TSR Giantlands

[Dannyalcatraz]

The whole “theme park” idea makes me want to ask someone to check their medications.

 

[Umbran]

There are hundreds of small press games every year, but we seem to be giving an awful lot of undue attention to this company and game. I mean yes, I am unimpressed. But, why do we keep giving them free publicity?

Please don't try to suppress discussion.

 

[Mistwell]

Please don't try to suppress discussion.

Asking why we give a company attention isn't suppressing discussion, it IS discussion. Telling me to not ask why we keep giving this company attention does feel like suppressing that discussion however.

I mean, if you want discussion you could try and answer my legitimate question. Why do you think we keep giving them publicity?

 

[Steampunkette]

You're trying to have a different discussion which by its very nature encourages a cessation of discussion on the topic.

Like. That's the position you've taken in the side-discussion you've created. That we should not provide them with "Free Publicity" and you're challenging people to convince you that we "Should".

It's an incredibly dishonest rhetorical tactic, especially to then tell a moderator that you're creating a discussion.

"Prove I'm wrong about my only tangentially connected assertion rather than discuss what you were discussing" is some pretty hefty sealioning.

 

[Bolares]

Why do you think we keep giving them publicity?

News are news. If people are still interested in following news about this subject (and popularity and engagement in the threads kinda show that they are) its fair game for news about it to be shared. It doesn't always need to be about giving or not publicity to them

 

[Umbran]

Asking why we give a company attention isn't suppressing discussion, it IS discussion.

When you accompany that with implicit questioning how "worthy" it is for discussion, compared to other games, the negative implications are quite apparent.

I mean, if you want discussion you could try and answer my legitimate question. Why do you think we keep giving them publicity?

Because we don't actually give a hoot about whether it is "free publicity".

You want to talk about the hundreds of other games out there, feel free to start a thread about them.

 

[Mistwell]

News are news. If people are still interested in following news about this subject (and popularity and engagement in the threads kinda show that they are) its fair game for news about it to be shared. It doesn't always need to be about giving or not publicity to them

News about TSR, sure. But discussing Giantlands? Of course if people are interested in discussing it that's fine, but I am curious WHY people are curious to discuss this particular game, separate from the TSR disaster itself? Its Kickstarter was quite a while ago and got almost no discussion.

 

[Mannahnin]

The whole “theme park” idea makes me want to ask someone to check their medications.

I thought I had read something about Dinehart previously working at Evermore Park in Utah. I presumed this was an ambitious attempt by him to leverage that prior experience to offer an unusual (if a pit pie-in-the-sky) additional dimension to the RPG.

This appears to be his professional site:

Home of the Original Narrative Designer

Welcome to the webpage of Stephen E. Dinehart IV, here you can learn more about his work in games, mixed-reality, theme parks and interactive narrative design.

narrativedesigner.com

 

[Bolares]

News about TSR, sure. But discussing Giantlands? Of course if people are interested in discussing it that's fine, but I am curious WHY people are curious to discuss this particular game, separate from the TSR disaster itself? Its Kickstarter was quite a while ago and got almost no discussion.

Giantlands, at this point can hardly be separated from TSR3. So the affluence of news about them will make people wonder about the game. I really don't see where this confusion about the topic can come from.

 

[Gradine]

Jim Ward spent a good hour and a half hanging out on a podcast with three unabashed racists and misogynists.

He does not get to get a free pass on all this

 

[Bolares]

Jim Ward spent a good hour and a half hanging out on a podcast with three unabashed racists and misogynists.

He does not get to get a free pass on all this

Hey gradine! how the vacation time has been treating you?

 

[Gradine]

Also I don't know about the rest of you but I've only gotten better with age

 

[Yaarel]

To be clear,

If someone buys Giantlands, TSR3 gets money.

 

[Steampunkette]

Jim Ward spent a good hour and a half hanging out on a podcast with three unabashed racists and misogynists.

He does not get to get a free pass on all this

Which podcast?

I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, I just wanna know stuff and look further into it. A quick google search brought up several podcasts for Jim Ward, some of which were music-based.

 

[Bolares]

Which podcast?

I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, I just wanna know stuff and look further into it. A quick google search brought up several podcasts for Jim Ward, some of which were music-based.

I think they were refering to the video with pundit

 

[Mistwell]

Jim Ward spent a good hour and a half hanging out on a podcast with three unabashed racists and misogynists.

