GiantLands – The road to finishing a “finished” RPG

So, having burned countless bridges and decided that he no longer needed to partner with TSR LLC to publish his game that he previously couldn’t publish – Dinehart had a whole bunch of issues to deal with:

A bunch of people had pre-ordered to support the nuTSR group – so were not happy about the money going elsewhere; and
A bunch of them were reactionaries who were angry as fuck to find Dinehart supported the notion of being non-binary (in a way that he finds interesting and approves of, only); and
It was now, according to the Kickstarter, 15 months overdue; and
According to the same Kickstarter, the product was ready to print in June 2020 (twelve months prior); and
According to writer James M. Ward, his part was late 2019;¹ and
It was also “Almost there” according to the Kickstarter in December 2020 (six months prior); and
One of the key flaws of the Kickstarter was that it promised a maximum of 100 1st Edition boxes only – which was never going to be profitable or something you could launch a theme park off; and
It was only available in hard copy, which meant that if you wanted to order it to say… New Zealand, it’d more than double the considerable cost of $79.99;² and
While the project web site and credits of the books that were eventually released boast a huge team of titans, if we consider the people doing the actual work and being part of Wonderfilled Inc… the team considered entirely of Dinehart. (Mandatory side note: Jeff Dee has requested he not be associated with the project, explaining it was artwork-only and work for hire,³ if you think Dinehart is going to respect this – you’re in for a lot of disappointment).

It was not an ideal situation – particularly given that Dinehart had no clout in the TTRPG industry before he started this fiasco, and somehow managed to have even less at this point and he is… not the best at diligent attention to detail, as demonstrated by the first version of the transfer from TSR Games to Wonderfilled Games site showcased.⁴ ⁵

A screenshot of a mobile device showing the "tsr.games" url.
It is for WFD, "Wonderfiled, Inc" (yes, one L).

A screenshot of the bottom of a page in mobile display. "Creating new Experiences"
"We're producing good old fashioned TSR TTRPG products with a new take. Our role-playing games GiantLands in just the beginning!"
At the bottom is "Add Wonderfilled, Inc. to Home screen"

He also seemed to keep the TSR shirts on his online store for an awkward amount of time.⁶

Naturally rather than think about how he was going to address these issues or move forward, given all the promises he’d made in the past and he was now back to square one in terms of people to help him – he spent the first few days ignoring the problem. He exchanged tweets with ComicsGate people about how race wasn’t real so it was people who talked about racism who were bad,⁷ tweeted on going an education display about Cherokee,⁸ pondered how wise he was for assuming “bent the knee” was homophobic,⁹ and then concluded that people who criticised him were not real…¹⁰

A screenshot of a tweet by Dinehart (@SEDart4): "Thee #TTRPG community on the internet, specifically Twitter, is nothing like real life. Truth is, it's one of the most welcoming & inclusive game communities I've ever witnessed. All are welcome. Play is both the ruel & the promise." 4:04 PM - 11 July 2021 — If you’re ever called out for bigotry and partnering with bigots, the most reliable way to fix it is to decide the people who called you out are not real. Definitely.

Bad Decision Theatre

At the same time he was ignoring requests for information about the release of the game and the pdf, as well as refund requests (including one from TSR’s Dave Johnson).¹¹ He later concluded he was not obligated to answer queries from his customers,¹² and posted about the box art – referring to the Larry Elmore original as “the painting we created together”.¹³ And oh, he also showed he had no self-reflection by thanking someone for “standing up” by referring to trans acceptance as “bullying men into believing they’re women”.¹⁴

And all that as in one week.

As you can see, Dinehart is a bad decision dynamo, generating terrible ideas over and over. Pretty much through all of July and most of August, he would spam out nonsense and terrible ideas to try to avoid dealing with anything relating to it. So here were my favourite Classic Dinehart moments in this period:

