Q&A with Jeff Berry

[aldarron]

hock: hock: Holy Crap. I had no idea so much "stuff" was done. Now I've got even more questions but I'll give it a better look over before I just start blabbering.

One thing you mentioned in an earlier post I found curious, that Dave had hired some of his civil war reenacting buddies. What was there roll in the business?

[Havard]

This is really interesting Jeff. It also adds some new dimensions to the Arneson lawsuits.

-Havard

[chirine ba kal]

hock: hock: Holy Crap. I had no idea so much "stuff" was done. Now I've got even more questions but I'll give it a better look over before I just start blabbering.

One thing you mentioned in an earlier post I found curious, that Dave had hired some of his civil war reenacting buddies. What was there roll in the business?

There was indeed a lot being published for Tekumel during that period, and I had a hand in all of it. (There's twelve running feet of shelving in our game room to hold it all.) After TSR sold EPT to Zocchi/Gamescience, we also did "Swords and Glory" as part of that deal. I was also doing all of the big conventions, eight hours of miniatures gaming and six hours of role-playing games a day, as Dave's Tekumel guy. As part of that, we built my (well, Chirine's, really) suit of armor, and so I was wearing 38 pounds of steel and brass for the whole convention. I was also a founding member of GAMA, as well.

(Somewhere in there I also painted something like 3,000 Tekumel miniatures for the game demos; I must have been either young and full of energy or nuts. Probably both...)

As for the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry guys, they were pretty much the whole of the AGI staff. Jim Moffat was the marketing guy, and very good at that; John Grossman was the 'game developer', whatever that was, and a very good editor. John Luecke was a writer (and the author of "Rails Thru the Rockies"), Peter Quinlan the staff artist (along with Ken Fletcher), and Frank LeBreque (spelling?) did the packing and shipping. John Grossman and Gene Hendricksen also wrote "The Compleat Brigadier" and also did their own line of 20mm historical figures. Artist Ken Fletcher and typesetter Sarah Prince were not part of this crowd, but came in from local F/SF fandom. Miniatures sculptor Steve Lortz also lurked around the place, primarily as a free-lance writer.

The First Minnesota guys were both the biggest strength and the weakest part of AGI, from my experience. They were all very good at their jobs, and very hard workers, but they were all historical miniatures players; none of them were role-players, and they never really accepted that RPGs were what were driving the game hobby after D&D took off. They felt that the 'real' game industry was the one based on historical miniatures, and never really could understand why I and my friends (the 'Tekumel boat people') could make lots of sales at conventions and via mail-order. I kept advising them to run demos of their games at conventions, and that it wouldn't hurt to wear their uniforms when doing ACW games, but they didn't feel that was 'proper'; they tended to sit at the dealers' tables we'd get at the conventions and be baffled as the world passed them by - and the boat people's section of the tradeshow booth was usually stacked three deep with RPG gamers desperate to give us their money.

I did a recent posting on my blog where you can see our travelling circus in action; photo by Dave Arneson:

http://chirinesworkbench.blogspot.com/20...gygax.html

And I usually got the girls, too, which also baffled them... :lol:

Feel free to ask any questions; I'll try to answer them for you...

yours, Chirine

[chirine ba kal]

This is really interesting Jeff. It also adds some new dimensions to the Arneson lawsuits.

-Havard

It did; I had a front row seat for all of it. There was always a certain dynamic tension between the Minneapolis crowd (Dave and Phil and their friends) and the Lake Geneva crowd (Gary and his friends); there were a lot of in-game rivalries which got played out at the first Gen Cons. I recently bought a copy of the book "Forty Years of Gen-Con" (or something to that effect) and laughed my fool head off reading it.

My personal take on the lawsuits is that Gary wanted very badly to be a 'respectable' author and publisher; the trade dress and format for what became AD&D was based primarily on what the largest bookseller in the US at that time, B. Dalton's, was dictating for their in-store display format. Boxed sets like the original D&D, were 'too crude' for the mass retail market, and any new products had to be either up to the standards set by Avalon Hill for boxed games or be 8 1/2" by 11" hardbound books. Period. Another driver in the marketing of AD&D was the tournament game, which was a direct follow-on from the historical miniatures world that both Gary and Dave came from. (Ancients were the worst of this trend; see also the WRG sets of rules, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. I have an opinion about tournaments and tournament players, and got entirely out of historical miniatures as a result.) The modules that these Gen Con tournaments generated provided new products, as they could be easily produced and shrink-wrapped to fit B. Dalton's retail format.

Once the game took off, the money started rolling in, and people got a little goofy. My personal experience, as well as my conversations with both Dave and Gary, was that both of the Blume brothers got just a little too greedy and thought themselves just a little too clever; the result was their cutting Prof. Barker and EPT off, as they were able to play on the fact that EPT out-sold D&D to persuade Gary to agree to drop Tekumel. (I've seen all the letters back and forth, between TSR and Prof. Barker; it makes for both interesting reading and a classic case of how to start a war by provocative letters.) When TSR refused to pay Dave a royalty on AD&D, Dave had no option but to sue, and Prof. Barker was only too happy to help him out. The Blume brothers made asses of themselves in court during their testimony, Gary was made to look like an idiot, and that was pretty much that after a lot of time and money was spent by the Blumes to try and wriggle out of a very bad business decision.

