James Ward on TSR's Amazing Accounting Department

[WaterBob]

TSR's Amazing Accounting Department

By James Ward



The time is 1987 and I was the Vice President of the design and editors. It was a great job because TSR had amazing people doing the design and editing of product. I wasn't liked much by upper management at TSR after Gary left the company. I don't do well with authority figures that I do not believe know what they are doing. So I was fairly sure I didn't have long to work at TSR. However, I didn't count on the product schedule keeping me there for as long as it did.

We, and I mean the company, got further and further behind in our release schedule because a great many of the managers and all of the upper management didn't know anything about roleplaying product and could care less. I was in the middle of things as Director of Product. The head of the company actually wanted TSR to do other things besides role-playing games that didn't include gaming at all. She had us doing things like Hollywood comic books and audio CDs instead of role-playing products.

Jack Morrisey was the head of sales and he was sharp. There wasn't anything about sales he didn't know. He always maintained that we needed to have covers and back cover text six months before the product released. This concept was because we needed retail stores and distributors to schedule our products in their monthly sales budget. At the time that type of TSR schedule wasn't coming even close to happening.

Against their better judgment, they made me a vice president of creative services and the schedule was my primary concern. I'm a goal-centered type of dude. Give me a goal and I'm on it like white on rice.

On this topic, I would like to give the product managers and Bruce Heard credit for doing the hardest part of the work. In those days we had product managers and a group of designers and editors for every one of the campaign worlds TSR produced. This means there was a Ravenloft product manager, an Al Qadim Product Manager, a Dragonlance Product Manager and so on. Most of my people were in at least two groups. They learned to love the products in their group and have a genuine desire to make an excellent product. I watched them like hawks, and they did the lion's share of the work. I did think of a great trick. I had all of the game designers from all the product groups, and we had a lot of them, give me their entire weeks worth of design work every Friday in a printout. I didn't have the time to read all of the material, but I could spend the weekend and read one of the efforts of a designer. However, none of them wanted to be judged as coming up short on their work. I would always hand back a review of that designer's material and tried hard to always be positive. You would be amazed at the volume of work that trick produced from the designers.

Eventually, thanks to everyone's efforts in about six months we had gotten ahead in the schedule and were six months early on the products and our department was very happy with the effort. Sales was ecstatic and orders went way up.

Then, horror of horrors, a new head accountant was hired.

At the time I was really happy with all the editors, designers, and artists at TSR. They are doing a great job in a timely manner. Bruce Heard was working great with the freelance people and doing a tremendous job of keeping them on schedule. When nasty events like a freelance designer falling off the grid; which happened all the time; Bruce was there with a good replacement. He and I argued a time or two, but I always respected his talents.

So, it was a happy and very satisfied “experienced and jaded James M. Ward” that walked into an officer's meeting. Unfortunately for me, Jack Morrissy wasn't working at TSR any more. We had a new sales guy that was an expert in mass market sales. Upper management really wanted TSR to crack the mass market sales area. It was a good idea, but TSR, in my mind, wasn't positioned with a product that would do that.

The new crazed head of accounting told me that TSR couldn't afford to be so far ahead in our production schedule. He tried to tell me it was costing TSR money to have products waiting to be sold for months at a time. He wanted to have the products finished exactly one month before the product was released.

People, I really couldn't believe what I was hearing. I appealed to the sales vice president about the timing of releases. He didn't back me up at all. I went through the design process and told them how truly difficult it was to create products with the typesetting, design, and art necessary in each one. The company was working on large boxed sets at the time and they took even more time. I talked about bumps in the schedule from designers and editors getting sick, to wrong estimates on how long some of the large projects would take.

It was all for nothing. I was sternly ordered to change the schedule so that releases were closer exactly one month before the due date. I walked out of the meeting shaking my head at the stupidity of upper management who knew nothing about the role-playing business and could care less.

I actually enjoy following orders if they make sense to me. This direction was totally against everything I had been doing for the last year and a half. The end result was that I never changed what we were doing. When asked about it at Vice President meetings I lied like a rug. The last two years of my stay at TSR the company made the most money they ever made on product schedules. The other vice presidents and the president of the company never noticed I didn't do what was ordered of me.

Although I didn't tell my people of that meeting, word must have leaked out somehow. I seemed to have earned a reputation as a Ranger protecting the Hobbits (designers and editors) from the Nazgul (upper management).

I don't feel bad about ignoring that order to this day.

