TSR Who's running the TSR3 social media accounts?

Ernie Gygax (before he and Stephen Dinehart accused the whole affair of being orchestrated by WotC and then deleted their Twitter accounts) indicated that Justin LaNasa was running the social media accounts for TSR3, Giantlands, and Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. After a full week of insults, barbed exchanges, and problematic statements from all three accounts, the following has been posted by...

Ernie Gygax (before he and Stephen Dinehart accused the whole affair of being orchestrated by WotC and then deleted their Twitter accounts) indicated that Justin LaNasa was running the social media accounts for TSR3, Giantlands, and Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum.

After a full week of insults, barbed exchanges, and problematic statements from all three accounts, the following has been posted by somebody who identified themselves as "Michael", perhaps suggesting that Justin LaNasa is no longer with the company (which seems unlikely), leaving many on social media to question whether "Michael" exists. The new TSR3 was founded by LaNasa, Stephen Dinehart, and Ernie Gygax, and despite the acrinomious social media activity, the former two founders' names have largely escaped much of the criticism.

UPDATE -- the below tweets now appear to have been deleted.

Screen Shot 2021-07-02 at 7.30.39 PM.png

Around the same time, the header above the available events at the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum website was altered to read: "Most role playing games will be played in old school fashion so if you're easliy offended or Rude ! DO NOT PLAY !" (sic)

tsr_rude.png

So who is TSR3 co-founder Justin LaNasa? He was an American politician who ran for office in 2014 and 2020, and who was involved in a minor scandal during the latter campaign.

 

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Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
Maybe, but it seems odd that TSR(3) wouldn't scream bloody murder if that were the case. It would play into their whole persecution shtick so well.
TSR used copyrighted logos already on their merchandise, right? It's entirely possible that WotC legal said to them, "This is what you're going to do if you don't want us to sue you. You're going to sign it. And there's a confidentiality clause in it so you don't talk."
 

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Doug McCrae

Legend
Vance's Dying Earth series is a book series about a fantasy post-apocalyptic world that was published in the 50s, is listed in the 1e DMG as an inspiration for D&D. Dark Sun as a FPA setting for D&D was published in 1991, and I'm sure it's not the first time the idea was used. It's really weird to claim that post-apocalyptic fantasy hasn't been done before.
Rifts (1990) -- a kitchen sink setting with both magic and high technology -- and Earthdawn (1993) are two well known examples. Rifts also uses the idea of leylines as a power source for magic.
 


TechOgre2000

Explorer
Giantlands definitely gives a vibe of a game that was written 25-30 years ago, based on what has been said. That being said, I prefer modern systems (go unified dice mechanics!). It's too bad this got all mixed up with 3SR.
 



Dessert Nomad

Adventurer
It just seems so absurdly out-of-touch that he would actually think in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty one, no apocalyptic fantasy RPG had ever been published.

Right - of course he had to correct himself since I'm sure he prompted people to list settings, but it's a bizarre thing to be wrong about. It would be like producing a MMORPG and announcing that no one has ever done one where you can steal from and kill/loot other players when Ultima Online, arguably the second MMORPG ever, included it, and there have been a variety of PVP MMORPGs since.

Rifts (1990) -- a kitchen sink setting with both magic and high technology -- and Earthdawn (1993) are two well known examples. Rifts also uses the idea of leylines as a power source for magic.

I forgot about Rifts, but since it is a kitchen sink setting instead of fantasy I could see not counting it. Earthdawn is definitely another good example, though I didn't realize it was 1993 and not 1980s. The 'we don't have magic, we have ley energy' is really saying 'we have magic and call it ley energy'; while it's a really lame claim to fame I'm not sure that any game has made that particular claim before - Rifts doesn't hesitate to call the stuff ley lines work with 'magic'. "Our magic is labeled with a different term" is not exactly innovative though.
 


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