TSR, Inc.: История издателя "Подземелий и драконов"

Former company, publisher of "Dungeons & Dragons"

TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company, best known as the original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Its earliest incarnation, Tactical Studies Rules, was founded in October 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Gygax had been unable to find a publisher for D&D, a new type of game he and Dave Arneson were co developing, so he founded the new company with Kaye to self publish their products. Needing financing to bring their new game to market, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner. Dungeons & Dragons is generally considered the first tabletop role playing game (TTRPG), and established the genre. When Kaye died suddenly in 1975, the Tactical Studies Rules partnership restructured into TSR Hobbies, Inc. and accepted investment from Blume's father Melvin. With the popular D&D as its main product, TSR Hobbies became a major force in the games industry by the late 1970s. Melvin Blume eventually transferred his shares to his other son Kevin, making the two Blume brothers the largest shareholders in TSR Hobbies. TSR Hobbies ran into financial difficulties in the spring of 1983, prompting the company to split into four independent businesses, with game publishing and development continuing as TSR, Inc. (TSR). After losing their executive positions, the Blume brothers subsequently sold their shares to TSR Vice President Lorraine Williams, who in turn engineered Gygax's ouster from the company in October 1985. TSR saw prosperity under Williams, but encountered financial trouble in the mid 1990s. While their overall sales and revenue were healthy, TSR's high costs meant the company nevertheless became unprofitable and deeply in debt. TSR was left unable to cover its publishing costs due to a variety of factors. Facing insolvency, TSR was purchased in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). WotC initially retained use of the TSR name for D&D products, but by 2000, the TSR moniker was dropped, coinciding with the release of the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons. WotC allowed the TSR trademark to expire in the early 2000s. Two new companies have since utilized the TSR trademark commercially.

Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was formed in 1973 as a partnership between Gary Gygax and Don Kaye, who collected together $2,400 for startup costs, to formally publish and sell the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, the creation of Gygax and Dave Arneson and the first modern role playing game (RPG). The first TSR release, however, was Cavaliers and Roundheads, a miniature game, to start generating income for TSR. The partnership was subsequently joined by Brian Blume in December 1973. Blume was admitted to the partnership to fund further publishing of D&D, as Cavaliers and Roundheads was not a commercial success. In the original configuration of the partnership, Kaye served as president, Blume as vice president, and Gygax as editor. In January 1974, TSR—with Gygax using his basement as a headquarters—produced 1,000 copies of D&D, selling them for $10 each (and the extra dice needed for another $3.50). This first print sold out in 10 months. Also in 1974, TSR published Warriors of Mars, a miniatures rules book set in the fantasy world of Barsoom, originally imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his series of novels about John Carter of Mars, to which Gygax paid homage in the preface of the first edition of D&D. However, Gygax and TSR published the Mars book without permission from (or payment to) the Burroughs estate. Warriors of Mars was quietly dropped from the catalog and never reprinted. When Don Kaye died of a heart attack on January 31, 1975, his role was taken over by his wife Donna Kaye, who remained responsible for accounting, shipping, and the records of the partnership through the summer. By the summer of 1975, those duties became complex enough that Gygax himself became a full time employee of the partnership in order to take them over from Donna Kaye. Arneson also entered the partnership in order to coordinate research and design with his circle in the Twin Cities. Brian Blume became the largest shareholder, Melvin Blume the second largest, and Gary Gygax the third largest. Gygax served as president of TSR Hobbies, and Blume as vice president and secretary. The Dungeon hobby shop would become the effective headquarters of the company, including the offices of Blume and Gygax. TSR Hobbies subcontracted the printing and assembly work in October 1975, and the third printing of 2,000 copies of D&D sold out in five months. D&D supplements Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demi Gods & Heroes were released in 1976. TSR also began to branch the Dungeons & Dragons product into two: Dungeons & Dragons as a general audience product intended for novices, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) for a more complicated product aimed at hardcore fans. In 1977, the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set was released for D&D, and the Monster Manual was released as the initial product for AD&D, making TSR the first game company to publish a hardbound book. The next year, the AD&D Players Handbook was published, followed by a series of six adventure modules. In late 1978, TSR Hobbies and the Dungeon Hobby Shop moved from 723 Williams Street into downtown Lake Geneva, to 772 West Main Street, with its offices once again located above the hobby shop. In 1979, the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide was published, and radio ads featuring "Morley the Wizard" were broadcast, All of these core books would go on to be major hits; the D&D Basic Set sold well in 1977 and 1978, would sell over 100,000 copies in 1979, and would continue to be updated and re released for years. In 1979, TSR signed a contract with Random House with unusual terms. In most deals between publishers and distributors, publishers are paid directly based on books sold downstream by the distributor to bookstores. In TSR's contract, however, Random House would loan money to TSR as an advance upon shipment of product from TSR to Random House, a loan equivalent to 27.3% of the suggested retail price. The arrangement was mutually beneficial at first: TSR could acquire money up front to fund their work, and not have to worry about immediate sales. Many of TSR's products had consistent sales over time, and the loans allowed the company to recoup the investment immediately and use the funds to make more books. Returns were generally low, leading to Random House's confidence in TSR. However, the arrangement would cause trouble later in the 1990s. Gygax granted exclusive rights to Games Workshop to distribute TSR products in the United Kingdom, after meeting with Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. Games Workshop printed some original material and also printed their own versions of various D&D and AD&D titles in order to avoid high import costs. TSR was unable to reach an agreement with Games Workshop regarding a possible merger, so the company created the subsidiary TSR Hobbies UK Ltd, in 1980. That same year, TSR Hobbies moved its offices again, into a former medical supply building with a warehouse attached. In 1982, TSR Hobbies broke the 20 million sales mark. In 1981, TSR Hobbies had revenues of $12.9 million and a payroll of 130. with no cash on hand, SPI was forced to hand over their operation to TSR. TSR published a few wargames created by their own in house designers, and had a hit with The Hunt for Red October, but ten years after the SPI takeover, TSR abandoned the wargame market.