Threatening a parody account with <2,000 followers with a lawsuit¹⁵
Complained about not liking newly registered accounts, then re-tweeted a new account that was obviously a sock puppet made by a reactionary and very racist white person using a stolen image to make “black people don’t care about racism” type nonsense.¹⁶
Locked down all the company accounts and announced people would be added on a Trust Rating basis¹⁷ he initially seemed to feel this was a plan to out maneuver the imaginary agents of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. He would eventually undo this – probably because it appears during this time he approved zero accounts.
Claimed ownership of the Prey 2 game that never launched, as well as the main character (who was carried over from the original Prey game that he did not work on) and wrote a fan fic about it was all due to Bethesda’s machinations and desire to steal his game… not 3D Realms staggering financial incompetence.¹⁸
Announced, without context or useful elaboration, that his game would not “feature concepts of European prudence” (spoiler: It would, to the standard degree in a pulp publication and would even belittle important native myths doing so).¹⁹ The game was to be tribute to his Cherokee ancestors, who are still here… (it is not, it is full of random cultural appropriation of various native american groups, mixed and match to a frankly insulting degree..).²⁰
Declared that GiantLands was going to change the landscape of games forever (spoiler: It would have no impact at all) and be his crowning achievement (spoiler: he would later say it was all Jim Ward).²¹
Posted a reminder that they were no longer with TSR with the explanation of “Like Icarus, we got too close.” then later “Unlike Icarus, we have a jet pack.” showcasing how he definitely understood the myth.²²
After having repeated harassment from the alt-right people²³ he’d disappointed, decided that on the Internet: 85% of people were bots, and 10% sock puppets… and this was all due to Hasbro and post-modernism somehow.²⁴ ²⁵
Tried to promote a fellow reactionary by shouting out the Blackmoor Film while asking the question of… can a role-playing game not be a war game? Does that game vampire actually exist? Showcasing he hasn’t even vaguely looked as the hobby outside of the games he played as a kid.²⁶
Made a weird post about how GiantLands would expect players to wear masks at games and in the theme park… but not online.²⁷ Dinehart has never explained this, but it seems to be paranoia about anyone who he can’t determine the identity of online.
Announced he’d been working on some music deals lately….²⁸ These, like the game he was supposed to be working on, were definitely going to change the world.
Made a truly baffling post about how he really needs assistants and a staff, but he doesn’t want that because then he’d have to hire managers, and managers for managers, and that’d me he’d eventually have to say words like “transparency”.²⁹
Tweeted about how he was applying for “rescue plan” grants.³⁰ This one is funny because later bragged his investment had “earned” back a profit in September.³¹

Eventually, on 18 August 2021, there was an announcement with some useful information in it. The “female talent”³² (yes he used that term) that he was hiring, was in fact his new editor³³ and it was old school TSR legend Penny Williams.³⁴ For the uninitiated, Penny was one of the original “experts” who would answer questions and essentially the founder of the RPGA (what we used to have before DMs Guild). She was a major influence in focusing on things other than just crunching numbers and war game shit. ³⁵

Pray for Penny Williams

When Penny actually joined is unclear since he bragged he’d signed on the “female talent” on 26 July 2021, a new editor on 30 July and made the announcement it was penny on 18 August 2021. He also claimed “our editor” is getting up to speed on 31 July 2021.³⁶

What is clear is Penny was not the first female editor he’d brought on board and was stuck on a the project from Hell for which she would receive no appreciation for her efforts. While she was apparently brought on at Jim’s request, but also it seems Dinehart and Jim’s vision for GiantLands was the exact opposite kind of game she’d excel at helping with – and was supposed to have been finished and playtested over a year ago. Dinehart had already finalized a lot of art, and shown the world what the copy was to look like.³⁷

A photo of a proof of GiantLands with the fantasy art marked up with all the promotions.

A photo of the back of the box, which is to have a full rear page of text with the tag line of "Who will you become?" which explains the entire concept and makes promises like you'll be able to be "a Mutant Warlord, Baron, Bounty Hunter, Augment Shamen, and more" and lists off all the key names at the bottom (no mention of Penny Williams).

Editors are great, but they’re they’re not actually wizards – they need the cooperation of creators and to be brought in before things are “final”. Had she been brought in at the start, Penny probably would have had a lot of ideas about things the game needed, things it didn’t need and ways that they could put things together – and settled on final copy, playtesting etc. It is difficult to overstate to what extent there was simply no opportunity for her to fix anything – particularly since Jim was apparently “done” by 24 August 2021³⁸ and Dinehart’s ego would not allow him to hear any criticism of his or Jim’s work.

From the start of September, Dinehart started bragging about how much he liked saying “Content Lock!”³⁹ because he’d promised it would be shipping in September⁴⁰ (spoiler: it would not be)⁴¹ and while he would never shut the fuck up about, and would eventually start just inventing cool stories about his male colleagues… the praise for Penny was rarer and more concise.⁴²

Then… a little over a week later.⁴³

And most recently, a post where it appears Dinehart refers to her as Peggy…⁴⁴

Penny for her part has not publicly said anything about GiantLands, or her time working with Dinehart, and honestly it’s not hard to see why if this is how he treated her.

The female talent (ie the editors)

As mentioned there was another female editor on before Penny, one Royce Grayson. Royce appears to be a dabbling fiction writer with a lot of technical writing experience and a Twitter friend of Stephen Dinehart.

It appears that she offered to help with the project in October 2019⁴⁵ and had finished her part in June 2021⁴⁶ (just in time to dodge the drama and the meltdown). Based on this timeline, it seems she would have had a much bigger opportunity to influence the product.

