Role-playing – A gentleman with opinions

Gnolls, Hyenas and “Matriarchy”

I’ve been catchup on my Slovenly Trulls episodes, now that I once again have time to listen to slay feminists Dungeons & Dragons lore podcasts. Recently I listened to Gnoll & Beholder¹ and was entertained by Shardae and Lyssa puzzling over the oddity that gnolls are, in all other lore, misogynistic patriarchal assholes… but in Monster Manual IV (2006)² and Dragon Magazine #367 (2008),³ it seems to claim it’s a matriarchy, and specifically explains that the female gnolls are indistinguishable form the males?

What happened around 2006 – 2008 that inspired this fascination with the ideas of gnolls being a reverse patriarchy with reverse dimorphism… that seemed unsourced and faded away?

Or to put it another way, why we all briefly agree that female gnolls had massive alpha male big dick energy? What was the “magic” element?

Allow me to offer my not so humble theory as a ~~wise~~ old man who was active in a bunch of online communities at the time.

1
Shardae & Lyssa Episode #53 “Gnoll & Beholder” (1 August 2025) The Slovenly Trulls
2
“Monster Manual IV” (July 2006, Wizards of the Coast, Seattle WA), at 67-71
3
Keith Baker “Playing Gnolls” in Dragon Magazine #368 Editor-in-Chief: (September 2008, Wizards of the Coast, Seattle WA), at 47-54

GiantsLands: The 3rd Age (2026)

The "Somehow Palpatine returned" screenshot from Rise of Skywalker, but with the GiantLands word art over Palpatine.

Having failed to take the world by storm with GiantLands: The 5th Age (5th Age),¹The Broken Road,² or Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword: Book One³ — Stephen Erin Dinehart IV (Dinehart) has released yet another product he attributes development of to dead men with most prestigious names than his.

So, what is GiantLands: The 3rd Age (3rd Age)?⁴ How does it stand up on the world of table top role-playing games?(TTRPGs)

Essentially its a stripped down version of 5th Age which seems to be set during an ice age. No more alien races, robot people, energy weapons* or familiar geography.

Technology is pre-historic but many of the other elements remains – indicating that the 4th Age (ie the world we live in) is an aberration where nobody gets magic powers or 3 bonus lives. Kind of depressing to think about.

The book stresses that this is is not a prequel, but a foundation. So, with that in mind, let’s look into what the foundation is. The game does use its own terminology, so instead of Game Master we have a Bone Keeper (BK) – that term is never explained, player characters are Spirits and non-player characters are… well they’re non-player characters (NPCs).

Inside the book it claims it was Printed in California, and in the back of mine Amazon says it was Made in Sydney, Australia. This basically sets the tone for the entire thing perfectly. Also, given he recently accused me of a “ongoing defamation” in (of course) a now-deleted-Facebook comment I sent him a right of reply over what I consider the most serious issues raised in this and other posts.

To date, he has not responded.

1
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV & James M. Ward GiantLands: The 5th Age (2021, Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI) [5th Age]
2
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV & James M. Ward The Broken Road (2025, Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI via Amazon Print-On Demand)
3
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV & James M. Ward Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword: Book One (2025, Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI via Amazon Print-On Demand)
4
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV & James M. Ward GiantLands: The 3rd Age (2026, Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI via Amazon Print-On Demand) [3rd Age]

Orcz: Those Pesky Orcz (2024)

So Justin LaNasa (LaNasa) has released Orcz: Those Pesky Orcz. also titled as Those Pesky Orcs, full title: Those Pesky Orcs: A Game About Vile, Corrupt, Aberrant Creatures By Justin LaNasa¹ (Those Pesky Orcz) and… it’s not very good. In fact, in the time that has passed since its release and my writing this, it has been confirmed it is not just bad, but it is a wrong thing that should not exist.

The evidence of this is that on 19 June 2024, the official Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) channel on YouTube released a 41+ minute video² that briefly features a depiction of orcs as like, a happy people with mixed personalities, and roles, and the old school gamers community collectively shat themselves in disbelief.³

A screenshot of Wonderfilled reposting an X post by "Drunkards and Dragons" (@The_DrunkDragon) 21 June
"It's time to start the trend #DnDIsDead after seeing the new players handbook artwork for Orcs." — Yes, Stephen Erin Dinehart IV also tried to jump on this bandwagon.

There was a torrent of raging Twitter posts (X was called Twitter back then), YouTube videos and all the rest about how this could not be – if orcs were not cartoonishly and ontologically evil, it was not D&D.

But literally nobody pointed to Those Pesky Orcs as an alternative, as a product that supplied a better and more correct explanation. That’s how bad it is.

Now it was taken off the market but it seems that it’s now in this weird situation where 3rd party retailers will sell and also if I try to buy it through Amazon Australia they will try to offer me a Print On Demand copy from the USA.

