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Konrad Lischka. Drachenväter: Die Interviews
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Vorwort
What was your first encounter with role playing games?
So you already were into fantasy literature and that stuff?
They got you hooked. Then, fast forwarding, how did you get to work at TSR?
It was before that, I guess
When you got there, what was your impression of the company? What did the place look like? How were the people? Was it very corporate? Was it very freewheeling?
Was the dress up so weird?
Did they still have, when you worked there, the separation of the new building and the old building?
A dungeon
Which year did you get there?
I've heard of them
When you said you played games over lunch, that sounds like the oft repeated myth that Lorraine Williams declared gaming at TSR illegal (which is untrue). That seems to be a myth, right?
... the job, right?
Overall, it sounds like it was a good and a productive place to work
What in your opinion was it that did them in?
That was a very good product. Maybe it was a marketing problem or something, because I remember those boxes
It sucked the gamers' budget dry. I remember
The two things I read about the demise of TSR (...) and I'm still not sure, because there's lots of stuff on the Web, but there's no way to fact check most of it. One thing I read was from the Wizards of the Coast manager, who was involved in checking out whether this would be a good asset to buy. He said in his ..
Yeah, Ryan Dancey. Right
He wrote a longish post about it and said the main thing that puzzled him, and it goes a little with what you said, is that he didn't find a lot of customer feedback data that indicated which products people loved and which they didn't
Yeah, right
I remember how angry I was when Dark Sun went away. [laughs]
I had the same impression. I have a dealers' catalog from TSR from 1995 or something, or '94. The number of product lines seems to be stunning. [laughs]
Yes. Very true. One other thing that strikes me when I look at the old dealers' catalogs is [...] how many paperback novels per year TSR turned out [in the mid 'nineties]
I heard that in the end they had a bad book market year, and Random House gave them back a couple of truckloads of books. Is that correct?
Not just in the United States. [laughs]
This is one of these other hard to check myths that are going around: The TSR management and Random House had some fallout, and then Random House wasn't willing to defer the payments of the returned books?
What puzzled me is that, normally, if you have an ongoing business relationship over the years, and this is the company that has given you so many New York Times Best Sellers, you would at least think twice before burying them under a mountain of books
From the trenches, as you said, what was your view, or your colleagues' view, and your opinion of the management of TSR at that time? Of course, one of the things I'm getting at is that Mrs. Williams appears to have been a very controversial figure
Those are more like minor misdemeanors, right? Yes. She said: ‚Well, things happen.’ I never got the sense that she was deeply invested in the gaming hobby ..
From what I've heard, apparently Gary Gygax hired her because he thought that she was a very level headed smart businesswoman
Apart from this, the management personnel involved in the books and the cards (...) how much, do you think, did other role playing companies like FASA or White Wolf impact TSR's business when stuff like „Shadowrun“, like „Vampire“ came out?
After TSR’s end (...) I mean after D&D got sold to Wizards of the Coast, there was this explosion of products because of the open gaming license. In hindsight, what do you think of it? A lot of people say now, in hindsight of course, that there were too many products and too many bad products. That impacted on the overall quality
Do you know whose idea it was to do the OGL model? That was quite a unique idea
Going forward even further to the fourth edition. There seems to have been this split or maybe even a schism, is that what you call it?
That seems to have gone right through the gaming community. How did that happen?
Wasn't there any way to get the genie into the bottle again?
Apparently, no. Otherwise, Paizo and other companies wouldn't have been able to [continue with 3.5]
What do you think the future of RPG's looks like, apart from computers? I still hate to call it ‚pen&paper,’ but that's what it's called now, right?
As you say: very vibrant. And when I look at your Kickstarter, or when I look at what Monte Cook did, an amazing number of people are willing to put their money down for this. Are they mainly older players, or are there younger players growing or following […] ?
Oh, really?
Which books (or other media) and authors have influenced your conception of fantasy and sci-fi and/or got you interested in the genre in the first place?
What was the fantasy and sci-fi scene like in the pre-RPG days?
Can you describe, from your point of view, how the RPG business changed and evolved from the mid seventies onward?
What kind of people got into RPGs and fantasy in the seventies and eighties?
Do you think there is any connection between the sixties student movement and the rise of fantasy games?
Please name a few milestones (events, game products, eras) from the thirty-five years of RPG history that you consider vital to the development of the industry
The US have alway been the number one RPG nation in terms of publishers, gamers, designers. But what other countries have made important contributions to the hobby?
Some RPG designers, like Sandy Petersen, later worked on computer games. How big is the influence of classic RPGs on modern computer games? Are there a lot of RPG people connected with the computer business?
How did dungeons become such a pervasive feature of fantasy RPGs?
What was the impact of the internet on P&P RPGs (positive/negative)?
