Category: RPG Disaster Tourism

There’s just something about Roleplaying games that means they sometimes lead to the most entertaining drama – always over either the most trivial or ridiculously high stakes things.

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

Continue reading LaNasa v. Tenkar – Dismissed with Prejudice
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    Tenkar A WTF are They Thinking!?! Kickstarter – Castles & Crusades: Blacktooth Ridge (T.V. Pilot) (3 October 2014) <www.tenkarstavern.com>

Giantlands (2021)

Contents

Premise | Character Creation | Species | Professions | Ley Powers | Mutations | Other stuff | Core Rules | The World | How do I economy? | Species pt 2 | Monsters | No bears? No bullywugs… oh god the bugs! | Is this okay? | Demo Game | You’re walking in the woods… | That’s won’t work | You guys are being attacked… | Conclusion | Unplayable, and I don’t want to fix it | Is there a setting? | Spirtual successor?

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 Wikipedia James M Ward <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Ward> as a kind of Native American themed, spiritual successor to Gamma World2 James M Ward & Gary Jaquet Gamma World (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1978) – the original release of GiantLands was also modelled off the White Box3 Wikipedia Dungeons & Dragons (1974) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(1974)> release of Dungeons & Dragons.4 Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson Dungeons & Dragons (TSR Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 1974)

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 Haase-Lockwood & Associates Funeral Homes Obituary for James “Jim” Michael Ward III <https://www.haaselockwoodfhs.com/obituary/JamesJim-WardIII> 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 James M Ward & Stephen E Dinehart GiantLands: Keepers Guide (Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 2021) at 4

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 James M Ward & Stephen E Dinehart GiantLands: Spirits Guide (Wonderfilled Inc, Lake Geneva WI, 2021) 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 Keepers Guide, at n 6, at 16 – 17

Continue reading Giantlands (2021)

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.

Continue reading GiantLands – The Release

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:

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

Continue reading TSR LLC vs Wizards of the Coast LLC – FIGHT!

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:

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 My Twitter, 8 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1412872199174643714 5 My Twitter, 8 July 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1413027319589924873

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 My Twitter, 8 July 2021, https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1413074953193213963

Continue reading GiantLands – The road to finishing a “finished” RPG

Those Pesky Goblinz by Justin LaNasa

Hot off the presses, the nuTSR group (TSR LLC, Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum LLC, Justin LaNasa) has released a “new” product… weeks ahead of the opening for pre-order date, by listing it on Amazon via their Print On Demand service. It is unclear why they opted to do both print-on-demand and a pre-order bulk print system… but that’s the least of the problems.

The product is, in summary: an playable mess of useless gibberish that radiates contempt for creators of role-playing games, for people who enjoy role-playing games and that mostly showcases the inadequacies and insecurities of the creator. It’s also an interesting study in when a rip-off reaches the point of copyright infringement through being an unauthorized derivative work.

David Flor has done a great job in breaking down many of the failings in a Twitter thread here, and Tom has done a feature.

So I wanted to talk about some of the more complex issues that don’t fit into 280 characters or reasonable sized videos (let me know if you think I should doe a Noah Caldwell-Gervais style essay).

Continue reading Those Pesky Goblinz by Justin LaNasa

OGL 1.2, contracts and getting sued

Okay so Wizards of the Coast (“Wizards”/”WotC”) announced a new version of the Open Game License (OGL), the magical document that lets people publish material that is basically plug & play compatible with Dungeons and Dragons (“D&D”).

This has a lot of people rushing to give you their thoughts on it, even before they had time to read it – and the Free Speech crowd even had speeches prepared about how it’d be bad! I would like to say I’m doing this because I got asked to, but the truth is I’m doing this because my social media feeds have been an onslaught of panic mongering and misinformation.

My background

I have been a D&D player since Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, specifically my entry to it moving from Fighting Fantasy books by Steve Jackson Games to The Curse of the Azure Bonds game on the Commodore 64, which was a heck of learning curve for a 10 year old before getting to play with actual people in boarding school. I also worked for Wizards of the Coast back in the late 90s, early 2000s as a Community Manager (I moderated the roleplaying chat room). I am the current owner of, and have been effectively the primary community manager for Hitmanforum for about twenty years now.

Currently, I am a law student in New Zealand who also has extensive experience (10 years) working as a debt collector and substantial experience (5+ years) as a fraud investigator for online payment gateways. Now, if you’re wondering what a law student in New Zealand knows about laws in the USA – the answer is quite a bit since both use the Common Law system which comes from England so have many things in common.

