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.

 

[grimslade]

Too borrow Umbran's car metaphor. Even though the majority of car travel speed is in the sub-65mph, there are venues to go faster. There are the Formula 1s and NASCAR to push the limits of automotive performance. There is a dearth of high level play options or examples out there.
This would tell me there is a market position open in the DMsGuild for 15-20 modules and rules, but I don't see a ton of offerings and those that are there are not massive sellers. The market is niche.
I do think that, like the more performative driving sports, high level play would be enjoyable streaming content. Perhaps a shift to competitive play at Cons could shift to pre-rolled characters for high end/ high stakes roleplay to show what 5E peak performance looks like?

 

[Umbran]

This is a simple failure to properly stress-test on the part of one or more of the website host, the host's internet provider, or - less commonly, and depending what the site is being asked to do - the site's designer.

Except it is not a FAILURE.

Like, if you have a wagon filled with 200 lbs of cargo, your cat is not going to be able to drag it across a field, but a Bernese Mountain Dog will handle it just fine. That is NOT a failure on the part of the cat. And not being good at hunting mice in the barn is not a failure on the part of the dog.

And that dog can pull 200 lbs all day. It can pull up to 1000 lbs, but it can't do it all day, and it will be slower, and it might get injured if you aren't careful. That it cannot pull a full ton with aplomb is not a failure of the dog. Everything has performance characteristics. Nothing is good through all levels of all domains, even the ones they are built in. A Formula 1 race care goes really fast, but it pretty much sucks if you want to go pick up groceries.

The same holds for a game. It will have performance characteristics, and it will behave differently across its spectrum - and at whatever the upper-end of that spectrum is, it'll tend to break down a bit, in one way or another.

 

[Cadence]

Except it is not a FAILURE.

Like, if you have a wagon filled with 200 lbs of cargo, your cat is not going to be able to drag it across a field, but a Bernese Mountain Dog will handle it just fine. That is NOT a failure on the part of the cat. And not being good at hunting mice in the barn is not a failure on the part of the dog.

And that dog can pull 200 lbs all day. It can pull up to 1000 lbs, but it can't do it all day, and it will be slower, and it might get injured if you aren't careful. That it cannot pull a full ton with aplomb is not a failure of the dog. Everything has performance characteristics. Nothing is good through all levels of all domains, even the ones they are built in. A Formula 1 race care goes really fast, but it pretty much sucks if you want to go pick up groceries.

The same holds for a game. It will have performance characteristics, and it will behave differently across its spectrum - and at whatever the upper-end of that spectrum is, it'll tend to break down a bit, in one way or another.

Is the wagon advertised for a cat? Are dogs sold as mice catchers?

If they advertised D&D 5e as going up to 15th level and stopped there, would it work pretty well across the entire advertised range?

 

[Parmandur]

Is the wagon advertised for a cat? Are dogs sold as mice catchers?

If they advertised D&D 5e as going up to 15th level and stopped there, would it work pretty well across the entire advertised range?

It does work at the higher range, by all accounts, it's just that most customers don't play campaigns that long...hence don't buy material for those levels, and TSR/WotC tried, even up to 5E.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

2 rounds is what the designers assume the average group will take to win an appropriate CR challenge, not an optimized group. Even at high level, with a large group not optimized to the hilt, several encounters in a session should be doable.

The designers also base everything on what is the default, or standard, and not on the assumption that groups will use the optional rules for multiclassing, feats, and variant humans. And while on the surface, it would seem more power would make things faster, but having more options probably actually slows down combat.

 

[Steampunkette]

Is the wagon advertised for a cat? Are dogs sold as mice catchers?

If they advertised D&D 5e as going up to 15th level and stopped there, would it work pretty well across the entire advertised range?

And it does go to 20th level just fine...

There's plenty of monsters and locales provided in the books... It's just "Make your own" territory because not a lot of people play up to 20.

 

[Parmandur]

The designers also base everything on what is the default, or standard, and not on the assumption that groups will use the optional rules for multiclassing, feats, and variant humans. And while on the surface, it would seem more power would make things faster, but having more options probably actually slows down combat.

Sure, and I haven't run or played in any games with multiclassing, fears, or variant humans in 7 years now, no joke. Those are optional rules, not everyone uses them.

 

[Parmandur]

And it does go to 20th level just fine...

There's plenty of monsters and locales provided in the books... It's just "Make your own" territory because not a lot of people play up to 20.

The real Caxhe-22 is the heavy Venn diagram overlap between people who ever want to go that high level and DIYers who just don't books from WotC.

 

[Lanefan]

Except it is not a FAILURE.

Like, if you have a wagon filled with 200 lbs of cargo, your cat is not going to be able to drag it across a field

Cleraly you haven't met my (RIP) cat. Instead of dragging the full wagon across the field, that guy would have emptied out the cargo (and, if at all edible, eaten as much of it as he could) and then pulled the wagon wherever it had to go....

And that dog can pull 200 lbs all day. It can pull up to 1000 lbs, but it can't do it all day, and it will be slower, and it might get injured if you aren't careful. That it cannot pull a full ton with aplomb is not a failure of the dog. Everything has performance characteristics.

Agreed, and there's an expected range of reasonably-optimal performance within said characteristics; with those expectations being set by a combination of things including advertising, owners' manuals, and (in some cases) common sense.

Nothing is good through all levels of all domains, even the ones they are built in. A Formula 1 race care goes really fast, but it pretty much sucks if you want to go pick up groceries.

Yes, and the pre-set expectations of said F-1 car don't include grocery runs. They do include high-speed racing, and an F-1 car whose manufacturer claims it'll do 250 mph no problem but which simply can't get over 225 mph no matter what isn't meeting those pre-set expectations; and the race team has every right to complain.

They lose that right to complain if they try to push the car to 280 mph and things don't go so well.

The same holds for a game. It will have performance characteristics, and it will behave differently across its spectrum - and at whatever the upper-end of that spectrum is, it'll tend to break down a bit, in one way or another.

Difference in acceptance levels here, I think.

You're willing to accept some degree of break-down at the upper end of the spectrum where I'm unwilling to accept any breakdown until the stated/advertised/promised spectrum limits have been reached. Otherwise, it's false advertising.

Put another way, if in-house stress-testing shows the game starts to wobble at about level 15 and the wobbling increases from there, it should be advertised and sold as a 1-15 game; and advertising it as 1-20 is, to put is bluntly, dishonest. Sure, put all the 16-20 stuff - and beyond! - in the rulebooks for those willing to try it anyway, but toss in a disclaimer that beyond level 15 things might not work as smoothly and that some DM intervention and-or tweaking might be required.

Better yet, the designers could get themselves right off the hook if they sold the game as "open-ended" with no reference to any specific capstone or end-state level, and include notes that while the system has been stress-tested to level x and that there's no guarantees it'll work and-or remain stable beyond that, the books* still give details up to level x-plus-y for those who are interested.

* - initial release just covers the stress-tested part; a concurrent or not-much-later release could deal with the not-as-tested higher-level material.

 

[Lanefan]

And it does go to 20th level just fine...

There's plenty of monsters and locales provided in the books... It's just "Make your own" territory because not a lot of people play up to 20.

I don't mind this at all, provided such is made reasonably clear up-front in the marketing.

Along the lines of "We'll support levels 1-15 with our adventure releases; and while we can provide informal suggestions and support for higher-level adventures our intention is not to release any, leaving it to individual DMs to design their own." Problem solved.