The book also credits a Jennifer Woomer Dinehart… who I think is Stephen’s mother/step-mother… or occupies a similar place in his family and its unclear when she did or didn’t participate in project. (The book also has special thanks to Luke Gygax… who has confirmed that he had nothing to do with it)⁴⁷ But we have, by now, already established that Dinehart is a not a reliable narrator.

What’s interesting about this is that Penny is credited as Lead Editor, and Jennifer and Royce as just “Editors”. Which sort of gives you the impression that all three of them worked together, but there doesn’t seem to be any overlap at all between the time Penny worked on it and Royce did… and well, who knows with Jennifer was involved.

So Dinehart seems to have hired Penny because Jim recommended it… and spent more effort on bragging about her name rather than anything she did, any contributions she made or any stories he has. He almost immediately updated the team page page to showcase the addition of another old school member, putting her right up there next to James.⁴⁸

Screenshot of the GiantLands Team:
Stephen E. Dinehart IV, Game Director
James M. Ward, Games Designer
Penny Williams, Lead Game Editor
E. Gary Gygax Jr, Creative Supervisor
Larry Elmore, Cover Artist
Josh Diffey, Lead Artist
Raoph Mohr, Concept Artist
Royce Grayson, Editor
Michael Allen Sue, Legal
Jeff Dee, Artist
Xan Holt, Artist
Steve Ince, Artist — And yes… Dinehart didn’t credit his family members on the site, the lousy bastard.

Of course… this could have had a lot to do with what else Dinehart was doing, he was up to a lot (though none of it seems to be working on GiantLands). He was playing D&D with Ernie and bragging about how there was a trans woman there who tolerated Ernie’s bumbling her pronouns⁴⁹ (note: nobody who knows Ernie for more than five minutes is going to expect him not to bumble… literally everything in a social situation), complaining about horny art on NFT auction sites⁵⁰ (so much for no European prudence), bragging about how he’s not attending GenCon (where he is banned due this meltdown),⁵¹ having a meltdown over the NFT market,⁵², brought on his childhood friend Michael Allen Sue as legal counsel, and he had a meltdown on Wikipedia that led to the uncovering of huge amounts of his previous falsifying his credentials.

Dinehart and the Great Wikipedia Collapse

So, it’s unclear what inspired this… but around the end of August, Dinehart engaged in a hilarious action where he went through and made some bizarre edits to the Narrative Designer page on Wikipedia, making the history page quite hilarious.

If you’re curious what the change Dinehart tried to make was, it was basically delete all the useful information about the field and tried to make it all about him via the Fracone acount. He also attempted this back in 2014 and it got him flagged for being an “Edit War”.

This, did lead to a cascade effect, particularly after some asshole (😁) left a comment in the Talk page about how Fracone had been involved in self promotion. This presumably led to further inspection of the entries and the (self referential) sources of claims, and Dinehart’s own page being removed along with the pages for his book, and other things he’d added on the sly over the years.

Dinehart did not take this well.⁵³ And amusingly it led to an account called Garygygaxjr appearing to champion him… and only him. It is unclear if Ernie is aware of this account.

Dinehart did come back and re-add himself to a couple of times to things like Company of Heroes – as both designer and writer, which is a bold claim to make when the job you actually got hired to do was help write scripts for cutscenes etc in the Opposing Fronts expansion. But these don’t seem to last terribly long.

Incidentally there seems to be good evidence that he does the exact same thing on IMDB, but more successfully. Unlike movies, video game credits are not heavily regulated and often change (particularly with things like MMOs) etc so it’s easy for him to slot himself in where he feels he deserved credit – including in Prey… where he feels he deserves credit because he worked on Prey 2, a different game that was scrapped when Zenimax bought the parent studio. This goes uncorrected, mostly because IMDB does not have any system for outsiders to report this kind of fraud.

Jeff Dee is banned but still exploited

GiantLands marketing has, and continues to, consistently reference that table top role-playing game legend Jeff Dee was “involved in the project”. If you’re not aware, Jeff is a man of many talents and also loud, progressive politics – so it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone when he clarified to people that his “involvement” was he did some artwork as work-for-hire. Particularly given that none of his work seems to match one to one with the lore, giving the impression it was conceptual sketches he did with very short summaries of the material, possibly before the project settled on a vision.

A drawing of a giant with a cybernetic arm, and a figure flying with a sort of Aztec/Mayan aesthetic to confront/greet what looks like a grey alien in power armour stepping out of a crashed UFO. — None of these are conceptually within GiantLands, as PC options or NPCs or lore aspirations.

What did come as a surprise was when Jeff made an announcement about this which included that he had been banned from the GiantLands page on Facebook, but hoped that it would end the matter.⁵⁴

A screenshot of a Facebook post by Jeff Dee: "The company currently identifying as "Wonderfilled" is actively promoting me as a member of its creative team. this is false. I did a small amount of contract work for one of its members, before he hooked up with a group of regressives pretending to be a new TSR, before they showed their regressive nature, and certainly long before the whole nest of them went through a couple of name changes trying to avoid responsibility for being the kind of people they are."

