ame Informer: So how did you get over at Wizards? What brought you over there?
Ed Stark: Well, I started in the game industry about 14 years ago, small game company called West End Games. West End published classic games like Paranoia, many board games, like Torg. And I wrote several games, Shatterzone, Master Book, and a couple of novels and everything. In ’95 I wanted to try something new so I got involved with TSR when they were back in Wisconsin. I became the lead designer on the Birthright product line after that came out and then did some work on Planescape and core D&D and various things like that.
When Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR in ’97 they brought most of the creative staff out to Seattle and I went with them. By that time I’d done a lot of writing, and a lot of design. I’ve got well over 100 design credits and author credits and things like that. So I decided I wanted to get into a sort of a more management role.
So I ended up becoming the creative director for Dungeons and Dragons during its third edition release and its 3.5 revision. And then we felt at Wizards that we needed somebody to help focus the R&D efforts concerning Atari and our other licensees, like Hollywood licensees, and things like that. So now I’m the special projects manager for role playing games and miniatures and so that’s what I do. My primary focus is making sure that people like Atari have what they need, get the approvals they need to get their projects done, and that we have some input in what’s getting produced.
GI: What was it like being at TSR during the whole implosion thing?
Stark: It was very rough because at the time I started at TSR, TSR, of course, was the big boy in the industry, and as far as anybody in creative services knew, everything was going great. You know, we had heard things about Random House having enough return material that they could just completely bankrupt us if they ever decided to ship it all back. And we were always told, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it.” We celebrated the 20th anniversary of D&D and had a big party and everything, and things went well.
And then, all of the sudden, right before Christmas, in fact, like two days before Christmas we had this big layoff, and everybody was stunned. And, in fact, I was more stunned than most people because I was laid off. I drove back to my house, and on the way back, by the time I’d gotten there I thought, “Well, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of writing in the industry. I’m not going to have any problem getting freelance. We can probably survive on unemployment while I do this. So I’ll have a decent, upbeat attitude.” Well, I called my wife where she was working and told her, and she couldn’t talk at the time because she works in daycare, and there’s a lot of things she has to do, but she was very upset because it was right before Christmas. “What are we going to do?” she asked, but we didn’t have time to talk So I thought, “Well, I’ll call her back and then I’ll call the unemployment agency.”
All of the sudden another phone call arrives. I think it’s her and instead it’s Harold Johnson, a longtime D&D person. He’d been around since the very start, and all that sort of thing. He has been my boss. He calls me back and says, “Ted, will you come back?” And then I said, “What?” And he said, “I went into Lorraine Williams’ office and I said, ‘Look, you’ve taken my lead designer, my assistant creative director.’” And I may be overstating it, but this is what Harold said, not what I’m saying. “And if you do that you might as well just cancel all of the lines I’m in charge of because I can’t run them by myself.” And so I was laid off for about an hour and a half.
I came back after they’d all had the big talk, all the survivors had the big talk about what we’re going to do now. Well, so everybody is walking around stunned, and then we went home for Christmas vacation, which was, I’ll tell ya, a bunch of fun there. A lot of stories out of that, but to cut to the chase, we then spent seven months trying to work and not publishing any products amid various rumors. I mean, everybody was just expecting to come in the next day and have the doors changed. But as it turned out we kept getting paid, we kept coming in and trying to work, nothing was being published, and then we started hearing rumors that TSR was for sale. And it’s like, “Okay, who’s going to buy it?” We heard a couple of rumors. We heard Legend of the Five Rings was trying to buy it, Wizards of the Coast was trying to buy it, and we heard a lot of other crazy rumors. We heard Random House wanted to buy us. As it turned out of course Wizards purchased us.
There were some people who didn’t want to move out of Wisconsin, my favorite editor at the time, in fact, the woman who worked on most of the products I wrote, Carrie Bebris, she had a family in Wisconsin and wasn’t going to move. So it was pretty rough during that time. It was a lot of uncertainty. But one thing I’ve gotta say is as badly as Lorraine Williams, the management staff at TSR has been maligned, the fact that they kept the core of TSR intact during that period instead of just closing the doors, saving a lot of money, and selling off, like, the various licenses to whoever wanted them, like selling off D&D to whoever was the highest bidder, she ended up making sure that many of us ended up having jobs and futures in the game industry. So say what you will about her or the TSR management at the time, that was one thing that was pretty positive. You know, a lot of us got to move out to Washington all together, and that helped. And I think a big reason for D&D’s success after we moved out to Washington was not so much the fact that it had the same people working on it, but the extent to which Wizards of the Coast and Peter Adkison went to bring everybody out because everybody who moved out there still doesn’t work there. I mean, a minority of people who moved out there still work there. A lot of people moved on, of course, there were some layoffs at Wizards a few years ago, but, you know, for the most part it kept the core of D&D alive. And we’ve essentially been passing the torch between us for many years.
