Wizards of the Coast

About Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast is an American games and book publisher founded in 1990 by Peter Adkison near Seattle, Washington, best known for Magic: The Gathering and, since buying TSR in 1997, for Dungeons & Dragons and its Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance fiction.

Magic: The Gathering made its debut at the Origins Game Fair in Dallas in July 1993. It announced the purchase of TSR on 10 April 1997, reportedly for about $25 million, taking over Dungeons & Dragons and TSR's novel lines. Hasbro bought Wizards in September 1999 for a reported $325 million and still owns it as a subsidiary, with its head office in Renton, Washington. Wizards also published the Pokémon Trading Card Game from 1999 to 2003.

For book collectors the central author is R. A. Salvatore. His early Drizzt novels, from The Crystal Shard (1988) to Passage to Dawn (1996), were TSR books; contract talks with TSR broke down in 1994, and after the takeover Wizards brought him back with The Silent Blade (1998). In 2010 Wizards announced six more Drizzt novels, released between 2011 and 2016. Dragonlance began at TSR in 1984 with Dragons of Autumn Twilight; the War of Souls trilogy followed in 2000 to 2002, after the purchase. Because Wizards only bought TSR in 1997, any copy of a 1980s or early 1990s TSR title carrying the Wizards name is a later printing or reissue.