Screenshot of the continued post: "I pointed this out on the Wonderfilled facebook page, and my comment was deleted. They have since made another post *specifically* focused on my involvement. I commented with a correction again, and have now (as predicted) been blocked from their page. What sort of an organization actively promotes the involvement of people who no longer have anything to do with them, nor any desire to EVER have anything else to do with them, and have been completely public about that?"

Spoiler: It would not.⁵⁵ To this day Jeff’s name gets thrown around to try to enhance the credibility of the product and brand it as authentically old school. He would later go on to list Jeff’s work on Opensea (though consistently failing to sell it) and try to justify it with he owned it so he could do whatever he liked,⁵⁶ apparently taking great delight in people knowing Jeff did not approve.⁵⁷

Last chance for the hype train!

In late September, Dinehart really started going hard on trying to hype up his project with some radical steps like… showing what some of the content might look like. Ordinarily, this would be a thing a creator would do early in the process and, at this point, be able to assure people what the final product would look like. Dinehart had not done that at any point, and this was not representative:⁵⁸

A sample of a document that is branded as GiantLands, 2019, Wonderfilled, etc.

It has unclear fonts, chaotic background imagery and professes to explain "Lorak"

The write up includes obvious typos "he seeks to shakle and destroy manking" "unitied under his thumb no man, giant, or lesser god could challenge his rein."

And it is heavily dependant on lexicon in the game that is not provided in the sample. — An early concept with completely different content, formatting, art style, etc and copyrighted two years earlier… just what you want to promote a game that is already overdue release. Also just… *gestures generally at the quality of this work*

Towards the start of October, Dinehart started making a strange declaration – soon it would be the last opportunity to pre-order his game at the current price (it would not be) because pre-orders would be closing soon and then the price would be raised to… some amount… also there would only be 2,000 of these printed (which was still 1,900 more than the Kickstarter promised would be made). Much hay was made over its future status as a collector’s item.⁵⁹

Oh yeah, he sort of glossed over that the price had been set during a Kickstarter where he promised it was going to be only 100 units… and that the artists in this case had already been paid.⁶⁰

When artisanal pricing did come into effect, it came suddenly,⁶¹ and was initially raising the cost of the boxed set to $129.99 per unit⁶² – putting it on par with the Dark Souls board game. Of course, instead of a handful of minis and a fold out board… you’d be getting a pair of golf pencils.

A screenshot of the listing for Dark Souls: The Board Game , $129.95 - includes miniatures. — Ironically, “Prepare to Die” is a good phrase to prepare people who want to play GiantLands… and any other game created by James M Ward.

Mysteriously, at this same time, the GiantLands official Twitter account started accumulating a surprisingly high number of new followers per day – from practically none to hundreds.

A screenshot of the "Monthly Gained Followers for 'GiantLands'" showing an awkward rise from an almost flat line, with $1,393 new followers in October 2021. — Very metrics… nothing to see here… (Source: Socialblade)

But, least you think that this was a real interest in the project… well, I don’t like to throw accusations at strangers but it seems that many of these followers were not gaming’s best people… or like… into gaming… or actually people.⁶³ ⁶⁴

An screenshot of another example account "dbstdcalderoj", "Send me funny shit" - Joined October 2021, 129 Following, 0 Followers

Dinehart would later go on to rant about how data had no intrinsic value, resellers were wrong to want to assess products based off it and some weird nonsense about decentralization.⁶⁵

Actually making a game

Eventually he did get to the bit that every creative fears. The moment in the project that sends fear through their bodies… the bit where you just have to suck it up and do the work. After all, he’d once again moved to release date and now promised to try for the end of November.⁶⁶

In this case the work seemed to consist primarily of typesetting, design and… last minute minute product revision to now include such gimmicks as a double-sided map-poster combination item. More curious still was that he had posted content before indicating that the design layouts etc had been done, and even had proofs published, but this did not resemble any of them.

This lead to a series of broken promises and what can really only be accurately described as bratty behaviour events from Stephen Dinehart – a man who has children and considers himself a role model for people wanting to get into the video games, film, music and theme park industries.

At one point he that he was entering his final day of self imposed crunch… and showed a picture of his socks to give him extra magic power, then almost immediately tweeted out for opinions that indicated he was considering adding a whole new mechanic to GiantLands⁶⁷ (he didn’t), then he expressed his sympathies to Alec Baldwin and his family over the shooting incident (no mention at all of Halyna Hutchins or her family)⁶⁸ and then… well the next day he posted a bunch of weird motivational nonsense.⁶⁹

Two tweets from Stephen E. Dinehart IV (@SEDart4) 8 hours ago:
"Achieving your dreams often times is not a matter of talent but persistence. Keep going."
"You can do it! If you only believe, truly. Faith is a powerful force & doubt is a natural part of the process." — Imagine if you you were someone who paid in the Kickstarter, got excited it was finally nearly done, and then went to check your feed honestly expecting a big update and this is what you see.

