A Talk With Keith Strohm

A 30th Anniversary Interview

I can vividly remember Keith Strohm coming to work at TSR. Hired right around the same time as Bruce Cordell (1995), Keith didn't have a cubicle at first and had to set himself up in a room we called the Games Library, which also doubled as a sort of employee lounge for the creative department. Keith took this all with amazing stride. He worked hard to fit in and make friends -- he impressed me early on, and I saw pretty quickly that he was someone I wanted to get to know better. After telling me that he couldn't imagine how someone could be truthfully frightened by a roleplaying game, I invited him to join our Call of Cthulhu game. He not only learned how scared one could get in a game, he quickly became someone that I would rather not run a horror game without, because he would get so caught up in the horror and emotion.

Professionally, Keith did a lot of good work as an editor for the D&D game. Fairly early on, though, he decided that management interested him and became the assistant manager to the D&D creative director. Then, after we moved to Wizards of the Coast, he rose to become the brand manager of the entire D&D line. He was one of the driving forces behind the business side of the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons launch, and eventually moved on to become the manager of the extremely successful Pokémon card game. Even though he left Wizards a few years ago, he's come back to an involvement with his first love, D&D, as chief operating officer of Paizo Publishing, helping to shepherd Dragon and Dungeon magazines.

Keith's a good guy and a good friend. He's also worn a lot of hats and has seen D&D from a lot of angles. Thus, I'm particularly pleased to be able to ask him some questions to help commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons.

Monte Cook: How did you come to start playing D&D?

Keith Strohm: Way back in about 1979, I had a friend who kept talking about this game where you could play a certain type of character, like a thief or a wizard, and go around having adventures like the characters in The Lord of the Rings. I can remember being excited about his description, but when I asked what the board looked like, his response confused me: "There isn't any board," he said. Up until that point in my life, I had never thought that I was particularly dim witted, but I just couldn't picture a game without some sort of board.

Right around the beginning of 1980, I went to his house and he showed me the D&D Basic Set (red box). I instantly fell in love with the game. We rolled up some characters (my very first was an elf) and, along with a few other friends, tackled the Keep on the Borderlands. I was bitten by the D&D bug pretty hard, and I can still trace my love of the game back to those heady days when we advanced to Level 3 and then had to start over because the Basic Set never gave advancement info beyond the 3rd level.

Monte: What did you do before coming to work at TSR?

Keith: Before coming to work at TSR, I was a lay volunteer with the School Sisters of Notre Dame, helping to provide job training and education to inner city youth in Milwaukee. Previous to that, I had been a professional student, earning my BA and MA in English literature.

Monte: How did these experiences prepare you with a job dealing with roleplaying games?

Keith: Obviously, my course of study had prepared me to work as an editor at TSR, but I also learned how to deal with large amounts of change and stress while working in lay ministry in Milwaukee.

Monte: Tell us how you got the job.

Keith: Well, my yearlong placement in ministry was coming to an end, and I was beginning to look around for my next job. I had met a wonderful woman in Milwaukee (now my wife) and knew that I wanted to remain in the area. As it turned out, my wife worked with a guy whose best friend worked as an editor at TSR. I couldn't believe the serendipity. I had only recently learned that Lake Geneva, the home of TSR, was only about 50 miles south of Milwaukee, and now I had a connection there.
One evening, a group of us were hanging out at the Water Street Brewery, and my wife's coworker brought his friend, Dale Donovan, along. I did my best to hide my "goobiness" but failed utterly. When Dale, who is a darn nice guy, found out that I had an MA in English literature, he encouraged me to send in my resume to TSR, as they were looking for editors. I promised to do so, and then convinced myself that nothing would ever come of it. About a week after I sent in my resume, I received a call from TSR -- they wanted to schedule an interview! The rest, as they say, is history...

Monte: What were your first impressions of TSR and the people who worked there?

Keith: To be honest, I think my very first impression was one of disappointment. I had thought that the TSR Office Building would be this dragon-shaped skyscraper with all sorts of Willy Wonka-like wonders in every nook and cranny. When it turned out to be an old two-story Q-Tip factory with very few windows, I was a little taken aback. However, everyone was very welcoming, and I remember feeling a lot like I had found my home. Michele Carter did threaten to drive a spear through my body on that first day, but that's a story for another time.

Seriously, I don't think I could have found a better group of people to work with. Sure, sometimes things were stressful, and there were always minor professional issues that you'll find in any job, but overall I had stumbled on to my 'dream job.' I was even more ecstatic when I found out that my coworkers were wonderful people. I'm still very close with many TSR staffers and count a few of them among my very closest friends.

Monte: You had a lot of different positions in your time at TSR and Wizards. How did that occur?

