What If: TSR, Inc./Games Workshop

[nick_crenshaw]

Gygax granted exclusive rights to Games Workshop to distribute TSR products in the United Kingdom, after meeting with Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. Games Workshop printed some original material and also printed their own versions of various D&D and AD&D titles in order to avoid high import costs. When TSR could not reach an agreement with Games Workshop regarding a possible merger, TSR created a subsidiary operation in the UK, TSR Hobbies UK, Ltd. in 1980. Gygax hired Don Turnbull to head up the operation, which would expand into continental Europe during the 1980s. The British branch of the operation, TSR UK published a series of modules and the original Fiend Folio. TSR UK also produced Imagine magazine for 31 issues.

What if this merger had succeeded?

[Tarmor]

Maybe we would have got a great many more different editions, where each one ignored, replaced, or made obsolete large portions of previous editions. We probably would have got a greater variety of D&D figures (or a few years earlier) than TSR/Grenadier did them.

[Glorthindel]

Presumably TSR would have pulled GW down with it when it died, and I assume we would have never seen WFRP (or it would have been killed off and never seen again)

[snowblizz]

The world would be a completely different place.

Also, I wouldn't be here.

On the forum I mean. In a meta-universal context I was always meant to be.

[137beth]

In a meta-universal context I was always meant to be.

Completely unrealistic! I'm the only one who was always meant to be:|

[factotum]

Presumably TSR would have pulled GW down with it when it died, and I assume we would have never seen WFRP (or it would have been killed off and never seen again)

The TSR resulting from this merger would have been a very different beast to the one that actually went forward into the 90s, though, so assuming it would have gone bust in the same way isn't a very realistic point of view.

[Eldan]

Maybe we would have got a great many more different editions, where each one ignored, replaced, or made obsolete large portions of previous editions. We probably would have got a greater variety of D&D figures (or a few years earlier) than TSR/Grenadier did them.

Eeeeh. That's later GW.

In the seventies, GW published White Dwarf, which back then was a general roleplaying magazine and made game boards for things like chess. They only co-founded Citadel Miniatures in 1979, after the entire TSR deal. And even then, through most of the eighties, they focused more on publishing American RPGs (they had Call of Cthulu, Middle Earth and Runequest) than they did on their miniature business and their own tabletop rules. Proper Warhammer, as opposed to the skirmish games they had before, only came out in 83. And the setting they did was pretty much cobbled together from bits of real history, some D&D tropes and a lot of pulp novels, especially Elric.

If they had instead become the D&D company, they might have instead made something based on Chainmail instead of their own setting and we might never have Warhammer. And by extension 40k, Warcraft and Starcraft.

[Tarmor]

I wasn't really giving a serious answer. The serious answer: No-one knows. Anyone can speculate, but any answer is purely a wild guess. D&D as have known it might have been better, been worst, completely replaced by something else, or have never progressed past AD&D.

Warcraft and Starcraft have no connection to Games Workshop. These are an independent production by Blizzard. I can't see that they have any relation to Warhammer. If you say Orcs, and Humans, then the same connection exists to TSR, Tolkien/Lord of the Rings, and any other fantasy novel/game/product around in the seventies and eighties.

[Eldan]

Warcraft and Starcraft have no connection to Games Workshop. These are an independent production by Blizzard. I can't see that they have any relation to Warhammer. If you say Orcs, and Humans, then the same connection exists to TSR, Tolkien/Lord of the Rings, and any other fantasy novel/game/product around in the seventies and eighties.

Warcraft was going to be a licensed Warhammer game until GW pulled out and they slightly remade it. That's pretty well documented.

[Tarmor]

Warcraft was going to be a licensed Warhammer game until GW pulled out and they slightly remade it. That's pretty well documented.

Apologies, I wasn't aware of that. I just done a search and learned a bit more. I'm happy that Blizzard couldn't get a license. But your point is now understood, it was inspired by Warhammer.

[Eldan]

No problem. More interesting is the connection between Star Craft and 40k, which I don't think was ever official, but seems quite strong nevertheless. In unit design, at least. (It's a game of Space Marines, Eldar and Tyranids.)

[factotum]

Warcraft was going to be a licensed Warhammer game until GW pulled out and they slightly remade it. That's pretty well documented.

As I recall, they even got sued over it? And I still remember one of the voice lines of the dwarf griffin riders in Warcraft being "This warhammer cost me 40k!"...

[snowblizz]

As I recall, they even got sued over it? And I still remember one of the voice lines of the dwarf griffin riders in Warcraft being "This warhammer cost me 40k!"...

Something like that, I don't think GW won the lawsuit, the game was generic enough in concept. And yes there were small easter eggs in it like that, the Blizzard devs were clearly Warhamme players.

[Jay R]

I didn't predict what happened to it in the real world, so I'm sure I can't predict what might have happened in this hypothetical one.

But I suspect that there are many, many possibilities, based on the many choices that the combined company might have made.

[137beth]

Warcraft was going to be a licensed Warhammer game until GW pulled out and they slightly remade it. That's pretty well documented.

Oh, huh, I never knew that.