The product claims to be family-friendly, but I feel the need to provide content warnings for the following things that I personally would not expect in a regular tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG): piss-play (consensual and non-consensual), sexual assault, ritual murder, rape, slavery, and human trafficking.

Oh yeah. Welcome to the final release of the nuTSR saga.

1
Justin LaNasa Orcz: Those Pesky Orcz. A Game About Vile, Corrupt, Aberrant Creatures (Adamantite Games, Wilmington NC, 2024) [“Those Pesky Orcz“]
2
“New 2024 Player’s Handbook Reveal | D&D” (19 June 2024) D&D Beyond YouTube <www.youtube.com>
3
Brian Anderson (21 June 2024) Drunkards and Dragons (@The_DrunkDragon) X née Twitter <currently suspended for a rules violation>

LaNasa v Wincen (it me!)

That’s right, I’m part of this story now.

This one technically started after the on case against Tenkar,¹ but was resolved quicker due to the appeal,² so I’m covering it first. We’re on the home stretch, I promise you.

Back on 10 March 2023, I was contacted over Facebook, then phone, by NetSafe to let me know that Justin LaNasa (LaNasa) had lodged a complaint about me and they were following process as they were required to do.

On 30 January 2024, LaNasa filed his follow up with Netsafe, and it was immediately put before Judge P R Rzepecky made a decision on the papers to take no immediate action but to refer the matter to a NetSafe technician (as LaNasa indicated it might involve an order to a hosting service), and then proceed with a case management conference and a half-day hearing.

On 12 April 2024 my wife told me there was someone was here to see me, quite confused why someone wearing a stab proof vest with a notice that it was recording on bodycam was there to deliver a giant parcel of documents to me.

I accepted service from a confused bailiff, who was grateful that I understood what it was about. She had been tasked with serving me over 110 pages, and was mostly screenshots without context, with the front cover being written in Lower LaNasian and Netsafe’s summary buried in the documentation.

They say that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client, so with God as my witness I immediately made a declaration.

Now, I wasn’t a lawyer that the time I received this – but I was a law student so I treated this as a kind of unofficial extra credit job. So, in the spirit of making this a robust analysis, as would be expected of a law student, I’ll be using the CLEO method.

So, let’s talk about that time I got served by the courts over some blog posts and bunch of comments on Facebook (many of which I didn’t even make).

1
Lanasa v. Stiene, 1:22-cv-05686, (E.D.N.Y)
2
Lanasa v. Stiene, 24-1325, (2d Cir.)

nuTSR declares BANKRUPTCY!

So, at this point in the saga, the situation was:

Justin LaNasa (LaNasa) had taken out multiple lapsed trademarks, and was claiming his new company TSR LLC was the divine heir to them, and was now having to throw money into a bottomless pit due to having taken Wizards of the Coast to court over it.¹

This was, not sustainable given that is its products were generally bad and it’s convention failed to generate any buzz for obvious reasons. 16 months in, Justin had clearly noticed it wasn’t going great – hence the numerous meltdowns.²

So naturally, in May of 2023, he decided TSR LLC should just go bankrupt, and it was very funny. Yes, normally bankruptcies are tragic and heart breaking but this one was very funny. Bankruptcy was filed for on 8 June 2023.³

The first area of hilarity was Stephen Erin Dinehart IV, (Dinehart) of GiantLands infamy, immediately jumped into try to blame Wizards of the Coast for nuTSR putting themselves into bankruptcy.⁴

It should be noted that the courts never had to decide who owned TSR, but the answer is Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary (not a Doing Business As) of Hasbro.

LaNasa himself chose to amplify this message, but decided to make no effort in doing so – leaving it open to speculation if he’d agreed with Dinehart – a man who he’d previous branded a traitor and put on his haters list – should basically resume his old job as nuTSR’s public relations.

A screenshot of Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum re-sharing the post by Wonderfilled.

TSR original Tim Kask had a much less sympathetic response to it.⁵

A text on image post by Tim Kask, 16 June 2023, "NuTSR bankrupt? Oh my, waht is the world coming to? Ah, it's senses. Big surprise when you are headed by a slimeball."

Rest in peace Tim, you were rough around the edges but you were an entertaining man of integrity right until the very end.

1
TSR LLC v. Wizards of the Coast LLC, 2:21-cv-01705, (W.D. Wash.)
2
Kim Wincen “Dungeon Crawl, TSR Cons & Meltdowns” (9 January 2026) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com>
3
TSR, LLC, 23-01577, (Bankr. E.D.N.C.)
4
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV (8 June 2023) Wonderfilled Facebook <now deleted>
5
Tim Kask (Kaskoid) (16 June 2023) Facebook <www.facebook.com/tim.kask.9>

Dungeon Crawl, TSR Cons & Meltdowns

It’s tricky to talk about the other antics that nuTSR got up to directly afterwards, because I don’t have access to the primary sources. I didn’t get access to a copy of Dungeon Crawl, I didn’t got to TSR Con (I’ve never even been to Wisconsin).