[Vulcan]

There is no shame in doing what you must to make things work in the face of executive stupidity. That's how all - and I do mean ALL - major corporations actually manage to function.

[WaterBob]

There is no shame in doing what you must to make things work in the face of executive stupidity. That's how all - and I do mean ALL - major corporations actually manage to function.

No so. I work for a major corp. It's the biggest in what it does in the world. And, the group think is crippling. Corporate politics. People being fired for not drinking the cool aide. It's sad--a once great company, I'm watching it be strangled.

[Vulcan]

There is no shame in doing what you must to make things work in the face of executive stupidity. That's how all - and I do mean ALL - major corporations actually manage to function.

No so. I work for a major corp. It's the biggest in what it does in the world. And, the group think is crippling. Corporate politics. People being fired for not drinking the cool aide. It's sad--a once great company, I'm watching it be strangled.

That's a great example of a corporation ceasing to function...

[osrgamer]

The last two years of my stay at TSR the company made the most money they ever made on product schedules.

Which two years was that?

[WaterBob]

The last two years of my stay at TSR the company made the most money they ever made on product schedules.

Which two years was that?

I don't know. The last two years of James Ward's stay at TSR.

[Xabloyan]

If he said that was 87 meeting, then the next two years would be 87 to 89.

As with all such stories, there's probably an element of fiction to this one. But the non-RPGer accountants who could tell the other side of the story def aren't chilling on 1e message boards broadcasting their version of events.

[osrgamer]

If he said that was 87 meeting, then the next two years would be 87 to 89.

He said "his last two years" not "the next two years". Al-Qadim and Ravenloft weren't around 87-89 (Ravenloft Setting at least).

Wikipedia says he left in 1996. So the last two years he was there were 94-96. That's right when I joined the hobby. D&D was at an all time high. There were extreme marketing blitzes going on. They had like 10 settings, multiple games, etc. Makes sense this was the best sellingest time for TSR.

This is also when the quality started dropping (IMO). I don't think it was just cuz he left. They had too many settings. Too many different things going on. One just needs to look at the quality of Dragon magazines at the time for proof. The font got bigger. There were more ads. There were huge margins on every page. So the amount of text in the magazine went down considerably. The same can be said for the other TSR products. Larger fonts. More (usually crap) art. Huge margins.

[EOTB]

Since he’s also referencing Al-Quadim the story must have some breaks in time

[MOTP]

The new crazed head of accounting told me that TSR couldn't afford to be so far ahead in our production schedule. He tried to tell me it was costing TSR money to have products waiting to be sold for months at a time. He wanted to have the products finished exactly one month before the product was released.

First, I have no knowledge of the situation beyond the OP.

Not to state the obvious, but what the OP describes in that quote is an unavoidable issue of business, cash flow. I'll give the example of someone building housing developments: Building the houses takes a lot of money, from buying the land to materials to labor to sales and marketing, and not a dime comes in until the very end when hopefully people buy them. In the meantime, that money to pay all those costs must come from somewhere; run out of cash and you have half-built homes that you can't finish - you're bankrupt; and even if you don't run out of cash, you have to pay interest on the loans, costing you more. In almost any business, reducing the time between accruing those costs and the sale is essential.

I don't know how much it costs to make RPGs, but even without reading the above I would expect TSR to have the same cash flow issues as other businesses. Also, they were not a blue chip company nor were they in an established industry - unlike home building, the banker has no idea what an RPG is or what the business model is (nobody knew) or what revenues to expect - borrowing would have been expensive.

[genghisdon]

Thanks Waterbob...and Jim!

[T. Foster]

Jim Ward left TSR in 1996.

[Nagora]

Not to state the obvious, but what the OP describes in that quote is an unavoidable issue of business, cash flow. I'll give the example of someone building housing developments: Building the houses takes a lot of money, from buying the land to materials to labor to sales and marketing, and not a dime comes in until the very end when hopefully people buy them.

In the UK at least this is not always the case. "Buying off plan" is fairly common during times of house price rises (which is nearly all the time) and at least deposits will come in before a single sod has been cut. My brother bought off plan in the run up to the bubble bursting last time; by the time the house was ready it's value had gone up 50% but the builder had to take the agreed price. Then, of course, a year and a half later it was worth less than the price paid. And the entire Crash was basically sparked by liquidity issues - Lehman's had plenty of assets but they weren't liquid and one day they couldn't find the cash to keep going.

There's a similar problem building up now and a couple of hedge funds have gone to the wall in recent weeks because they were invested in property and couldn't sell it in time. Cashflow is indeed king.

