28 June 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Interview: Kevin Hendryx (Part
II)
JUN 27, 2009 09:29A.M.
4. Do you recall why this reorganization occurred? Was this
part of TSR’s phenomenal growth in the early 80s or was it the
result of other internal pressures within the company?
We were not privy to TSR’s executive management decisions, except
what we were told or what was rumored, so in a way I can’t answer this
except from my own perspective, and according to what we believed at
the time or might have learned later. Tensions and tempers ran hot
during that period. Product Development was full of a bunch of mainly
younger, intense guys bursting with energy and enthusiasm; above us
were more and more non-gamer business and marketing men, who
seemed to have the ear of the executives and whose priorities were not
our own.
The conflict between these attitudes and expectations led to unpleasant
situations at TSR beginning in mid-1981 and recurring at regular
intervals thereafter, as far as I am aware. The company would
periodically swell with new staff, then constrict when times grew lean.
People were summarily fired or laid off at the whim of management. The
problems in early 1981, however, were not financial, but philosophical. In
those days, cronyism was rampant at TSR, at every level — old friends,
in-laws, and whole families dominated entire divisions. Some factions
were more powerful or better connected than others.
By and large, the creative wing wasn’t involved in the ego games and
power struggles — Product Development was physically isolated at that
time, in our own building downtown along with the Dungeon Hobby Shop
and Dungeon Distributors and the RPGA, and the managers were on the
outskirts of town in the new building and warehouse. We didn’t marry or
get born into our jobs. We had no little hubris about being the “content
providers” as it were, while the rest were doing whatever it was they did.
We often felt that the Blumes and Gygaxes and their associates, like Will
Neibling, were arrogant and greedy, were in over their heads as
businessmen, and treated the company and its employees like NPCs in
a big game they were playing.
Tremendous growth and inflows of cash made it possible to grow both
responsibly and irresponsibly. We had a large design and art staff that
was the envy of smaller publishers. We weren’t dependent on the
vagaries of freelance submissions; we could generate quality products
completely in-house, but at the same time, we weren’t paid particularly
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well and TSR insisted on owning all rights to everything we produced, as
opposed to honoring earlier agreements to pay royalties for in-house
productions. This led to many confrontations, as you’d expect, especially
when the serfs saw the executives buying big houses and fancy
automobiles or other “bling.”
The sales and marketing honchos at the company were interested in
pursuing licensing agreements and other aspects of mainstream game
publishing, like the big boys at Mattel or Parker Brothers or Hasbro might
do, which meant branching into children’s games à la Fantasy Forest
(Candyland with dragons) and movie tie-ins like Escape from New York.
Not all the design staff was interested in working on such things; we all
preferred to explore original concepts or work within the hobby game
arena. Some of the guys were more vocal about their disinclination to
toe the company line than others, and ultimately some of the big bosses
decided to crack down and force the issue. Maybe they’d been taking
management courses and wanted to do things the way other companies
did.
So we were all obliged to “reapply” for our jobs in a formal sense — this
was April 1981 — and the people in charge of the process used this as
an excuse to abruptly terminate some of the troublemakers for having
bad attitudes. This led to some others quitting in protest. And that was
the first of the infamous TSR purges. (I recall Jim Roslof returning from a
weekend out of town to discover he was alone in the art deptartment,
basically.) It put the rest of us on alert as to what we could expect in the
future, so those of us who had been spared but were extremely upset
and unhappy at the turn of events began to make plans to leave.
By the end of that summer, more of us were gone, including me. TSR
continued to make new hires, replaced those who left, and was a very
different place by the end of the year. We who were gone referred to
ourselves as the “Terminati” and that bygone era as the “Golden Age” in
our wishful way. It was a short period of time, but very intense. To this
day, I’ve never had such an engaging job or worked with more creative
and inspiring people. Some of the close bonds formed then have
continued, and to this day I feel great kinship with all those with whom I
worked in Lake Geneva, even our then-antagonists. And requiescant in
pace
5. After you left TSR, you went to work for Metagaming as a
product development manager. What projects did you oversee
during your time there?
I had arranged to return to Austin and join Metagaming full-time before
I decamped from Lake Geneva. Howard Thompson was pleased to pick
me up again after what he felt was TSR’s “training” me. Metagaming
didn’t pay as much, but in those days Austin was a cheaper place to live
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
and it was good to be back in familiar surroundings after the
disorientation of small-town Wisconsin and what had become the
oppressive, paranoid atmosphere of TSR Hobbies in those days (at least,
to us young snot-nosed punks in Product Development). It’s difficult to
recall precisely what games I worked on while at Metagaming in 1981-
82; there are websites that chronicle this stuff better than I remember it
now, and I sold off most of my games and documents and memorabilia
from this period to collectors. I continued to receive and review outside
submissions, coordinate playtesting, copyedited and did layout for a
number of games, and proposed original projects that never got off the
ground due to Thompson closing down Metagaming’s in-house
production staff in the spring of 1982. I recall Dragons of Underearth by
Keith Gross and supervising some Fantasy Trip modules like Orb Quest
and some TFT things licensed to other publishers à la the Judges
Guild/TSR arrangement, as well as a few MicroGames like Helltank
Destroyer. Thompson was always tinkering on a sci-fi RPG system he
felt would be the equivalent of TFT but I don’t think he ever got his
design finished. It was going to come out in separate volumes, like TFT,
beginning with an individual combat system game and then spaceships
and then more sort of RPG supplemental material. I think a lot of games
in progress were stillborn when Metagaming was deep-sixed.
