D&D General When We Were Wizards: Review of the Completed Podcast!

humble minion said:

My recollection is that the offer was for all of Gary’s 800 shares at a way-above market value of $3000 each, plus the trademarks to D&D, plus a lump sum payout and a sum of $500k/yr for 5 years in exchange for nixing the royalties deals (owed and ongoing) and TSR no longer paying for Gary’s mansion in LA. The total mentioned was $17 million, of which only $2.5m was paid in instalments. Am I misremembering? Because that would imply that $15m would still have to be found.

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You failed to consider that much of this amount would be replacing other things that Gygax was previously receiving from the company - royalties, the mansion, etc. So much of it was not new cashflow, just restructuring it. And as someone mentioned, the amount for the shares themselves would have come from Williams.

Fifth Element said:

You failed to consider that much of this amount would be replacing other things that Gygax was previously receiving from the company - royalties, the mansion, etc. So much of it was not new cashflow, just restructuring it. And as someone mentioned, the amount for the shares themselves would have come from Williams.

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By "the mansion", you're referring to renting King Vidor's mansion as his residence in Hollywood, right? Which I understand they stopped after a while or resumed by means of him deferring royalty payments for a bit.

I don't think the company was paying for his mansion/personal residence back in Lake Geneva.

Mannahnin said:

By "the mansion", you're referring to renting King Vidor's mansion as his residence in Hollywood, right? Which I understand they stopped after a while or resumed by means of him deferring royalty payments for a bit.

I don't think the company was paying for his mansion/personal residence back in Lake Geneva.

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Yes the summary of the deal I was responding to mentioned that it would include cessation of payments for the place in Hollywood.

I recently dug into the D&D/Gygax history and it's all quite fascinating. As a kid in the mid-80s I had no idea what was going on, but obviously thought Gygax was the man, since all of the core 1st Ed books had his name all over them.

As somebody involved in business and finance now I can only slap my forehead with so many decisions made by Gygax, Williams, and others. Pissing off the authors including Salvatore seems insane in retrospect. Those folks were keeping the lights on. I remember that era of a new paperback novel every month, some of questionable quality, but lots of people bought them all up regardless.

My view of WOTC and Peter did a complete 180 after learning of those details. He's basically a hero.

Great podcast, along with Ben Riggs' book and others gave me a bunch of context of the history here. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the movie "The Great Kingdom". It's a lengthy documentary film that came through kickstarter. It appears to be produced by some of the same team:


Check the updates section where they have published how to watch it now, for free.

I mention it because Paul Stormberg features in it and that's where I was linked to this podcast. The documentary is long, but doesn't go past Gary's ousting IIRC. It has a lot of the same people interviewed, lots from Mary Jo, Ernie, etc, which really helped me with putting faces and names to voices in the podcast.

I just finished the second episode. How come nobody has talked about this? It's pretty interesting hearing about the early, early days pre-TSR. Gygax really comes off as a guy with an unhealthy fixation on gaming and was lucky he was able to turn it into something.

MGibster said:

I just finished the second episode. How come nobody has talked about this? It's pretty interesting hearing about the early, early days pre-TSR. Gygax really comes off as a guy with an unhealthy fixation on gaming and was lucky he was able to turn it into something.

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There was another whole thread about it, iirc

TiQuinn said:

There was another whole thread about it, iirc

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I was joking of course. This thread alone has almost 100 posts.

MGibster said:

I just finished the second episode. How come nobody has talked about this? It's pretty interesting hearing about the early, early days pre-TSR. Gygax really comes off as a guy with an unhealthy fixation on gaming and was lucky he was able to turn it into something.

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These will come to be known as the healthy, non-problematic days.

Despite having seen Gary Gygax's interview on 60 Minutes, I don't think I ever fully appreciated his efforts to serve as an ambassador for D&D during the Satanic Panic years. I imagine this might have cemented him in the minds of so many people as being synonymous with D&D. Non-gamers probably had no idea who Zeb Cook or Dave Arneson were, but they knew who Gygax was because of his numerous appearances on television and radio.

MGibster said:

Despite having seen Gary Gygax's interview on 60 Minutes, I don't think I ever fully appreciated his efforts to serve as an ambassador for D&D during the Satanic Panic years. I imagine this might have cemented him in the minds of so many people as being synonymous with D&D. Non-gamers probably had no idea who Zeb Cook or Dave Arneson were, but they knew who Gygax was because of his numerous appearances on television and radio.

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I taped that episode on VHS when it came out. It really did make a difference to have an avuncular spokesperson speaking common sense in response to the insanity of that time. In the When We Were Wizards podcast it was interesting how upset he was with how he felt set up and ambushed by 60 minutes, but at the time, for me, it felt like a win for the hobby.