The Many Deaths of Dungeons & Dragons | A Kingdom Reborn | 2
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
After years of falling sales, Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher TSR is being dragged under by massive debts and in need of rescue. But as hopelessness takes hold, TSR boss Lorraine Williams resorts to desperate measures that will put the future of the famed game on the line.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's August 1996, and in Milwaukee, Jen Con is underway. |
| 0:15.3 | It's been nearly 30 years since Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax started this annual gaming convention. |
| 0:22.7 | Since then, TSR, the publisher behind D&D, has built it into North America's biggest gaming |
| 0:28.4 | expo, with 30,000 attendees expected this year. |
| 0:33.2 | At the center of the exhibition floors, TSR's domineering stand, featuring a huge replica castle, complete with 20-foot-tall turrets. |
| 0:42.7 | Within its walls, gamers can discover, play, and buy the D&D publisher's latest offerings. |
| 0:48.5 | And the queen of this castle is TSR's owner, Lorraine Williams. |
| 0:53.9 | As she walks through the stand, she tries to project calm and confidence. |
| 0:59.5 | But truth is, her kingdom is crumbling. |
| 1:04.0 | TSR owes its main distributor Random House millions of dollars, and last December it missed a deadline to repay a large chunk of that debt. |
| 1:13.2 | TSR took desperate measures to avoid being sued into bankruptcy, like halting royalty payments |
| 1:19.0 | to many authors of Dungeons and Dragons novels. This saved enough cash to keep random house |
| 1:24.9 | at bay, but now TSR owes its printer J.B. Kenahan more than |
| 1:29.2 | $6 million. So to stop the printer from demanding payment, TSR gave it ownership of its |
| 1:36.5 | corporate headquarters and signed a contract prohibiting it from moving its business elsewhere, |
| 1:42.6 | all of which makes it harder for Williams to pretend that |
| 1:46.4 | everything's okay. And what's making it even harder is that she's about to have a one-to-one |
| 1:52.9 | meeting with Peter Atkinson, and she doesn't know what's on the agenda. |
| 1:58.1 | Atkinson is the founder of Wizards of the Coast, the Renton Washington Company |
| 2:01.9 | behind Magic, The Gathering, the hugely successful collectible card game. Williams isn't happy |
| 2:08.2 | about this meeting. She doesn't like Atkison or his game. Magic is crushing sales of |
| 2:14.4 | Dungeons and Dragons and pushing TSR closer to the abyss. |
... |
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