GI: What was it do you think that caused that core crash? Was it the internal thing at TSR where the company itself wasn’t doing what it needed to do? Or was there a cultural thing where it’s like suddenly people who grew up on D&D changed? Or you didn’t have a new audience?
Stark: I’ve heard that before and I think for awhile people subscribed to that theory, but looking back on it now, especially with our recent success, I mean, there are actually more people playing D&D now than have ever been, even during the eighties. I think what happened was TSR stopped looking outward and started looking inward. What I mean by that is when D&D first came out, Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, the various people who where involved with D&D at the start where willing to try all kinds of crazy stuff. You know, you had things like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks where D&D meets science fiction. You had all kinds of really cool adventures and everything.
And then somewhere around the nineties somebody got it in their head that the only way to make money is to release new campaign settings. And these campaign settings all had a narrow focus. If you look at Planescape or al-Qadim those were the most extreme examples of campaign settings that were done. And they were very critically acclaimed and financially successful in certain ways, but you see a lot of other campaign settings that were very good but, like, Mystara, Birthright, Red Steel, these various things, how many times do you need to say, “European middle ages fantasy?” You know, and do essentially the same thing over and over again. They all had very cool mechanics and many of them had cool histories, but it was essentially the same darn thing over and over.
So we kept splitting our audience. And when you split your audience, instead of selling 15 products to 100,000 people each, you’re selling 150 products to 10,000 people each, you know, that doesn’t work. And, you know, the math is terrible on that. So when Wizards consolidated Dungeons & Dragons and said, “Look, we’re going to pursue core D&D, were going to pursue Forgotten Realms, and for awhile that’s pretty much it. And then we did D&D miniatures and now we do the new Eberron campaign. Very strong growth potential. We’ve managed to get it so that our core consumers are no longer confused about which thing they want to buy. They’re no longer confused about which campaign setting has what, you know, which product goes where, what they should have. They know that every month a couple of products are going to come out and that’s going to be what’s available. I mean, I remember when Birthright launched we put out four Birthright products in a month, and not to mention Planescape, core D&D, Ravenloft, and a bunch of other things. So you might have like twelve different products and who’s going to buy all of those? Now we put out two or maybe three D&D products a month, plus novels and miniatures. That’s it. Wizards of the Coast recaptured that focus and now it’s much easier for somebody to get into the game because they look at it and go, “Oh, that’s what D&D is. I understand.”
And so for the first time in years we’re seeing the audience grow. We’re seeing younger players getting in. Older players, some of them transition out, some of them come back. But every month our numbers are showing that more people are starting to play D&D. The new basic game comes out this September - it’s in the catalog. We’re going to have another venue for people to get in because the basic game that is very similar to the old basic set where you could do character creation, and you could put your own adventures, and it’s going to have really cool miniatures in it with a very low price point. But unlike the old basic game it’s not a separate game. It’s the same game as you get in the players handbook, it’s just less of it. You know, you don’t need 80 spells in there. You only need the five or six for each class and level that are going to provide an interesting choice and then you move on.
GI: You said that more people now are playing D&D than there ever was back in the day. Why do you think that is? I mean, obviously there are so many other avenues out there, You know, you can play video games, surf the web, etc. I guess, why do you think the old school is still kicking ass?
Stark: I think there are a lot of different reasons. Part of it Wizards can take credit for. I mean, doing Third Edition the way they did, a big change, big start, you know, it caused a lot of attention. It got people to give it a try. But also we benefited a lot from the changing environment. You’ll notice that a lot more people in general are doing things like taking up hobbies and core games and stuff. They’re not as willing to go out and spend money and not get anything in return for it. Like going out to a movie multiple times is not nearly as popular as it used to be, at least in the circle of people I know. You plunk down money for something, you want to keep it. More complicated board games are becoming more popular. You know, we’re starting to see more of the German style board games come in. Computer games, more and more, have to provide an ongoing experience. People look to things like MMORPGs or console games that have Xbox Live downloads, things like that. They want more for their money. They want more of an experience. Role playing has always been a very high return on your investment. I mean, you may have to plunk down $90 for all your core books, but you can use those for years.