[rabbi]

If he said that was 87 meeting, then the next two years would be 87 to 89.

He said "his last two years" not "the next two years". Al-Qadim and Ravenloft weren't around 87-89 (Ravenloft Setting at least).

Wikipedia says he left in 1996. So the last two years he was there were 94-96. That's right when I joined the hobby. D&D was at an all time high. There were extreme marketing blitzes going on. They had like 10 settings, multiple games, etc. Makes sense this was the best sellingest time for TSR.

This is also when the quality started dropping (IMO). I don't think it was just cuz he left. They had too many settings. Too many different things going on. One just needs to look at the quality of Dragon magazines at the time for proof. The font got bigger. There were more ads. There were huge margins on every page. So the amount of text in the magazine went down considerably. The same can be said for the other TSR products. Larger fonts. More (usually crap) art. Huge margins.

It sounds like, based on the timelines, that Mr. Ward oversaw the quality drop. I don't know if I'd be tooting my own horn about how great a job I was doing during the two year downward spiral that TSR was on from 94-96. I believe that TSR jumped the shark around 94, with competitors taking its number one position in the industry. I don't know how you qualify "D&D was at an all time high", as if I remember correctly, it was in decline by then. I had heard it was at its most popular around 92.

If Mr. Ward had done such a great job, why did the company go bankrupt? Perhaps Mr. Ward's behavior, having everything ready too far ahead of time and general bloat in terms of product lines, was part of the problem. Hitting sales goals is one thing, and making a profit another. Just playing Devil's advocate.

[Starbeard]

The conventional wisdom I've always heard was that TSR went under because of its overzealous attempt to corner the mass paperback market, which in part jives with what he said.

Also playing devil's advocate, memory could be conflated just as much as it is selectively omitted or embellished. His dates may be out of order, and actually a lot of those anecdotes were anywhere from 89 to 92, which would also jive. Really the only way to reorder the events with any success is to get more interviews from Ward and others from across different levels and departments of the company, and then compare them against themselves, each other and whatever source documents are available to be dug up. Unfortunately I really don't see that ever happening in a fully satisfying way.

[osrgamer]

If he said that was 87 meeting, then the next two years would be 87 to 89.

He said "his last two years" not "the next two years". Al-Qadim and Ravenloft weren't around 87-89 (Ravenloft Setting at least).

Wikipedia says he left in 1996. So the last two years he was there were 94-96. That's right when I joined the hobby. D&D was at an all time high. There were extreme marketing blitzes going on. They had like 10 settings, multiple games, etc. Makes sense this was the best sellingest time for TSR.

This is also when the quality started dropping (IMO). I don't think it was just cuz he left. They had too many settings. Too many different things going on. One just needs to look at the quality of Dragon magazines at the time for proof. The font got bigger. There were more ads. There were huge margins on every page. So the amount of text in the magazine went down considerably. The same can be said for the other TSR products. Larger fonts. More (usually crap) art. Huge margins.

It sounds like, based on the timelines, that Mr. Ward oversaw the quality drop. I don't know if I'd be tooting my own horn about how great a job I was doing during the two year downward spiral that TSR was on from 94-96. I believe that TSR jumped the shark around 94, with competitors taking its number one position in the industry. I don't know how you qualify "D&D was at an all time high", as if I remember correctly, it was in decline by then. I had heard it was at its most popular around 92.

If Mr. Ward had done such a great job, why did the company go bankrupt? Perhaps Mr. Ward's behavior, having everything ready too far ahead of time and general bloat in terms of product lines, was part of the problem. Hitting sales goals is one thing, and making a profit another. Just playing Devil's advocate.

Well "quality drop" and "best sales ever" are not mutually exclusive.

[Varl]

It's amazing how often upper management Just Doesn't Get It™ when it comes to production. The company I'm currently working for has a similar upper management outlook. They're not even in the same state as we are, but they've somehow managed to dwindle a robust company of over 100 production employees down to 11, and we're still getting the job done. Our work is being outsourced to other state and countries, you guessed it, because the labor and benefits are cheaper or non-existent. Well, they get what they pay for, and we're often the ones left to do all the rework on product when it fails test. So, I can completely understand what James went through. We're going through it right now.

[osrgamer]

It's amazing how often upper management Just Doesn't Get It™ when it comes to production. The company I'm currently working for has a similar upper management outlook.

