The Articles of Dragon: "Update from the Chief"

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, for all the fanfare that accompanied the publication of issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985), it nevertheless felt like the end of an era – at least to me. At the time, I couldn't have meaningfully articulated precisely why it felt this way, but I felt it nonetheless. Something intangible had shifted and I don't think I was alone in sensing it, even if its ultimate source remained nebulous.

I was reminded of this fact as I cracked open issue #101 (September 1985) and read it for the first time in decades. The very first article in the issue is "Update from the Chief" by Gary Gygax himself. Subtitled "About the past, the present, and a bit of the future," it's a very interesting snapshot of the state of TSR during the period between Gygax's return from California in late 1984 and his loss of control of the company in late October 1985. 

Take note of those dates, particularly the second one. This article appeared less than two months before Lorraine Williams snatched TSR from Gygax's grasp, doing so just as he had begun to right the company's finances after years of mismanagement by the Blume brothers. TSR wasn't out of the woods yet. There were still plenty of problems to be addressed and it's far from a certainty that, had Gygax remained in charge of TSR, they would have been. That's precisely why I find this article so notable: it's the last gasp of the pre-Lorraine Williams TSR, for good and for bad, and, in retrospect, I find it fascinating that it somehow aligns with my own adolescent sense that the wheels were indeed coming off the wagon in 1985, even though there is no way I had any inkling of what was happening in the boardroom at Lake Geneva.

The article begins with Gygax continuing to report on the possibility of a D&D movie, something he'd been pursuing while during his exile in California. From what he says here, the project was, by this time, still not very far along. He mentions that there is still no finished script, nor any actors or director attached to it. I've never really understood the point of a D&D movie. However, it's clear that getting one made was personally important to Gygax and he beat that particular drum right up until he departed TSR for good before the end of the next year.

Next up, Gygax crows about how well Unearthed Arcana sold – and rightly so. For all my grousing about the book's shortcomings, I know it was very popular at the time of its release. For many months, it was indeed a very hot property and often difficult to find. Gygax mentions that it outsold TSR's expectations. Those purchases, along with the release of Oriental Adventures no doubt played a big role in helping to fill the company's coffers. Say what you will but Gygax understood well what would appeal to the AD&D audience at the time. He also announces the upcoming release of Temple of Elemental Evil. While I don't personally think much of this "supermodule," like UA, it sold well. After all, AD&D fans had been waiting for the conclusion to The Village of Hommlet for more than five years by this point. Pent-up demand probably served it well. 

Though focused more on matters at TSR Hobbies itself, Gygax was still shepherding other D&D-related entertainment projects beyond the aforementioned movie. He notes that the D&D cartoon had been renewed for another season and expressed hope that it would be renewed again after that. Obviously, that didn't come to pass. Beyond that, there is talk of Amazing Stories and his own Greyhawk novels featuring Gord and Chert. 

More interesting to me is mention of "a game and companion book series based on modern-day action adventures." The game, about which few details are given, was to be written by Gygax and his son, Ernie, with assistance from Jim Ward, and Paul Yih (whoever that is). He calls the game "different" and "family-oriented." If anyone has any idea what this game might have been or if any work on it had ever begun, I'd love to know more. Could it, perhaps, have been an early version of Cyborg Commando or something in that general vein? 

Finally, Gygax takes a moment to once again excoriate "unscrupulous attacks and baseless accusations pertaining to role-playing games in general and D&D in particular." I certainly can't blame him for his distemper. There was a lot of nonsense circulating about Dungeons & Dragons in the mid-1980s and, while I personally never ran afoul of it, I've met enough people over the years who have that I can understand why Gygax was so angry about it all. The mendacity of these attacks is galling. I'm all the more grateful that my introduction to the hobby, just a few years prior, was free of this sort of thing.

"Update from the Chief" isn't really an article in the usual sense. Rather, it's just a collection of news items and musings from the time right before Gygax was booted from his own company. It's thus a remarkable historical document in its own small way. It's also a window on a period in my own personal involvement with the hobby when I began to sense a change in the wind.