Another thing is it’s a social activity. It’s me getting together with my friends. And parents really recognize the fact that, “Gee, if my kid is upstairs in his room playing D&D with his friends he’s not out going and getting in trouble. He’s using his imagination.” And more and more people are happy to see that their kids are getting involved in this sort of thing. So they encourage it - a lot of parents actually - and this is something that’s going to be very prevalent at Gen-Con this year because it was the last couple of years, are bringing their kids into it. It’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m 40 years old. I played D&D when I was in high school and college, and now my son or daughter’s like 10 or 12 years old. I’m going to start getting them to play.” So we see a lot of that.
And, finally, media. Both Atari with their terrific games, and fantasy movies like The Lord of the Rings are making fantasy and imagination much more mainstream. I mean, it used to be that, “Oh, if you play D&D you are a geek.” Well, as you can see from our 30 Years of Adventure book, they’re not exactly true. You look at that book, you’re going to see essays and sidebars and stuff in it by guys like Steven Colbert from The Daily Show, David X. Cohen, producer of The Simpsons - people like that are talking about their experiences playing D&D. And you know what? I was an all-state athelete. My baseball team played D&D. To say we were the typical bookish geeks or whatever, that’s not true. There’s a lot of myths about what you have to know or how smart you have to be or what you’re willing to spend your time on to play D&D and stuff. And we’re just finding that’s not the case. I think Magic helped a little bit with that too because when we had the Magic Pro Tour, you know, people actually going and playing and winning money, it’s like, “Hmm, Magic Pro Tour. Golf Pro Tour. Those are kind of similar.” We have guys who that’s their job. They make their living going and playing Magic Pro Tour. That’s a pretty big incentive. I mean, they show it on ESPN. So, we’re hoping that someday Miniatures may actually have a Pro Tour, we have a nice tournament structure that we’re building up this year. …
GI: So do you think it’s become easier to translate the Dungeons & Dragons, the whole concept, to kids now?
Stark: Oh yeah. Part of that is just the fact that fantasy and things like Harry Potter, and the upcoming Narnia series, and of course Lord of the Rings are big and popular among kids. And the Japanese anime and stuff like that, and Pokemon certainly helped us a lot. It is easier to describe to a kid what you’re doing. But we’re also making strides by creating a basic game and by encouraging Atari when they want to do a game like Demon Stone, which is very action oriented and very rules-light, you can just start playing right away. You don’t have to read through this long rulebook. It helps people to transition in, and the more they like something the more time they are willing to invest. So by the time the kid has played Demon Stone, maybe played some D&D miniatures, maybe played the basic game, he’s willing to crack open that 320-page player’s handbook and play because he knows “I don’t have to read all of this. I want to play a fighter. I need to read the two pages on the fighter, and one page on the dwarf, and maybe a couple of feats, and I’m ready to go. And later on when I want to play a wizard I’ll read the wizard stuff and spells and all of that. No big deal.”
GI: So now you’ve obviously been with Dungeons & Dragons for a long time and there’s been video games throughout the decades, on all the different systems. What’s it been like from your perspective, and have you had any involvement with it?
Stark: Well, it’s been pretty cool because my first experience with video games was probably like a lot of people playing old Atari and Midway games. You know, Asteroids and Space Invaders and all that sort of thing. And then my first computer game when I finally got an old 8088 computer was Wizardry, which of course was essentially one of the first D&D games. And then of course when Stormfront did their gold box games I got involved in those. So I’ve kind of grown with D&D or D&D-like computer games. They always appealed to me because, even though I had a very regular gaming group, we got together a couple of times a week usually, there were certainly times when I wanted to play and nobody was around. So it’s like, “Oh, throw the disc in the drive and play.” When I wasn’t playing Pirates, which was just huge in my home too. And when, one of the things that happened, remember I said TSR started looking very inward? That happened with computer game licenses too.