D&D was there first, but one might argue that other games like RQ were at least as good. Why did D&D become so huge in the eighties, with TSR dwarfing any other company in the business?
With 3E came the idea to create an open source community of third party publishers. Whose idea was this and what was the rationale behind it?
Do you know of any other RPG publishers who had a strategy similiar to OGL?
Why did WotC change their strategy with 4E?
There appears to be a schism between 3E and 4E gamers: One piece of evidence is Paizo's „Pathfinder“. And then there's an old school revival, with people recreating AD&D first (edition). How did this happen?
What was ICE like? Who founded it and who were the main people behind it?
While I used to be a fanatic RM player (blue box!), I have always wondered what the motivation was to come up with a game with so many detailed tables. Was it to achieve realism? Or were the designers just very fond of mathematics?
What happened to the original ICE and what are the people who worked there doing today?
After 3E D&D came out, you left Wizards of the Coast to start Malhavoc Press. What's the story there?
What are you working on now?
You wrote [...] a blog post [...] that described how TSR was out of touch with their customers. What were other significant factors that contributed to their demise? Or was that the main one?
Many people appear to have disliked Lorraine Williams intensely; others have told me she was a very sensible businesswoman. What is your view? Do you think she bears the responsibility for TSR's downfall?
The last nail in the coffin appears to have been Random House book returns. This one still puzzles me. Why did they do that to a long-time partner that gave them so many #1 NYT bestsellers?
Was buying TSR's assets an easy decision? Were there many people in the company who were against it? What was the ultimate factor in going forward with the acquisition?
How much did WotC pay for TSR?
Whose idea was the OGL?
Were there many opponents to it?
In hindsight, would it have been possible to open-source D&D in such a way that there would have been a better overall quality [in] d20 products [i.e. more control over the whole thing]?
What ultimately caused the Great Schism [fourth. Ed vs. „Pathfinder“]?
Did Wizards see it coming or were they surprised when a large chunk of the community rallied to Paizo's banner?
As one of the leading MMO and P&P experts, what do you think the future of the hobby is going to look like?
How much will tech seep into P&P RPGs? Will MMOs ever be able to recreate the group experience of offline RPGs? Will the two merge somehow?
Wann seid ihr zur Fantasy gekommen?
Und das gab es in speziellen Läden, oder?
Was ist mit diesen ganz alten Fantasysachen, also „Conan“ von Howard oder Leiber?
Unvorstellbar
Wie wurde »Der Herr der Ringe« in Deutschland populär?
Wer hat dafür geschrieben oder waren das Übersetzungen?
Und wie habt ihr andere Menschen gefunden, die sich für Fantasy interessierten?
Was für Brettspiele waren das?
Und wie nahm man da Kontakt auf? Einen Brief schreiben, anrufen?
In welchen Regionen war Follow damals in den Siebzigern groß, Wien?
Wann kam das Rollenspielelement bei Follow dazu?
Welche Convention war eure erste?
Wie kamt ihr an solche Originalausgaben?
Hattet ihr Kontakt zur Society of Creative Anachronism in den USA?
Wie war das Verhältnis von Science-Fictionund Fantasy-Fans?
Mit welcher Argumentation?
Wie hat sich Follow entwickelt?
Was haben die gespielt? Also Sachen aus den USA oder England?
Auch so „Diplomacy” und so was?
Wer spielte damals eure Rollenspiele „Empires of Magira“ und „Midgard“?
Wie kamt ihr denn auf „Empire of the Petal Throne“?
Wenn man OD&D heute liest, erscheint es ja wahnsinnig verquast geschrieben. Da brauchte man ja eigentlich jemanden, der Neulinge da etwas heranführt
Was hat Euch an D&D nicht gefallen?
Ist das auch eine Altersfrage?
Das war drei Jahre vor „Das schwarze Auge”
Wie hoch war die Auflage?
Und bei „Midgard“ wussten die Leute, was sie da kauften? Was das ist, ein Rollenspiel? 1981?
Wie hat sich die Auflage entwickelt?
Gab es Auslandsausgaben?
Wann hatte Midgard die meisten Spieler?
Wie habt ihr Midgard von DSA abgegrenzt? Jürgen Franke: Gar nicht, wir waren zuerst da. Uli Kiesow war bei DSA ein Freund weniger, einfacher Regeln. Wer braucht schon Regeln fürs Schwimmen? Das war Ulis Philosophie in der Anfangszeit
Dicke Hardcoverbücher oder? Das ist ja dicker als Rollmaster in seinen Hochzeiten
Gibt es denn da keine Lösung?
Und natürlich gibt es Computerspiele
Wie hoch würdet Ihr die Zahl der Tischrollenspieler in Deutschland schätzen in den Neunzigern?
War Midgard für euch je ein Unternehmen oder war das immer ein Hobby?