He does not get to get a free pass on all this

I mean, at the time of the podcast I don't think he had any reason to know about either event? Wasn't the podcast before the Native American comment? And it would appear almost nobody was aware of the grits wrestling video being the same LeNasa at the time of that podcast?

I have not followed the news close enough to know if that is accurate so please correct me if I am mistaken. Last I saw, Jim Ward had said:

followed by:

 

[Sir Brennen]

Giantlands, at this point can hardly be separated from TSR3. So the affluence of news about them will make people wonder about the game. I really don't see where this confusion about the topic can come from.

Yeah, based on the KS, there were only 77 backers, so it probably didn't get a lot of attention then. Possibly another failing of Dinehart to get the word out. But now that they've hitched their wagon to TSR3 (or possibly vice-versa) and the following fiasco, alot more people are aware of it. And, like me, somewhat curious about this game that has so many original D&D creatives (and, um, a famous player?) attached to it.

 

[CleverNickName]

I had mild interest in the Giantlands project, back in the Kickstarter days. The main draw for me was the Gygax and Elmore names that were attached to it. I didn't pledge because it looked suspicious to me (the goal was just $100, for a boxed set? Fishy.) I decided I would just keep an eye on it, and then jump on the Backerkit later to pick up a finished product if it met my expectations.

But then they started throwing around transphobic rhetoric, and my interest is no longer detectable by current technology.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

You yourself have mentioned desperation - have you considered that the desperation might stem from his health? When the successes we can name are from 30+ years ago, we can expect major chronic health issues to be quite a strain. Ward so far seems to be guilty of a few overblown statements about the game he wrote. On the scale of things said by folks in the TSR3 orbit, these are the least significant.

No, because I was doing what the board rules encourage and discussing the game and the claims that have been made about it, not the personal life and issues of anyone involved in the game - it seems like that would turn rapidly into a personal attack. I didn't know anything about Jim Ward's personal life until other people dragged it into the thread, and I don't see how it's particularly relevant. That Jim Ward might really need the money instead of just wanting money doesn't change my evaluation of the comments as "overblown to the point of desperation."

The tactic of overhyping the game with transparently false claims ('best ever' is normal marketing speak, 'first in this genre' when there are multiple popular previous games is not) and spending time on playing semantics games to support the claims still reads to me that the game itself is lacking and that those marketing it are "desperately" trying to find something other than the merits of the game to focus attention on, regardless of what is going on in Jim Ward's life. My experience is that if a game is good, the marketing focus is on how good the game is at the stuff that it does, plus some (possibly spurious) comparisons with popular games, but if it's bad the marketing becomes "desperate" to find something good to focus on for attention, and starts making weird claims (like easily disproven 'first in genre') and focusing attention on those claims.

It's got zilch to do with anyone's money or medical issues, and everything to do with the fact that failing to discuss the meat of a product tends to indicate that the meat is lacking, which leads to "desperation" when marketing tries to get people interested.

 

[billd91]

Asking why we give a company attention isn't suppressing discussion, it IS discussion. Telling me to not ask why we keep giving this company attention does feel like suppressing that discussion however.

I mean, if you want discussion you could try and answer my legitimate question. Why do you think we keep giving them publicity?

Why? Because of things we see in these two quotes:

I mention that because... one, I don't want to seem unsympathetic to a genuine legend, and two, to establish that I know this particular failstate intimately because I've seen it from the inside. Also because I'm utterly shameless about self-promotion.

I had mild interest in the Giantlands project, back in the Kickstarter days. The main draw for me was the Gygax and Elmore names that were attached to it.

There are big names in the industry attached. And that's something that LaNasa and Dinehart and company (as well as lots of other companies) are counting on. The fact that there are big names that are either involved or invoked means the rubes (us) will blather on and on about them and give them a ton of free publicity. It's the nature of fandom. We attribute a lot of weight (maybe too much) to these names whether or not what they're currently producing is any good.

And then there are those in the hobby watching and talking because they're enjoying the chaos. There's nothing quite so satisfying as watching celebrities go down in flames. Who cares if a marriage falls apart due to narcissism and mental health problems with normal people, but if it's Kanye and one of the Kardashians, it's water cooler discussion fodder. Same with the gaming board water coolers - just with a lower order of magnitude. If all of this were done by nobodies (which LaNasa and Dinehard largely are), it would have been a brief blip. Attach Ernie and the TSR name or Jim Ward, and it's celebrity and the feeding frenzy begins.