Prestige Classes, Power Creep and DM Autonomy

So recently the Slovenly Trulls (who I love) did an episode where they tried to puzzle out the purpose of and general role of prestige classes in 3E/3.5E, and why they might have some caveats like “only if your DM approves” and “must stay in x region”.¹

As an old white man who spent too much of his youth reading shit for nerds, I naturally had to rush in and write way too many words. But hey, they like sources and explanations… I hope.

1
Lyssa & Shardae Episode 36: Rashemen Gynarchy & Other False Promises (Slovenly Trulls, Podcast, 2 March 2024)

LaNasa v. Tenkar – Dismissed with Prejudice

Throughout out the TSR Saga, there have been many reporting on it – doing varying avenues and degree of investigating. One of those was the proprietor of the Tenkar’s Tavern web presence… who we’ll refer to as Tenkar (who is an old D&D character of his, of course).

Background

Tenkar is a long time player of D&D who has a general interest in role-playing games, which he primarily expresses through his website, Tenkar’s Tavern and the connected YouTube Channel. He is also a former Internal Affairs officer with the New York Police Department and a big advocate for OSR. He also (like everyone) injects his politics and his personal opinions in there, but for the most part here’s what you need to know:

Tenkar did a lot of videos covering the various mistruths and questionable claims of the nuTSR crowd, sometimes with accompanying blog posts writing things up and linking to relevant information.
Tenkar has a lot of opinions on old school games styles, often making videos to discuss the idea of playing now vs then, talking about the principles of OSRIC, etc.
Tenkar also made a consistent effort over the years to expose people trying to grift or otherwise exploit the nostalgia for old school gaming. Ken Whitman, for example, has featured frequently and generally in an unflattering manner since at least as far back as October 2014.¹
Tenkar is wary of the pitfalls of commentary, and takes steps to prepare his receipts and evidence in advance – and to always show the material he’s using to substantiate his opinions.
Tenkar’s long involvement with the hobby, conventions and the history of the hobby have made him quite well networked within the niche hobby.

Naturally this did not bode well for Justin LaNasa, the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum or the nuTSR crowd in general.

1
Tenkar A WTF are They Thinking!?! Kickstarter – Castles & Crusades: Blacktooth Ridge (T.V. Pilot) (3 October 2014) <www.tenkarstavern.com>

Giancola v. WotC

So, the Magic the Gathering¹ drama circles have ignited by a public statement² issued by legendary fantasy artist Donato Giancola, calling out Wizards of the Coast³ (“WotC”) over the work of their contracted artist,⁴ At the time of writing it has 1.7 k “likes” and 481 shares.

For reasons that are unclear to me… there seems to be a trend to claim a lawsuit is in the works and that Wizards of the Coast will lose because… some hands look like other hands. So, briefly let’s look at the causes of action that people think are available… and how that’ll go.

At this time, I can’t find any evidence of an actual lawsuit. Anyway, my name is Kim, I’m a law student in New Zealand – I’m not a lawyer, certainly not a US Copyright lawyer and most importantly I am not your lawyer. None of this is legal advice and please, do not take legal advice off blogs or assume you have a confidence relationship like lawyer-client with the a blogger.

1
Wikipedia Magic the Gathering <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering>
2
Donato Giancola, 26 March 2024, Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/donato.giancola.7/posts/pfbid02sseDdjseRuve7SBXfWAcdKB2vVmjd5fkjZGQv4idrJVteKgeUHJqvGHaDW19y6gZl>
3
Wikipedia Wizards of the Coast <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_of_the_Coast>
4
Fay Dalton. Personal web site of Fay Dalton <https://www.faydalton.com/about>

Giantlands (2021)

Edit: Apologies to those who struggled through the initial release, and thank you to those who pointed out the many issues in it, will continue to try to tighten them up and cut back on my ellipses addiction.

Touted by Stephen Erin Dinehart IV as his role-playing game based on his unique vision of the world, but also written entirely by James M Ward (“Jim”)¹ as a kind of Native American themed, spiritual successor to Gamma World² – the original release of GiantLands was also modelled off the White Box³ release of Dungeons & Dragons.⁴

Dinehart regularly claims (incorrectly) to be the inventor of Narrative Design and a great master in game design space, but routinely avoids taking responsibility for not working to smooth out any issues in his game.

