campaign setting. “The whole line never made any money,” Riggs says. “Even though it’s an artistic high point for the company—and maybe ever for the brand of Dungeons & Dragons—it didn’t make any money.”
Bizarre business decisions abounded at TSR, including a practice called “factoring,” in which TSR pressured retailers to lock in their orders for the entire year in January. This led to severe deadline pressures for TSR writers like Jim Ward, who was given just 10 weeks to design thecollectible card game. “It made TSR incredibly inflexible,” Riggs says. “You couldn’t take more time to make the product, because if you did you’d be in contractual violation.
Many of TSR’s woes stemmed from a fundamental issue with tabletop role-playing games—how do you make money selling a product that encourages players to use their own imaginations? “I think the thing you would take away from this is that the role-playing business is a difficult business,” Riggs says.