In an attempt to distract from the reality that he had wildly underestimated the work involved in this and began a series of poorly advised distraction attempts – including posting a photo of a group of high school students (ie children) with no clear permission to insist that… well let me provide the alleged quote:⁷⁰

This game is so welcoming! It has a wide variety of genders to choose from for your characters. I felt very, very welcomed to the table as a trans kid. It was also one of the best roleplaying games I’ve played yet.
“Elliott the trans kid”, a very real playtester with a very real opinion shared on Twitter

That tweet was quickly deleted and it was pretended that it never happened. It is unclear if this is because he realized he didn’t have permission to post the children (after lecturing others on doing so), realized how unbelievably bad the lie was or if he realized that claiming to playtest at this stage might lead to questions about how much of this project was actually finished.

A week later, at the end of October, he would post a picture of a box, explaining it as “the prototype from the printers”⁷¹ which was weird since he had posted proofs on Instagram in the past,⁷² and posted an entirely different box as the speciemen to prove “use in commerce” on the Trademark register in June 2020.⁷³ Indicating there was a lot of reinventing the wheel.

November

He then bragged about how he’d hired a cartographer, apparently in response to someone talking about game maps turned out to be him wanting to map out the theme park he was very sure this product would launch.⁷⁴

Then he posted some weird statements about how he’d been working on albums for the game, and a weird brag about how he was living up to the starving artist trope by not having had home of his own, a reliable car, money to spend on himself etc.⁷⁵

At this point a general reminder: No matter how he tried to pretend so, Dinehart was not a scrappy youth out of college ready to take on the world – he’s a father whose son is in school and he constantly brags about his experience in theme parks and mainstream video games.

He then started sharing some of his work, showing the kind of great quality layouts he was doing for this product… or at least the book on monsters etc… and the results were… not inspiring.⁷⁶ ⁷⁷ ⁷⁸ The layouts were clumsy and seemed to prioritize fitting in the artwork over clear communication or even providing significant information beyond what a good group could spin up on the fly.

A screenshot of the a sample provided which sows three monsters:
1. Dofling (which are rabbit people)
2. Dwerf (sentient mushrooms)
3. Eiquitzche (boar faced men with crude weapons) — Remember this is supposed to be a whole new setting, with all this new lore and mechanics that will revolutionize table top role-playing… but multiple intelligent species are just summed up with singular paragraphs each… probably because they’re just quicklings, myconids and orcs with the serial numbers filed off.

Shortly afterwards he also bragged that it “looked like they had a success on their hands” because the game had, according to what he’d been told, already sold more copies than the original D&D White Box.⁷⁹ ⁸⁰ The game that was entirely experimental and being released to a market who didn’t have any conception of what a role-playing game might be unless they personally knew Gary Gygax or Dave Arnesson. Regular comparisons to that product would become a theme.

A few days later, he would announce the “…first copy arrives at the studio on Monday!” There was, of course, no clarification on what this would mean for the people patiently waiting for their orders…⁸¹There was also never really an update on what he thought of the first copy… though he did start speculating on whether people want alignment in the game.⁸² Then, lacking any new revelations… he started pitching the importance of masks and starting fights with prospective customers.⁸³

The website continued to state the game would ship in November, which was pretty much impossible given the requirements for manufacturing and shipping…⁸⁴ so naturally what Dinehart decided to do was announce the pre-sale would be ending in November. A promotion called “2FOR2” which actually meant “2 copies of GiantLands for $200” but you basically had to work that out by trial and error.⁸⁵ ⁸⁶ ⁸⁷

Nearly a week and one hilarious NFT drama later, Dinehart announced he had yet another project that was not the release of the game… it was a newsletter about the game, starting with inside information. Naturally, because Dinehart is so creative and independent thinker, breaking new ground… he named it after the obscure but historically very important The Strategic Preview from original TSR.⁸⁸ He promised regular columns, etc, but to date there have been four publications of it… two of which happened in November 2021.

Almost immediately afterwards Dinehart engaged in one of his weird routines where he claims credit for an award for work he didn’t participate in, on a product that he did some work on but wasn’t really in control of or even a defining voice of.⁸⁹ Then he tried to use name dropping to convince people his entry level job into video games, where they cared so little they let him write the description to reshape modern games…⁹⁰ later bragging he’d applied for many jobs and been rejected for rudimentary reasons. Very believable.⁹¹

Around this time the Wikipedia drama came to boiling point, and he also gained about 8,000 followers on Twitter… mysteriously.