[Die frühen Fantasy-Nerds in Deutschland] ... das sind so [Jahrgänge] späte Vierzigerjahre, also 46/47/48?
Sind das dann auch alles so, was man( ...) tja, Achtundsechziger ist so ausgelutscht. Aber so (...) also sagen wir mal eher Akademiker, ein bisschen eskapistisch veranlagt vielleicht? […] Geht [Rollenspiel] irgendwie einher mit so Studentenbewegungssachen?
Und wo fängt es deiner Meinung nach denn an? Also gibt es da so Initialzündungspunkte oder Milestones, wo man sagt: ‚Das hier war auslösend!’?
Aber das war noch (...) dieses World Building. Da war ja jetzt noch nicht die Idee angelegt, in dieser Welt auch zu spielen
Immerhin
In Süddeutschland waren die?
Waren da immer so Hexe drauf?
Warum habt ihr das gemacht?
[…] Also, das klingt ja fast freimaurerisch oder ..
Das heißt (…) diese Sechzigerjahre-Strategiespiele [und Fantasy. Und] die waren halt dann stark geprägt von den ..
Also der Fantastic Shop, 1972 war das?
War das „Chainmail“?
„Diplomacy?“
Da muss ich mal anrufen. Die haben das ja irgendwo
Ja klar, vielleicht hätten auch anderthalb gereicht, aber ..
Das war später auch noch so
Das muss also in der Luft gewesen sein
Okay. Aber die ..
Es lag in der Luft, weil die ..
Im Hardware-Store?
„RuneQuest“ noch
Ja, also das (...) Das ist konzeptionell so anders. Keine Level, keine Charakterklassen. Also das ist ..
Ja.[…] [Gygax] hat ja noch mal ein Spiel gemacht. So einen ganz großen Aufschlag, mit so vier Bänden, und das war völlig entsetzlich
Beim „Spiegel“ genauso
Und diese, ja bis zu siebzig Systeme. Und dann wurde erst mal im Wesentlichen viel importiert?
Ja, in Deutschland
Und wo kam dann (...) wo kam die Kundschaft her?
Da gab es ja auch noch (...) da gab es ja kein Internet
Da wusste ja niemand, dass da ein Laden ist
Also ich hab persönlich erst, glaube ich, drei oder vier Jahre, nachdem ich mit dem Spielen (...) wir haben da nur „Schwarzes Auge” gespielt. (…) und das hab ich in einem normalen Spielegeschäft gekauft
Irgendwie so was. […] Und da stand dann noch „Dungeons & Dragons“ rum. Und mir war überhaupt nicht bewusst, dass es da noch mehr gibt, und nur weil da dieser schrecklich schlechte deutsche „Drache“ in dieser D&D-Box war, hinten halt eine kleine Anzeige „Fantasy & Science Fiction, Wandsbeker Chaussee“. Und dann bin ich da reingegangen ..
Hat der nicht auch die Zinnis gemacht?
Den kenne ich, ja
Wie oft hat sich dieses Ding denn überhaupt verkauft, diese Box? Also millionenfach auch?
So „Fortune“-Liste oder so was?
Ja gut, wenn du von so einem niedrigen Umsatzniveau kommst, dann hast du natürlich diese ..
War das D&D noch oder ...?
Auf den Umsatz?
Also irgendwas [vom] Nettoladenpreis
Nein
Also Droemer hat Euch bezahlt?
Hattet ihr denn schon was? Oder habt ihr sozusagen from scratch [losgelegt]?
Also wie sich das dann füllt (…) manchmal geht so was flott von der Hand
Ja, die wissen das alles genau
Aber schon Computer immerhin
Pressekonferenz?
Die ist auch nicht mehr erhalten oder schwer zu kriegen?
Waren die Übersetzungen da schon fertig?
Das heißt, also sozusagen: ‚Wir haben unseren Werkauftrag hier erledigt, jetzt tun wir was anderes’?
Hunderttausdend Boxen (...) was hat die [Box] gekostet damals? So neunundzwanzig Mark oder so was, glaube ich. […] drei Millionen Erlös schon mal
Ja, aber das ist ja eine Marge von achtzig Prozent oder so!
Ja gut, aber das ist ja trotzdem ganz ordentlich
Ja, auf jeden Fall. Wird immer genannt. Aber die (...) jetzt zu dem Zeitpunkt, also späte Achtziger, wo dieses Ding in jedem Laden stand (…) also, wo ich irgendwo wahrscheinlich reingekommen bin als Spieler
Es gab ja dann zu dem Zeitpunkt, also Ende der Achtziger, [...] so eine riesige Flora und Fauna an Cons und Spielern, an Tie-ins schon über Taschenbücher und so weiter
Es gab dann nochmals, also aus Kundenoder Spielerwahrnehmung, [...] eine Phase, wo [...], das weiß ich noch, [...] wir in diese Läden rein[gingen], und dann lag da „Shadowrun“. Wo wir sofort gemerkt haben […] vom Layout, von den Zeichnungen, dass das noch mal ein ganz starker Qualitätssprung war. Und dass dagegen diese TSR Second Edition (...) die sahen dagegen plötzlich mächtig alt aus
War so ein bisschen [...][das] Krautrollenspiel
Und die hatten ja auch diese ganzen [Zeichner], also beide im Prinzip. Also Laubenstein, Bradstreet, Brom und so. Die auch im Comicbereich ganz groß waren
Erstaunlich ist ja, […] [wie gut es]funktioniert ..
