From: mavra@cpac.washington.edu (Peter D. Adkison)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: History of WotC (Was: Arcanum <----- What ever happened to it?)
Date: 23 Jan 93 21:54:43 GMT
Organization: Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
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NNTP-Posting-Host: bailey.cpac.washington.edu
In-reply-to: camelsho@gemini.ksu.ksu.edu's message of 22 Jan 1993 16:51:19 -0600

James A Seymour writes:

>   Peter, could you please post a brief history of your company?
>   I'm curious from both a casual standpoint, and from a game
>   writer wanta be viewpoint.

Jeez, this could take hours--make that days!  Asking a gaming company
president, er, I mean janitor, for a brief history of his company is
like asking a historian for a brief history of the world.  :-)

Thanks for being interested; I'll try and be brief.

Along about 1979 or so a product came out called "The Overlord's City"
or something like that from Judges Guild.  A friend of mine named
Terry Campbell saw that and was really excited about it--thought it
was an incredible piece of work and was really inspired to make up his
own city module.  He suggested to myself and two other friends,
Darrell Judd and Ken McGlothlen, that we start a gaming company.
Darrell came up with the name, Wizards of the Coast, from the name of
a mage guild that one of his characters belonged to in another guy's
campaign.  We sat around and discussed it but figured that there was
no way we had the time, experience, or funding to pull something like
this off.  The discussion sorta ended with a "maybe someday after we
have real jobs."  Little did we know.

Over the next few years we sorta used Wizards of the Coast as an
informal name to attach to various amateur things we did.  In fact, we
actually published one amateur game back in 1981 called "Castles &
Conquest," which forms the basis for some of the thinking that's going
into *The Military Order,* which is what I'm working on right now.
Our byline was "What's D&D without C&C?"  It was really really
amateur, made Arduin and Judges Guild stuff look like Time Magazine,
but I managed to sell enough of them to make my way at conventions and
such.  Eventually I quit doing it because I wasn't satisfied with the
product and this wasn't something I took very seriously at the time.

Other uses for the Wizards of the Coast logo over the next few years
included a campaign newsletter that I published for my *Chaldea*
campaign, "sponsorship" of some convention events and tournaments,
etc.  It basically came to symbolize the gaming group I played with,
which at one time included about 50 active players.  From about 1982
through 1990, *Chaldea* was my life (when I wasn't going to college,
and then working at Boeing as a systems analyst).  Even when I was
taking 20 credits of college classes I'd GM three or four times a
week, and a lot of that was power gaming where the fundamental
principals of The Primal Order were playtested and developed.  Yes, we
played and ran deities, even as PCs--I can admit that now.  :-)

In the spring of 1990 I was starting to go through that phase where
I'd paid off my college loans, I was getting married, and I'd worked
at Boeing long enough to feel that my career was secured.  At this
time I started thinking about life and the thought of being a computer
programmer for the rest of my life was really starting to scare me (it
was becoming really boring).  I realized that gaming wasn't something
that I was going to "grow out of," but I was starting to feel a need
to justify it in light of the incredible amount of time I was spending
on it.  Fortunately my wife plays, but I guess that was inevitable
since I refused to date women who wouldn't play--roleplaying games
that is.  :-)

So, one day in April of 1990 as I was talking back and forth with Ken
McGlothlen (Terry and Darrell had left the scene by this time,
although we're still friends and have occasional contact) on internet
during my Boeing lunch hour, Wizards of the Coast came up.  We started
reminiscing about the "good old days" and then the idea popped into my
head, "Why don't we do it?"  So I typed it accross the internet to
Ken, "Why don't we start a gaming company?  Wizards of the Coast, only
for real this time?"

There was a long pause.

Ken knew me well enough to know I was serious, and that I also
realized the implications of starting something like this.  His
response was, "Something like 90% of all businesses fail within the
first two years, but if anyone could pull if off, you could."  Ken is
someone who very rarely gives complements, and that statement was
something I emotionally fell back on many many times over the next
couple of years.

So, we spent the next couple weeks talking to each other over internet
for a couple of hours every day.  Some of those conversations are
still logged somewhere.  :-) We talked about every conceivable thing,
like what we wanted to do, who we'd need, pricing, fund raising, etc.
One thing that came out of that conversation was that we "wanted to do
it right."  That we were going to approach it as a business venture,
spend ample time planning it out, raising money, print professional
quality products, and find professional editing, art, typesetting,
printing, binding, etc.