A graph from Social Blade showing that in November 2021... SEDART4 gained 8,009 followers. Then immediately lost followers in January 2022.

finally, three weeks into November – there was some confirmation they were actually printing something.⁹² Finally though… on 25 November 2021… we got some actual info (but not on when the product was coming).

The Strategic Preview (Bootleg Edition)

The second entry is still available online on the web site, but not in it’s original form. The original release included a baffling array of mistakes ranging from malapropisms to writing 1,000 on one line and 100 on the next line. (Some of you may have already found mistakes in this blog post – but please do remember I am not pitching this as the product that changes the world of table top games forever… I’m actually quite confused anyone reads it).

A screenshot showing a sentence where on one line it quotes "1,000" experience points and then on the next line "1,00"

A screenshot showing, with highlight "In terms of Ability Izal has a good spread, with his Urgency being weakest and his Luck being *strangest*."

And yes, if you’re wondering, he did literally just go through a character sheet he posted for all the world to see and explain the blatantly obvious aspects such as which stat in a cluster had the highest scores, etc. Context was provided for pretty much nothing, and the general impression was that players had very little participation in the creation of their own characters, and no new insight into the setting.

Not exactly inspiring coming from “The Narrative Designer”.

Also, rather upsetting to many people who actually cared about the history of D&D since the actual Strategic Preview is an important set of documents that give us insight into TSR Inc during it’s first major expansion period. Further cementing that Dinehart does not see this history as important insights into the culture, or interesting in its own right – but simply as a means to create the illusions of credibility and the illusion of future value.

It remains to be seen if the four issues of each is merely a coincidence, if Dinehart will retroactively take credit for it (despite having set up no alternative nearly a year after the last issue) or if he’ll eventually put something out as one of his many ill advised projects.

December – Merry (post)Christmas

One of the first things that Dinehart did, in the final month of the year… was announce that “due to popular demand” he was re-opening pre-orders… really. This is a thing he did.⁹³

Then he started promoting his book, claiming that Game Design was a subset of Narrative Design… which would mean (according to him) he invented the concept that games… a thing that has existed for thousands of years… were built on.⁹⁴

So having insulted people who pre-ordered at the last minute, and people who work in games, he decided to get ultra spicy and insult his old business partners by claiming he was going going to sell the urls with their brand names TSR.games & TSC-Con.com (both still owned by Dinehart at the time of writing).⁹⁵

This attempt, however, did not come across as terribly sincere give than he ignored all contact from people asking him what price, insisting that all the details were on the GoDaddy web site – which actually just tells you that for the small price of $100.00 US they will notify the owner of your intention to buy.⁹⁶

Hilariously he then also started to come apart at the seams a bit, announcing that the new sale was going to close in six hours,⁹⁷ then a reminder at one hour…⁹⁸ followed by a justification that the time was entirely at his convenience regarding spreadsheets etc.⁹⁹ Then later clarified he wouldn’t cut off orders, just who’d get their orders from the initial sending.¹⁰⁰

He then also mused the next day that one day, he’d get a real team of professionals and top talent…¹⁰¹ That thing which GiantLands was supposed to be.

Then he mostly went quite for a bit aside from a weird announcement about how the world has grown tired of “epics” and so GiantLands… a game he promoted explicitly as an epic apocalyptic arc but would be “human stories” about “when we have no choice but to find a different way to live” (spoiler: everyone in GiantLands has magic powers, and there are no real survival skill or lifestyle rules).¹⁰² He then announced it as an apocalyptic epic for the purposes of linking it to a real world environmental protection movement.¹⁰³ (He continues to advertise it as an apocalypse epic product at least as recently as 29 April 2023).¹⁰⁴

Two weeks before Christmas, he decided to do an “unboxing” video which mostly showcased that he didn’t take good care of his own hair and was more interested in talking about the contents of the box rather than showing anything to anyone.¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ A point of note here, he received two test copies for examination, this is him unboxing one. He later shared an intense close up video of one of the completed character sheets… it a very unhelpful manner.¹⁰⁷

A screencap of a tweet by Stephen E. Dinehart IV (verified) @SEDart4
"Tried to make an unboxing for @GiantLands"
below is a photo of Dinehart in a kitchen with a box, and him looking into the box rather than showing the content - his hair is messily spread across his shoulders.

Another tweet by Dinehart, this one is just a zoom in shot of a character sheet for Atsila - mostly all that can be made out is "Atsila grew up oustide Cahokia in the wetlands of Kansas. her family hunters by trade, she's life the warrior life since she was small. She is the top ranking member of her tribe. While she is generally luck and often fearless, she doesn't trust flying creations and prefers to keep her feet on the Earth."

Then later he decided to make some weird self congratulatory statements about his own along with a single photo of the inside of the books… which were… very unimpressive.¹⁰⁸

A photo of the box with two of the booklets in the background, and one open to show the contents of the monster folio type book. Text seems very cramped, and the priority seems to have been to get at least one illustration per creature in the book.

