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Post by geoffrey on May 30, 2011 12:32:17 GMT -6
When did TSR lose the rights to Empire of the Petal Throne? And to whom? And why?
All I know is that Game Science held the rights to EPT in 1981, since that is what Judges Guild's module, The Nightmare Maze of Jigresh, says.
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Post by Finarvyn on May 30, 2011 15:23:55 GMT -6
I have no inside information, but I know that Jim Ward retained the rights to Metamorphosis Alpha even though TSR published the 1E version, and perhaps it's a similar situation for EPT. Maybe TSR only picked up "first printing" rights or something like that. Wikipedia says: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9kumel |
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Post by thorswulf on May 30, 2011 15:52:38 GMT -6
I worked in a game/comic book store in the mid 80's. My boss was an absolute nut for Tekumel (which rubbed off on me), and we ordered most of our stuff right from Tekumel games. This was a company run by Barker's players-I think- annd we could only get material from them due to a massive flood that hit Gulfport, where Gamescience was located at that time. Some time around 1990 Different Worlds Publishing reprinted the EPT rules, and the Sourcebooks in a three part format. Hope this helps.
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Post by James Maliszewski on May 30, 2011 22:10:40 GMT -6
TSR simply ceased publication of the game because it wasn't a good return on their investment. Sometime later, Lou Zocchi acquired the RPG rights from TSR and restored them to Professor Barker, who's retained them ever since. Someone better knowledgeable than I -- Victor Raymond perhaps? -- can fill in the precise details. What I am pretty sure of is that EPT was unprofitable enough that TSR gave it no additional support beyond the initial boxed set and that Lou Zocchi eventually brokered a deal that got the game back in the Professor's hands.
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Post by thorswulf on May 31, 2011 17:22:14 GMT -6
THANK YOU Mr. Zocchi!
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Post by Zenopus on May 31, 2011 17:55:38 GMT -6
IIRC, this subject is discussed at some length in the interview with M.A.R. Barker in Dungeoneer #23. I have a copy, I'll take a look at it.
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Post by geoffrey on May 31, 2011 18:27:51 GMT -6
Lou Zocchi is awesome.
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Post by aldarron on May 31, 2011 19:58:47 GMT -6
An interesting thing about EPT in regard to the seperate rights, is that there is a lot of the basic rules text that is almost word for word what it says in the 3lbbs - compare the sections on pursuit in the dungeons, for example. It would clearly be copyright infringement to publish EPT, were it not for the rights already being seperated. In a sense I think this helps the OD&D clones since there is more than one identical, but legally seperate source for a lot of the rules.
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Post by Zenopus on May 31, 2011 21:09:32 GMT -6
Okay, I found the issue - it's one of the hybrid issues with the JGJ - The Dungeoneer Journal - Oct/Nov 1980.
There's an entire page devoted to his relationship with TSR. Essentially, TSR had a 20% royalty on EPT products, which Barker was ok with in the beginning, but eventually decided was too much, particularly when he wanted to write a planned EPT novel (presumably Man of Gold). He put off writing the novel until EPT sales had declined enough that TSR was willing to sell the rights.
Here's the first question and answer:
Judges Guild: In the early days, how well did you get along with TSR?
Barker: Oh...I wouldn't say badly. We got along quite well. I didn't have any difficulty corresponding with Gygax or contacting and talking with him on the phone. Now, of course, it is such a huge corporation that things are different. At the outset, he showed a great deal of interest and he made it very easy. It seemed that he was excited about having EPT and he wanted to develop it. He gave me opportunities to write stuff for the The Dragon and The Strategic Review and offered to publish stuff that I or other people put out on Tekumel. He kept this up for some time. I had no objections until it came to this problem on the nature of the royalties on my novel.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2011 22:28:34 GMT -6
Sorry to be dropping in here so late...
TSR didn't lose the rights to publish EPT; they sold them to Lou Zocchi / Gamescience in what was in effect a hostile sale to try and bury the game in Gulfport. Lou, at that time, was more of a 'surplus store' operation where games went to be sold off after their parent companies had changed their focus or marketing ideas.
The basic problem that caused TSR to want to dispose of EPT wasn't for any of the reasons given in the previous postings in this thread; EPT actually sold very well, and did better in sales then the original boxed edition of D&D when it came out in 1975. It was, however, a 'package' deal where TSR actually had very little input into the physical layout or packaging; Prof. Barker's father had run a printing and litho shop in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Professor submitted all the required color separations for all of the artwork and maps for the game to TSR. All they had to do was take the package down to their printer and order up 'x' number of copies for sale.
(The 'fancy maps', by the way, were run off by the printer on a job lot of an early type of synthetic fiber paper as an experiment; it didn't cost TSR anything extra over and above the four-color printing.)
For TSR, this made the game actually very profitable; they did very little work on what was effectively a turn-key game and game system. Gary Gygax asked the Professor to make changes in the rules to make the game much more compatible and interchangeable with D&D, hence the 'Good / Evil' of OEPT vs. the 'Stability/Change' of Tekumel.
The biggest problem was an ego issue; the TSR folks, especially Gary, were pretty intimidated by the depth and breadth of Tekumel in what they felt was a comparison to their own creations. It has to be kept in mind that the Professor had been developing his world-setting since the 1940s, and had used a lot of his background materials from that time to create EPT, the Jakalla Underworld 'mega-dungeon', and over 1,000 NPCs in the summer of 1974 during the six weeks that he got it all down on paper and started running game sessions. That, in the opinion of some of the people at TSR, was very intimidating.