May 23rd, 1990, is a date that will forever stick out in my mind.  I
invited everyone in our gaming circle over to my small apartment and
we sat around in a circle and brainstormed product ideas until about
2 o'clock in the morning.  I still have that list in my files and
there are enough ideas on that list to keep us in business for ten
years.  Out of that meeting was born our capsystem philosophy,
although it was to be refined many times in the future.

In the months that followed we started putting together a corporate
structure, assigning projects to project managers, and so forth.  We
started working on four books, and this list soon expanded to five,
including The Primal Order, TaoGM, and three system-independent
compendiums (one on bars, one on mages/magic items, and one on
keeps/castles).  Our goal was to have them to first draft stage by the
end of 1990.  Meanwhile I set out to try and collect information about
the gaming industry.

In august I went to a local gaming convention called DragonFlight, and
at that convention was Tom Dawd from FASA.  He chaired a panel called
"Writing for the Gaming Industry" and it was mostly about submitting
modules for FASA/Shadowrun.  Still, it was fascinating to me and I
learned a lot about what was involved in writing and such.  At the end
of the panel I told him that I was starting a gaming company and he
gave me that glazed over look that I find myself trying not to give
to the hundreds of people who tell me that.  He told me the same thing
I tell them--go to the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) trade
show which is held every spring in Los Vegas.  This is a wonderful
show and its where you can learn everything about the industry; there
are retailers, distributors, and most of the other gaming companies of
note, and there are panels on how to package products, pricing,
distributor relations, and so forth.

Meanwhile things were going slowly on the writing front.  We started
going through a phase where people learned that this was going to be
real work.  By the end of 1990 we had two products that we thought
were at first draft stage, The Primal Order, and The Compandium of
Mages and Magic.  At about that time we started consulting with
Beverly Marshall Saling, a professional editor who I was a friend of,
but who hadn't been involved much to that point.  I told her I had two
books for her to edit if she'd be willing and she said she'd take a
look at them.  Similarly to Tom Dawd, Beverly had that glazed over
look in her eye that I try not to give to the dozens of unpublished
authors who give me something they think is a "first draft."

Beverly was very polite, but she couldn't hide her amusement at our
puny efforts.  What we gave her "wasn't even close" to "publishable"
in her estimation and during the first part of 1991 we had many
internal squabbles along the lines of "what does she know," and "looks
good to me," and "how much quality did we want, anyway?"  We were
getting closer and closer to our projected release date, July 1991,
and things were getting tense--it was not a pretty time.

Then in March it came time to go to the GAMA trade show.  We scrapped
together our pennies and came up with enough money for one person to
go to *part* of the show.  Instead of going myself, I sent a guy who
was involved at that time, Rich Kaalaas.  I sent Rich because he's
very good looking, charismatic, and can socialize very well, where I'm
short, a bit overweight, and quite shy around people I don't know.
Rich went to the tradeshow and magical event #2 happened--he met Lisa
Stevens who was at that time working for White Wolf.  Well, Lisa was
single, Rich was cute, and, well, suffice it to say that they spent a
lot of time together at the con.  Lisa gave Rich massive amounts of
advice, and after Rich came back from GAMA Lisa continued to give us
advice, both in the form of phone calls, and eventually through
internet since Ken McGlothlen, a networking god, was able to get her
connected up through to our BBS with no long distance charges.

So, after GAMA and lots of consulting with Lisa, we completely
reorganized the company's focus.  We shelved all three compendium
projects (we may revived one or more of them as part of our upcoming
pandevelopment line some day), put TaoGM on indefinate standby (I'd
really really love to see this published, if Ken ever finishes
it--hint, hint, clue, clue Ken!), and focused our attention on The
Primal Order, which Lisa thought was the only thing worthy of being an
opening product line.

I also about this time made a decision to trust Beverly on the editing
and try and match her standards for publishable writing.  Even though
I'd never written much, and had pretty much ignored creative writing
in college, I stubbornly decided that I'd work on this thing with her
and Ken (who writes amazingly well--I'd rather read his writing than
any writing I've ever been exposed to) until I got it right.  I spent
much of April and May that year (1991) working on that every waking
hour that I wasn't at Boeing.  Spent three or four sessions a week at
Ken's, often crashing on his floor, and by the end of May I had
essentially passed a crash course in writing.  I wasn't good, but I'd
at least gotten to college level.  And in these months we'd rewritten
about half of the book.

