TSR TSR3 Throws In Towel, Rebrands Wonderfilled

embee said:

Maleficent in dragon form and Giga Bowser, respectively.

Click to expand...

Not cool, yo. Nintendo's lawyer is quite obviously Gannondorf.

embee said:

WOTC is such an evil selfish corporation, that one of the first things they did was create the Open Game License.

Click to expand...

I mean, the OGL (and more importantly at the time the d20 trademark) were explicitly a way to try to distance themselves from the legacy of TSR. Instead of suing small game companies, Wizards was saying "hey we'll provide a license so that you can make D&D products and so long as you follow these rules you don't even have to ask us to do it". That was revolutionary at the time but it was needed because TSR had been so heavy-handed with licensing that Wizards had a lot to prove.

(Eventually they forgot all of these lessons and tried to put the genie back in the bottle with a super-restrictive license on 4e - which blew up in their faces because it prevented the game from getting the wide-spread support that 3e had gotten and also blew up their reputation as a reliable partner for 3rd party publishers, so with 5e they had to go out of their way again to try to mea cupla their bad behavior. But that was much later, and after a lot of turnover in the company.)

Jer said:

I mean, the OGL (and more importantly at the time the d20 trademark) were explicitly a way to try to distance themselves from the legacy of TSR.

Click to expand...

I don't know if the legacy of a dead company would be so heavy on their minds to dictate company policy...

Bolares said:

I don't know if the legacy of a dead company would be so heavy on their minds to dictate company policy...

Click to expand...

Why not? TSR had spent a lot of the prior decade alienating fans. D&D itself had become unfashionable in a lot of gaming circles, with a bunch of younger gamers moving on to White Wolf and other games.

Part of Adkison's mandate to "Save D&D" was also to win back the fans and consumer confidence, beyond just buying TSR and its IP to prevent the mess of creditors from locking the brand/game/IP away.

So I leave this place for one day and miss all this drama!

Changing name doesn't wash away what was said. It's still the same people behind. I guess they got a C&D from WoTC.

Bolares said:

I don't know if the legacy of a dead company would be so heavy on their minds to dictate company policy...

Click to expand...

How about we live in the space between the endpoints?

So few things in life are such absolute drivers, so no, it probably didn't DICTATE policy. But how about strongly influence? That's plausible.

LuisCarlos17f said:

Why not Hasbro to buy the brand to use this like a subsidiary in the same way than Avalon Hill? For example for a new videogame studio more focused into CRPG.

Click to expand...

Why? I mean even if they wanted to use the TSR name, why would they buy the company? They'd just start using it. They bought the original company, they own the copyright on all artwork for the logos and the text for the games, they've been actively using "TSR" to sell reprint products on DriveThruRPG plus the White Box and AD&D 1st/2nd Ed collector reprint boxes they did. The only argument for an abandoned trademark is that Jayson Elliot's TSR Games was allowed to use the trademark unchallenged for most of a decade, but that's more of a defense of TSR2 or TSR3 using the trademark and not something that would prevent Wizards of the Coast from using it.

For example, there's been two similar disputes over trademark in comics. One was over the term "superhero". Both DC and Marvel claimed they owned the trademark on the word. It went to court and was decided that BOTH companies owned the trademark, but only for the specific presentation "Super-hero" (note the dash). DC and Marvel were both fine with this because they got to keep using the trademark but also prevented anyone else from using it. The other was for the superhero "Captain Marvel". Both companies had classic characters using that name. DC owned the Captain Marvel that was child Billy Batson who, when he said the word "SHAZAM!" turned into a superhero from their purchase of Fawcett Comics. Marvel owned the Captain Marvel that was Mar-Vell, a member of the Kree Militia. This led to fighting over the trademark to the name "Captain Marvel", which was decided in court: They both owned the name so long as they continued to use it. This is why there has always been a Captain Marvel comic in print up until recently (DC finally gave up on the fight with movies about to come out for both Captain Marvels to avoid dragging the film studios into the confusing mess).

So basically, if Wizards of the Coast wanted to use the TSR trademark, they could just start anytime they want. Whether they could stop Jayson Elliot from using it is a question that courts would have to decide (and likely part of the reason why Elliot didn't want to bother once Justin LaNasa and Stephen Dinehart's TSR Games started attracting negative attention). The only thing purchasing TSR3 would do is give money to a bunch of people who have gone out of their way to be antagonistic toward Wizards of the Coast and the D&D 5e fanbase.

Jer said:

I mean, the OGL (and more importantly at the time the d20 trademark) were explicitly a way to try to distance themselves from the legacy of TSR. Instead of suing small game companies, Wizards was saying "hey we'll provide a license so that you can make D&D products and so long as you follow these rules you don't even have to ask us to do it". That was revolutionary at the time but it was needed because TSR had been so heavy-handed with licensing that Wizards had a lot to prove.

(Eventually they forgot all of these lessons and tried to put the genie back in the bottle with a super-restrictive license on 4e - which blew up in their faces because it prevented the game from getting the wide-spread support that 3e had gotten and also blew up their reputation as a reliable partner for 3rd party publishers, so with 5e they had to go out of their way again to try to mea cupla their bad behavior. But that was much later, and after a lot of turnover in the company.)

Click to expand...

I feel a main reason 4e failed is because they failed to supply an OGL. If third party could confidently fill what some players felt was missing, then 4e would have benefited. Popular options would eventually find their way into official 4e.

Even in the formative period, when 4e was still being put together, I knew the lack of an OGL would be disastrous. I said so. In hindsight I feel correct.

Part of the success of 5e is an OGL, and I feel the DMsGuild is an elegant way to benefit from player needs and creativity.

Coming up with a completely different setting for 5e means not using DMsGuild, and doing much work to create a stand-alone product. But it is fair, and some companies do this.

Dausuul said:

Wait. Laser Tag has lore?

Click to expand...

more so., but it has rules, and TSR supplied them, written by James Ward. If you have played Laser Tag, you have almost certainly played with the rules Ward wrote.

Yaarel said:

I feel a main reason 4e failed is because they failed to supply an OGL. If third party could confidently fill what some players felt was missing, then 4e would have benefited. Popular options would eventually find their way into official 4e.

Even in the formative period, when 4e was still being put together, I knew the lack of an OGL would be disastrous. I said so. In hindsight I feel correct.

Click to expand...

The other issue 4e had was that what was released was a buggy beta version that could have used about an extra year in development for some bugfixing and a whole lot of polishing (in part because they went back to the drawing board ten months in to a two year development cycle). I do consider the final version of 4e was excellent and that 5e is basically 4e lite with a layer of paint disguising its 4e roots - but you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Oh, and the third issue 4e had was not just that the PHB was undercooked but the initial adventure was just plain bad. The Keep on the Shadowfell was terrible to the point that the best thing you could do to fix it was simply drop a meteor onto the keep itself. Before the keep is fine, but the keep itself boils down to over a dozen (from memory 17) fights in a row in cramped static environments with terrain you can't interact with. No D&D will survive that but it would be hard to have designed an adventure to more sabotage 4e.