A History of Wizards of the Coast

The folks at RPGnet have published an article that tracks the turbulent history of Wizards of the Coast from 1990 to the present day. A bit about their acquisition of TSR (and Dungeons & Dragons):

While Wizards was building their CCG business back up, TSR, the former big dog of the RPG industry was facing financial insolvency. By the end of 1996 they were over $30 million in debt. There’s no doubt that the CCG explosion hadn’t helped. Their Spellfire was never a success, and Wizards would later ship trailer-truckloads of Dragon Dice out of the TSR warehouse. TSR was selling books at loss, overpaying for licenses, and otherwise engaging in all manner of poor business practice. However according to Ryan Dancey, TSR’s core problem was simply that they didn’t listen to their customers. They did no surveys and got no feedback of any sort. They published material into a void, and hoped that it was what players really wanted.

In the face of TSR’s oncoming bankruptcy, bidding developed for the firm, with some of the bidders including film maker Sweetpea Entertainment, Ryan Dancey’s Five Ring Publishing Group … and Wizards of the Coast. It was Five Ring Publishing Group who actually brought the TSR deal to Wizards of the Coast. On April 10, 1997, Wizards of the Coast announced their purchase of all of the assets of TSR, including D&D and the other major gaming convention, GenCon. They ended up purchasing Five Rings Publishing Group too, and thus Legend of the Five Rings.

Wizards immediately jumped back into the roleplaying game. They continued production of TSR’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line, and even staged a return to Greyhawk, the classic AD&D campaign world, which had been abandoned by TSR for five years. Another roleplaying push starting in 1998 was the SF roleplaying system, Alternity. Five Rings Publishing Group stayed on as its own entity until 1998, then was dissolved into Wizards proper. Ryan Dancey would end up the head of Wizard’s tabletop roleplaying division, and thus would have a tremendous effect on the entire industry.