In 1983, the company was split into four companies: TSR, Inc. (the primary successor), TSR International, TSR Ventures, and TSR Entertainment, Inc. This series was the lead program in its time slot for two years. In 1984, TSR was able to make licensing agreements that allowed the company to publish the Marvel Super Heroes, Indiana Jones, and Conan role playing games. In 1985, Gen Con moved out of Lake Geneva which had given it its name, and relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the game convention would have more badly needed additional space. The Oriental Adventures hardback for AD&D was released that same year, becoming the biggest seller for 1985. TSR published a game based on the All My Children daytime drama on ABC, with over 150,000 copies sold. In 1986, TSR began publishing the bi monthly Dungeon Adventures magazine, featuring only adventure scenarios for D&D. The struggle for financing led to board room shake ups at the top level. TSR's line of credit was stopped by its bank, and the company was in debt to over $1.5 million. Gygax would later say that he was in the dark as to the extent of the financial difficulties due to being in Hollywood; Ben Riggs, an author who studied TSR's history, is skeptical Gygax was truly unaware, however. Gygax now controlled TSR. Financial difficulties continued, however.

Williams saw potential for rebuilding the debt plagued company into a highly profitable one. However, she also acquired a reputation as a non gamer who played the "villain" in retrospectives of TSR. Gary Gygax grew particularly disdainful of her; Williams' habit of threatening lawsuits and legal action against perceived foes was criticized as unwise and turning potential allies into enemies. However, her tenure has also been defended. John D. Rateliff said that "Every single person I talked to who worked under Gary [Gygax] and the Blumes and then worked under Lorraine preferred working under Lorraine I never met a single person who was under both who didn't prefer being under her." TSR also released Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure in 1994, which detailed one of the kingdoms in the setting of Mystara. As an innovation, it included an audio CD with tracks of dialogue and sound effects. In 1995, TSR released Birthright, a campaign setting that mixed D&D with strategy games. The intent was for players to play noble characters empowered by divine blood which gave them the power to rule domains; players could expand their domains and divine powers with a mixture of war and diplomacy. TSR eventually moved into publishing hardcover novels as well with Salvatore's The Legacy, published in 1992. It made the top of The New York Times Best Seller list within weeks. In the late 1980s, TSR opened a new West Coast division in Southern California to develop various entertainment projects, similar to how Gygax had sought deals in Hollywood in the early 1980s. However, the efforts of the division would come to "less than nothing" according to TSR historian Ben Riggs, despite initial promise. TSR had an arrangement with DC Comics to produce the comics Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms, which sold well and were profitable for both DC and TSR. Sensing an opportunity, TSR decided to produce comics themselves as a stepping stool to television and film, as comics were cheaper to produce and start with. However, they had already sold the rights to their own A list product in AD&D. TSR attempted to not enrage DC Comics by calling their new product "comics modules" and including game related material at the end of each issue; additionally, TSR largely sold the comics modules through bookshops rather than comic shops. The compromise failed in both directions: DC, feeling betrayed that their partner was moving to become a competitor, immediately stopped production of both the AD&D and Forgotten Realms comics, and canceled an in production Ravenloft work. However, the changes to present the product as not a comic book caused the potential audience to either not know of its existence at all, or to be confused as to its nature. TSR West eventually published four comics modules: a Buck Rogers comic, a sci fi comic Intruder, a time travel comic Warhawks, and a horror comic called R. I. P. They were not commercially successful. TSR's book division ran into troubles in the mid 1990s. TSR engaged in disputes with some of its most successful authors over terms and remuneration. Weis & Hickman had been driven off in the mid 1980s; a new dispute with R. A. Salvatore happened in 1994–1995. TSR ramped up the number of novels published, but the expanded roster saw disappointing sales. TSR decided to publish twelve hardcover novels in 1996, despite a previous history of publishing only one or two hardcover novels each year, but they did not sell as well as expected.