*Sigh*. Not pretty to watch, and not at all helpful to the game hobby / industry...

yours, Chirine

[aldarron]

When Dave closed AGI down, everything Tekumel came to me and everything else went to Flying Buffalo as Dave was a part-owner of that company. We on went from there as a separate business entity, and once we'd incorporated Dave got shares of stock in the new company to pay for all of the back inventory of publications we'd gotten from him.

Does that help?

yours, Chirine

Hey Chirine,

When did Dave shut AGI down? Is that when he moved to San Francisco? Why San Francisco anyway?

[chirine ba kal]

Hey Chirine,

When did Dave shut AGI down? Is that when he moved to San Francisco? Why San Francisco anyway?

AGI closed in the spring of 1983, If I recall correctly. I helped pack everything up and get it sent off to Flying Buffalo.

San Francisco? One, because Dave's wife was part of an evangelical mission that was bringing the word of God to the hedonists of that sinful city, and Two, Dave also had an interest in Ehara Tadashi's "Different Worlds"; Dave later had a position as "Marketing Director" for DW, which is how DW came to get the rights to do Tekumel publishing in the late 1980s.

yours, Chirine

[aldarron]

"Playing in Blackmoor": Yes, Phil did play in Dave's Blackmoor for a while; the two of them conspired to transport us there in our ship, and we just appeared in Blackmoor Bay one day. ... We played our Tekumel selves, as they were. We arrived in the bay, Gertie showed up, and I made instant contact with her as Chirine is a magic users descended from the ancient Dragon Lords of Tekumel's past. It was pretty smooth sailing with the locals after that, aside from the language problem. I'll go back to my notes and get the rest of the details for you; I kept a log book of all our games, starting in 1976

Hi Chirine,

I know you are deep in preperation for the memorial event (I swear I'm going next year!) but when you get a chance, I'm wondering if you can tell me what year this happened. I'm thinking of adding it to my timeline project.

[chirine ba kal]

"Playing in Blackmoor": Yes, Phil did play in Dave's Blackmoor for a while; the two of them conspired to transport us there in our ship, and we just appeared in Blackmoor Bay one day. ... We played our Tekumel selves, as they were. We arrived in the bay, Gertie showed up, and I made instant contact with her as Chirine is a magic users descended from the ancient Dragon Lords of Tekumel's past. It was pretty smooth sailing with the locals after that, aside from the language problem. I'll go back to my notes and get the rest of the details for you; I kept a log book of all our games, starting in 1976

Hi Chirine,

I know you are deep in preperation for the memorial event (I swear I'm going next year!) but when you get a chance, I'm wondering if you can tell me what year this happened. I'm thinking of adding it to my timeline project.

Lemme see...

Ah! Late 2361 A.S. in the Tsolyani calendar, according to an entry in the Imperial Military Journal, published in Bey Su and Minneapolis. This was after we'd gone swanning around in Lake Parunal, and which adventure the Professor used as a plot device in his novel "Flamsong".

[Aldarron reaches for his bec de corbin, and fetches somebody a good smack up the side of their head... ]

My notes say the late summer of 1982. Dave was very amused that he'd been able to 'feed' Phil a plot development, by the way.

Event preparations are going well; I spent a very enjoyable several days last weekend sorting out terrain, figures, and ships. I'm meeting the first wave of out-of-town guests at the airport in about three hours, but things are on schedule.

If you do think you'd like to wash up on our shores next year, the DLA MMME will be held on the first Saturday directly following April 7th; in the case of 2012, it will actually be on April 7th, the first Saturday in that April. Usual schedule of watery fun, too.

Does this help?

yours, Chirine

[aldarron]

Your the best Jeff!

I'll take that to mean good ol'Gertie was brought back to the living some time after her fatal battle with the forces of Coot. Unless you think Chirine may have ventured back to an earlier time... I didn't get the impression that was the case though.

I know its slim, but any chance at all your notes mention anything about who was in charge of Blackmoor? Name of the baron or any of the hero's, King Uther, anything like that?

[Havard]

Loving this as usual Jeff!

Artist Ken Fletcher and typesetter Sarah Prince were not part of this crowd, but came in from local F/SF fandom. Miniatures sculptor Steve Lortz also lurked around the place, primarily as a free-lance writer.

Can you tell us something else about Ken Fletcher and Steve Lortz? Both are listed as original Blackmoor players. Lortz played Lortz Kharnundrhum the Dwarf, and I suspect Fletcher may have been the inspiration for the NPC Fletcher Williams of Blackmoor University.

-Havard