[Und] diese TSR-Taschenbücher [...]?
Also da kam „Shadowrun“. Dann kam „World of Darkness“ …
Von ...?
Wie hat sich das [mit den Karten] denn [negativ] auf das Spiele[geschäft ausgewirkt] [...]?
Da haben eine Zeit lang alle ihr Geld [da]für ausgegeben und für nichts anderes mehr
Wann ist die Magic-Phase, wann war die (...) das große Feuer zu Ende?
Tragisch eigentlich
Und dann habt ihr das (...) Wie war das denn? Wer hatte denn da die Rechte?
Ja, dann habt ihr das gekauft. Jetzt habt ihr es weitergegeben?
Can you remember when you played your first session of „Dungeons &Dragons“?
That whole group was already into
Had you heard of the game before?
What was your character called and what was he or she like?
What was your character like?
You were a Dungeon Master in these first weeks? Or you were just a player?
Did „Dungeon and Dragons“ in the early days grow out of table-top wargaming? Did it feel similar back then, or was it something completely different from the very beginning?
Was the „Society for Creative Anachronism“ similar to pen&paper role playing in the early years?
When did you get in and how did you get into the SCA?
When you look at the demographics of the SCA and D&D back in the late seventies, how would you describe it?
Fantasy in general was mainly Tolkien?
What other authors did you read after Tolkien’s „Lord of the Rings”?
And it influenced the first „Ultimas“. You had hobbits as characters …
How long were you active in the SCA, are you still?
Has the SCA gotten more stable than the pen&paper role playing game crowd, or how has it changed over the years?
If you can describe it, how does „Dungeons & Dragons“ and role playing at the SCA influence you as a designer? How did this get into the kind of game you try to make? What elements did you want to take from these games to the first games you created for the computer?
Speaking of mechanisms: Elements like experience points, levels, hit points, weapons with +1 or +2 bonuses and so on – these today universal concepts in computer games come from pen&paper role playing games? Or do you know any other possible source?
How has the role-playing aspect developed over time in computer games? Has it become more or less important if you compare it with the late nineties, early eighties?
How does interactive storytelling change through the rise of multiplayer online role playing games?
But in MMORPG you sometimes see people doing things the game master did in the old days. Guilds with own stories and backgrounds, setting their own goals and internal rules. But this has never developed into something like you meet with your certain friends and you play your own game. The background story still is always provided by the producer in MMORPGs
That is so hard to interactive storytelling as a producer or game master, and that is the reason why pen&paper role playing never became main stream phenomenon?
Why do you think TSR has failed as a company?
But it couldn't grow much?
What future do you see for pen&paper roleplaying?
Do you remember when you first heard or read about pen&paper role-playing games, tabletop gaming?
Your first pen&paper RPG session – when, where, with whom, how long, who was DM, and what happened? What was different, unique about it, in how far did it feel familiar to some other game or book or activity?
Which books or other media have influenced your conception of fantasy and sci-fi? How important were Tolkien, Leiber, wargames [...]?
How did you get in contact with other readers, writers, gamers – were there newsletters, conventions?
Did you see a connection between Fantasy novels and RPGs back then?
Was RPG [...] synonymous with D&D or were other early RPGs like T&T „Empire of the Petal Throne” known?
What was your impression of TSR on your first visit?
How was TSR as a workplace, what memories come to your mind thinking back?
Was actual role-playing anyhow involved in the creation of „Dragonlance“?
Was it uncommon that the „Dragonlance“ books published by a house like TSR turned up in the NYT bestseller list?
Can you describe, from your point of view, how the RPG business and how publishing, especially in Fantasy, changed and evolved from the eighties onward?
In the late eighties/early nineties many people thought that TSR had lost its magic. „Shadowrun“, „Vampire“ and others had better artwork, layout, copy etc.. In your opinion, what went wrong at TSR? I think everyone in the industry has an opinion on what went wrong at TSR
Which books have influenced your conception of fantasy and sci-fi?
What was the fantasy and sci-fi scene like in the pre RPG days (sixties and seventies)?
How did fantasy fans and gamers relate: Which group was bigger, were gamers fantasy fans?
