cabala wrote in Produced vs. Distributed:I have to believe games like "The Honeymooners" below were not produced (designed) by TSR. Maybe Frank recalls playing this one in house though?
We did most of them in-house. Early ones were done over Gary's objections (low ROI), later ones after he was forced out.
After the early family board (including Dungeon, Fantasy Forest, and Escape from New York) we tried a squarebox format, producing (in short order) All My Children and Crosscheck (both by my BECMI editor Anne Gray), Balderdash (from another publisher), Broadway (allegedly by Parmentier, brought to us by M*A*S*H actor Farrell, and tweaked), Sirocco (Niles/Cook), and Honeymooners (uncredited but prolly Anne and someone else).
After that, mgmt tried a "Party Zone" line in the same squarebox format (Knave/Hearts, Spy Ring, Inheritance), which all bombed. Marketing (Dobson et al) figured that as long as retailers were dealing with the others, they could handle more... haha.
So giving up on in-house design-on-demand failures, they tried buying cheap properties from others: Maxi Bourse (FX Schmidt) and Elixir (Silver Bear), then 3 from DMR (Crosse, Steppe, Kage). The experiment started dying at that point and faded to obscurity
imho. ;>
F