A week before Christmas he decided to have another of his meltdowns over the real environmental consequences of his beloved NFTs by trying to put the blame on Disney… glossing over that the main sources of Disney’s carbon includes… theme parks.¹⁰⁹

Then finally, less than a week from Christmas… an update on the actual product! It was going to include sharpened golf pencils! ¹¹⁰ Oh and also he would absolutely not be following through with the pledges of people who bought PDFs via the Kickstarter because that was the Pandora’s Box.¹¹¹

The next day two copies had arrived in Chicago… mysteriously in the hands of Wonderfilled Inc’s legal counsel.¹¹² Almost like Dinehart just made him post with the test print boxes. Naturally in response to this, people started asking why their copy hadn’t arrived… so were told they’d have to email in and he’d look into getting them a tracking number.¹¹³

Finally, on the cusp of Christmas… someone unrelated to Wonderfilled Inc received their copy, in Los Angeles… ie a stone’s throw from where the printer who was mailing them out is based.¹¹⁴ So, naturally at that time, they decided to clarify who was actually being mailed orders… on Christmas Eve (USA). Six months after the meltdown.¹¹⁵

On Christmas Day, it was declared to be Christmas Miracle that those who were within sufficient proximity of the printers had received copies¹¹⁶ – not an example of mismanagement and waiting until the absolute last second to finalize – which would surely not indicate major issues in the final product. (Spoiler: There are major issues in the final product).

Of course, that also meant that in the new year there would be opinions on the final product… and oh boy, there are opinions. I’ll get to those next time.

