TSR, Top Secret, and Dille
TSR’s Buck Rogers XXVc roleplaying game is often abused by those unhappy with the fate of Gary Gygax at TSR because of the way in which the company was used by Lorraine Williams to promote and profit from the work of her grandfather, John Dille, who took ownership of Buck Rogers. I can agree that the situation was questionable, but when judging the game and world solely on its own, I think the work stands out as a forgotten classic. Fun, imaginative, and a nice example of rebooting a property.
Well, it turns out that the Buck Rogers XXVc roleplaying game wasn’t the only instance of Williams using her position at TSR to benefit her family directly. This 1988 advertisement for TSR’s Top Secret/S.I. roleplaying game — not to be confused with the original Top Secret RPG that I’ve mentioned before — hides a secret in the copyright block where we learn that Williams’ brother, Flint Dille, held copyright ownership of some of the Top Secret/S.I. products. Weird.
Side note: If the name “Flint Dille” feels familiar then you’re likely remembering that he was part of the team behind the Transformers and G.I. Joe cartoons of the eighties. Small world! See Wikipedia for more.
Related articles
- TSR 1990 Catalog and the Buck Rogers XXVc Roleplaying Game (battlegrip.com)
- Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (battlegrip.com)
- Transformers Writer Flint Dille to attend TFcon Charlotte 2015 (news.tfw2005.com)
Man that is weird–small world! It kinda’ makes me feel better though to know their family was always into making entertainment (seems less “exploit-y”).
In other news, I didn’t even realize that Top Secret was different than the SI version. Was SI like “Advanced” to regular ol’ Dungeons and Dragons?