Remember Game Designers’ Workshop

Michael Williams has a story about how Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast/TSR is trying to screw people over with copyrights, leading to Williams’ rant about IP.

I, on the other hand, remember what TSR did to Game Designers’ Workshop and Gary Gygax over Dangerous Journeys (Gygax talks about it way down in this interview.

Mike, another friend, and I met Gygax at GenCon when he was preparing to or had just settled the lawsuit, so we got to look at the court papers (which Gygax was carrying with him, I guess). TSR was claiming copyright to things like dwarves, elves, and rolling dice.

So it’s not new that they’re playing IP games, especially now that they’re owned by bigger fish. It’s that they’ve always wanted to be the stereotypical Microsoft-style or Google-kind of monopolistic power, but they’re niche.

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