An Introduction to my TSR Experience - Roaming Around Stories Yet to Be Fleshed Out

During my teen years, when I wasn't trading adventures with Kuntz and others, I hung out at the Dungeon Hobby Shop. A couple of my childhood friends worked there, namely Tim Jiardini, Neal Christensen, and Jeff Leason. At night, I bussed tables at the Playboy Club, where I raked in the tips.

Much later, fast-forwarding to the Greyhawk Project, after Rob suggested I'd be a good addition to the team, Gary and his bodyguard, Jim Johnson(?), had brunch in the Playboy Club Living Room with me as a formality. All the bunnies kept coming over to say hi to me and chat a bit. All the bunnies liked me. I was gay, so I was even made privy to all their "girl talk," and I'd also been a faultless busser for all of them at one time or another. Gary loved being introduced to them all. And then, at after-bar-hours parties, some would come through he hadn't met yet, and a couple, being so close to Chicago, had been in spreads in the magazine.

That all the bunnies liked me, and knowing me to be judgment-free on the issues of sex and love, welded me to Gary as someone he could tell about his experiences in his second childhood. But it is at this point that I say nothing more on that topic, as it was all clearly spoken of in utter confidence.

I really knew two Garys: the famous game designer, and my neighbor whose divorce from Mary I've secretly never approved of. But I will finish on this topic by stating unequivocably that Gary's second childhood was a great success and that nobody was ever damaged by it if we ignore the divorce.

I'll come back to my gaming days with Kuntz in future posts, as I knew Rob like a brother and I naturally have a lot to say about him. But for now I should paint his status at TSR.

Gary was like the father Rob never had, and there was father-son ego-driven strife between them. Rob's player character in Greyhawk had been the solo adventuring, lawful-evil Robilar, and this matched how most at TSR would characterize him: as a rogue to be wary of! Of note: most nerds and geeks at TSR would consider themselves lawful good, and for the record, I'm a pragmatic realist, so I tend toward lawful neutral.

Rob was an unparalleled and unconventional tactician and strategist in nearly any wargame. As a teen, he and his brother, Terry, routinely crushed adult opponents from all the major Midwest cities in Napoleonic wargames. Rob could venture down 10 dungeon levels and come right back out, never mapping. And, of course, Rob had been Gary's co-DM of Greyhawk. Gary clearly admired Rob's intellect.

The Production Department did not like him. Period. Also, Gary bringing me in was kind of an insult to them, since I was a high school dropout. (I'll explain this escapade in a future post.) In their eyes, I was so unqualified that I reminded them of my friend, Jean Wells. Gary had liked her ideas and hired her. She should have been further trained or groomed, but TSR lacked the capacity to train anyone. Worse still, our contract split royalties with Gary, a highly coveted position to be in.

My first Greyhawk assignment was to turn Stephen Marsh's 6-page description of Starstrands into a semi-plane resource book. I suggested we use its web structure to dimensionally connect its radial strands to all the other TSR RPG system worlds, and a few other places. Boot Hill gating in from one, instituting a kingdom derived from its values, Gamma World from another, Nazis from Earth on another, and so on.

Gary loved the idea, but it was going to take some doing, so Gary came up with the idea of hiring me at TSR, half-time in the Hobby Shop Shipping department, half-time in the RPGA.

But there were two factions at TSR: The Gygax faction and the nepotistic Blume faction. Everyone in the company knew of and was forcibly part of this growing division that would push Gary out long after I grew frustrated and entered the Navy.

The Blumes issued a new rule: employees could no longer wear beards. Frank Mentzer looked funny without one. But their next rule, issued while Gary was in Hollywood working on the D&D cartoon, was that any work created off-hours by any TSR employee would belong to TSR.

I was the fifth RPGA employee, but this basically eliminated me. For several weeks, I started taking long lunches at Jane's Bar. I immediately held back at least 3/4s of my ideas going into Eye of the Bog, and never finished it.

Then Rob and I were asked to a meeting with Harold Johnson, where Rob mentioned our plans for Starstrands, and when Harold asked how we planned to pull that off, I quickly said no work had taken place yet, divorcing TSR from any claim to owning Starstrands.

I did happen to stay after hours and rearrange all of shipping, setting it up the way the girls had always wanted. But a manager took credit for it right in front of my face.

So there's the outline of my challenges working with TSR, setting the stage for how I would do things.

Oh! And my mother's college friend who graduated top of her class but had spent 3 months trying to get employed but couldn't get hired- I brought her in to show Dave Sutherland her portfolio, and he hired her on the spot. This proved fortuitous for me in the future war.

From here on out, I'll be fleshing out all the specifics.