TSR TSR3 Blames Widespread Pushback On WotC

In an unexpected turn of events, the primary individuals behind TSR3 have claimed the pushback they've received on social media and elsewhere was orchestrated by .... D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast (a company which has thus far remained completely silent on recent events).

TSR3 is run by Justin LaNasa, Stephen Dinehart, and Ernie Gygax. The controversy has been raging for over a week, since TSR3 announced itself with a press release.

TSR - Companies & Freelancers Distance Themselves From The New TSR

The new TSR (which I refer to as TSR3 to avoid confusion) has doubled down on its stance--which has been widely condemned online--via an ongoing series of tweets and replies from its TSR Games, Giantlands, and Dungeon Hobby Museum social media accounts (possibly operated by Justin LaNasa) in an...

www.enworld.org

Stephen Dinehart and Ernie Gygax have since deactivated their Twitter accounts; Justin LaNasa doesn't appear to have one, but it is believed he is the person operating TSR3's Twitter account. A couple of days ago, Ernie Gygax posted about recent events on Facebook (note that he edited the post, but the original can be seen here).

I wish to state in the strongest terms that I never meant to hurt anyone of any race, creed or color. My video From the Bunker caused some to feel that they would not be welcome or would be looked down upon. That was never the intent, I was reacting to focus of modern role play into a more background and Role Play rather than the wargame that so made so many lives happy over 40 years ago.

As a gamer it meant that most of us were not worthy of any attention from others of our own age. We were Nerds. We were brainy-acks and others would snicker. Older classmen would ask to "borrow" something of ours to then pass back and forth a game of keep away. I used to receive some special attention from about 4 Juniors in my Freshman year. I played the Violin and often I began to wish that I had Super Powers, perhaps become a Giant.. I was far to shy and then embarrassed as attractive ladies would just lower the eyes while the jocks or other socially vibrant fellows had some fun at another geeky nerds expense. Thank goodness I grew 4 inches my junior year.

The only real comfort zone we all could share was a table in the lunch room. At least the fledgling TSR found fertile minds in those who had only those like us - gamers. Rather than have to risk embarrassing myself, since Phy Ed was going to force us to dance with those wonderful and yet scary girls. Well to get my Diploma I had to slave for a month to Mr. Gerber the head of the Phy Ed department. Fortunately I knew all about janitorial work as before D&D and TSR dad only made $5,000 as a Cobbler (five children) and we had food stamps and even free school lunches. Yes you had to go to the councilors office every week to collect your free lunch passes. Obviously you could feel all the eyes on you and the talk about....

Everyone has been welcome at my gaming table and multitudes of new friends have been created by the time spent playing the games we Love. Look at pictures of gaming on my site or anywhere I run games. Everyone is welcome, just like a Boot Hill game leave your guns at the bar until you leave town. If you come to the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum Jeff R. Leason will show you courtesy and a smile and you will see that gaming with elder gamers is a safe and entertaining environment.

TSR - Ernie Gygax on New TSR, WotC Beefs, Trademarks, Licensees, 5E, & More

A YouTube channel, 'Live From the Bunker', interviewed Ernie Gygax about the new TSR. I've watched and decided to try to transcribe the most relevant parts of it, but the full hour-long video is below if you want to see the whole interview and full context. Ernie Gygax is one of D&D...

www.enworld.org

 

[Retreater]

Well anyone interested should probably PM me. Luke and I would need to know probably in a month? To schedule for him and for design lead time for me. I can then have my connections at LoRP do a short print run which would be a memento of the event, that is, a pre-run edition of the adventure (sans art). I think I can swing that.

OT, so take to PM if there are Q's //messages.

I'll need to figure things out with wife and work, but I am definitely interested. Hopefully I'll get all the logistics figured out this weekend.
Maybe all of us should pop the discussion about GaryCon into another thread so it's not buried in this 3SR topic?

 

[Rob Kuntz]

I bought my flight and hotel reservations a couple days ago, so I'm in! I'll be at the Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Lake Geneva Resort, since there were no open rooms at the Grand Geneva resort. But Google says it's close. It's just the drive from O'Hare that will be time consuming lol. Coming in the night of the 23rd (my birthday).

