TSR

Founded in 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye as an eventual means to publish, sell, and distribute the rules oí Dungeons & Dragons, TSR went on to become one of the most noteworthy companies in the entertainment game industry. While Dungeons & Dragons went on to have a significant lasting impact on both digital and nondigital games, TSR, as a corporate entity, is perhaps best known for its financial woes and the bitter conflict that arose over ownership of the company and its intellectual property.

In 1973, Gary Gygax, a game designer from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and Don Kaye founded Tactical Studies Rules in order to publish the rules for Cavaliers and Roundheads, a miniature Wargame based in the English Civil War. While Cavaliers and Roundheads was the initial focus of Tactical Studies Rules, Gygax and Kaye also wished to publish the rules for Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy miniature role-playing game developed by Gygax whose rules were based on Chainmail, a medieval miniature game developed by Gygax and Jeff Perren in 1971. As Cavaliers and Roundheads began generating revenue for Tactical Studies Rules, the partnership was expanded to include Dave Arneson and Brian Blume. While Dave Arneson was brought into the partenership as a game designer, and left shortly thereafter, Brian Blume entered as a ftinder. Blume believed that Cavaliers and Roundheads was not generating enough revenue and encouraged Gygax and Kaye to focus their efforts on releasing Dungeons & Dragons.

In 1975, after the highly successful release oí Dungeons & Dragons, Don Kaye died of a stroke. The immediate result was that Blume and Gygax dissolved Tactical Studies Rules and founded a new company named TSR

Hobbies, Inc. The board of directors for TSR Hobbies, Inc. consisted of Brian Blume, Gygax, and Kevin Blume, Brian Blume's younger brother, who had received shares from Melvin Blume, Brian and Kevin's father, who had purchased shares in the company. Brian Blume acted as president of creative affairs, while Kevin Blume acted as president of operations and Gygax acted as the company's CEO and president. Unlike the equal partnership of Tactical Studies Rules, Brian Blume and Kevin Blume owned a majority of the new company's shares.

Initially, TSR Hobbies, Inc. experienced phenomenal success in both the United States and abroad. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Dungeons & Dragons brand was becoming more popular and widely recognized, analysts say the Blumes began to greatly overex-tend the company's reach. They not only moved into domains such as board games and toys, but began to diversify in remarkably unrelated areas. Perhaps the best evidence of this, analysts point out, was the acquisition of Greenfield Needlewomen, a needlepoint business owned by one of the Blume's relatives.

In addition, some experts say TSR Hobbies, Inc. was remarkably overstaffed. Further, Kevin Blume had overprinted millions of copies of the previously successful multipath Dungeons & Dragons adventure books, many of which could not be sold. In an effort to mitigate the mounting financial problems, TSR Hobbies, Inc. was restructured into four companies: TSR Inc., TSR Ventures, TSR International, and TSR Entertainment. TSR Inc. continued to manufacture the company's core Dungeons & Dragons role-playing products. TSR Ventures focused on the production of plastics and toys in Asia. TSR International was established to manage overseas business, distribution and sales there, licensing and production. TSR Entertainment, which was headed up by Gygax and later changed its name to Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corporation, was responsible for leveraging TSR's IP in other entertainment markets, such as movie and television. Unfortunately, TSR Entertainment's only success was the short-lived Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. Upon multiple occasions, Gygax had said that the separate corporations were Blume's attempt at keeping foreign income away from U.S. taxation.

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