After the gold box games were done, which had been very good, very true to D&D - Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and the Eye of the Beholder series - after those came out there was kind of a lull, and something happened at TSR, and I wasn’t involved in it so I can’t say exactly why it happened so it soon became that TSR was willing to take a check from a computer licensee, but didn’t really want to do anything. They didn’t want to be involved. So they would say, “Yes, you have the rights to do this video game, and we don’t want to hear from you.” And so games would come out that weren’t very good. They weren’t real strong representations of the D&D brand, and may have been good games in and of themselves, but had no business having the Dungeons and Dragons logo on them because they weren’t reflections. And every once in awhile somebody would come out with something that was very cool and very D&D, but it was completely by accident as far as TSR was concerned.
Well, when Wizards of the Coast took over TSR, Peter Adkison said, “Look, computer gaming is the future of roleplaying. We’ve got to get involved in this.” And that’s when Neverwinter Nights was coming out. So I got involved in the original Neverwinter Nights, kind of at a late date. But I mean I flew up to Edmonton with Bioware and we spent several days going over their design document and looking at what they had already built and trying to say, “This is really not the way things work in D&D.” Or, “Could you do this instead?” And we got it so that Neverwinter Nights was pretty darn close to where we wanted things for D&D to be. Since then Atari has been so communicative and set up so many meetings and things between the development houses and our own staff in Seattle that we feel often like partners when we’re working on this game. I mean, my entire job is really about working with Atari. And so when they come in and say, “Look, we want to do something different. We want to do an action based game that really isn’t a strong representation of the rules, but we feel is a really strong representation of the brand.” I say, “Well, show me what you’ve got.” And we work it out and we end up with something like Demon Stone, which is completely their idea, but we were able to look at it and go, “What’s important about the D&D brand?” Well, socialization, heroic fantasy, high action, and a good story. Well it has all those things. Do you get to see the dice roll? No. Do you even know what the main character’s strength is? No. But he gets to buy feats, he gets to buy equipment, he gets to work with party. No problem.
GI: I’m curious. We got to see D&D Online and that seems to be, well, it wasn’t what I was expecting at first, but it seems to be a much truer conversion of D&D than even Neverwinter has done to some extent. I’m just kind of curious what your thoughts are on that.
Stark: Well, and see I think D&D Online hits the other end of the spectrum than Demon Stone because Demon Stone is a console game. It’s supposed to be finite. It’s supposed to tell a good story. It’s supposed to get across this great brand message of what D&D and Forgotten Realms are. D&D Online is of course set in the new Eberron campaign setting. But that’s going to be a game where you’re going to be playing continuously. The rules have to stack up. I mean, if I’m going to sit there and tell an online player that they’re playing D&D Online, they have to be able to sit there with the player’s handbook and go, “Okay, I should pick this class or skill because I’m going to be able to do that later because if it turns out that the fifth level wizard can’t cast fireball they’re going to go, “Wait a minute. This isn’t D&D.” So we feel it’s important that D&D Online really reflect the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. Now, we are going to have certain places, I’m sure, we haven’t gotten far enough for me to give a specific example, but where things are going to be compromised. Like where we’re going to say, “Look, it’s important in an online game that you’re able to do X.” I don’t know what X is right now, but in D&D you have to be able to do it this way. Who knows if attacks of opportunity are going to work the same way? Are they going to be reflected in the game? Almost certainly. I think the end user’s going to look at it and go, “Wow, this is such a great translation of D&D.” And we’ll of course, knowing the background, go, “But, oh, the code works a little bit differently.”
GI: What you think about all the other things that happened with third parties expanding D&D, kind of coming up with totally different things to do with the D20 system.