Since he also had a lot of additional materials, such as the language books, TSR agreed to let him publish them himself; there was a "no compete" clause in the contracts which stated that the Professor could not publish other RPGs without paying a royalty, and Kevin Blume used this clause as an excuse to request that the Professor pay TSR a royalty for the permission to publish "Man of Gold". The difference was over the phrase "game or game-related materials", and the Professor took the position that the novel wasn't covered by this. TSR was more then happy to agree, in order to get rid of EPT and "War of Wizards", and sold the lot to Lou. I got sent down to Lake Geneva to pick up all the left-overs, like the 1,500 "Declaration of War" posters that TSR had that I bought from them.
If footnotes, citing sources, are needed I can supply them; one of my first jobs as Phil's secretary/major-domo/court painter in the late 1970s was to organize up all the letters and contracts in the Professor's files.
yours, Chirine
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Post by geoffrey on Jun 17, 2011 22:48:45 GMT -6
Very interesting information, Chirine. Thanks a million for that! Do you know the month and year when EPT was sold to Game Science?  |
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Post by thorswulf on Jun 17, 2011 22:50:43 GMT -6
Thank you for the great information Chirine! I can certainly understand why TSR would be intimidated by the good professor's creation!
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 18, 2011 7:45:42 GMT -6
Sorry to be dropping in here so late... An awesome post, and quite informative. Welcome to the boards and have an "exalt" for your post!  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2011 12:36:25 GMT -6
Very interesting information, Chirine. Thanks a million for that! Do you know the month and year when EPT was sold to Game Science? Happy to be of some help! I think it was the summer of 1982, but I'd have to go back and look; it's been a very busy morning here at The Workbench, and I haven't had a chance to look at the files. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2011 12:54:55 GMT -6
TSR simply ceased publication of the game because it wasn't a good return on their investment. Sometime later, Lou Zocchi acquired the RPG rights from TSR and restored them to Professor Barker, who's retained them ever since. Someone better knowledgeable than I -- Victor Raymond perhaps? -- can fill in the precise details. What I am pretty sure of is that EPT was unprofitable enough that TSR gave it no additional support beyond the initial boxed set and that Lou Zocchi eventually brokered a deal that got the game back in the Professor's hands. If I may, I'd like to politely disagree about the level of support that TSR gave to Tekumel. Gary, on his visit to the Twin Cities to talk to the Professor and get the contract signed, also had quite a few discussions with the local Tekumel players about doing additional materials for TSR to expand the line. TSR also published the wizards' duel board game, "War of Wizards" as well as a number of things like the posters and the magazine articles. TSR also licensed Old Guard to do what for the time was a huge line of miniatures, and also published Dave Sutherland's miniatures rules for Tekumel; they also encouraged him to start sculpting his own miniatures for Tekumel, which is why there is often some confusion between his sculpts for Tekumel and for the various D&D editions. According to what I have been told by TSR staffers from that time and from the documentary materials that I've seen, the game made money for TSR but wasn't an 'in-house' product; from TSR's point of view, as you surmise, that was not particularly acceptable to TSR at that point in their history. While EPT and Tekumel were seen as a 'premium' item, it wasn't part of TSR's DNA, if I can use that simile... yours, Chirine |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2011 13:00:08 GMT -6
An interesting thing about EPT in regard to the seperate rights, is that there is a lot of the basic rules text that is almost word for word what it says in the 3lbbs - compare the sections on pursuit in the dungeons, for example. It would clearly be copyright infringement to publish EPT, were it not for the rights already being seperated. In a sense I think this helps the OD&D clones since there is more than one identical, but legally seperate source for a lot of the rules. That was done at Gary's request, to make the game more interchangeable with D&D as it stood in 1975. D&D and EPT were very 'open architecture' at that time, and it wasn't until the need for TSR products to conform to the stocking requirements of B. Dalton Booksellers that this began to change. B. Dalton refused to stock the OD&D sets, as they wouldn't fit in their standard shelves, so the AD&D hard-bound books were developed to meet that commercial need. The huge expansion of the market that B. Dalton meant drove a lot of the changes to a 'closed architecture' model of more standardized rules and adventures. yours, Chirine |
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Post by geoffrey on Jun 18, 2011 13:33:33 GMT -6
Very interesting information, Chirine. Thanks a million for that! Do you know the month and year when EPT was sold to Game Science? Happy to be of some help! I think it was the summer of 1982, but I'd have to go back and look; it's been a very busy morning here at The Workbench, and I haven't had a chance to look at the files. Hmm. I was assuming it would have been sometime in 1978, because the last of Prof. Barker's articles to be published in The Dragon was in the Dec. 1977 issue. But perhaps the Dec. 1977 date is not as significant as I thought. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2011 9:11:02 GMT -6
As much as my aged brain can recall, Chirine speaks truth. Peace be upon you, Chirine.
Gronan/OG/Michael/General Mnashu hiChiashyani of Thri'il
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Post by James Maliszewski on Jul 28, 2011 9:07:22 GMT -6
If I may, I'd like to politely disagree about the level of support that TSR gave to Tekumel. By all means! My knowledge of business matters relating to Tékumel is, at best, third hand, so I readily defer to gentlemen such as yourself or Victor or anyone else who has direct experience of what was transpiring. |
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