Marvel Comics seemed to have a heavy dose of that in the 90s. Especially during Jim Shooter's reign as Editor-in-Chief.

One thing a lot of people seem to lose sight of is that the Suits are there for the Bottom Line. They are there for the investors, the owners and the shareholders. They are not there for the fans, as much as we think we're the important ones. They are not there for the Writers or the Creative Talent.

[D.J.]

It's amazing how often upper management Just Doesn't Get It™ when it comes to production. The company I'm currently working for has a similar upper management outlook.

Marvel Comics seemed to have a heavy dose of that in the 90s. Especially during Jim Shooter's reign as Editor-in-Chief.

One thing a lot of people seem to lose sight of is that the Suits are there for the Bottom Line. They are there for the investors, the owners and the shareholders. They are not there for the fans, as much as we think we're the important ones. They are not there for the Writers or the Creative Talent.

If they aren't then the share holders don't get their monies.

I was told at one job I wasn't important. I asked why, I maintain gear at this locale and you get paid. They didn't like me pointing out that if we IT people at the remote location were as dumb as they claimed, the contract would be lost and the home office would lose revenue.

Why did they say I was dumb ? I didn't work at the corporate office hundreds of miles away. I have a Bacherlors in Applied Computer Science. Turns out some of the corporate IT people didn't have a Bachelors, they had a 2 year programming degree. Now, that makes no difference to me. All I cared about was 'this software you sent us doesn't work properly, here are the error messages. Please fix. Thank you.' I didn't care. They could have gotten all of their programing knowledge on the job for all I cared.

Office politics and a bit of petty jealousy on their part from what I could determine. I have no time for it. Once my boss realized what they were doing, he told them to call him, which is what they were supposed to do, and he would talk to me about what ever needed fixing, etc.

[MOTP]

Not to state the obvious, but what the OP describes in that quote is an unavoidable issue of business, cash flow. I'll give the example of someone building housing developments: Building the houses takes a lot of money, from buying the land to materials to labor to sales and marketing, and not a dime comes in until the very end when hopefully people buy them.

In the UK at least this is not always the case. "Buying off plan" is fairly common during times of house price rises (which is nearly all the time) and at least deposits will come in before a single sod has been cut.

I don't think TSR would have found many buyers for 'off plan' sales (and Nagora isn't suggesting they would, as far as I can tell). But now it is almost commonplace - crowd-funding. I still question if an industry giant (i.e., biggest fish in a small pond) like TSR would have been able to attract crowd-funding for its products, but it allows smaller publishers and creative individuals to sell 'off plan' and solve the cash flow dilemma.

[Xabloyan]

I believe that TSR jumped the shark around 94,

I'd peg it right around 1985-1986 personally

[Spartakos]

I believe that TSR jumped the shark around 94,

I'd peg it right around 1985-1986 personally

While I get that some prefer 1st edition, I think it’s a little odd to take the position that the development of 2nd edition (released in ‘89) was “jumping the shark”. Late 80s and early 90s were huge boom years for the game. I mean, Forgotten Realms cane out in ‘87...arguably the most well known and popular campaign setting ever.

Now Dragon Dice and Spellfire...those were jumping the shark.

[krebizfan]

I believe that TSR jumped the shark around 94,

I'd peg it right around 1985-1986 personally

While I get that some prefer 1st edition, I think it’s a little odd to take the position that the development of 2nd edition (released in ‘89) was “jumping the shark”. Late 80s and early 90s were huge boom years for the game. I mean, Forgotten Realms cane out in ‘87...arguably the most well known and popular campaign setting ever.

Now Dragon Dice and Spellfire...those were jumping the shark.

Dragon Dice and Spellfire were cases that the accountant's plan of printing just as orders came in was needed. Between those and the Buck Rodgers plastic figures, TSR had decades worth of very expensive inventory. The RPG products needed a sizable print run for efficiency done far enough in advance to meet the initial surge of orders and then a couple of years of inventory to handle the smaller volume of reorders*. Miss the initial order window and the product may never move. It is necessary to understand the customer requirements and the limits of suppliers when trying optimize the accounting methods. Keeping more cash on hand does not help if the method used reduces profitability.

* Keeping inventory has a cost but increasing the size of the order to the next drop in per unit printing costs provides the extra inventory for very little and sure beats having to pay for very expensive short print runs to catch up with demand.

