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Dice, dice, baby! Photo by Dan Horgan on Unsplash
TSR Retrospective
I was in middle school when I learned about Dungeons & Dragons from an article in the local newspaper about some college student who had gone missing in the campus steam tunnels in Wisconsin. I didn’t care about that1, but the description this new “fantasy roleplaying game” he was supposedly involved in immediately piqued my interest. Dungeons & Dragons went to the top of my Christmas wish list.
Happily, Santa brought me the first edition Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set and off I went to draw maps, figure out the funny-looking dice, roll characters, design dungeons, and write funny D&D parody stories. I soon discovered the AD&D manuals, the many adventure modules, the World of Greyhawk setting, Dragon magazine (to which I subscribed) and all the other material that would consume much of my allowance for years to come.2
This was my entrée into D&D. And it came with B1, baby! In Seacrh of the Unknown. None of that Keep on the Borderlands hogwash! Image: Sword & Shield
D&D was published by the company TSR, which stood for Tactical Studies Rules, reflecting D&D’s origins in tabletop wargaming. All I knew of TSR was what I read in Dragon and gleaned from the products they published. To young me it seemed that writing dungeon modules for TSR would be the greatest job in the world!
With the possible exceptions of writing comics for Marvel or being a private investigator like Remington Steele.
Little did 8th grade me know that TSR was a dysfunctional toxic dumpster fire of a workplace full of backstabbing worthy of a 12th level thief armed with a +5 dagger of backstabbing. Adult me, however, is fascinated by the retrospective train wreck that was TSR.
Substacker Dave Thaumavore of Thaumavoria recently interviewed Ben Riggs, the author of a history of TSR that answers the question:
Why was TSR such a dumpster fire?
I was already familiar with the general outline of the story of TSR’s rise and fall and ultimate sale to rival fantasy game company Wizards of the Coast (which was in turn bought out by game and toy goliath Hasbro). This story has been told many times in articles, online fora, and previous books about the history of RPGs and the life of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax.
Author Ben Riggs adds Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragon (Audible | Kindle | Paperback) to the corpus of TSR studies. He explains why at the top of the interview:
There have already been so many treatments of the history of TSR. What gave you the confidence and the drive to write one more?
I did not choose to write this book. The book chose me.
It began as a piece for Geek & Sundry, and as I researched that article, I discovered that I in fact had no idea how and why TSR failed, and the facts I leared about its destruction were fascinating and illuminating. Interview led to interview, and soon people were sending me documents that had been sitting in their basements for 25 years, I started receiving sales records, etc! Once someone tells you how the most-storied TTRPG company of the 20th century managed to violate the basic laws of economics in the course of its everyday business, you sit up and pay attention.
So in short, because I was focused on a different era, and had so much information that had not before seen the light of day, I had no hesitation in seeking out a publisher.
I have not read the book, though it is now on my ever-growing list. Check out the Thaumavoria interview with Riggs and the accompanying video if you are interested in the winding tale of poor decisions, missed opportunities, greed, and corporate skullduggery behind the company that brought us Dungeons & Dragons.
It is disappointing to know the sordid reality behind the captivating worlds of fantasy and adventure that D&D and TSR’s other games and books created for millions of players. But this is the world we live in — and the story behind the story is in its way as engaging as invading the Hall of the Fire Giant King and uncovering the dastardly plots of the devious dungeon-dwelling Drow. Fare thee well, brave adventurers!
Roll to save vs bankruptcy. Photo by Shane Scarbrough on Unsplash
Tomato Juice News
Along with delving into D&D, I grew up chugging massive quantities of V-8, which is basically tomato juice enhanced with juice from seven other vegetables3 and way too much salt.4 So I love tomato juice. And tomatoes! I eat tomatoes almost every day.
I especially like those little so-called grape or cherry tomatoes. I call them snack tomatoes. I like the orange tomatoes and the yellow tomatoes and the brown tomatoes and the purple tomatoes. I love tomatoes!
Tomatoes are your friend! And, like any good friend, they help keep you safe from things that are not your friend.
Like salmonella.
Tomato Juice Effectively Kills Salmonella and Other Harmful Bacteria
Tomato juice can kill Salmonella Typhi and other bacteria that can harm people’s digestive and urinary tract health, according to research published this week in Microbiology Spectrum, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Salmonella Typhi is a deadly human-specific pathogen that causes typhoid fever.
Team Tomato!
First, the researchers, in laboratory experiments, checked to see if tomato juice really does kill Salmonella Typhi. Once they ascertained it did, the team looked at the tomato’s genome to find the antimicrobial peptides that were involved.
Antimicrobial peptides are very small proteins that impair the bacterial membrane that keeps them as intact organisms. The researchers chose 4 possible antimicrobial peptides and tested how well they worked against Salmonella Typhi. This helped them find 2 antimicrobial peptides effective against Salmonella Typhi.
Tomatoes put the pep in peptides!
The most significant discovery is that tomato juice is effective in eliminating Salmonella Typhi, its hypervirulent variants, and other bacteria that can harm people’s digestive and urinary tract health.
This is why I store all my room temperature raw chicken in tubs of tomato juice.
(Actually, don’t do that.)
(That would be a really bad idea.)
Bottom line — drink more tomato juice!
Read all about it at: “Antimicrobial properties of tomato juice and peptides against typhoidal Salmonella” by Ryan S. Kwon, Gi Young Lee, Sohyoung Lee and Jeongmin Song, 30 January 2024, Microbiology Spectrum. DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.03102-23
Tomatoes of every color and shape living together in peace and harmony. Why can’t we? Photo by Vince Lee on Unsplash
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It turned out the guy’s sojourn into the steam tunnels was all about overdosing on Quaaludes, not D&D. His name was James Egbert and he had a lot of problems, none of which had to do with roleplaying games. But I didn’t know any of that in the 6th grade.
See: The truth about the dungeon master who disappeared in the steam tunnels
What I didn’t do is actually play D&D more than once or twice. I was far more into creating worlds and characters and stories. Involving other people would only slow things down and mess up the plot. Naturally I became a fantasy author.
I know a tomato is technically a fruit. As it is written: “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put tomato in a fruit salad.”
Nevertheless, I often added salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce to my V-8. Probably the added salt was wholly unnecessary.