Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Wasting a Legacy: The Incompetence of the Gygax Trust

All players of RPGs, and fans of fiction derived from Dungeons & Dragons (Record of Lodoss War, Sword Art Online, Overlord, Dragonlance, Castle Crashers, Monster Hunter, and so much more) owe Gary Gygax (and Dave Arneson, but he's not being shat upon here) everything for their hobby.

Therefore, when I read this post at Tenkar's Tavern regarding how Gary's widow is wasting the valuable property he created during his lifetime, I'm both sad at this utterly stupid course of events and not surprised that the widow in charge of the trust completely fails to comprehend where the value lies or how to properly take care of it. (How many times have you seen the widow waste the property her late husband leaves to her? You know it's hardly uncommon.)

Gail Gygax--the aforementioned widow--thinks that she'll get far more by going to videogames and film/TV. Nothing's happened yet; she refuses to license Gary's non-D&D properties for tabletop games. She's a moron; tabletop is the only medium where Gary's name has any weight, and she doesn't know the videogame or film/TV businesses at all.

Neither does her son, Alex, whom is her pawn running Gygax Games.

How can I tell? They partnered with Fig. Instead of setting up on Kickstarter, or IndieGoGo, etc. they're using Fig.

That's a big tell that they don't know what they're doing, and given the track record this is likely willful ignorance with the intend of creating a paper trail to sustain a narrative of adversity in maintaining the value of the intellectual property in their care. In short, this is setting up a long con; expect "Much Crisis of Treachery" levels of e-begging and finger-wagging to follow when this falls through.

Read Tenkar's post. He goes into more detail, but the shameless and incompetent hucksterism will appall you.

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