In the meantime I was still communicating a *lot* with Lisa Stevens.
The flame had died between her and Rich but I'd gotten to be pretty
close friends with her by this time.  She came due for a vacation at
White Wolf and decided it would be fun to come to Seattle and meet all
the people she'd only talked to through the net.  So, in June she came
to visit and we all got to meet in real life and we had a ball.

Enter magical moment #3.  Lisa asked me how I'd like to have her as an
employee.  Why would she want to leave White Wolf, a rapidly growing
company (they'd just put out Vampire) to join a company that didn't
even have its first product out the door?  Ownership (there were some
other reasons too).  WW is a partnership between Mark Rein*Hagen and
Stewart Weick and she didn't see how her hard work would get her
anything in the long run, whereas WotC is a corporation and we were
willing to give her a sizable chunk of stock to come work with us.  A
long and involved negotiating session ensued, where Lisa was able to
entice us even more by saying, "How would you like to start production
with an entire product line, and $100,000 in inventory?  Have you ever
heard of Talislanta?"

The next couple of months were amazing.  Lisa and Rich went to GenCon
and started strategically placed rumors about this hot new gaming
company on the west coast that she was helping out.  By then the
rumors had started flying about how she'd left WW, and I think she was
offered about three jobs at that convention (Lisa has an incredible
reputation in the industry as being very good at sales and marketing).
We entered negotiations with Stephan Michael Sechi to acquire the
exclusive english-language publishing rights to everything Bard Games
had ever done, and we started raising money in earnest so that we
could move Lisa out here and get started.

I was very paranoid about TPO though.  I was starting to realize that
there was a lot at stake, and that deities were probably not going to
be that hot of a topic and that TPO had to be *awesome.*  So, at
GenCon I got Lisa to collect the names of some key authors in the
gaming industry who'd be willing to critique the draft I had at the
time.  As a result of that I was able to send drafts to Allen Varney,
Graeme Davis, Jonathan Tweet, and Ken Rolston, not to mention Nigel
Findley who I'd met a local con (DragonFlight in 1991).  TPO basically
sat on the shelf that summer/early fall while I waited for feedback
and tried to get over feeling burned out on the book.

Also at about this time magical event #4 happened (although we didn't
realize its import at the time).  As a result of one of my posts on
rec.games.design, I received a letter from a guy named Mike Davis
about this game that a friend of his, Richard Garfield, had designed.
The name of the game was Robo Rally and, to tell the truth, it sounded
kinda stupid from the description.  I politely told him that we were a
roleplaying company and were only mildly interested in "getting into
board games some day."  He was fortunately persistent and I eventually
agreed to take a look at the game and meet them since they were both
flying out to the west coast to see Richard's parents.  Well, the game
was simply brilliant, and I was immediately impressed by their
intellect and immagination, which surpassed my own on both counts.  We
told them we'd like to publish it the following summer after we got on
our feet (the projected release date for TPO had been pushed back to
winer of 1991 by this time).  To jump ahead in the story, we never
have published this game because of the tremendous expense of putting
it out, although we're working on perhaps doing it as a joint venture
with another company that shall remain nameless at this time.

At this meeting I mentioned that there was going to be a convention
(DragonFlight 1991) the following weekend and they should come up to
Seattle to attend.  Mike had to go back to Atlanta, but Richard said
he'd come up.  Then Richard, probably wanting to show off, asked me if
I'd like him to design a game during the next week (!), and if so, to
describe to him a game concept and he'd do it.  Well, I had always
thought it would be really cool to have a fantasy oriented card game
that was quick to play, easy to carry (playing cards *only*), fairly
easy to learn, that could be marketed through the convention circuit.
I had noticed that people spend a lot of time at conventions hanging
out in lobbies, standing in lines, etc., and I think having a game
like this could sell very well in that market.  He said, "Okay."

Next week Richard came to DragonFlight and while we were in a vacant
parking garage accross from Seattle Center (Ken was with us and we had
parked there so Ken could run in to some building and pick up
something), Richard described to me a game that he'd come up with that
fit those specks--and went way beyond.  And this game was the single
most awesome gaming idea I had heard of since 1978, when I heard of
roleplaying.  I started whooping and hollaring and yelling, primarily
because I knew at that moment that we had an idea that would add a
whole new dimension to gaming, and if executed properly, would make us
millions.  This wasn't just a new game, it was a new gaming *form.*
(Btw, if we can raise the capital, this game will be coming out this
summer.  Wish I could tell you more, but you know how it is...)