If you’ve found this via my write up of the GiantLands Saga, or anything connected to that – then you’re most likely already aware that the game is bad – but curious as to all the ways it is and if there’s tiny gems of goodness among the rotting debris. Also, since the game comes in three booklets I’ll be citing them separately.

Jim passed away on 18 March 2024,⁵ with his final work widely ignored and panned, but apparently still optimistic that it could result in a theme park one day.

The Premise

The basis for the setting is that the upon re-awakening or reaching her breaking point, the spirit of the world as we know it ends the world as we know it – killing everyone as punishment for our misdeeds toward nature and creating a fresh start known as “The Great Reset”. It encourages the Spirit Keeper (who runs the game) to imagine how their world might look after such an event, but also with underground bunkers and alien spacecraft.⁶

This results in the return of giants, not simply big humanoids but beings of immense supernatural power. As well as a new kind of human… and also robots, aliens, star ports… and all kinds of wild nonsense that never really gets explained. It’s also weirdly inconsistent – Sapiens are introduced to the players a new type of humanoid (capable of living 200 years)⁷ but in the Keepers Guide says they were created in the 1st Age “to rival the Giants” and appear to have been present as “humans” in every age since.⁸

1
Wikipedia James M Ward <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Ward>
2
James M Ward & Gary Jaquet Gamma World (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1978)
3
Wikipedia Dungeons & Dragons (1974) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(1974)>
4
Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson Dungeons & Dragons (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1974)
5
Haase-Lockwood & Associates Funeral Homes Obituary for James “Jim” Michael Ward III <https://www.haaselockwoodfhs.com/obituary/JamesJim-WardIII>
6
James M Ward & Stephen E Dinehart GiantLands: Keepers Guide (Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 2021) at 4
7
James M Ward & Stephen E Dinehart GiantLands: Spirits Guide (Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 2021)
8
Keepers Guide, at n 6, at 16 – 17

GiantLands – The Release

So Wonderfilled Inc’s 2022 effectively started with the release of their flagship game, GiantLands, a time of celebration and one that sets the standard for any new game publisher.

It didn’t go very well.

Issues seemed to include that overseas and Kickstarter orders go low priority, that there was a some bad weather which jeopardized delivery windows for the first rounds and… well, the reception was not great.

Also yeah… do not expect any consistency in capitalization of Giantlands vs GiantLands from Wonderfilled… the branding experts. It drives me nuts too… but this is just how they are.

Gina Carano’s LOLsuit

In the interests of personal responsibility, I feel I need to open with a clarification that when a billionaire (Elon Musk) funds a washed up celebrity (Gina Carano) to sue a multi-billion dollar mega-corporation (Disney) with a baseless case – it’s a LOLsuit and should be viewed as a spectacle.

When rich assholes sue regular people with baseless defamation suits, it’s class terrorism and needs to be stomped out.

Also I’m not a lawyer, more importantly I’m not your lawyer so this is not personalized legal advice to anyone (especially not Gina Carano) and I strongly urge you to never take legal advice off a blog, or ever believe you have a lawyer-client relationship with a blogger. Also I’m doing this without Westlaw or Lexis so someone who is practicing can probably find some info I can’t.

Lucky Dip DM’ing

Gary Gygax was famous for his love of filling books with tables, specifically tables where you would roll a dice (or two) to find an outcome or a prompt.

This summary on Futurama was both brutal but indisputable.

Tables for random encounters, tables for treasure hoards of the recently slain monsters, tables for magic items in the treasure hoards and even tables for sex workers to spend the treasure on. Indeed, long before procedurally generated video games were a trend, Dungeons & Dragons was a game where you could leave huge parts of the story in the hands of the RNG gods through dice rolls.

Notably though, this is not how Gary DM’d. By all reports he rarely looked at the books, never limited himself to the rules and almost never rolled on a table himself – instead relying on preparation and improvisation. Some people will say he included the tables for lesser DMs, or to pad out the books, but realistically he probably figured it was a more engaging way to provide prompts and information than just a plain list.

Today tables for random outcomes continue to be a regular feature in role-playing games, expansions, modules and even comic books about those things. To many the outcomes are so sacrosanct that, even in the privacy of one’s own home and a single player story, bypassing them is a biblical sin.

