burntwire wrote:Dangerous Journey items are fairly common. Usually sell for only a few $.
Traveller wrote:Something tells me I'm going to have to find Epic of Ærth, as that was to me a rather kick-ass worldbook. Having the rules wouldn't hurt either, even if TSR's machinations are what brought about the demise of GDW.
Robin Goodfellow wrote:As for the infamous TSR (publishers of Dungeons and Dragons) lawsuit over Dangerous Journeys (or Dangerous Dimensions, as it was originally titled -- that sounded a bit too close to Dungeons & Dragons, I suppose), I really have no insights. We got regular updates from Frank at the start of each week's production meeting, but I don't recall much. I was disappointed that they decided they did not need a deposition from me -- I was hoping to get an interesting life experience out of it, and maybe use it in a short story.The suit did not cost GDW a cent -- it was all the time spent attending to the lawsuit that took us away from making games that hurt us financially. That, plus the success of a little game called Magic: The Gathering, which hurt all RPG publishers, as distributors put their funds toward CCGs first and RPGs second. (See Loren Wiseman's site -- IO - The Modular Data Center Technology Leader -- for his take on the fall of GDW, among many other things.)
GDW Closed Shop --------------- Late in 1995, GDW announced that for various reasons (blamed primarilyupon previous legal and financial problems) they would be closing shopat the end of February 1996. Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, etc. wentsolo, while rights for practically all the Traveller material thendevolved to the game's originator - Marc Miller (Marc had left GDW someyears before, to pursue alternative career interests).
Traveller wrote:The Gulf War books did not bring down the house. Given the time frame, that is absolutely impossible, especially as one of those books was a New York Times Bestseller. It was as Goodfellow said. The time and energy involved in fighting off TSR, as well as the appearance of Magic: The Gathering, killed GDW. Not the Desert Shield Fact Book, and not the Gulf War Fact Book.
jamesmishler wrote:Traveller wrote:The Gulf War books did not bring down the house. Given the time frame, that is absolutely impossible, especially as one of those books was a New York Times Bestseller. It was as Goodfellow said. The time and energy involved in fighting off TSR, as well as the appearance of Magic: The Gathering, killed GDW. Not the Desert Shield Fact Book, and not the Gulf War Fact Book.Actually, I did half-misascribe. Indeed, the Desert Shield Fact Book, which was a bestseller, did very well for GDW. It was the Gulf War Fact Book that hurt them, because by the time that one went through the mass (and even the hobby), nobody cared, and they printed it to the same level and beyond that they had with the Desert Shield Fact Book... though there were no returns from the hobby (in general), the mass could return them in mass, and did. It was sold starting in April 1991 and for a year and a half or more afterward... and then the returns started coming in a year later. Having worked in distribution at the time, I saw tons and tons of those things come back through at pennies on the dollar after the returns.From Loren Wiseman's bio:"The Desert Shield Factbook made us a fortune. The Gulf War Factbook lost most of it. In retrospect, we should not have listened to those advising us to do the second book. The first was in the right place at the right time, and was the only title available for several critical weeks during and after the air and ground campaign. The second was "just another Gulf War Book.""Recall, that though GDW officially ceased to to business on Feb. 29, 1996, they had been on the ropes for a number of years before that. I recall meeting with some of the GDW people at the GAMA Trade Show in 1994, before Magic: The Gathering had taken over the industry (Antiquities was releasing that month), and even then they were effectively down and all but out of business, with the cash infusion from TSR the only saving grace. You will note that Steve J. Pyskoty Olle's story in your quoted page confirms this, as he was laid off in July 1994, more than a year and a half before the company closed its doors, and after things were bad that people had already taken paycuts to 1/2 normal and they had Frank Chadwick working the phones for sales!Now I'm not quite sure as to the exact timing, but the two major cash flow incidents occured at or around the same time. Yes, there were troubles caused for developers and others because of the TSR lawsuit, but that was a secondary issue. The money that GDW got from the settlement helped keep them alive after losing the cash they had to pay back to the mass market on the GWFC returns...The basic chronological order is this (and this, note, happens time and again with game companies that get a good sale in the mass): Massive numbers of books go out to the mass, pay the printer, the writers, pay down a lot of bills. Great cash flow, and it all goes out in old bills or in new products. Then the returns start coming in, and you've got to pay those guys off. Returns on mass market books are generally 50% or greater, and can be up to 90% (the Desert Shield Fact Book was an aberration, believe you me). Most of the products cannot be resold. And returns are at full wholesale price. So GDW's cash flow crashes to less than zero at the same time they are going through the whole Dangerous Journeys: Mythus thing with TSR (1992-1993). They lose many of their creatives and much of their staff during this time, for various reasons. And THEN Magic: The Gathering hits in 1993, and starts sucking the free cash and then the core cash out of distributor, retailer, and consumer pockets in October and on. Traveller: The New Era was a bad game, and sold no better, with a lot of the money gotten from the TSR settlement going down the drain supporting an insupportable line. 1995 was a massive year for CCGs, and the glut caused a massive discombobulation in sales at the end of the year... the "three bad quarters" mentioned by Wiseman. And that was the final, last nail in the coffin. Already a marginal company to begin with at this point, orders for GDW products died... and so did GDW (and a fair number of other marginal companies at the time... heck, even WotC laid off some people in the 4th quarter of 1995).Without the financial wherewithal to continue, the double whammy GDW received from the changing industry did them in once and for all. I say double as truly, Magic: The Gathering was only half the equation, the obvious and hobby-related portion; the other half, invisible to many, was computer wargames. That shift was the final nail in the coffin in the vast majority of wargame companies, either directly or indirectly. But GDW's demise is attributable to the following, in whole or in part, with the assignment in order of my estimate of the damage that was caused by the factor:#1) Over estimation of number of Gulf War Fact Books that would sell through in the mass market, and the return and charge-back thereof;#2) Movement of wargames away from tabletop to computer;#3) Magic: The Gathering;#4) Dangerous Journeys: Mythus lawsuit (remember, they made more money than they ever lost on the settlement, and the lawsuit never cost them a dime in cash).#5) TNE sales being miserable.
Traveller wrote:I think I'll be searching on ebay for Mythus Prime, Epic of Ærth, and Necropolis, as the diet that DJ was put on to make Mythus Prime actually made the game more enjoyable.
jamesmishler wrote:I'll believe in DBRP when I see it. It has not attained for me the same mythical vaporware level that, say, RQ IV has or T2 ToEE did, but it is getting close...
Traveller wrote:I have that rough draft as well, although no comments as I picked up my copy from the web. However, I spoke to Dustin at Chaosium and he confirmed that DBRP was being written as I was speaking to him. Now, whether it gets put out at Gen Con or not is really anyone's guess, but there was also a reason that BRP monograps were being sold at the Chaosium website...to gauge interest in DBRP.I would not have spent $60 on print-on-demand copies of RuneQuest III if I didn't feel that the game had a ghost of a chance of being put out.