By 1996, TSR was experiencing numerous problems, as outlined by various historians of the company. Shannon Appelcline wrote: "Distributors were going out of business. TSR had unbalanced their AD&D game through a series of lucrative supplements that ultimately hurt the long time viability of the game. Meanwhile, they had developed so many settings—many of them popular and well received—that they were both cannibalizing their only sales and discouraging players from picking up settings that might be gone in a few years. They may have been cannibalizing their own sales through excessive production of books or supplements too." Ben Riggs agreed that TSR was factionalizing the AD&D audience by continually releasing competing new settings (Forgotten Realms, Al Qadim, Dragonlance, Planescape, Dark Sun, Birthright, Karameikos, etc. ), a strategy intended to lure in new customers, but that actually divided its own core customers. TSR's products essentially competed with themselves, requiring more development effort to reach the same number of total customers. Ryan Dancey and Lisa Stevens, who examined TSR's finances for Wizards of the Coast, found that many of the AD&D settings products were never profitable, and more worryingly never could have been profitable—the cost of production was simply too high compared to the price they sold for. Another factor that hobbled TSR in the long term was a financial arrangement known as "factoring." Factoring worked like this: TSR first arranged contracts with retailers in the hobby trade (gaming stores, comics stores, and so on) to preorder their products and offered a discounted rate for contracts signed in January. TSR then took these contracts to investment banks, and was advanced money immediately by the banks, with the banks to be paid off from the eventual sales of the product. This financial innovation allowed TSR to be essentially "paid in advance", less fees from the banks and from discounts given to suppliers, which worked out to keeping about 82% of the revenue. Getting all of the money in January allowed TSR to budget with more certainty and potentially fund projects with a long lead time immediately, rather than waiting on sales. Other than the direct cost of losing 18 pennies on every dollar of revenue, factoring had the other downside of not being flexible to changing market conditions, as TSR was essentially locked into its budgeting from January. It was partially why Spellfire was made on a tiny budget, as TSR was attempting to take on a new initiative in the middle of the year, and led to a fiasco with its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CD ROM Core Rules product where a preorder arrangement with Babbage's was continued despite Babbage's becoming financially insolvent. TSR's old deal with Random House, which had been mutually beneficial in the 1980s, began to be used by TSR in ways that would paper over short term financial problems. Since TSR was paid up front on the assumption that shipped goods would ultimately sell, TSR began shipping overstock to Random House to generate loans on demand. This caused people in the know at TSR to call it the "Banco de Random House". Despite total sales of around $40 million in 1995, Since the logistics company had the production plates for key products such as core D&D books, there was no means of printing or shipping core products to generate income or secure short term financing. The company laid off thirty staff members in December 1996, and other employees including James M. Ward quit over disagreements about how the company managed the crisis. Wizards eventually closed the TSR corporate offices in Lake Geneva. Some TSR employees accepted the offer of transferring to Wizards of the Coast's offices in Washington, and a few others continued to work remotely from Wisconsin. Wizards of the Coast continued to use the TSR name for D&D products for three years. Wizards also set about the creation of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It was released in 2000 under the Wizards of the Coast brand only. In 1999, Wizards of the Coast was itself purchased by Hasbro, Inc. In 2002, the Gen Con convention was sold to Peter Adkison, the founder and CEO of Wizards of the Coast.