But, they were products of TSR LLC and well, they’re more interesting to talk about that the weird rebinds of classic books that they had made,

A collection of 5 generic hardback rebinds of 1st Edition D&D books - the are gold on black, looking very generic with the only flare being the inclusion of the TSR Game Wizards trademark.

These were not a terrible idea but:

Featured the infringing trademark (as well as typos); and
Only available by “making a pilgrimage” to the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum (and hoping that it happened to be open on that day); and
Were massively overvalued by the shop who wanted $650 US a piece for them¹

Now, just to be clear – it is perfectly legal to rebind old books and sell them in the USA, it’s called the First Sale Doctrine. Ordinarily, including the trademark of the original publisher would also be mostly viable. It is not, however a good idea to do this while also trying to pass yourself off as the owner of said trademark, and the divine heir to all its good will.

To the best of my knowledge they never sold a single one of these.

1
Justin LaNasa as Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum (29 March 2022) Facebook <www.facebook.com/RPGANONYMOUS> 📸

The Broken Road (2025)

Released at the same time as Wonderfilled Presents: GiantLands: Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword: Part One, (Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning)¹ this is the long awaited introductory module for GiantLands² and allegedly the final work of James M. Ward. (Jim or Jim Ward)

I say allegedly because from my observations it seems Jim stopped working on it in 2022 at latest, the product I read didn’t really mesh with the way it was described by Jim (videos now deleted) or the session he did on a video call, supposedly covering the opening of the module.

Much like Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning it seems the primary authors are Stephen Erin Dinehart IV,(Dinehart) and a collection of video cards running a Large Language Model. Almost none of it is connectable to Jim’s video call playthrough, and that which is has been re-written to become unrecognizable for those familiar with Jim’s work.

The product seems to be an attempt to do a soft re-launch of GiantLands, but to make it focused around the co-released Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning with no real connection to the events, characters or ideas in that novel. There are surface level references, but nothing about the core plot of aliens invading, destroying sacred places to steal the Ley energy or even Gaea and her champions.

In fact, it creates a weird alternative version where characters like Dinehart’s own self-insert can only be understood as having just idly sat by and watched it all happen from their ivory tower, and undermines the significance of the Jim Ward insert.

This review is from the hardback copy of GiantLands: The Broken Road (The Broken Road)³ I ordered on 30 November 2025. It is, hopefully, the final part of the GiantLands Saga.

1
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV “Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword: Part One” (Wonderfilled Inc via Amazon Print-On-Demand, Lake Geneva WI, 2025)
2
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV & James M. Ward “GiantLands” (Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 2021)
3
James M. Ward & Stephen Erin Dinehard IV “GiantLands: The Broken Road” (Wonderfilled Games via Amazon Print-On-Demand, Lake Geneva WI, 2025)

I read: Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword

On or about 29 November 2025, the long overdue The Broken Road adventure for GiantLands was announced on X née Twitter,¹ making up 50% of the current front facing posts and having the singular like on the posts. Also on Facebook.

A screenshot of the GiantLands feed on X, aka Twitter: 19 November "Two new epics Launch today!
THE BROKEN ROAD (adventure)
TUSKALOOSA'S RECKONING (novel)
Old school RPG x Ancient pyramids x crashed starships x Thunderbirds x alien tech
Avaiable now (links)
#GiantLands #IndigenousFuturism #TTRPG"
(Beneath it is a very busy and difficult to parse AI generated image featuring Aztec Pyramids,
11 September: "Race is a myth."

It was accompanied with an announcement of a book, Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning, full title: Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword : Book One… or I suppose:²

Wonderfilled Presents Tuskaloosa's Reckoning The Sun Sword: Book One GIANTLANDS By James E. Ward & Stephen E. Dinehart A GiantLands (registered) Novel — Nothing says close friend and collaboration by changing Jim’s middle initial to match Dinehart’s… or something. Also, mandatory “graphic design is my passion” joke.

Now, predictably after years of Dinehart bragging that his products would never be digitized, and would only be sold via master craftspeople using American products he picks himself etc… it seems they are just being sold via Amazon print-on-demand and the novel is available on Kindle. So, while I wait for The Broken Road to be delivered, I figured I’d read the book.

At the time I purchased it, it has 1 review giving it 5 stars.

Customer Review
(five stars) Classic Pulp Goodness
Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2025
Format: Paperback (Verified Purchase)
A compelling entry into the Giantlands universe. Classic really.

