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The CRPG Renaissance, Part 3: TSR Is Dead

“How do you make a small fortune in tabletop gaming?” runs an old joke. The punchline, of course, is that you come to that market with a large one.

Way back in the early 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons was successful enough that its maker, the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin-based TSR, dared to wonder whether that game might be able to make the leap to the mainstream, however strange it may have seemed to imagine that an exercise in elaborate make-believe and tactical monster-fighting might have the same sort of legs as Monopoly. Some people point as far back as 1985, when Lorraine Williams, a wealthy heiress who owed her fortune primarily to the Buck Rogers character of comic-book, movie-serial, and television fame, ousted Gary Gygax and took over the company in a palace coup. Being well acquainted with the rumors that were swirling around the industry about TSR’s dire straits, Abramowitz broached a visit to their Lake Geneva headquarters to kick the tires and discuss a possible purchase, even though he knew full well that he was possessed of nothing like the financing that would be necessary to pull off such a deal.

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