After its initial success faded, the company turned to legal defenses of what it regarded as its intellectual property. In addition, there were several legal cases brought regarding who had invented what within the company and the division of royalties, including several lawsuits against Gygax. This included the company threatening to sue individuals supplying game material on websites. In 1984, there was an incident involving Lucasfilm that led to a legend that TSR had trademarked the term "Nazi". TSR published a supplement for the Indiana Jones RPG, Raiders of the Lost Ark Adventure Pack, in which some figures were marked with "Nazi™". This trademark notation was because of a list of trademarked character names supplied by Lucasfilm's legal department; they had indiscriminately marked all figures with a trademark symbol, and the Nazi figures were likewise marked accidentally.

In 2011, a new company taking the name TSR was founded by Jayson Elliot, who co founded the Roll for Initiative podcast. Elliot found that the TSR trademark had expired around 2004 so he registered it himself. He then decided to launch the new company with assistance from early TSR/D&D contributors including Luke and Ernie Gygax, sons of the deceased D&D co creator Gary Gygax, and Tim Kask, former editor of Dragon magazine. Their first product was Gygax Magazine, announced along with the TSR company revival in December 2012. Wired reported that "Elliot stressed that his 'TSR is a new company'." The company operated as TSR Games, producing the Top Secret: New World Order role playing game.

In June 2021, a new, separate TSR company was launched by a group including Ernie Gygax, Justin LaNasa and Stephen Dinehart. Elliot's TSR Games then announced on social media that while they have owned the trademark since 2011, they missed a filing date in 2020 and were considering various options. However, after Ernie Gygax's "troubling comments about race, gender identity, and gun violence, as well as his company's reaction", would not have "any form of working relationship" with Ernie Gygax's TSR. Dinehart then rebranded as Wonderfilled Games. Dicebreaker reported that "TSR Games never officially announced its rebranding as Wonderfilled Games" and most of its "Twitter accounts had been locked down or nuked, and the company's old website simply redirected to a new page that — interestingly — listed Dinehart's GiantLands as an in development title. [ ] How much of TSR Games exists in Wonderfilled Games isn't clear". LaNasa's TSR Games then launched a crowdfunding campaign in December 2021 to raise money to sue Wizards of the Coast for "Trademark Declaratory Judgement of Ownership"; the company then filed and voluntarily dismissed the complaint that month. Wizards of the Coast, also in December 2021, sued LaNasa's TSR for trademark fraud over the use of the TSR logo which is owned by Wizards of the Coast. The content also contains "homophobic, transphobic, and anti semitic content, as well as additional material of a discriminatory nature". In September 2022, Wizards of the Coast sued TSR Games—helmed by Ernie Gygax and LaNasa—and the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum to enjoin these companies from publishing games under the "Star Frontiers" and "TSR" trademarks. In its motion for a preliminary injunction, Wizards of the Coast wrote that TSR's Star Frontiers: New Genesis game is "despicable" and "blatantly racist and transphobic", In June 2023, LaNasa's TSR declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which triggered an automatic stay of the lawsuit.

TSR's main products were role playing games, the most successful of which was D&D. However, they also produced other games such as card games, board games, and dice games, and published both magazines and books.

In 1984, TSR started publishing novels based on their games. Most D&D campaign settings had their own novel line, the most successful of which were the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms lines, with dozens of novels each. TSR also published the 1995 novel Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future by Martin Caidin, a standalone re imagining of the Buck Rogers universe and unrelated to TSR's Buck Rogers XXVC game. TSR published a large number of fantasy and science fiction novels unconnected with their gaming products, such as L. Dean James' "Red Kings of Wynnamyr" novels, Sorcerer's Stone (1991) and Kingslayer (1992); Mary H. Herbert's five "Gabria" novels (Valorian, Dark Horse, Lightning's Daughter, City of the Sorcerers, and Winged Magic); and humorous fantasy fiction, including Roy V. Young's "Count Yor" novels Captains Outrageous (1994) and Yor's Revenge(1995). However, such projects never represented more than a fraction of the company's fiction output, which retained a strong emphasis on game derived works.