Cool. Can't wait to share some fun and game memories and show you around. Cons are always great. There will be a certain hobby shop to avoid on the way to the NDP, but we'll manage. Kinda strange, though not being indifferent, just marking the sudden shift, but it is weird in a memory hole kinda way me not wanting to enter a building where I once worked due to all the Cr** these NuTSR crumbs have caused. Oh well, life as the say, is stranger than fiction. The taint has started and it's strange and yes, surreal. Later!

 

[Faolyn]

Discovery is gay, DS9 is queer. Never forget the amazing chaotic bisexual energy brought to us by Mirror!Kira.

Is it really bisexual if you're hitting on yourself from another dimension?

 

[Faolyn]

You can't see the twinkle in his eye? That happiness not gas!

For all you know, beholders fart from their eyes!

 

[LordEntrails]

I really wanted to ignore this, but Youtube's algorithm decided to shove it down my throat because I watch D&D streams and thus clearly want to hear about D&D 'news'. So of course I got a 45-minute long video where they frame this is EGGJR being attacked for saying he wants Old School players included, asserting that new players in the game have usurped the game using a very dumb analogy about a lonely new kid invited to eat lunch at the cool table, then running all the cool kids off by asking for their friends to eat at the table too, and then 'certainly not saying' (read stupid, unsubtle dogwhistling) that WotC is behind it.

The best part is they didn't mention anything about trans people in the entire 45 minutes. That's like watching a carjacking where the victim was held at gunpoint, then talking about how unfair it is for the jacker to be prosecuted for just taking a Sunday drive.

You do know you don't actually have to watch a video YT recommends right? But if you watched the whole thing and its that long, it must really have been interesting to you. Sounds like the algorithm worked pretty well. (note, interesting does not equal agreement.)

 

[Faolyn]

Aww. Now you’ve got me feeling sad for beholders. All this time they just needed a hug.

Thaumaturge.

That's the problem when you have no limbs.

 

[Essafah]

From my vantage point, I feel like the one who is most skeptical and critical of Ernie Gygax.

But generally, on these threads there is an outpouring of love and good will for Ernie, along with understandable concern.

I feel the saddest part of this painful affair, is Ernie not realizing how many WotC fans wish him well.



While I am critical of Ernie, I also wish him well. At the same time, I also wish Non-European Americans, women, gays, and in this situation, especially trans well.

Well speaking as a African American male who has been playing DnD regularly since 1989 and dabbling prior to that I have never encountered racism or problems at any gaming table and this was long before WOTC's diversity push. I am not Conservative. In fact, I am Liberal to the point of being socialist but I have gamed with people of various colors, creeds, religions, genders, and political philosophies that are vastly different from mine with no issue. To be clear, I am not saying none of the various "isms" don't exist in society but I never experienced them at a gaming table. Also, did I mention that I live in the Southern United States and still I have had no issues (gaming wise).

One of the reasons I think this is true is because what Ernie said about the gaming table being for nerds of all origins is true. I am in my mid-40's. When I started gaming and was in high school DnD was not the Critical Role worshipping Geek Chic full of models looking crowd that it is now. At that time DnD despite a surge of popularity was still looked at as a nerdy thing and nerdy was not cool at that time. Far from it in fact. Due to nerdy not being cool the gaming crowd traditionally excepted anyone because being in a glass house no one threw stones so to speak. So Ernie's experience in high school was not all that unique. I never got bullied in school and I pretty much got along with with all the cliques that existed but the gamers were by far not the "cool" crowd. Stranger Things is a far more accurate representation of the historical DnD experience of those of us that have been playing DnD for years moreso than Critical Role and its facisimiles are.

I don't think what Ernie said in his Bunker interview was THAT bad. It was a bit naive and I don't understand why he would even bring it up at all in an interview. I don't think he said anything just in that one interview that he could not make amends for. That being said I know he said other stuff on Twitter and Facebook. I don't know how bad (or not) those statements were as I don't have a Twitter, FB, IG, or TikTok, account as I think social media is basically an exercise in narcissism that distorts peoples reality far more than any illicit drug ever could and is also an echo chamber where ideas are not challenged but simply reinforced by like minded people (I know on Twitter that statistics are something like 3% of people do 90% of the Tweeting or something like that).

