Game Wizards (Game Histories) by Jon Peterson

Author:Jon Peterson [Peterson, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dungeons, Dragons, Gygax, Arneson, Dungeons and Dragons, TSR, History, role-playing game, RPG, Popular Culture, 1970s, 1980s, GenCon, Origins, Business, Games, hobbies, Avalong Hill, Guidon Games, Tactical Studies Rules, TSR Hobbies
ISBN: 9780262542951
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2021-10-12T06:00:00+00:00

And then, not long after he wrote those words to Marsh, Gygax lost his mother to a heart attack, while she was visiting Dragonlands ranch. Gygax had been just seventeen years old when his father died. “I expected my mother to live on for many years. Well, what can one say?”

In this state—unwell, famous, bereaved, wealthy, and stymied creatively—Gygax came to the November TSR shareholder meeting, which fell on the day voters would go to the polls to elect Ronald Reagan as the next US president. TSR’s business at this point was simply gangbusters. Ed Sollers, who would start November 5, was the one-hundredth employee. Revenue had effectively quadrupled over the previous year, with the company bringing in around $8.3 million. Accordingly, at the shareholder meeting, they set a new book value for TSR stock at $1,000. The Blume family stake in TSR was now worth around a million dollars. As a measure to protect that substantial holding, a shareholder vote that night brought about a change long in the works: after holding the titles of controller and treasurer, Kevin joined Brian and Gygax on TSR’s board of directors.

But of course, there was one outstanding worry that TSR’s newly constituted board had to resolve. “Who was the fat guy with the bald lawyer nobody would sit next to?” Random Events wondered pettily in its report on the shareholder meeting, the last where Dave Arneson would appear in person. The scorn he faced in that room was not lost on Arneson, either: as he wrote in a letter to Chaosium founder Greg Stafford at the time, “Ever sat for an hour with 38 people glowering at you?”

Arneson knew well that the strong sales reported at the shareholder meeting meant more royalties for him, enough that he could take over his own distribution and publishing. By this point, Excalibre had lost its appetite for publishing Adventures in Fantasy, sitting on a large amount of inventory that simply would not move. On November 12, they signed over all rights to Arneson’s company Adventure Games—it was around this time that Arneson stopped using the name Adventures Unlimited, so the contract marking this transfer of rights has the old company name crossed out and the new one penciled in. The transaction would be covered by the hobby press; Strategy & Tactics ran a brief blurb to the effect that “Dave Arneson has been disappointed with the low sales and high price of his game, Adventures in Fantasy, produced by Excalibre Games. To remedy this, he has bought back the game and will publish it under his own company name, Adventure Games, for $20.00.” Arneson planned to open a new office in St. Paul on November 15, and had already convinced Dave Megarry to come back home from Boston to work there. He also negotiated toward a new contract with Richard Snider for the rights to his still-unpublished “Mutant.”

Arneson’s willingness to spend cash probably reflected the optimism of his legal team about their prospects in his dispute with TSR.

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