6. Like a lot of tabletop RPG designers, you eventually entered
the computer games industry, working first for Coleco (which
seems to have hired a lot of RPG talent). Did you find the
transition into video games difficult? Were there many
similarities between the two industries or were they
completely different?
I went to Coleco in spring 1982 and remained there as a game designer
in the home video game division until summer 1983. Coleco’s revolving
door saw a legion of designers from other companies pass through —
Lawrence [Schick — JDM] once remarked that Coleco had the largest
collection of RPG designers not designing RPGs of any game company in
the world. Many of them came after my time and our paths did not cross,
unfortunately. I enjoyed some aspects of Coleco, but not nearly as much
as TSR, and when I left Coleco I left the game business, as it turns out.
I’ve never been able to get back in since, on the occasions when I’ve tried
— I hoped to work for Origin Systems in the early 1990s, I even made
inquiries at TSR again in the mid-1990s, and WOTC/Hasbro and
Cranium since then — but I don’t have any background in computer
gaming, so I’m hopelessly behind the times anyway.
I did find the technical aspects of video gaming during my Coleco stint
more difficult to assimilate than conventional games, and computer
gaming would probably have been even more so. I’m not much of a
technophile, much more a technophobe. I also grew weary of the shoot-
em-ups that dominated home video gaming, and I realized long ago that
I have no interest in catering to teenage boys’ power fantasies anymore,
if I ever did. I realize there’s more to computer gaming than this, but this
is what seems to drive the industry, this pandering to adolescent male
wish-fulfillment. I’d rather be involved in something more challenging
and grown-up and more, well, whimsical. Or painting miniatures. I’m so
old school, I have one room, hard wooden benches, and hickory switches
in my brain.
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28 June 2009
7. Whimsy is something I strongly associate with the early days
of roleplaying. Is it a quality you tried to include in your own
game designs over the years?
Certainly! Although I’ve had little opportunity to indulge in this
professionally since the 1980s. My game designing since then has
remained private, ephemeral, in an almost sand mandala-like way
(elaborate miniatures games that can never be repeated; RPG campaigns
that have returned to the Immateria from whence they came; many game
designs or rules unpublished and unfinished through lack of time).
Putting a “Divine Wrath” rule in The Fury of the Norsemen was an early
attempt to inject a fantasy element into an historical topic, and one that
was not universally appreciated.
If I’d stayed at TSR I think I’d have worked on many more oddball
games. The first assignment I had there was a rewrite/cleanup of The
Awful Green Things from Outer Space. I’m a big fan of Tom Wham‘s
simple but always elegant games like AGTFOS, the original Icebergs, or
Gangsters! These are classics in my mind, and I’d like to see some Euro-
game publisher snap them up and make refined, jazzed-up editions
available to us. Just imagine Green Thing miniatures! Wham was sort of
on permanent retainer at TSR as an affiliate game wizard deluxe, not
bound to any time clock or protocols. He kept his own schedule and
counsel. But he always came out with amazing ideas.
I try to incorporate similar concepts in certain boardgames on my “In
Process” shelf. Most of what I’m interested in as a designer are still
boring ol’ miniatures rules and hex wargames and RPGs, but I’ve also got
some simmering concepts for multiplayer boardgames in the newer Euro
style, with varied game-play and nice components that allow for a lot of
variety and intricate, integral game mechanics. I hate to give away too
many ideas, but many of these involve a mix of history and whimsy. Now
my challenge is to find time to work on them, since I’m doing so purely
on spec or for my own enjoyment, I’ve not got any publishing deal in the
works for anything. Self-publishing via my CafePress shop is always an
option for simpler projects like miniatures rules. It makes them available
for those who are interested, without convincing a regular publisher to
go broke on them. Because there’s nothing like self-published game rules
on CafePress to get you that villa in Tuscany or that third yacht, you
know?
8. Do you still play RPGs today and, if so, which ones?
Alas! Playing RPGs with my brother Game Wizards in Lake Geneva, and
to a lesser extent in Connecticut (Coleco), surrounded by unparalleled
talent and creativity and bonhomie, so completely and hopelessly spoiled
me that I’ve never been able to replicate the enjoyment of the early 1980s
with any other groups. I’ve not been able to hold together a group as a
DM in Austin due to job pressures and time constraints and the
distractions of adult life, and my efforts to find a simpatico group to just
play with has also met with failure. The last time Mary and I tried, back
in 2000, the DM flaked out after only a few months and disbanded the
campaign, and I’ve not made the effort again since. But not for lack of
interest. Any mature but convivial, collegial, easy-going and non-
neurotic gaming groups in Austin who are looking for players, give me a
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 28 June 2009

shout! I am active in the Lone Star Historical Miniatures group that

meets regularly at the Great Hall Games store in Austin for toy soldier
battles (also boardgames), and we play a lot of skirmish-level gaming
that has a high element of role-playing involved. And I’ve been talking to
some of the ex-TSR gang about a reunion at GaryCon this coming March,
in Lake Geneva, so we’ll see what comes of that.