Can you describe, from your point of view, how the RPG business changed and evolved from the mid-seventies onward?
What kind of people got into RPGs and fantasy in the seventies and eighties?
Was the kind of gameplay „Dungeons & Dragons“ allowed something completely new, or had you played something in any way similar before?
You first pen&paper RPG session – when, where, with whom, how long, who was DM, and what happened?
Did you play regularly before D&D was published?
How did the concept of gamebooks come about?
How did you envision the relationship between FF and Pen&Paper RPGs, fantasy literature – did you think of it as something fantasy readers but non-gamers would pick up, and that would interest them for games?
When did you discover Edward Packards „Sugarcane Island“ – what’s the main difference in design and setting?
Would you describe „Tunnels and Trolls“ solitaire adventures as gamebooks?
Where did you take your inspiration from for the setting of the first FF book „The Warlock of Firetop Mountain”?
Why did FF become mainstream and why didn’t D&D?
Besides the US: What were the most important markets for RPGs in the late seventies/eighties?
How long did it take until FF take off?
How big is the influence of classic RPGs on modern computer games?
Do you remember your first RPG session, pen&paper RPG session?
When was that?
OK, so once a week you got your turns? Or how was this working?
How did you get in contact with „Albion”?
The British TSR
Was this infrastructure of fanzines, was this important to spread pen&paper role-playing games later?
Where did you get „Dungeons & Dragons“ from?
Did you ever find out how Gygax got hold of the copy of „Owl and Weasel“?
When you first played „Dungeons & Dragons“, did this kind of game play remind you of anything you played before?
The appeal was, of course, interactive storytelling. Was it also important that it had this fantasy background, thinking about Tolkien and the 1960s?
Most of the first RPGs had Fantasy settings. Why was that do you think?
How did you, in the first years, get the word out about what is new about this game and how it works, basically? How did you get people to realize it?
How big was „Owl and Weasel“ with issue six? How many readers did it reach?
It was all over the UK?
How many copies did you sell in the first years of „Dungeons & Dragons“?
When was that?
Sometime in these years, did an infrastructure of specialized shops exist in the UK, or was it mail-order only?
You were just speaking about wargamers. Did some of early role-playing game players come from the wargamer tabletop crowd, or was it distinct? Was there an overlap?
How old were the D&D players in the beginning? Younger than wargamers, older?
Besides „Dungeons & Dragons“, were role-playing games like „Tunnels and Trolls“, „Empire of the Petal Throne“ important in Europe, or was it only D&D?
What do you think ruined TSR in the end as an independent company?
So what is your opinion?
When you think back to 1976 traveling from the UK to your first Gen Con, what was it like?
What elements do you think the first computer games took from pen&paper role-playing games?
The „Fighting Fantasy“ books offered something computer games did too: You could enjoy some kind of interactivity alone, without a dungeon master and other players
Specific elements in computer games like levels, experience points, your certain abilities expressed in numbers, these are coming directly from pen&paper role-playing games or am I missing something?
Is it correct that Gary Gygax wanted to merge TSR, at a certain point, with Games Workshop?
So you never regretted the decision not to merge with TSR back then?
How important were the Games Workshops imports of D&D in the beginning for the other European markets? How much did you ship to Germany? Were was D&D popular back then?
Why is it that pen&paper role-playing games today, well, it was never mainstream, but is more niche than ever. For example, games like „Warhammer“, I see new shops coming up everywhere and young people playing it. Why is the development so different?
And pen&paper role-playing games? Is there still a place for this kind of game-play today?
Your involvement with role playing games started with play by mail?
Were there games played by mail before?
In 1970?
Just because this is completely alien to me in the sense that I can't even imagine how it works: If you play the game, you get a form? You fill it out?
Everyone would get sent a printout with his results back?
You started from scratch? There were no programs that would do that?
How did the people hear about the games played by mail?
If you were interested in these kinds of games at the time, those were the things to read?
The games, you completely designed yourself? Or were these adaptations?
At that time, there couldn't have been many people who grasped the concept of roleplaying
After you sold the fourty-four copies, did you decide that you needed more [...]?
What were you playing before starting the playby-mail games thing? You were a war gamer?
What kind of war games were big in the sixties or seventies?
How did you hear about it? From friends or ..
How old were you when you found it?
The first real version of „Tunnels and Trolls“, was that still the Xerox thing or was that already with colored cover and so on?
Were you also into fantasy literature or science fiction literature?
„Tunnels and Trolls” became also the first English role playing game to be published in Germany, if I'm informed correctly. 1983?
How did the Japanese come to know about it?
You just have one character and you move through the world and you send in your moves?
Is it still by mail or is it by email?
What kind of people play by email these days? Did a lot of people migrate to the more flashy computer MMOGs?
When was [...] play by mail really big? When was it great?
