TSR TSR3 Throws In Towel, Rebrands Wonderfilled

In the news story that never ends, after reversing its position earlier and admitting that it was NOT the original TSR reincarnated, the new TSR company, embroiled in acrimony for the last two weeks, and having blamed the widespread criticism it has received on Wizards of the Coast, has deleted its own Twitter account and rebranded its website, misspelling it’s own name in the process.

In just a week a much-loved trademark, which was associated with the creation of our entire hobby, and which generally attracted nostalgic affection as recently as a fortnight ago, has been utterly trashed in an astonishing display of self-destructive publicity and incompetence. Two companies (one of which was directly responsible for the damage) have now divested themselves of it, and most major conventions have banned the company behind it, due to the actions and statements of three people: Justin LaNasa, Stephen Dinehart, and Ernie Gygax. "TSR" is no longer a brand which anybody wants to be associated with — not even the company which ‘relaunched’ it two weeks ago, let alone the company they sniped it from. It has been a spectacular masterclass in how not to manage a brand.

This followed an astonishing day of activity where one of the three TSR3 founders, Stephen Dinehart announced - publicly! - that he had blocked WotC and Hasbro on Twitter. After everybody thought things couldn't get any more ridiculous, they did.

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As TSR2 rebranded to Solarian this week (after TSR3 sniped their name and trademark due to a missed filing), we've now gone from two TSRs to zero TSRs in the space of a few days.

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Most people assume that WotC (or Hasbro) has been in contact with TSR3 regarding its use of copyrighted imagery.

Meanwhile, search teams have been sent out for Michael, the mysterious PR officer announced last week who made two posts and then was never heard from again. In the meantime, somebody has set up a parody Twitter account for him.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

221 to be exact, if they’re all medium encounters for the party’s level. That’s 31 adventuring days if you’re averaging 7 medium encounters per adventuring day (which from what I gather is actually a lot more than most groups do), which means about 6 months of play if you play weekly and get in one full adventuring day per session, both pretty generous assumptions. That’s a significant time commitment, even under the best of circumstances!

Of course, all of that depends on actually using XP, which in my experience it seems most groups don’t do.

I might be misreading you here, but basically every campaign I've run has lasted for more than 6 months of play--usually closer to two years, if not longer. Granted, these weren't 5e campaigns, but do people typically wrap up in less than a year of play?

 

[Charlaquin]

I might be misreading you here, but basically every campaign I've run has lasted for more than 6 months of play--usually closer to two years, if not longer. Granted, these weren't 5e campaigns, but do people typically wrap up in less than a year of play?

Sorry, I mathed wrong, that should have been 8 months. And I’m arriving at this estimate based on extremely generous assumptions - 7 encounters per session, 1 session per week, with an average encounter difficulty of medium. If you average closer to the 4 encounters per session most folks here self-report, that goes up to about 14 months. If you have any combat-light sessions, or if you have to cancel any sessions, it gets even longer. And do most campaigns last more than 6 months? Not in my experience. 6 months is a successful long-running campaign, but lots of campaigns are planned for shorter term, and lots that are planned for long term peter out before that point.

 

[Parmandur]

221 to be exact, if they’re all medium encounters for the party’s level. That’s 31 adventuring days if you’re averaging 7 medium encounters per adventuring day (which from what I gather is actually a lot more than most groups do), which means about 6 months of play if you play weekly and get in one full adventuring day per session, both pretty generous assumptions. That’s a significant time commitment, even under the best of circumstances!

Of course, all of that depends on actually using XP, which in my experience it seems most groups don’t do.

To add to the math factors, I recall that way, way back when, in early 5E days, that WotC stated the assumed norm was that a group meeting weekly for 3-4 hours following the DMG guidelines would get to Level 20 in about a year, or 52 sessions. So, average assumptions 3/5 of an Adventure Day per session

 

[Parmandur]

Is it? I thought 3 rounds was the assumption.

2-3, but closer to 2 in aggregate. 4 is a sign of a severely mismatched CR.

 

[Parmandur]

I just thought the monster building guidelines in the monster manual said to calculate average damage per round based on its damage over 3 rounds (assuming it hits all of its attacks/targets fail their saves, and AoE abilities hit two targets).

The main place I recall a very thorough breakdown of this is unfortunately no longer available, when Mearls was experimenting with a new take on Summoning in the Happy Fun Hour (which is the origin of the new Summon Spwlls in Tasha's). It took them a few years to realize that a 2-3 round spell effect and a Monster block were mathematically the same thing, and he got pretty nitty-gritty with how WotC approaches combat design with their internal statistical apparatus.

 

[Parmandur]

Just to add, they designed the XP Leveling curve based on their data that the average D&D Campaign as actually played in the early Teens involved a DM with 4-5 players meeting for 3-4 hours every week, and that average lifetime of a Campaign was about a year.

Honestly, with so many new people playing, and with social and technological changes, what's average might well have shifted significantly, but that was what the design intent was based on.

 

[Rafael Martin]

Someone needs to create a D&D module called The TSR Wars!!!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Someone needs to create a D&D module called The TSR Wars!!!

I think it would be a better board game or card game.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I might be misreading you here, but basically every campaign I've run has lasted for more than 6 months of play--usually closer to two years, if not longer. Granted, these weren't 5e campaigns, but do people typically wrap up in less than a year of play?

To add to what others said, when 5E first launched, WotC seemed to be assuming a typical group would complete two campaigns per year, which is why they were publishing a hardcover adventure every 6 months, before realizing they may have been wrong, and switched to one adventure per year.

 

[jdrakeh]

In new Wonderfilled news, Wonderfilled and Jim Ward are now claiming that he's a co-creator of D&D (he's not). Now, he absolutely is a co-creator of Gamma World and the creator Metamorphosis Alpha, in addition to being a prominent contributor to D&D. But rather than attribute his impressive list of legitimate accomplishments, Wonderfilled instead decided to go with "co-creator of D&D" (which, again, he is not).