TSR TSR (2) Confirms TSR (3)'s Acquisition of Trademark (Updated!)

Jayson Elliot registered the TSR trademark back in 2011 and used it to launch Gygax Magazine along with Ernie and Luke Gygax. The two Gygax's left the company a few years later after Gary Gygax's (co-founder of TSR (1) back in the 1970s) widow, Gail Gygax, forced the closure of Gygax Magazine. Then, earlier this year, TSR (3) swooped in on the TSR trademark, after Jayson Elliot accidentally let it lapse, as TSR (2) confirms:

We have owned the TSR trademark since 2011. Last year, we missed a filing date, and another company registered it, though we are still using it in commerce. While we could win a lawsuit, we frankly don't have the money to litigate. So, we're licensing it back from them.

As a result, there are two companies now using the name TSR. You can tell when it's us because we're the only ones using the new logo.

They're opening a museum in Lake Geneva at the old TSR house, and we wish them success with it, it's important to celebrate the legacy that Gary Gygax created.

Ernie Gygax, formerly of TSR (1) under Gary Gygax, then working with Jayson Elliot as part of TSR (2), is one of the founders of of TSR (3), and confirmed in his (now infamous) interview --

The other TSR is a licensee because [Jayson Elliot] let it lapse. But he had absolutely ... love for the game and the products. There was no reason to say 'oh you've screwed up, oh it's all ours, ha ha ha ha!' Instead, Justin [LaNasa] came to him and said ... we love that you're doing Top Secret things, we have a much broader goal for the whole thing. But there's no reason for you to stop or even have any troubles. Justin said, I'll take care of the paperwork, you just give me $10 a year, and you put out all this love for old school gaming that you can. And we appreciate that you were there to try and pick up things, and you produced Gygax Magazine, for in its time that you're also working on a game that you love to play ... because Top Secret was Jayson's love, as a young man.

TSR (2), still run by Jayson Elliot, publishes Top Secret, and is not connected to TSR (3) other than now having to license it’s own name from them. TSR (3) has also registered the trademark to Star Frontiers, a game owned by and still currently sold by D&D-owner WotC.

In other news the GYGAX trademark appears to have lapsed.

UPDATE! TSR (2) has decided NOT to license its own name from TSR (3):

Update to our earlier tweet - we will NOT be licensing anything from the new company claiming rights to the TSR logos. We are not working with them in any fashion.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Later on that page he writes about the various good alignments, that would all disagree with what to do, and he doesn't specify which is the "right alignment".

The label "good" is suggestive.

That being said, I wish I could say starting to try to read through the Q&A's on ENworld doesn't give me hope of finding anything that sounded redeeming.

Being born in 1938 is at least somewhat redeeming. Some of my late mother's views where even more extreme.

 

[Parmandur]

Okay, I genuinely can't agree with any of this. It's patently ridiculous to me. I'm sorry, but nobody qualifies their own personal ethics or beliefs in a discussion about alignment on a gaming message board. I can't even imagine it would be difficult to find each of you not doing that very thing on these boards.

The only reason to do it is so that you can't have your personal character impugned 16 years later on a different message board when you couldn't be asked for clarification or your current opinion because you've died. Nevermind that that thread is older today than the entire world wide web was when it was written.

I always qualify my discussions of D&D Alignment with caveats regarding the metaphysical abdurdities surrounding the whole grid structure.

I'm not saying Gary Gygax was a bad man, but he had some unfortunate ideas. Good people can have bad beliefs, people are complicated.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

you couldn't be asked for clarification or your current opinion because you've died.

This is a valid point. Intelligent people constantly revise their views. Unless, of course, they are dead.

 

[BookTenTiger]

This is a valid point. Intelligent people constantly revise their views. Unless, of course, they are dead.

That's one problem D&D knows how to solve!

I'm imagining a lich reflecting on their views... "Over the centuries I've realized that true power doesn't come from gold and magic... it comes through systemic change. That's why I'm becoming a kindergarten teacher, to help change the world at an early stage of development..."

That said, a cabal of undead trying to make up for their past evils after centuries of reflection does seem like a cool thing to have in a D&D game!