That was before everyone had a Commodore 64 at home
A lot of it is also that it's free now, right?
One thing that strikes me when I look at the old adventures from „Tunnels and Trolls“ and D&D, my impression is that the „Tunnels and Trolls“ stuff has a lot more irony, sarcasm, and fun. D&D is most of the time neutral, not making fun of fantasy cliches. Why is that?
Do you or „Tunnels and Trolls“ profit from the whole old school revival of role playing that appears to be going on right now?
Even at only two hundred copies a month, that's quite a lot of copies over the years
„Tunnels and Trolls“ came out in 1975, D&D in '74. In the early eighties they really took off. What always puzzles me when I look at the old D&D box from '83, and I look at all the other games that were already around at that time, like „RuneQuest“, you could argue that a lot of them have a much better rule system, much more detail and interesting backgrounds
Mr. Egbert
But it also caused some huge problems, right?
Do you have any idea where they got the idea to use those?
Was that the one in Palo Alto?
In the eighties, they had some really bizarre merchandise products. „Dungeons & Dragons“ beach towels, candy, bendy action figures ..
There are two or three now, right? There's one with Jeremy Irons as the evil [one]
When do you think was the best time for role playing game companies?
2000
Do you think there is more gaming in the US today?
Your first pen&paper RPG session – when, where, with whom, how long, who was DM, and what happened?
How did gamers get to know about games like D&D in the seventies and eighties, how was the word spread?
What RPGs were popular in Sweden and other European countries back then, what did people know, what was available and how did this change in the eighties and nineties?
Where could you buy RPGs in the seventies and eighties in Europe, especially in Sweden?
How big was RPG-business in Europe at its best time from your estimation?
Can you describe, from your point of view, how the RPG business changed and evolved from the mid-nineties onward?
Why did you create „Drakar och Demoner“ instead of translating existing RPGs in 1982?
What was the fantasy and sci-fi scene like in the Pre-RPG days?
What kind of people got into RPGs and fantasy in the seventies and eighties?
How did you come to design „Call of Cthulhu“ as a role playing game?
How long had you been playing RPGs back then?
So you got one of the very first editions of „Dungeons & Dragons“?
How did you hear about it?
How did you come up with new concepts like the sanity points in „Call of Cthulhu”?
I knew I was onto something really good with that. I said: ‚OK, I'm going to really focus on this.’, and that's really where it all came from
The Cthulhu mythos (...) why did it become so popular? You have it in comic books, you have it in movies (...)
And it was possible because it was open, there was no company sitting on it?
How did you get into computer games?
What did you play back then?
These are very different games, when you first look at it, from role playing games. Are there certain mechanics or elements that were influenced by tabletop gaming, for example, or even pen&paper?
When you got to id Software, and you were working on „Doom“, was it something completely new, the ego perspective? These are dungeons, of course ..
If you look at elements in „Doom“, for example you have medkits you have to collect, and you think about (...) running through, when do I use it (...) it's a certain fighting simulation, where you have tactical elements in it?
When you look at games today, do you see elements of, for example, the first levels you have it from role playing games, experience points, and all those mechanics? What other influence do you see still in computer games?
This isometric perspective in real time strategy games, you still have. I was thinking, where did it come from? Was it from the sandbox you looked at?
Do you see a convergence between table top and digital? Many people are trying to integrate digital elements
And pen&paper role-playing is always just as good as the game master
Other people with their Smartphones, I think, the audience for gaming is much bigger than it ever was
Will game design change? Evolve?
Is there more room for making new ideas? Or less?
You have this young audience who grew up with computer games. How can you introduce them to pen&paper games, board games?
Did you ever meet and work, or knew Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax?
So from your memories, how would you describe them?
What is the future of pen&paper role playing games?
Because they have their own strengths?
How did you get into the SCA?
How would you describe the people at the SCA looking back, who was into it?
Do you think there is any connection between the 1968 student revolts and the rise of fantasy games? How did people at SCA see these developments?
Which books have influenced your conception of fantasy and sci-fi and/or got you interested in the genre in the first place?
What was the fantasy and sci-fi scene like in the pre-RPG days (sixties and seventies)? Were you a member of any clubs or societies? Were there any games?
Was there an overlap between wargamers, fantasy readers, SCA and role-playing?
Your first pen&paper RPG session – when, where, with whom, how long?
Did you play regularly before D&D was published?
Was the kind of gameplay „Dungeons & Dragons“ allowed something completely new or had [you] played somehow similar games before (which ones)?
How important (and well-known) were other early RPGs like T&T or „Empire of the Petal Throne“?
How did you hear about D&D and other new role-playing games back then – were there newsletters, magazines, cons?
Where could you buy RPGs in the seventies and eighties? Were there shops, mailorder?
How did the idea of doing „RuneQuest“ come about?
