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TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company and the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons.
When Gary Gygax could not find an established games company willing to publish D&D, the new type of game he and Dave Arneson were co-developing, Gygax and Don Kaye formed Tactical Studies Rules in October 1973. However, needing immediate financing to bring the new game to market before several similar products, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner. When Kaye unexpectedly died in 1975, Blume's father, Melvin, purchased Kaye's shares, and the company was re-formed as TSR Hobbies. With the suddenly popular D&D as its main product, the company became a major force in the games industry by the late 1970s. Melvin Blume eventually sold his shares to his other son Kevin, giving the two Blume brothers a majority control of the company, now renamed TSR, Inc.
Under the Blumes, the company ran into financial difficulties in 1984, and although Gygax managed to have the Blumes removed from the board of directors, they subsequently sold their shares to company manager Lorraine Williams, who succeeded in forcing Gygax out of the company at the end of 1985. The company continued to prosper under Williams for some years, but by 1995, it had fallen behind several other companies in overall sales. A failed attempt in 1996 to tap into the collectible card game market with a CCG-like product called Spellfire and later with Dragon Dice, coupled with an unexpectedly high return of the year's hardcover fiction novels, left the company with no cash reserves to pay its printing bills. With no way to make money and facing insolvency, the company was purchased in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast. Although the new owners made use of the TSR name for D&D products for three years, they stopped using the TSR name when a new version of the D&D rules was published in 2000.
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