy genre to the horror genre, while this did attract some new fans it wasn’t what TSR needed. Many people working on the products believed that the Ravenloft items were doing well when this wasn’t the case. Again this information was kept from the games department meaning they couldn’t adjust what they were doing to suit the market. At this time Brom was hired as an artist but style clashes led to conflicts early on but he did find mentorship. Brom realised that the management genuinely didn’t understand the creative types and didn’t know how to handle them but Brom brought the Dark Sun to life with his gothic style which did ok in sales but nothing compared to the book department.
Mary Kirchoff and Jim Lowder were working together in the book department and with Lowder Rising quickly as an editor, the pair decided to push the book department into the limelight again. This was successful as they earned more royalties for authors and became an independent department in 1990. The book department was the financial centre of the company as book sales in 1991 accounted for half of the company’s profits. However, Lowder and Kirchoff would leave the company because of Kyle advancement, the disrespect from management and the fact they called brand over people. Kirchoff was replaced by Brian Thomsen, who began to change things for the worst. He wanted to undercut authors and remove unsolicited submissions where the company has found some of their greatest talent. This led to many conflicts with Lowder and eventually Robert Salvatore.
The company then brought in John Rateliff to work on an RPG game based on Tolkien’s work which already has a large and dedicated fan base. However, Williams wanted the rights to publish new fictional work based off Tolkien’s universe and sent Rateliff to negotiate with the Tolkien estate. Rateliff accepted the task because he was a Tolkien nerd but knew that the estate was deny their proposal because no one up to that point had been allowed to create new books inspired by Tolkien. As expected their request was denied and Williams opted to scratch the project altogether and many believed that this was a bad move especially when we see the success others had with alternative Tolkien works later on.
The next idea the company had was breaking into the younger market since AD&D was primarily marketed at teens and adults. This inspired the creation of Dragonstrike which was marketed at eight years olds but many designers thought this to be a stupid idea since the mechanics and mathematics involved in D&D meant it would be impossible for children to understand and it was extremely difficult at the time to simplify the information. As expected, this didn’t go well and Dragonstrike performed poorly on the market because it was confused and didn’t really explain the game well enough for children to understand.
Jim Fallone commented that he believes that the management decisions were injuring the company since it was being run by non-gamers who didn’t understand the market for their products. The decision was made for a second attempt at breaking into the younger market with First Quest which performed slightly better but not to the management’s expectations. Questionable choices made by the people in charge also out the company in debt with Random House for returned products and William’s decisions were becoming a cause for concern for those working for her. Fallone eventually leaves the company after receiving an offer from Bethesda where he went on to work on the Elder Scroll series and became the lead designer on Skyrim.
At the same time trouble was brewing with Robert Salvatore, as he was being asked to produce six books for TSR in addition to his other contract meaning he would have to write three books in a year when he had repeatedly been working on short deadlines. He ends up declining this offer and leaving TSR, leaving them without their best author and this was a major blow to the company. They now needed another writer for Drizzt but many people refused sympathising with Salvatore but someone finally accepted and this was a move to solely run Salvatore the wrong way. Despite all of their efforts even the release of Planescape, seen as the best work TSR ever turned out couldn’t stop the sales decline and this was the beginning of the end for TSR.
Wizards of the Coast president Peter Adkison, a witness to everything claimed he was going to buy TSR when it eventually went under but TSR rebuffed these claims by claiming great financial health but this was false. At this time Random House wanted TSR to pay its debts but it didn’t have the money to do but Williams was hiding this fact from everyone. While they set up a payment plan, they defaulted so Random House took them to court to get the money owed to them. Managerial decisions like factoring meant there were losses in products and inflexibility in product development and schedules, placing a lot of the blame of Williams’ decisions for the company. Managerial decisions weren’t the only issue as competition from games like Magic: The Gathering was fierce and TSR were falling behind the curve because of the way they were doing business under Williams.
Some of the employees came up with a similar games to Magic called Spellfire which performed really well upon its release but Williams hated the idea of copying someone else and tabled it early on. Many were upset with this decision especially when the money issues became apparent because they knew there was a market for Spellfire and they were being shut out of it by their own management. The money problems were becoming more visible as TSR owed royalties to most of its authors and it was now in debt with their printer. Williams eventually made the decisions to sell the offices to the printer company in exchange for exclusive printing rights and being able to lease the building to hold them off for a little while. Not long after this Jim Ward quit when asked to fire many employees who were vital to the company, up until, this point he was the longest staying employee.
By the winter of 1997, scores of employees were being laid off and millions of dollars’ worth of product was being returned increasing the debt the company was in to a staggering amount. By Christmas, TSR was dead in the water and everyone knew it they were just waiting for the enviable to happen. The author also really introduces us to Peter Adkison and how he started Wizards of the Coast and created Magic with a friend while working full time for Boeing. It was at the end of 1997 that he offered to buy out TSR because he didn’t want to see another nerd central go under understanding the passion behind a company like TSR but Williams refused his offer to the surprise of everyone. At this time e we must remember the rights to a lot of their products like The Dungeon Master’s Guide and much more were collateral with the bank, the worst case scenario for the employees who created them.
Salvation finally came in the form of Bob Abramowitz and Five Rings Publishing who helped produce a deal between themselves, TSR and Wizards were Wizards would purchase both companies and the debt associated with TSR in return for the intellectual property and this deal was closed in a few weeks. Peter Adkison proved to be the ideal leader for the company correcting the business mistakes made by Williams and Gary as well claiming back some of the geniuses that helped created D&D and related products. Wizards became a company run by fans for fans and has remained that way today even getting an open license for its products meaning that anyone can create a D&D based book or comic and profit it from it without paying anything to the original company. Overall, the life of Dungeons & Dragons has been filled with ups and downs but it did have a happy ending. The untold stories from the people working for the company added a real human element to this story and made it about more than the game itself but how artistic and creative types were often overlooked during this time and seen as easily replaceable when they weren’t. Would recommend this to any nerd especially fans of D&D.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Comentários