Role-playing – Page 4 – A gentleman with opinions

Primordial Ooze

Dinehart has shifted multiple times on whether GiantLands was his own Gamma World homebrew that he GM’d as a kid or was the premise for an isometric strategy game (like X-Com) he tinkered with during film school.¹ Regardless of the true genesis of it, there are a number of factors that remain consistent about it:

It is his, property of Stephen Erin Dinehart IV, and NOBODY ELSE. He will in fact, regularly refer to as “my GiantLands” in posts on his personal Twitter even though there is no other relevant GiantLands product it could be compared to.

It is inspired by Gamma World. A setting very much a product of its time.²

It has been reworked in his imagination many, many times – frequently he will state that his original vision was in the “3rd Age” but also kind of indicate that it doesn’t matter because the “5th Age” takes place after a cataclysm that resets everything anyway.

The cataclysm was caused by the mother spirit of the Earth in revenge for the abuse she has endured at the hands of humanity – thus killed all of humanity (they grow back again… somehow).³

There are no “Classes”, only “Professions” (which operate as classes).

There are no “Races” because Stephen doesn’t believe in race, and regularly makes bizarre statements about this – instead their are Species and Sub-Species (which is probably how one would more accurately describe “races” in the vast majority of RPGs).⁴

Gender expression is “open”. (Confused? Yeah it’s weird, and covered later on.)⁵

It leans into Native American mythology rather than European, but not any specific group.

For those with experience dealing with creative projects, you can probably already sense one of the core problems – this is Dinehart’s “one big idea” that he will not be convinced is not supremely genius, and has overworked and redeveloped it so many times that he cannot keep it straight in his own head – let alone spec it out for a team to work on.

In June 2021, a Twitter account @tsr_games (archive) was launched to promote TSR LLC, a company registered in Wisconsin in September 2020 for the express purpose of running a tribute to the original Dungeon Hobby Shop at the original address, and making games with the help of old school gaming personalities like Ernie Gygax. The company and associated group (NuTSR) were founded by Justin LaNasa.

By the end of July 2021 the twitter account would be renamed to @wfd_games and representing Wonderfilled Inc, a company registered in Wisconsin by Stephen E Dinehart IV – former CCO then separated from TSR LLC and owner/co-creator of GiantLands. By December 2021, TSR LLC would have lodged a federal lawsuit against Wizards of the Coast over a handful of old trademarks.

The events involved in that are complicated, and convoluted, but the short version of it is a series of bad business decisions, unethical practices and expression of reactionary politics by the personalities above created quagmires of public image, legal problems and unfavourable exposure. Most of the incriminating tweets, videos, etc have seen been deleted or removed from public access so screenshots will be used where archive links are not available. Most of this is being recreated from a Twitter thread that has become incredibly unwieldly over time.

Ignition Point

In June, Ernie Gygax did an interview (no longer available on YouTube) that was reported on EN World by the site owner Morrus. In it, Ernie, amongst other things:

Announced that about he was dissed for being old-fashioned, particularly around ideas like gender identity.
Claimed Lorraine Williams was a corporate raider and that mean she was like native american tribes who would “wipe out another tribe many times take the woman and children and murder off everything else.”
Referred to the people at modern Wizards of the Coast and their supporters lemmings – then announced the problem is “my fighter returns antagonism for antagonism. So that’s where we start getting into some difficulties and I’m having to throw a protection from evil up.”

For obvious reasons, this raised a lot of concerns among the modern audiences and required TSR LLC to wade in on and seek support. This was, initially done primarily by Stephen Dinehart who attempted to simply to deny anything happened and then – through his GiantLands Twitter account (replying to a tweet to TSR’s Twitter) launched the tweet that escalated things to flashpoint.

A screenshot of the original exchange between Meg (@MegTheSorceress) and GiantLands (@GiantLands) where she asks them to confirm if they agree trans identities are valid, and stop evading the question, and GiantLands replied with "You are disgusting" — The tweet that set the garbage pile ablaze

The lit fuze

An apology by Ernie was issued, but at this point the situation became polarized – with the vast majority of the old school gaming (including Luke Gygax) being alarmed and opposed to all of this, sceptical of the validity of this claim of being the old company reborn and unimpressed with the responses; and reactionaries from groups like ComicsGate rushing in to defend TSR LLC, seeing it as a new battlefield where they could claim victory and dominance over shared nostalgia.

Category: Role-playing

GiantLands – The Beginning

Primordial Ooze

The TSR & Wonderfilled/GiantLands Saga – Introduction

Ignition Point

The lit fuze