Whether he can redeem his statements or not I don't know. My point is I have no reason to believe that I would feel unwelcome at a table ran by Ernie Gygax. I probably would not hang out with the LaNasa guy as he seems more brash and dogmatic in his political views which are vastly different from mine. That being said, while I want diversity in the game via representation (i.e, characters of different colors being portrayed, women being present, varying sexual orientations being present) I don't like people forcing their politics into DnD. I play RPGs to escape the issues of the real world not explore them. I never looked at Orcs (in DnD) as representative of me and I have no problems with alignment or good and evil races being present in the game. The only DnD race that was problematic was the Drow and that is because their origins in Monster Mythology almost verbatim Hamitic Race Theory but I never looked at Krusk from the 3E PHB and said, "Man! That looks just like my cousin Petey." That just didn't happen. So I agree with Ernie's sentiments on wokeness and not being the focus of the game but rather the game itself regardless of a players politics, race, gender, and thus forth being the focus of the game.

All that being said I am holding out on whether I support the new TSR3 or not but not because of his statements. I am holding out because it remains to be seen whether they can actually deliver Giantlands and also how good Giantlands will be. TSR3 has not mentioned anything regarding the rules mechanics of this Giantlands RPG. They say it is Old School vibe....which is whatever. I like Elmore art—love it actually especially his female characters. Yes I know it is evil of my as a heterosexual "cis" guy to like looking at beautiful women yet I much prefer new school mechanics such as 5E. Then the game seems trying to appeal to old school/OSR games but from what I gather it has a LARP mechanic to it. LARPing is not a part of the OSR and I highly doubt most fans of old school DnD and the OSR crews are just dying to go LARPing. So I at some point MAY support them depending on ) what they can actually deliver and ) how good the product is when it is released. Them not talking about the mechanics of their premiere game is not helping their promotion of it. Star Frontiers I would love to see and would definitely support that.

 

[mythago]

One of the reasons I think this is true is because what Ernie said about the gaming table being for nerds of all origins is true. I am in my mid-40's. When I started gaming and was in high school DnD was not the Critical Role worshipping Geek Chic full of models looking crowd that it is now. At that time DnD despite a surge of popularity was still looked at as a nerdy thing and nerdy was not cool at that time. Far from it in fact. Due to nerdy not being cool the gaming crowd traditionally excepted anyone because being in a glass house no one threw stones so to speak. So Ernie's experience in high school was not all that unique. I never got bullied in school and I pretty much got along with with all the cliques that existed but the gamers were by far not the "cool" crowd. Stranger Things is a far more accurate representation of the historical DnD experience of those of us that have been playing DnD for years moreso than Critical Role and its facisimiles are.

I'm confused by the contradicting statements here. If gaming is for all the nerds, why sneer at "Geek Chic" or "models looking" gamers? Is the table only welcoming for people whose CHA is below a certain cutoff, or who have played for a particular number of years?

I'm also puzzled in that you hold up your own experience as indicative of what the gaming community was like back in the day, but admit that your own experience of not being bullied or harassed is very different than what Ernie describes and what Stranger Things, in your view, accurately depicts.

I am genuinely glad that you've never run into bigotry in the gaming community or bullying outside of it. Plenty of others have different experiences. Admitting those experiences are a problem, and that we can do better than retreading dumb tropes and stereotypes, doesn't hurt us.

 

[Gradine]

I don't think what Ernie said in his Bunker interview was THAT bad.

That's nice. Speaking as a trans person, I do

 

[MGibster]

Well speaking as a African American male who has been playing DnD regularly since 1989 and dabbling prior to that I have never encountered racism or problems at any gaming table prior WOTC's diversity push. I am not Conservative. In fact, I am Liberal to the point of being socialist but I have gamed with people of various colors, creeds, religions, genders, and political philosophies that are vastly different from mine with no issue.

That's been similar to my experience as well. Other than a handful of occasions, the behaviors that cause me to label someone as a problem player have been apolitical. At my current table, several of my players are Liberal to the point of being socialist and I am not but it doesn't get in the way of having a good time at the table. It just doesn't come up.

I don't think what Ernie said in his Bunker interview was THAT bad. It was a bit naive and I don't understand why he would even bring it up at all in an interview.

I didn't think the initial interview was that bad either but it only got worse from there. My parents taught me that when you find yourself in a hole the first thing you need to do is stop digging.