Well, that fall I got the critiques back from the writers I'd sent to.
These critiques helped a lot, since they included two important
elements: (a) pages of constructive criticism on how to make it
better, and (b) a statement saying that the product had tremendous
potential and that they wished us the best of luck.  The letter from
Ken Rolston was especially encouraging, and led to us asking him to
write the foreword for the book.

One of the major criticisms of the draft I'd sent out was that it was
very dry and that it was too oriented toward AD&D.  At that time I
brought Dave Howell into the loop and started working on yet another
redraft of the book, this time with the intent of "lightening it up"
and removing all the AD&D flavor.  Also, about this time I started
studying other game systems to write integration notes and quickly
came to the realization that I need a *lot* of help.  That's when we
started up the famous experts-l mailing list, where I called for
gaming system experts on the net to help us out.  By December 1991, we
finally had a complete honest-to-god professional-quality 1st draft of
TPO.  Time to go see Beverly again.

This time Beverly didn't throw up on it, but actually declared it as
"having potential."  The editing soon turned into redrafting/editing,
and Beverly and Dave both actually moved into my house (much to the
chagrin of Beverly's husband and house mates) and worked on TPO night
and day.  Dave was helping with the redraft and doing the typesetting
too.  I helped where I could, but they were able to work fulltime
while I had to go to Boeing and run the company.  The book was
supposed to be released in January, but it didn't go to the printers
until late February, and the shipment arrived at my house on April
Fools Day, 1992, perhaps the greatest day in my life other than my
wedding day.  To hold that book in my hands, and see thousands of
copies in boxes, after working on it for over a year and a half, was
just incredible.

The last part of 1991 and early 1992 was also consumed by the millions
of things that had to be done to get going.  Getting UPC codes for our
books, UPS drop/stamp, bulk mailing permits, distributor announcements
and solicitations, learning how to use a fax machine, securing
financing on a copier, getting a laser printer and a couple of macs,
etc., etc., etc--all the little things that had to come together.  If
we wouldn't have had Lisa who knew how to do all this already, we
would really have been flailing.

Of course the biggest hurdle of all was money.  Financing has always
been the limiting factor for our company's growth; its very difficult
to find people who want to invest in gaming.  Well actually, lots of
people *want* to invest in gaming, but most of them are gamers who
don't have any money.  We were never able to raise our entire stock
solicitation, but we were able to get enough of it to get going and
we're still paying the consequences of not having been able to raise
it all.  The biggest day in that sequence was the securing of a
$30,000 line of credit, which was enough to guarantee publication of
TPO and the Guidebook.  The day we secured that LOC is a day I think
of as the turning point as to whether all this was really going to be
worth it or not.  Before that there was always the possibility that
we'd have a good product, good people, and a good plan but couldn't
move forward because of lack of capitalization.  But at that point I
knew we were guaranteed of at least being able to put our mark in the
gaming industry, that no matter what happened, I'd be able to
contribute something to the industry I love so much.  No matter what
happens now, even if the company goes under because of this Palladium
lawsuit and I end up paying back the loans for the next 20 years, I'll
always feel that I came out ahead.

Concurrently to everything I've been describing, we had our share of
internal problems.  Almost everyone who was initially involved with
the company ended up moving on, either because they found that they
didn't have the time to do the work on top of their "day job," because
they didn't have skills we needed, because of personality conflicts,
loss of interest, or what have you.  I'm happy to say that I'm still
close with everyone I've ever worked with.  But now, out of the most
active players in WotC, I'm the only one who was there at the
beginning.  Those primary people are Lisa and Beverly, of course, and
Jay Hays and Jesper Myrfors.  Jay came on board the earliest, along
about November of 1990.  He immediately dived into things head long,
with tremendous ambition, dedication, and energy.  He told me that
he'd be a corporate officer within six months and on the board of
directors within a year--he succeeded in both goals.  He's
consistently been one of the most hard working and fanatical members
of the team, and he has a stock percenage to show for it.  Jesper is
the most recent arrival.  He is an artist who'd always been a fan of
Talislanta, asked to do art, and then just started coming down to the
office and started hanging out, looking for things to do, volunteering
his time.  Within a couple months he was running just about all of the
production department and we figured we'd better put him on the
payroll.  He's been a tremendous part of the team ever since.

After the release of TPO things bogged for a month or two until we got
the Talislanta Guidebook out the door--another huge tome that consumed
massive amounts of internal resources to get done "right."  I have to
admit that I'm not sure we did as good as we could of, although its
heads above the earlier editions (don't mean to slam Bard Games, but
with Jonathan Tweet's coauthoring and Beverly's editing, it really
turned out very nice).  After the Guidebook, Geographica, Tales,
Pawns, and the Codex seemed to just fly out the door.  Once we had
Jesper, we had an incredible team and we started to really get into
synch.

But just after the Guidebook came out, on June 17th, 1992, we were
dealt a devastating blow (although it took several months before the
full impact really started to hit).  We were jointly sued by Palladium
Books and Kevin Siembieda for copyright and trademark infringement due
to the TPO integration notes.  The further and further we got into
1992 the more time and resources this started to consume, and a cloud
started settling over our office that sapped our energy and caused us
to start doubting the future of the company.  This last November and
December were low points, culminating with the fact that the case
wasn't thrown out of court on the 14th of December as we'd hoped it
would be at the summary judgement hearing we had that day.  We had
started a stock solicitation in November, but it was proceeding
slowly, and on December 28th, during our Christmas holiday, I told our
staff that the payroll checks I was writing would be their last,
probably for several months.

But a couple of weeks ago for some reason things started picking up.
I'm not sure why, but partly its because we realized that we can
actually move forward and continue publishing products with all of us
working on a part time basis.  Probably because we've gotten pretty
proficient at our respective tasks here.  Jesper's living at home and
said he could go without pay indefintely, particularly since his
involvement here at WotC has gotten him some free-lance contracts for
other companies (an upcoming White Wolf book is being entirely
illustrated by him, and I hear they liked it well enough that he's
going to be doing another one).  I'd been working full time here and
at Boeing (I've averaged over 80 hours of work a week for the last two
years) and didn't need WotC income, Jay said he could work part time
for WotC and full time elsewhere and manage Design & Development from
home through e-mail if he could take home one of the computers,
Beverly said she could probably get by with her husband's full time
job if she could pick up some free-lance editing, and Lisa's working
part time free lancing too (she just edited a book for TSR, for more
money than I'd been paying for for three months worth of work!).

Also, we picked up a couple of investments and our printer and our
attorney have each given us some very good payment terms.  And
recently we've received some news from GAMA about the lawsuit, which I
probably should keep under my hat for now, that will help out on that
front considerably.

With all these things coming together there's been a flurry of
activity here.  Jesper's just about got our next book, The Compeat
Alchemist (a rework of an old Bard Games product) ready to go to the
printers, and we're in very good shape on our next four projects.  We
havn't been this busy since September, and I once again feel very
positive about where the company is going and our chances of success.

As you can probably see, starting up a gaming company is a tremendous
amount of work and is filled with highs and lows.  I don't recommend
it unless you're truly a workaholic and know a few others who are too.
Unless you're rich, you'll always be struggling with money--we're only
just now finally getting to our break even point, where our monthly
sales equals or exceeds our monthly overhead (of course the part of
the overhead that would otherwise go to salaries is now going to feed
lawyers kids), and we've got a significant debt to work down.

Of course I'm very anxious to see how this card game goes.  We've just
about got the business plan for it finished so I'll soon be able to
start trying to raise financing for it.  If that comes along quickly,
this summer is going to be a very exciting one for the gaming
industry, and the 1993 GenCon will probably be one of the funnest gaming
conventions of my life if we can premier it there like we're currently
planning on doing.

Of course one of the things I've enjoyed most is all the friends I've
met here on the net.  I believe in computer networks and think that
this type of communication and sharing is one of the most powerful
things a company can get involved in (even if it does burn a
tremendous amount of time).  I've particularly enjoyed the two times
I've traveled out of state and posted ahead of time where I'd be, and
then got a chance to meet internet people and place a face to a name.

Anyway, that's a part of the WotC story.  A lot less than the whole
story, but certainly a lot more than you probably expected.  The good,
the bad, the fun, the heartache--its all there.  And I wouldn't trade
the experience for anything.

				--Mavra!
				  Peter D. Adkison
				  Janitor, Wizards of the Coast
				  mavra@wizards.com

The above internet address should be used for e-mail if it is
different from the e-mail address in the header.