What does TSR mean?!

What does TSR mean?

I know it has something to do with dungeons and dragons but I really don't what it means. So if somebody could tell me i'd really appreciate it. Thanks

TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company most famous for publishing the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The company was purchased in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, which no longer uses the TSR name for its products

History
Tactical Studies Rules was formed in 1973 as a partnership between Gary Gygax and Don Kaye as a means to publish formally and sell the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, one of the first modern role-playing games. The partnership was subsequently joined by Brian Blume and (temporarily) by Dave Arneson. When Don Kaye died of a stroke in 1975, the Tactic Study Rules partnership was dissolved. Brian Blume and Gary Gygax, the remaining owners, incorporated a new company, TSR Hobbies, Inc., of which Blume and his father, Melvin Blume, had the larger share. The former assets of the partnership were transferred to TSR Hobbies, Inc. Ownership of Melvin Blume's shares were later transfer to Kevin Blume. With the board of directors consisting of Kevin and Brian Blume plus Gygax, Gygax was primarily a figurehead president & CEO of the corporation with Brian Blume as President of creative affairs and Kevin as President, operations effect in 1981. In 1983, the company was split into three companies, TSR, Inc. (primary successor), TSR International and TSR Entertainment, Inc."

Gygax left for Hollywood to found TSR Entertainment, Inc. (later Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corp.), which attempted to license D&D products to movie and television executives. His work would eventually lead to only a single license for what later became the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. The Blumes were forced to leave after being accused of misusing corporate funds and accumulating large debts in the pursuit of acquisitions such as latchhook rug kits that were thought to be too broadly targeted.Within a year of the ascension of the Blumes, the company was forced to post a net loss of 1.5 million US dollars, resulting in layoffs for approximately 75% of the staff. Some of these staff members went on to form other prominent game companies such as Pacesetter Games, Mayfair Games and to work with Coleco's video game division.

Gygax, who at that time owned only approximately 30% of the stock, requested that the Board of Directors remove the Blumes as a way of restoring financial health to the company. In an act many saw as retaliation, the Blumes sold their stock to Lorraine Williams. Gygax tried to have the sale declared illegal; after that failed, Gygax sold his remaining stock to Williams and used the capital to form New Infinity Productions.

Williams was a financial planner who saw the potential for transforming the debt-plagued company into a highly profitable one. However, she disdained the gaming field, viewing herself as superior to gamers. Williams implemented an internal policy under which playing games was forbidden at the company.[citation needed] This resulted in many products being released without being playtested (some were playtested "on the sly") and a large number of products being released that were incompatible with the existing game system.

Through Williams' direction, TSR solidified its expansion into other fields, such as magazines, paperback fiction, and comic books. Through her family, Williams personally held the rights to the Buck Rogers license and encouraged TSR to produce Buck Rogers games and novels. TSR would end up publishing a board game and a role-playing game, the latter based on the AD&D 2nd Edition rules.

In 1984 TSR developed Dragonlance, which consisted of an entirely new game world promoted both by a series of game supplements and a trilogy of novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. "The Dragons of Autimn Twilight", the first novel in the series, reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, encouraging TSR to a launch a long series of paperback novels based on the various official settings for D&D. By the early 1990's, the profits from TSR's fiction department actually far surpassed that of their gaming publications. During the height of its success, TSR made an annual profit of over one million U.S. dollars, and maintained a staff of 400 employees.

However, TSR gradually lost its ability to innovate.[citation needed] After the emergence of collectible card games, TSR released several new collectable game lines: Dragon Dice and Spellfire. Neither found great success in the market place. At the same time, TSR began retaliating against fan fiction and other creative work derived from TSR intellectual property, which angered many long-time customers and fans. Other new entrants into the RPG genre introduced competing fantasy worlds, which fragmented the RPG community, further reducing TSR's already wilting consumer base. These and other factors, such as a disastrous year for its fiction lines in 1996 (over one million copies of tie-in books for various game lines were returned to TSR that year), led to TSR ending accumulating over $30 million in debt by 1996, and having to endure multiple rounds of layoffs.
With the decline of TSR, Wizards of the Coast, publishers of the wildly popular collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, inherited the title of "Lord of the RPGs". Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR and its intellectual properties in 1997, ending the company's slow fall from grace. TSR employees were given the opportunity to transfer to Wizards of the Coast's offices in Washington; some accepted the offer. Corporate offices in the Lake Geneva office were closed. Over the next few years, various parts of the company were resold to other companies, while in 1999, Wizards of the Coast was itself purchased by Hasbro, Inc. In 2002 Gen Con was sold to Peter Adkison's Gen Con, LLC Also in 2002 TSR's magazines were transferred to Paizo Publishing.The TSR brand name continued for several years, then was retired. Soon after, TSR trademarks were allowed to expire.