How successful was „RuneQuest“ in the seventies and eighties, do you know ... sales numbers? And how popular was it overseas? I read in a book about RPGs from Ian Livingstone from 1983, that „RuneQuest“ was the 3rd most popular RPG in the UK back then, after AD&D and „Traveller“
What kind of people got into RPGs and fantasy in the seventies and eighties?
Can you describe, from your point of view, how the RPG business changed and evolved from the mid seventies onward? Could you identify distinctive eras or phases in terms of products?
How did RPGs influence computer games?
Do [you] know computer game designers that grew up with (fantasy) RPGs in the business? Did you play RPGs at Interplay, Maxis, Spectrum Holobyte?
Which comics did you read back than, how old were you and what fanzines did you read?
Where did you find D&D?
Can you give me a brief overview of the early history of T&T? (There is some info on Wikipedia but I am not sure whether it is correct, and it doesn't list a lot of info about the beginnings)
[…] What kind of games did you play before?
What's the history of the name „Tunnels & Trolls”?
D&D quickly became the biggest RPG, but in terms of game mechanics and backgrounds many other early RPGs were considered more innovative – T&T had spell points, RQ was very elegant etc. Werner Fuchs from Fanpro told me that the German T&T was even out before the German D&D. Why did D&D become so big anyway?
Do you know how many copies of T&T were sold, roughly?
T&T is famous for its solo adventures – where did that idea/concept come from?
Which books (or other media) and authors have influenced your conception of fantasy and sci-fi and/or got you interested in the genre in the first place?
What was the fantasy and sci-fi scene like in the pre-RPG days (sixties and seventies)? Were you a member of any clubs or societies?
What kind of people got into RPGs and fantasy in the seventies and eighties?
Do you think there is any connection between the 1968 student revolts and the rise of fantasy games?
Some RPG designers like you or Sandy Petersen later worked on computer games. How big is the influence of classic RPGs on modern computer games?
Classic RPGs appear to be in decline. What do you think is the reason for this?
Your first contact with pen&paper role-playinggames: Where, when, how, and what game?
What were you playing before?
How important was fantasy and science-fiction as a background?
What kind of people played P&P-RPG in the beginning – wargamers? Students?
How successful was „Bunnies & Burrows“ – and why do think that happened?
How did p&p-RPG influence culture and game / computer and video game design in special?
I read that you met MAR Barker, Gary Gygax, David Arneson in the seventies – how small was the RPG community back then in the US – did everyone know each other somehow?
Did the Society for Creative Anachronism relate to P&P-RPG anyhow – was there a crossover of SCA-members and P&P-RPG-players?
How do you remember Gen Con – what was the atmosphere, what kind of people attended, who played what?
From your experience: When did P&P roleplaying-games become a niche market so small that the industry shrank – why did that happen?
Do you remember when you first heard or read about pen&paper role-playing?
How did you come by „The Lord of the Rings“?
Were these novels perceived as a genre of its own?
There appears to have been an explosion of fantasy in the late seventies / early eighties – can you think of any reasons?
What was your impression of TSR on your first visit in 1983?
How was TSR as a workplace, what memories come to your mind thinking back?
Can you describe, from your point of view, how the RPG business and how publishing, especially in Fantasy, changed and evolved from the eighties onward?
You have created very successful games in many genres – from pen&paper role playing to tabletops, alternate reality games, PC and iPad titles, you oversaw the Xbox launch. So you are obviously very good in one thing, but what is it? What have these games in common?
Nearly every game for the new consoles will have some multiplayer mechanism in it. But when I think of social moments in games, the most intense ones were in pen&paper RPGs. No MMORPGs has come near that experience. Will this change?
But despite these limits, computer game are very popular. What do they excel in?
How often will people actually look at the screen, and how often will they look at the table?
Pen&paper roleplaying is very good in one more thing: freedom. When you have a good Dungeon Master, you can do anything. And though we have this very free form sandbox computer games like „Skyrim“, it does not feel nearly that free. Why?
You can go diving, and you have stock markets
One way to solve this is to give players the tools to expand a game, like you did with „Shadowrun Returns“
Are simple, very basic rules a way to expand the audience of pen&paper RPGs?
How did you get into gaming?
So it was very new
That's very interesting because Gygax and Arneson started with war games too and built role playing on top of that. What do you think is the connection between war games, RPGs and computer games? Tactics? Resource management?
Mechanics like experience points, leveling and so on in nearly every computer game come straight from pen&paper RPGs
Did you meet Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson?
And were these two good at the same things, or what was the difference between their focus, what they were good at?
I remember his lists with what you have to read – Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber –, and so that was Gary's list
If you look at how pen&paper developed in the seventies and the 'eighties, how would you divide certain episodes of the business, the boom, how do you see it, looking back on the history? How would you tell it?