Stark: I think it’s great. I was initially one of the very strong skeptics. When Ryan Dancey proposed that we release Dungeons and Dragons system as D20 System license, I was one of the people that said, “Wait a minute. Why are we giving this away? We’ve worked for three years on this and based it off of, you know, 20 years of history. Why should we give this away to people?” And he had to explain to us that what it’s going to do is, not only will it help the industry, and let’s face it, Wizards of the Coast is essentially the biggest boat in the harbor that is the industry. Any water that gets added to that harbor is going to float us higher. So any benefit to the industry benefits us. So there was that, and there’s also the idea that they’re going to do things that we aren’t going to want to do. Like, for example, they might want to do a fantasy setting that has cyberpunk elements in it or something. Dungeons and Dragons isn’t about, it’s not a core part of D&D to have cyperpunk-type stuff in it. But there might be a fan out there who wants that. It’s better for the guy who sits there and says, “Well, I’m playing D&D. I’m playing D&D. Okay, I’m bored with D&D. I’d like to try something else.” To find something that’s in the D20 system that he can play with is D&D material, play that, and then come back and buy more of our stuff later. Than to have him say, “Oh, gee, there’s nothing in this industry for me. I guess I’ll go get another hobby.” And, you know, two years later he’s collecting trains, and we don’t get any of his money.
The important thing to remember is, while we want our consumers to have a lot of fun, we also want all of their money (laughs). And we want to give them great value for their money so they keep wanting to get our stuff. Let’s face it, if I don’t get paid, you know, I can’t keep doing what I love doing. So I think it’s great that there are companies out there that do stuff. They also challenge us. If another D20 company comes out and does something that’s not for Dungeons and Dragons, but could be used in Dungeons and Dragons in a D20 sense, and it’s better or cooler or does something different that we haven’t thought of, D20 licenses, well, as long as we give them credit, we can use it too. So, I mean, we recently did a book called Unearthed Arcana, which is one of my favorite books we’ve released ever since the third edition. It’s all variant rules under the OGL license. The Open Game License. Most of that stuff was generated in-house by us. It’s like house rules and most of the stuff that we’ve come up with over the years, and variants that we wanted to explore, but there are things in there by companies like the Game Mechanics, you probably never heard of them, they’re a very small D20 company. Several of the people who work for the Game Mechanics, in fact, I think all of them used to be Wizards of the Coast employees who started up their own company. And they came up with this really cool system of enchanting magic items. And so we said, “Hey guys, we’re doing Unearthed Arcana. Legally, we can reprint your material, but we’d like to ask your permission if you wouldn’t mind us reprinting this material, giving you credit?” And they said, “Yes, sure.” I think we had one or two companies where we said, “We’d like to reprint your material” and they said, “Well, we’d really rather you didn’t because it’s too soon after we just had our book. We want to keep some of it in our book.” And we said, “No problem.” Even though license lets us do that we didn’t want to hurt, you know, that whole industry. We didn’t want to hurt a small company that didn’t want us to do that. So the D20 license really gives us an opportunity to look around and see what other people are doing. So unlike TSR in the early nineties, Wizards of the Coast is very much focused outward. We’re always looking to our customers, to our competitors, to different industries like the computer game industry for ideas that we can bring in and make ourselves better.
GI: It seems like a pretty friendly environment.
Stark: It is. It’s very competitive. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we very much compete with other designers, not so much for shelf space or dollars, because, I mean, we’re several factors ahead of even our closest financial competition, but for quality. You know, there’s nothing that’ll steam a Wizards of the Coast designer more than having his stuff held up and compared to another designer’s unfavorably. You know, sit there and say, “Oh, somebody did this way better.” So our guys are really intense on trying to do stuff right the first time, or thinking of it best. One of the things they do love though is when Atari comes out with this really new cool idea, and says, “Well, this is kind of the way we have to work it in the computer game because we can’t do it the way you do it in the role playing game.” We sit there and go, “Yes, that’s great! We’re now willing to adopt it for the paper and pencil.” And Atari goes, “What? Oh, well, glad you liked it.” You know, they get very surprised sometimes when they violate our rules and come back and say, “Oh, we’re sorry we had to violate the rules.” And we’re like, “That’s terrific! That’s brilliant. We’re going to change the rule.” And that happened a lot with Eberron. I mean, like Dragonshard and D&D Online have, of course, been in development for several months while Eberron was only released last month. So during that time we were constantly in communication with Atari and saying, “Okay, here’s the latest version of Eberron.” And every once in a while they’d come to us and say, “Boy, we noticed that the latest version of Eberron doesn’t have this. Or you handle a rule that way. And that’s kind of a problem for us.” And we sit there and go, (swishing noise) “Okay, how about if it works this way?” Or “Do you want a suggestion?” So I think Eberron’s really an opportunity where Atari and Wizards of the Coast got to work together to make things work out for the best for everybody.
-Billy Berghammer, Adam Biessener