In fact, they have so much in common that when dealing with a novel case (ie one where there isn’t a clear precedent) the New Zealand courts will often look to the case law of the USA (though priority is usually given to case law from the UK, Canada, or Australia). This has even extended into occasionally incorporating U.S. common law… such as the tort of intrusion on seclusion.1 C v Holland [2012] 3 NZLR 672

So, general principles work the same (I could nerd out about the differences in case law, but suffice to say it’d be woefully esoteric) but it’s important for you to understand:

  1. I am not a lawyer and make no claim to being recognized as one anywhere;
  2. I’m not your lawyer and so the following is not individual legal advice;
  3. In every case there can be facts, etc that influence the general principles;
  4. Lots of law scenarios are “untested” in the sense nobody has taken it to court and gotten a final verdict;
  5. No law is permanent, statutes (even constitutional ones) can be amended or overruled, the highest court in the land can overrule itself – law is always in motion

It is therefore pretty much impossible for anyone to give you an answer with complete certainty on the key matters relating to the OGL 1.0a, and anyone giving you a high probability answer should be able to cite US case law to substantiate it. Currently, I am confident nobody outside of lawyers working for game companies is doing that, because it is a lot of work to not get paid for.

I’m not hoping to give you a full education here or an official legal opinion – I’m just hoping to help you understand why you can’t just trust a YouTuber or a blogger who says “I’m a lawyer…” and then doesn’t really cite anything or an influencer who assures you that they definitely know what they’re talking about because they just do okay? At this point, there is so much misinformation and misunderstanding that it takes basically a primer on how contract law actually works. There’s going to be a lot of talking about legal doctrines and concepts.

Also in case you’re curious, not I don’t particularly trust Wizards of the Coast or any immortal corporation that exists primarily to make money and whose leadership can change at a moment’s notice – that’s why I read the document instead of just rubberstamped with happy emojis and stuff. I also did not do any serious case or statute research for this, so it is possible there are quirks and issues I am not aware of.

Again, it’s not legal advice. Don’t get personalized legal advice off a blog.

Executive summary of the OGL 1.2

It’s fine. It could do with some elaborating to make it easier for the layperson to read, but it’s fine.

Continue reading OGL 1.2, contracts and getting sued
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    C v Holland [2012] 3 NZLR 672

The Open Gaming License (OGL), and what you (probably) missed during the outrage

So, a whole bunch of people are congratulating themselves for having helped Paizo increase their market influence through a new open license ORC (it’s… just a catchier term for OGL).

Naturally the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum and Wonderfilled have the worst take on this:

A screenshot from the Facebook page of the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum, it is an image of flat blue with text on it: "(Attention all Publishers) It isn't truly an open game License if you have to acknowledge the owner's illegal claims of owning a game system."
Apparently you can’t own a system, but Ernie is the divine heir of Dungeons & Dragons, so it belongs to Justin LaNasa’s companies… and definitely not the rest of the Gygax family because they very understandably do not support Justin profiteering of their name.

However a few things are apparent.

Most people who commented and campaigned on this, didn’t understand how any of the following work:

  1. Copyright
  2. Licenses & Contracts
  3. What the OGL is
  4. What the OGL isn’t
  5. What motivates corporations
  6. What is not a victory
  7. What they didn’t see in the OGL because they were too busy screaming about royalties and repealing OGL 1.0a

So… it would take… forever, like college level text book length to explain all of that… so I’m making a primer from a law student who is not your lawyer and so definitely not giving you legal advice and my advice regarding firm statements on law is the same as my advice for rodeo riding: If you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, leave it well enough alone.

If you haven’t set, but you want to read the document for yourself, Stephen Glicker, aka Roll for Combat, made a sanitized copy available in the description of his video. One thing you’ll notice is there’s a lot of signs its an early draft (there are placeholders, definitions aren’t clearly spelled out, etc). So keep that in mind.

Now, I tried to explain this before and people… pretty much ignored it, and it’s heavy stuff so I don’t expect anyone to come out of it thinking they understand perfectly now. If nothing else, what I want people to understand is that it is more complicated than what people have been saying, and if someone tells you that they definitely understand it and it clearly means x… they’re probably wrong on both points.

The reason this is frustrating is when people get into the mob mentality they make decisions they later regret, both things like burning bridges or signing up for inferior deals, and in actively spreading misinformation and social pressure that leads to other people doing that.

I’m not here to tell you what to do, but I do want you do whatever you do for your own reasons and with good information.

What is the OGL?

This seems to be the biggest point of confusion since a lot of people seem to think the OGL 1.0a was useful for making all kinds of games – including games completely unrelated to Dungeons & Dragons like sci-fi adventure games etc.

What it actually is a kind of license to fan-wank provided that you don’t use particular terms and don’t impinge on Wizards of the Coast’s market share or use some terms they’d rather you didn’t for… strategic reasons I could get into later.

Things covered under the OGL include the basic character races, classes, class abilities, feats, spells, magic items and some monsters. These are all laid out in the Standard Reference Document 5.1 (or “SRD5” as it is officially known because… that was a really weird decision by the people who drafted it and the OGL).

It’s very convenient if you want to skip over a lot of work, but it is also very specifically for promoting D&D – and that’s why it’s there. If there is a bunch of stuff that is 100% compatible with D&D available – that’s more incentive to play D&D, even if you never use any of it. It seems cool and like they care about the fandom and that there’ll never be a shortage of material if you start to get bored or want a change of pace.