Keith: Hmm . . .I guess a part of my multi-faceted career at TSR and Wizards of the Coast is due to the fact that I am rarely satisfied with remaining where I am for any length of time. I love learning about new things, and there were so many aspects of the roleplaying business that were new to me, that I just dove in. It didn't hurt that, in companies like TSR and Wizards, employees receive far more opportunities to gain skills and experience than at other more established companies.

Pretty soon after I started at TSR, Steve Winter, the creative director for the D&D Core Product Group, asked me to be his "second," which is really a nice way of saying "unpaid gopher." I learned quite a bit from Steve about how to get things done at TSR, and he offered me the chance to work on aspects of the business that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I consider him my first real professional mentor.

When Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, I became an assistant brand manager working for [D&D Brand Manager] Thomas Reid. By that time, I found myself really enjoying both the creative and business aspects of the job, and I can remember pestering my bosses to let me take on more responsibility. After Thomas left, I became the brand manager of the D&D core group and held that same position under Ryan Dancey when we launched 3rd Edition.

Monte: Which do you remember the most fondly?

Keith: I guess that I look back upon my first year at TSR with the most fondness. It was a great time of building friendships and working creatively on projects for the game that I had always loved.

Monte: What were some of the differences between your time as a game editor and your job after moving into the management and business sides of things?

Keith: As an editor, you get to really focus on the creative dimensions of a project: the quality of the writing, technical rules-issues, layout, and artwork. Business is a lot like a game, and working on the business side of things, I began to discover the fun and joy in setting performance objectives for a product and working with the whole team (R&D as well as marketing, accounting, production, organized play, etc.) to achieve those objectives. The scope of my work wasn't as specialized as it was when I was an editor, and I rarely had the opportunity to work directly on the creative end of things, but overall I wouldn't trade my experiences on the business side for anything.

Monte: How do you suppose working for a company like TSR or Wizards differs from working for other, more "standard" corporations?

Keith: Well, I think I mentioned it earlier, but companies like Wizards and TSR really do provide you with opportunities that you might never have at a more traditional company. What other type of company would let a 30-year old guy with an MA in English run a global business that was in the tens of millions of dollars? Also, I have to say that there was a strong sense of community at TSR and Wizards -- a sense that we all shared the same passions and interests. The really cool part was that we could express those passions and interests openly at work. Both companies had a real sense of fun at their center -- at the very least among the R&D staff -- even during the stressful times.

Monte: You played a large role in the development of the D&D business strategy, particularly as the game moved into its new edition. What insight does that experience provide when you look at where the game is now, and where it's going?

Keith: First off, I want to say that the time I spent as the brand manager of D&D during the launch of 3rd Edition has been the highlight of my professional career and one of the positive milestones in my personal life. I feel deeply honored to have been a part of that process, and equally honored to have worked alongside some of the most talented men and women in the industry to make 3rd Edition happen.

Having helped analyze and rebuild the Dungeons & Dragons business has really given me a great framework to look at where D&D is today. When I look at the game now, I am really encouraged by the things I see. There is a very strong push to introduce new players into the D&D hobby happening, and I think that such a strategy is essential for the future of D&D. I'm also heartened by the goodwill and positive press that the 30th Anniversary of D&D Celebration has engendered. I think that from a "brand" perspective, D&D is even stronger now than it was five years ago. It's always easy to armchair quarterback, especially when you're not faced with the immediate realities of running the business, but I am confident that the Dungeons & Dragons brand is in very good hands, and that it will have an even longer and more successful life!

Monte: Will you share with us a funny or interesting story about your time at TSR/Wizards?

Keith: You know, there are so many that I'm having a hard time choosing. I guess I'd say that one of the highlights of my time at TSR happened during my second day. One of the hazing rituals that the R&D staff had at the time was to subject new editors or designers to The Mask of Valor. This was a modified fencing mask that the newbie would wear while he was standing up against a high cube wall. Several other long-time editors/designers would gather around and "huck" darts at the noob! One "passed the test" by not flinching as the darts struck close to one's body.

Now, what I didn't know was that T'ed Stark had surreptitiously replaced the metal-tipped darts he held in his hand with some plastic-tipped blunt darts, so I was never really in any danger. What he doesn't know (because of the mask) is that I had my eyes closed the whole time. I never flinched because I couldn't see what was coming! I was the last employee to ever go through The Mask of Valor, and Colin McComb bequeathed it to me when he left TSR. I still have it somewhere in my garage to this day.

Monte: You left Wizards of the Coast a few years ago, but you've stayed active in the game industry. What have you been doing since?

Keith: After my stint as VP of the Pokémon Product Group at Wizards, I worked with a smaller startup company, Sabertooth Games, as their Director of Marketing. I left Sabertooth after about a year and took some time off from the industry. I returned to work with Lisa Stevens, a teammate on the 3rd Edition brand team at Wizards, as her VP for Paizo Publishing. I'm now the chief operating officer and publisher at Paizo, so I still get to work closely with D&D.

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