This reviewer gave the same rating but more effort into explaining Those Pesky Goblinz, so I’m not convinced they’re entirely unbiased.

I however, am, at this stage—the foremost GiantLands scholar alive. So, let’s get into what is is, and is it worse than the AI slop nuTSR put out. Spoilers ahead.

1
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV as “GiantLands” (29 November 2025, X née Twitter) <x.com/GiantLands/>
2
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword (15 November, Wonderfilled Inc, Amazon Print on Demand) (Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning)

ORC 2-ish years later

It’s been 2-ish years since Paizo “finished”¹ their Open RPG Creative License (ORC)² (more on that in a bit) so it seems like a good enough time to see how the new license is coming along, what sort of momentum has it built, what was the overall outcome. Did it revolutionize tabletop role-playing games (“TTRPGS”)? And what was the overall significance and involvement of Azora Law?³

Tell me you want to be the premier law firm for TTRPGs without telling me you want to be the premier law firm for TTRPGs.

Azora Law is, according to a publication in the Washington State Bar News – June 2021, it is “one of Seattle’s oldest virtual law firms”.⁴ This seems to be the singular instance of it claiming to be a virtual law firm, which is an odd claim since if they’re all in Seattle and they have a registered office address… that means they just let staff work from home if they want? Pretty sure that was the standard in mid 2021.

Unless they also had a presence in the Metaverse at some stage.

Anyway, I thought ORC sucked… but I’ve been known to be wrong.⁵

My name is Kim. I am not a lawyer, certainly not a US lawyer specializing in copyright and most importantly I am not your lawyer. I am a law graduate in New Zealand who has a passion for role-playing games, and you should not consider anything I post to be legal advice (or take legal advice from blogs or social media posts in general). Also please, understand – absolutely nothing you say to me falls under lawyer-client privilege – especially if you do it in the comments.

Okay, now that’s done, let’s look at this.

1
“ORC License: The Final Version is Here!” (29 June 2023) Paizo <paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sico>
2
“Open RPG Creative License” Paizo <paizo.com/orclicense>
3
Azora Law <azoralaw.com/>
4
Brian Lewis “Three Big Developments in Soft IP Law” Washington State Bar News (Washington US, June 2021) at 30
5
Kim Wincen “The ORC has landed. It kinda sucks” (2 June 2023) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com/2023/07/02/the-orc-has-landed-it-kinda-sucks/>

What is GiantLands? Is it… a theme park? A bimonthly snack box, or phat beats?

So, after GiantLands 1st Edition¹ (also known as “GiantLands, the only edition”) was released, it only had 1,000 units (again, 1,000% of the amount promised in the Kickstarter).

What next for this exclusive limited edition?

As a note, this has gotten trickier to report on as in June 2025, Dinehart had another meltdown – this time provoking the far-right audience he’d cultivated and ended up nuking most of his public facing posts and accounts. So I’ll have to be relying on screenshots, notes and memory from here on.

Is GiantLands: A Theme Park?

Well the first thing was a paid press release “article” about how Wonderfilled intended to make a nightmare of a theme park in Wisconsin.²

A drafts diagram of an Inca/Mayan/Aztech "theme park" which mostly seems to consister of huge, inexplicable sculptures and buildings - with farms and shrubbery, a river on one side and an aquaduct. Also, agraian animals wandering about. — “A project of remarkable vision” according to the project proposer.

Wisconsin receives an average of 40+ inches of snow per year, with higher snowfalls in particular areas – not exactly a place that’d be create for pseudo-Mayan/Aztec/Inca fusion architecture that was designed for the tropics.

But, by far the weirdest thing about this is its not clear what the vision is. This doesn’t seem to be a specific location, so the overall layout etc isn’t really clear if its a proposed layout, or a sort of conceptual depiction. There’s also no way to know what the attractions are supposed to be. Is the arena for shows or do you go to fight?

Largely the reason that’s not clear is there’s no real thought beyond it other than he assumes that native american themed Evermore would be a license to print money for no particular reason. Evermore closed it’s doors permanently in April 2024, and this seems to have gone unnoticed by Dinehart.³

1
James M. Ward & Stephen E. Dinehart GiantLands 1st Edition (Wonderfilled Inc, Wisconsin USA, December 2021)
2
Stephen E. Dinehart “GiantLands Theme Park Will be a Game Park Built on a Groundbreaking Vision” (1 January 2022) PressRelease <https://www.pr.com/press-release/852171> Archive: <https://web.archive.org/web/20220101122718/https://www.pr.com/press-release/852171>
3
Darienne DeBrule “No fantasy: Evermore Park closes its gates for good” (10 April 2024) FOX News Utah <https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/no-fantasy-evermore-park-closes-its-gates-for-good>