Continue reading The Open Gaming License (OGL), and what you (probably) missed during the outrage

NuTSR’s recruitment drive and the Fall of Michael

From June 2021 to mid January 2022 – nuTSR went into a mission to try to build up credibility as a games company and recover from losing their flagship product as well as the individual they had given control of their social media presence to. Pretty much all of this effort would fall onto the shoulders of “volunteer” Michael Hovermale as Justin focused on talking things up and recruiting terrible people to make terrible products.

I put scare quotes on the volunteer because Justin and… accounts very defensive of Justin have always maintained that Michael was purely a volunteer who never expected to get paid – but as you’ll see he was doing an awful lot of work and putting up with awful lot of shit (including from yours truly) – so I’m inclined to believe this was supposed to be a “volunteer for now and then we’ll talk compensation” type arrangement.

Particularly given some later events involving some accounts called “Mario Real” but… more on that later in our story.

Side note: If this was professional reporting I would have reached out to people for comment, but since I didn’t do it while it was happening and I think there’d be rather massive differences in responses due to personal reasons. (Don & Michael would probably be happy to comment, I’m pretty sure Justin would not) Therefore all this is based on observation and public interactions.

The Official Discord

Before being promoted to head of PR, Michael had been the head moderator at the Discord and had implemented a lot of rules that were in place to try to keep the conversation entirely about games – and not about politics. These, ironically, would have been prohibitive of Justin being a member of the Discord – but Michael didn’t realize that yet.

A screenshot of the server rules for the TSR Official Community Discord. "1 Respect each other harassment & bullying isn't allowed. This includes personal attacks, slurs, racist, sexist, homophobic, hateful or derogatory speech. Also don't attempt to create drama. It's not nice to make fun of others, let's make sure that this remains a safe and positive space for everyone. 2. No NSFW or obscene content. This includes text, images, or links featuring nudity, sex, hard violence, or other graphically disturbing content. A good rule of thumb is keep things PG-13. Discord allows members as young as 13 to join. If you're unsure if your post is "ok" you can ask a moderator. 3. Avoid sensitive or controversial topics. Real world politics, religion, race, gender, current (sensitive) real world events, depression/suicide, violence, etc. These discussions can easily turn into heated debates, which does not reflect the positive and inclusive nature of this server."
Ironically Justin would later demonstrate the only thing that stopped him breaking all of these rules was disinterest in his own “community”.1My Twitter, 8 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1424151599375519749

And I want to stress here, as misguided as it was to try to run a Discord about any role-playing game with no discussion of politics around it in the first place – given that invariably a part of world building in role-playing games is working out the politics, and the implications of your interpretations of those politics. Even something as simple as creating a “good” society means making political statements on what is encouraged and what is encouraged by “good” people.

Continue reading NuTSR’s recruitment drive and the Fall of Michael

GiantLands – Leaving NuTSR

As covered earlier, while the overall reputation of Justin LaNasa, months of barely contained reactionary non-sense and unprofessionalism built the pyre for TSR LLC (LaNasa)’s reputation, and Ernie Gygax’s interview was the match that started it – Dinehart using his GiantLands account to call a trans woman disgusting was the accelerant that turned it into a bright blaze and caught the attention of the wider world.

The actions of TSR at the time are already documented, but the absurdity of Dinehart on his own account and the GiantLands account warrants its own entry – particularly given the many loft claims he regularly makes about himself. At the time, he was doing his absolute best to look incredibly important and a man of many, many important titles.1My Twitter (25 June 2021) https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1408342703394361346

A screenshot of the Twitter profile of Stephen Dinehart (@SEDart4), listing him as Chief Creative Officer: @TSR_games President @Wunderfilled Executive Producer @Psychfilab Artist @zodkev @dodoinksi @dodoo9966 It also lists his location as "Hollywood" and links to his IMDB profile.
It’s kind of amazing a guy who’s so busy and so important has time to tweet…

With credentials like that, you’d expect some sort of display of some professionalism… I mean… obviously not project management given how GiantLands had gone – but maybe something else like say marketing and communication? Well, I invite you to read his pinned tweet after he posted the “TTRPGs are the original safe space” nonsense.

A screenshot of a tweet of a Pinned tweet by Dinehart (@SEDart4): "When I say "safe space" I mean it. As a sufferer of PTSD & a survivor of various forms of abuse & assault, games, TTRPG has & always be safe spaces for me. That's why I made GiantLands. I know there are kids of all ages, like I was, that also need a safe place to simply BE." 26 June 2021.
Reminder this came up because he told a young trans woman she was disgusting. Also he’s tweeting this like Minecraft doesn’t exist now.

This is particularly telling because, contrary to what he claimed – people had in fact been telling him in detail why they disagreed with his claim. The issues of nightmare DMs who abused trust, the largely exclusionary history of the hobby, the presence of weird reactionaries in the hobby space, etc. His response to this was to dismiss this as “woke” and tell others not to be “woke” but “awake” because “it’s a lifelong journey” before promoting a “before of fake woke” posted by a fellow NFT enthusiast.2My Twitter (28 June 2021) https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1409233749137522688

Continue reading GiantLands – Leaving NuTSR