[EOTB]

I think the core weaknesses that TSR was grappling with was their increased sales coming from fewer absolute people

As their base aged they could buy more stuff, but the younger crowd was coming in at smaller rates

Thus the product mix changing to many parallel lines based on worlds. Someone buying FR would likely also buy a dark sun and a raven loft, and they could make books to sell to the declining player base also, which was still an increase in paying customers, as previously this group bought character sheets and dice. But it was still a shrinking pool, plus a decrease in product purchased by whoever used 1E instead

Add in that the revenue figures touted have nothing to do with actual consumer demand, but instead how much product TSR could convince distributors to take, and its not hard to see the quasi-ponzi that blew up at the end, when Magic sucked the disposable income out of the equation

[genghisdon]

It's amazing how often upper management Just Doesn't Get It™ when it comes to production. The company I'm currently working for has a similar upper management outlook.

Marvel Comics seemed to have a heavy dose of that in the 90s. Especially during Jim Shooter's reign as Editor-in-Chief.

One thing a lot of people seem to lose sight of is that the Suits are there for the Bottom Line. They are there for the investors, the owners and the shareholders. They are not there for the fans, as much as we think we're the important ones. They are not there for the Writers or the Creative Talent.

But they should be.

<expletive deleted> being livestock for the 1% to feed off of. Reject the paradigm of misery.

[SugarShark]

I liked Spellfire.
I didn't like the increased rarity card trend; but in that regard they were waaay ahead of the curve for collectible card games

[osrgamer]

I liked Spellfire.
I didn't like the increased rarity card trend; but in that regard they were waaay ahead of the curve for collectible card games

Magic was already out and infinitely better.


I liked it too, but it was lacking in oomph and mechanics. The cool art and homage to D&D could only carry it so far.

Planescape Blood War was a much more mechanically sound game.

[Gentlegamer]

I think the core weaknesses that TSR was grappling with was their increased sales coming from fewer absolute people

As their base aged they could buy more stuff, but the younger crowd was coming in at smaller rates

Thus the product mix changing to many parallel lines based on worlds. Someone buying FR would likely also buy a dark sun and a raven loft, and they could make books to sell to the declining player base also, which was still an increase in paying customers, as previously this group bought character sheets and dice. But it was still a shrinking pool, plus a decrease in product purchased by whoever used 1E instead

Add in that the revenue figures touted have nothing to do with actual consumer demand, but instead how much product TSR could convince distributors to take, and its not hard to see the quasi-ponzi that blew up at the end, when Magic sucked the disposable income out of the equation

This was the era where when I would meet a new player, I would have to tell them we use core AD&D only* so they wouldn't bring their suitcase of splatbooks to roll up a psionic drow bladesinger, etc. It seemed like every player outside my core group (the friends I had taught the game) had every Complete Munchkin race/class book and would insist on inclusion.

*2e with lots of 1e and RC

[osrgamer]

I think the core weaknesses that TSR was grappling with was their increased sales coming from fewer absolute people

As their base aged they could buy more stuff, but the younger crowd was coming in at smaller rates

Thus the product mix changing to many parallel lines based on worlds. Someone buying FR would likely also buy a dark sun and a raven loft, and they could make books to sell to the declining player base also, which was still an increase in paying customers, as previously this group bought character sheets and dice. But it was still a shrinking pool, plus a decrease in product purchased by whoever used 1E instead

Add in that the revenue figures touted have nothing to do with actual consumer demand, but instead how much product TSR could convince distributors to take, and its not hard to see the quasi-ponzi that blew up at the end, when Magic sucked the disposable income out of the equation

This was the era where when I would meet a new player, I would have to tell them we use core AD&D only* so they wouldn't bring their suitcase of splatbooks to roll up a psionic drow bladesinger, etc. It seemed like every player outside my core group (the friends I had taught the game) had every Complete Munchkin race/class book and would insist on inclusion.

*2e with lots of 1e and RC

The only people I knew who had the splatbooks were other DMs. Maybe someone might grab the Tome of Magic or Fighter Handbook. But it was only DMs that had the splatbooks and knew how to "break" the system. At least in my experience.

[WaterBob]

The only people I knew who had the splatbooks were other DMs. Maybe someone might grab the Tome of Magic or Fighter Handbook. But it was only DMs that had the splatbooks and knew how to "break" the system. At least in my experience.

I've got a player who loves the splatbooks for 2E. In fact, I couldn't get him to play the game without them. He loves all the fighter options. When I showed him that he was reading the rules wrong--he thought that fighters could use any proficiency slot, not just weapon prof slots, for the fighter options--he got all bent out of shape and threw a fit.