 

[Cadence]

Being born in 1938 is at least somewhat redeeming. Some of my late mother's views where even more extreme.

Doing family genealogy things and collecting stories about the last few generations... there are lots of things I wish I hadn't run into. It would just be nice to not have to look at them relative to the mass of people of their day as an excuse, and to have more that were better than the typical of the day. (Of course, most people can't be better than the typical views of their time by definition.) And going back further it sure isn't fun to dig up most well-to-do ancestors in early America when they had a really good chance of either having gotten there based on people they owned, or starting owning people once they got there :-/

...

So, if one were assigning alignments on the 9 point scale to historical figures and organizations from, say 1960 and before, would many of them actually get a G by modern standards? (How many weren't hideously racist, sexist, slave owning, child abusing, violent, anti-LGBTQ+, or had horrid legal systems).

Is that actually be an argument for getting rid of alignment all together if one had to combine modern sensibilities with trying to write up something "vaguely historically inspired"?

Partially out of context quote:

See the last question in this one of TSR - Q&A with Gary Gygax for the whole thing (which I wish I could say was encouraging).

 

[billd91]

Being born in 1938 is at least somewhat redeeming. Some of my late mother's views where even more extreme.

Indeed. Times change and the times in which we live out our strongest formative years change. One aspect of privilege that often gets overlooked is the privilege of TIME. Recent generations are increasingly privileged with respect to the resources that have developed over time - improved theories and legal frameworks on human rights and values that can more easily be promulgated via unprecedented methods of communication, openness to wider world-views and perspectives that our parents and grandparents had no access to. They all take a little effort to deal with, but even that becomes easier for each generation.

This doesn’t let them off the hook. It’s just a useful perspective to use to keep ourselves and our own judgment in check.

 

[Maxperson]

He doesn't say anything to indicate that he thinks different values should apply in RL.

He didn't need to. The context was paladins and the game, so that's what the comments apply to. If someone wanted to know what he personally believed, they needed to ask that question.

 

[MoonSong]

The label "good" is suggestive.

Being born in 1938 is at least somewhat redeeming. Some of my late mother's views where even more extreme.

Exactly, it is almost as if people forget he was an evangelical Christian with an active stint on the JWs and apparently a firm believer in prosperity theology that was born back when eugenics was still considered sound science. He came from a different worldview, one that we don't (or might not) find particularly moral, but we can't expect somebody who was born and grown in a different environment to suddenly and retroactively change to suit our worldview. Specially somebody who is no longer around. People are flawed, we all are flawed. The best we can do is take the good and recognize the bad to learn from the past.
Even Junior here, most of us here don't seem to agree with his views or business practices. (For a given definition of business) It is morally fine to not buy from him (though I wasn't a customer of his in the first placr) But dragging his family and wanting his brother to come out and publicly dusown him, that is extreme.

 

[Gradine]

I'm not an expert on any of this, but if Giantlands was created by Mr. Ward, would it be possible for him to take back his game from that s**tshow? I know Ward is more conservative, but I'm pretty sure he does not share the views of The EGGJR, Demon-lord of Bigots (now pronounced egg-a-jurr, copyright pending).

It would leave them with a big catalogue of 0 product

"Egg", being a term commonly used in the trans community, is off limits for bigots like Ernie.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

He didn't need to. The context was paladins and the game, so that's what the comments apply to. If someone wanted to know what he personally believed, they needed to ask that question.

Why would he write the game and paladins so that killing orc babies would be considered good? Maybe if he was writing on Warhammer for GW I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that he isn't endorsing this kind of behaviour. But as far as I can tell, Gygax did not intend to satirize or condemn this kind of murderhoboism My read of it is that he's being completely earnest (heh).

So while there might be room to argue that he's not outright endorsing the views of the Lawful Good paladin in his post, he's not denouncing them either. So why would he write such a universe where this behaviour could be considered any kind of good?

Also, Gygax was a conservative, right-wing Christian member of the American Libertarian Party, so forgive me if I can't help but be concerned about any of his thoughts on Native Americans, to put it lightly.