You said that you read Tolkien after you encountered „Dungeons & Dragons“. I think it was the other way around with many players
And how do you think would you describe the role of fantasy literature, of course Tolkien, but Fritz Leiber and Howard, before something like this happened, the idea of virtual worlds and you go travel into this world, was literature important for that?
I think the first games that really had this idea of virtual reality were role playing games, or am I wrong? Do I miss something?
But it's not interactive, it's a story
Yes, it does, but it's more about the mechanics, because you are not the general
But you did not play in-character
When you just talked about leveling up and Chess, I was thinking about services like Foursquare and other type of gamification by very basic point mechanics. After all these years of talking about gamification, the mechanics are not very much fun, are they?
So you would say gamification works when you have a place of its own for the game?
Is it important to know the people you play with before [giving] real meaning to social interaction?
Playing against or with human opponents in computer games is not necessarily social, is it? If opponents have no context, then really they're just really good AI. If I start to learn who they are and I follow them and I'm like:
The first dice used for D&D, they came from an educational products company (called Creative Publications), right?
He shouldn't have said that
Were those still the dice that did not have painted numbers? I remember from the mid eighties when I started gaming that you got some kind of crayon delivered with your dice and you were supposed to paint out the numbers yourself
Mm hmm. All by hand?
That's anti-branding for you
When you started producing your own dice, what year was that?
OK. I think the year D&D came out, the first professional edition?
Through that way of meeting or talking to Gary Gygax, is that how you became his first distributor?
What's his name, sir?
No
How close to the kind of role-playing game that people play today was the game they played?
They actually acted out, or walked around?
That was the war game, right?
Yes. I remember those
Concerning the different versions of the boxes, I don't have the really old ones, but the first one I have is the one before the famous red box. That one didn't have dice in it but it had those chits. Why did they do that? [laughs]
There was someone in Germany making those dice already?
Do you remember who it was or when it was?
Thank you. I have his email address, but I didn't catch him at the fair
I actually think I have some. I think I remember those. [laughs]
At that point, I just know that I think in 1982 the D&D basic sets at Christmas were like one million sold or one million sold per year. At that point, the business of producing dice must have been rather enticing to a lot of people, right?
On page like 75 or something
It's very hard to figure out when was the peak in roleplaying game sales. Is it possible to infer that from dice sales in any way? Everyone that buys a copy needs a set of dice
Yes. The famous steam tunnel one
There was a movie about it with Tom Hanks
Right, exactly
The media
I remember, because we did a story about the thirtieth anniversary of that and I looked at the old newspaper articles. If you know the games, from today's point of view it's hilarious because it's stuff like people tie each other up or people wear ninja dresses while playing the game. I've never seen anyone wearing (...) coming in with a Japanese sword. It's pretty much the same way what people read today when something ugly happens to a young person. Then they find, I don't know, certain music and they find computer games. It's pretty much the same thing
And demons and devils
Right, right. The whole alignment
I remember that there was a psychologist who was very much against D&D in the 'eighties in conjunction with the whole Egbert thing. I called him up for the one story we did concerning his research, and it turned out later on he lost his job for gross misrepresentation, embezzlement, and so on and so on. Apparently, there were a lot of, let's say, interesting figures who jumped on the antiD&D bandwagon
He was a colorful character, too
That was the Southern lady, right?
Yeah. I saw her in an old „60 Minutes“ on YouTube from the late eighties
That means he did this huge documentary and you're saying it might have made sense to contact his daughter delving into that material
No, I don't
I know, yes. At the game fair, I spoke to one of the – now Hasbro – press guys. He told me that when the third edition came out, Gary Gygax was somewhere in the credits, but Dave Arneson was not. He was very hurt about that, and other things in how they treated him
[laughs] That's tough for an author
The first one
Bush Senior
Right. Get your money back
Ergo, it's their game
I didn't know that much, but I knew they did quite a substantial amount of material
[laughs] What's it called?
I would like to say no but I'm afraid you are. [laughs] „Drang nach Osten“. OK. I think it's the „Yearning for the East“, or „Thrust towards the East“. It probably alludes to the ..
... the Germans attacking Russia. Operation Barbarossa. '41
Did Gary Gygax have to pay Game Designers or TSR for the „Dangerous Journeys“?
Even if he didn't pay anything, he lost his second shot at creating a franchise?
They did publish a few copies, didn't they?
I think some were hidden in my basement. There is a copy of the first player's handbook, which was a rather thick tome of four hundred or five hundred pages
I would very much like to hear it because the story I got told, the long and short of it is that they miscalculated the number of paperback novels that they might be able to sell and that the publisher sent back a lot of the books and that killed them. Is that the same story?
OK. Then now it's interesting. [laughs]
They were awash with cash from the „Magic“ bonanza, right?
Right. [laughs]
No
Oh my God! [laughs]
Give me two! [laughs]
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