1
James M. Ward, 2 October 2021, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/james.m.ward.7/posts/pfbid035DPDVGNb76bSF7bnDzb3DMAjX5JBTeTpMi1oogABop2bQZZ1pZ6qXAGTGNxiiXUEl?comment_id=4335357853215823&reply_comment_id=4335363659881909&cft[0]=AZXobOYNBDuofMWcszevsM5lvfcERikty_bsRikPxpgAMKnTNlTi3WGFJOD-feRF30M3JpdZXjElKZkghZtX5L44dRtxWCdEELnJ9S2LadAsDf_uerQj6eBiVhGRLyQK7WVuaTQ4SBtMNLP8BFaMaXpP&tn=R]-R
2
My Twitter, 16 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1415946235509305348
3
David Flor, 29 September 2021 https://twitter.com/BrainClouds/status/1442852326168010758
4
My Twitter, 8 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1412872199174643714
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My Twitter, 8 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1413027319589924873
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My Twitter, 8 July 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1413074953193213963
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My Twitter, 10 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1413649532370391043
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My Twitter, 11 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1414100945714106374
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My Twitter, 11 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1414100950973706245
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My Twitter, 11 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1414100955423858695
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My Twitter, 11 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1414100982682636292
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My Twitter, 13 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1414690442059272214
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My Twitter, 13 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1414834627957592076
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My Twitter, 15 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1415466675189653506
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My Twitter, 18 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1416524940887482368
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My Twitter, 21 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1417601859561267204
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My Twitter, 22 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1417940901867913219
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My Twitter, 22 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1418007946760376323
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My Twitter, 22 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1418128079558385666
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My Twitter, 22 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1418128086059552768
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My Twitter, 23 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1418326757376098304
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My Twitter, 26 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1419555837933023234
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My Twitter, 22 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1417944906920730624
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My Twitter 30 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1420867976287326209
25
My Twitter 30 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1420867992519266310
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My Twitter, 1 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1421613796011896833
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My Twitter, 2 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1421980058885844992
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My Twitter, 3 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1422352000977575936
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My Twitter, 10 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1424820556545724425
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My Twitter, 12 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1425546054615719945
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My Twitter, 24 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1441150307803623427
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My Twitter, 26 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1417948801067749377
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My Twitter, 30 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1420867998739419137
34
My Twitter, 18 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1427724421347778563
35
Dungeons & Dragons Wouldn’t Be What It Is Today Without These Women by By Cecilia D’Anastasio, 26 June 2017, Kotaku https://kotaku.com/d-d-wouldn-t-be-what-it-is-today-without-these-women-1796426183
36
My Twitter, 31 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1421242514137260036
37
My Twitter, 1 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1421656535927726080
38
My Twitter, 24 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1430122934673186818
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My Twitter, 2 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1433173143166795781
40
My Twitter, 24 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1441150280930709511
41
My Twitter, 24 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1441150289889746953
42
My Twitter, 20 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1439834850895138821
43
My Twitter, 29 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1442969290638954496
44
Wonderfilled (@WFDgames) 11 January 2023 https://twitter.com/WFDgames/status/1612898664711884801
45
Royce Grayson (@RoyceGrayson) 20 October 2019 https://twitter.com/RoyceGrayson/status/1185631916801871872
46
Royce Grayson (@RoyceGrayson) 19 June 2021 https://twitter.com/RoyceGrayson/status/1403424796835262468
47
Luke Gygax, 2 January 2022 https://twitter.com/lukegygax/status/1477347230545707009
48
My Twitter, 9 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1436508149159129095
49
My Twitter, 13 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1437168010377056256
50
My Twitter, 15 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1437916078286405632
51
My Twitter, 17 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1438664007120928770
52
My Twitter, 19 September 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1439834846411452419
53
My Twitter, 23 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1462916052141043718
54
David Flor (@Brainclouds), 29 September 2021, Twitter, https://twitter.com/BrainClouds/status/1442852326168010758
55
My Twitter, 11 September 2022, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1568775367405731840
56
My Twitter, 20 February 2022, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1495317072301428739
57
My Twitter, 19 February 2022, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1494779351711498240
58
David Flor, 30 September 2021, https://twitter.com/BrainClouds/status/1443235052721213450
59
My Twitter, 2 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1444085474851581952
60
My Twitter, 1 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1443708988038672431
61
My Twitter, 2 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1444161101571129344
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My Twitter, 3 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1444417414993571840
63
My Twitter, 3 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1444380022517616640
64
My Twitter, 3 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1444384060114026498
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My Twitter, 13 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1447998598218588160
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My Twitter, 17 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1449658915453501446
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My Twitter, 22 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1451382428174409729
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My Twitter, 22 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1451400515787452421
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My Twitter, 23 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1451664102506446851
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My Twitter, 23 October 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1451671271062732803
71
My Twitter, 30 October 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1454196013736988672
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My Twitter, 9 July 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1413407023958401026
73
Specimen for “GL GiantLands”, 3 June 2020, https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn88590483&docId=SPE20200603193330#docIndex=8&page=1
74
My Twitter, 2 November 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1455258191286071297
75
My Twitter, 3 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1455737430775005187
76
My Twitter, 4 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1456197991325306883
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My Twitter, 4 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1456057428403834883
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My Twitter, 5 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1456541382114377729
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My Twitter, 5 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1456413845681958912
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My Twitter, 6 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1456769778920480769
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My Twitter, 7 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1457087271585259520
82
My Twitter, 8 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1457448616641974272
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My Twitter, 11 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1458638363175518215
84
My Twitter, 11 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1458717319681634304
85
My Twitter, 12 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1458868749696520192
86
My Twitter, 12 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1458868755287592977
87
My Twitter, 12 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1458868761730043939
88
My Twitter, 16 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1458868761730043939
89
My Twitter, 18 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1461198033383690240
90
My Twitter, 19 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1461420897730904065
91
My Twitter, 21 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1462296770923274247
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My Twitter, 23 November 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1462919674228723713
93
My Twitter, 3 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466487550436990976
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My Twitter, 3 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466491044455862272
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My Twitter, 3 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466503690768977923
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My Twitter, 4 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466893692950568966
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My Twitter, 4 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466898259012567042
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My Twitter, 4 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466912438683504641
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My Twitter, 4 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466921700163940354
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My Twitter, 4 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1466924472221323266
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My Twitter, 5 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1467257688249700355
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My Twitter, 9 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1468717056933515264
103
My Twitter, 9 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1468723679353737216
104
Wonderfilled (verified), @WFDgames, 29 April 2023 https://twitter.com/WFDgames/status/1652054662860746752
105
My Twitter, 11 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1469444555921498113
106
My Twitter, 11 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1469444786465619968
107
My Twitter, 11 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1469445925852483585
108
My Twitter, 12 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1469798376560422913
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My Twitter, 19 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1472318935315931138
110
My Twitter, 20 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1472694272541569025
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My Twitter, 20 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1473230997973991425
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My Twitter, 21 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1473229628755963904
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My Twitter, 22 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1473422167551270916
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My Twitter, 24 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1474221705514020869
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My Twitter, 25 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1474505841453584384
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My Twitter, 26 December 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1474986609456017408

GiantLands – The road to finishing a “finished” RPG

Bad Decision Theatre

Pray for Penny Williams

The female talent (ie the editors)

Dinehart and the Great Wikipedia Collapse

Jeff Dee is banned but still exploited

Last chance for the hype train!

Actually making a game

November

The Strategic Preview (Bootleg Edition)

December – Merry (post)Christmas

Related

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Bad Decision Theatre

Pray for Penny Williams

The female talent (ie the editors)

Dinehart and the Great Wikipedia Collapse

Jeff Dee is banned but still exploited

Last chance for the hype train!

Actually making a game

November

The Strategic Preview (Bootleg Edition)

December – Merry (post)Christmas

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Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply