TSR, now more than ten times the size of SPI thanks to the Dungeons & Dragons fad, gave them a secured loan of $425,000 to keep their doors open a while longer. Already in 1982 SPI, alongside Avalon Hill one of the twin giants of wargaming, found themselves in a serious financial crisis brought on partly by the general decline of the wargame market, partly by the general recession afflicting the American economy at the time, and partly by general mismanagement all too typical of their hobbyist-driven industry. As the 1980s dawned and Dungeons & Dragons exploded into a popularity no wargame had ever dreamed of, it was hard not to blame one genre’s rapid rise for the other’s slow decline. The late 1970s, you’ll remember, had seen the wargame at its commercial zenith, the RPG the exciting, fast-rising upstart genre. He never felt seriously tempted to try it again.īy the time that SSI was off and running, Joel and other wargame stalwarts like him had more reasons than ever to dislike RPGs. “This is the stupidest game I’ve ever seen,” he concluded. His one experience with playing Dungeons & Dragons hadn’t been a positive one: a sadistic Dungeon Master killed his whole party before he had even begun to figure out what was going on. And of course some split the difference, playing a little of this and a little of that. Others, the ones who found Montgomery and Rommel far more interesting than Frodo and Sauron, scoffed at RPGs and their silly fantasies and clung all the tighter to their Avalon Hill and SPI boxes. Some wargamers saw in RPGs the experiential games they had really been wanting to play all along they jumped onto the RPG bandwagon and never looked back. The newer hobby had arisen directly from the older, forcing each and every grognard to a judgement and a reckoning. In this he was hardly unique among hardcore wargamers. Joel Billings of SSI never had a whole lot of use for Dungeons & Dragons, TSR, or RPGs in general.
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