They’re an inescapable part of the hobby, and many people spend no small amount of time making their own tables for their own campaigns. Now, that includes me, so I’m not about to tell you that they’re inherently bad – but rather that a classic mistake is to rely on them – up there with relying on “a rare roll must always have an extraordinary result”.

Both are symptoms of assigning too much authority to dice, usually out of insecurity about one’s ability to perform their role – so instead outsourcing it to an inanimate object or two.

Common and racial tongues in D&D

D&D has always had an odd approach to languages. While J. R. R. Tolkien can probably be blamed for the normalizing of racial languages in the fantasy setting, D&D never limited itself to that approach – taken as a whole, the classic D&D approach to language was…

…it was weird.

There were specifically nations, separate cultures with separate histories… but no languages associated with those – instead we had:

Racial Languages: Elf, Dwarf, Orcish, etc
Profession Languages: Druidic
Sub Languages: Thieves Cant was a form of coded language that required speaking a base language
Alignment Languages: Yeah, you could speak Lawful Good. The premise was that alignments were real cosmic forces, their were cults built around them, and hence their were cults who had their own languages to communicate in secret (which every adventurer knows one and only one).
Default language: Common, Trade Tongue… like there’s just a language made to be lingua franca, the Esperanto of these fantasy worlds… only it actually is wide spread.

I’m not going to touch on the Sub Languages or Alignment Tongues, but I did want to address what I consider the weirdest parts: Common tongue and racial tongues.

Between universal languages and cross compatible currencies – the distinctions between nations were usually alignment, and aesthetic. That kind of functioned for simply dungeon crawls, but didn’t lend itself well to world building or lore creation – because these don’t hold up to how language works in any shape or form – I mean, when was the last time you spoke “Human”?

These days there’s an effort to mix in cultural languages etc, but it always seems to fall back on depending on Common… the weirdest language. This is a real shame since it essentially locks the value of languages behind specialist scenarios, and eliminates opportunities like needing translators, confusion or ambiguity in translations, culture shock in language, etc.

TSR LLC vs Wizards of the Coast LLC – FIGHT!

During 2022 and 2023 there were numerous disasters engaged in by nuTSR, most of which are pending a final resolution – but the most spectacular and all reaching was the lawsuit of TSR LLC against Wizards of the Coast LLC. Many of these aspects were not easily understood by someone without a background in law or intellectual property.

Prelude

It can be safely assumed that once the intention to use the old TSR Inc trademarks became public, Wizards of the Coast would have instructed legal counsel to write polite, but firm, letters to TSR LLC advising them that they did not have the right to do so. The exact details provided etc are not available to the public, but it is an all but mandatory courtesy in these situations.

This seems to have worked to a certain degree, as the following trademarks were surrendered/abandoned without a fight:

Diagonal TSR (Surrendered commenced 7 September 2021)
The TSR Wizard (Surrendered commenced 7 September 2021)
TSR Seal (Abandoned 28 July 2021)

But well… for the rest…. they decided to fight…

So you want to license…

Okay, so Open RPG Creative (ORC) is out and a lot of people want to know whether they should use it or another license… and sadly ORC doesn’t really provide a lot of guidance one how to do that – its jargon laden text reads like something written by a copyright lawyer for copyright lawyers… hang on…

…I am being told Brian Lewis of Azora Law, lead on the ORC project, is a copyright lawyer who works in a firm of copyright lawyers.

Well that explains a lot.

So, here’s your quick and dirty primer to understanding licenses and which is right for you.

In case you don’t know me, my background is I’m a law student in New Zealand. I’m a not a lawyer, I’m definitely not your lawyer and what follows is not personalized legal advice and doesn’t form and sort of client-lawyer privilege. Please do not rely on blog posts for your legal advice.

Qualifying for copyright, or “does it even?”

Thanks to a generation of grifters trying to sell you fake money to buy ugly images of apes, there is a lot of confusion about what constitutes intellectual property. Most recently, that’s been compounded by grifters trying to sell subscriptions to AI programs that make drawings of big titty anime girls no matter the prompt.

It’s made even more confusing in that lots of people talk about US laws like they’re universal (looking at you ORC), when in fact they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

For that reason the following primer is deliberately vague and doesn’t cite any particular tests, because the tests and the standards used will be determined by the jurisdictions involved.

Pages: 1234

Author: wincenworks