TheRPGSite

Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: Shawn Driscoll on June 17, 2021, 07:17:39 PM

Title: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shawn Driscoll on June 17, 2021, 07:17:39 PM
I'm confused at this point. Will have to watch this and see.



https://tsr.games/
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Darrin Kelley on June 17, 2021, 08:05:42 PM
Seeing this brings me a lot of joy. TSR coming back makes me very happy. I wish them nothing but good fortune in the products they create.

What comes of this has me very interested.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: FingerRod on June 17, 2021, 08:14:11 PM
The usual dickholes on Reddit were calling it a cash grab. Of course they know absolutely nothing. These guys are more TSR than TSR was when it sold.

Jim Ward is a great writer and DM, and I have at least half a dozen tattoos that I would like to get of Elmore’s art.

Giantlands looks good so far. I am interested to see what they do.

EDIT: Five minutes of research would have allowed me to make a much more informed opinion. I saw Jim and Larry’s names associated and automatically attributed recent works to this project. But this thing is crazy. Their next big event listed on their website is GaryCon 2020. They are hoping to launch a theme park 9 months from now, and we should have had the box set a year ago.

Still interested to see what happens, but for very different reasons.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Pat on June 17, 2021, 08:19:33 PM
Wasn't TSR already back? They published 5 issues of Gygax magazine, almost a decade ago. With two of Gygax's sons and Tim Kask.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 18, 2021, 02:33:20 PM
I'm confused at this point. Will have to watch this and see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3hhzW63H3k

So is the youtube video guy.

At 6:00 in
"I think D&D would have gone down a decidedly different path had Hasbro not purchased Wizards of the Coast..."

Delusional.

WOTC was already left wing, and they hired two proto-woke gamers; Jonathan tweet and Monte Cook to design 3e.

Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D before "going woke" really took off.

This can be proven from articles and post where Tweet and Cook talk about the creation of 3e.



Seeing this brings me a lot of joy. TSR coming back makes me very happy. I wish them nothing but good fortune in the products they create.

What comes of this has me very interested.

Time to prepare for disappointment kids.

Nu-TSR is a woke stillborn abortion.



TSR Games is Back
The studio behind the original Dungeons & Dragons has returned to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, under the guidance of Gary Gygax Jr. with the help of Wonderfilled, Inc.

TSR Games is BackLake Geneva, WI, June 15, 2021 --(PR.com)-- Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was founded in 1973 by E. Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Originally formed in 2020, TSR Games is officially back and under the leadership of E. Gary Gygax Jr.

“I am thrilled to be part of this next generation of gaming and hope that you all find it cut the same cloth as all my old TSR experiences as we forge a new TSR Games,” said Gygax, continuing, “Thanks to the vision of our CEO Justin LaNasa, and the help of Wonderfilled, we’re bringing TSR back home to Lake Geneva. It really means so much to me.”

TSR was behind the original Dungeons & Dragons first released in 1974, now a worldwide phenomenon owned by Hasbro on its fifth and most popular edition yet. The team includes Justin LaNasa (CEO), Ernest G. Gygax Jr (EVP), Jeff R. Leason (COO, and Stephen E. Dinehart (CCO). LaNasa is a visionary and entrepreneur that has set out to reunite brands like TSR with the original talent behind them.

“It’s with great pride that we’ve managed to secure the TSR brand, born here originally in 1973 and brought back to the people who created this new form of game that changed the world,” said LaNasa.

In addition to the classic lines of products at TSR Museum and Dungeon Hobby Shop, TSR Games is working to bring a new generation of role-playing games and more to players worldwide. “Now more than ever, the world needs TSR,” said game designer Jeff R. Leason. “We’re happy to be bringing it back for experienced and new players alike.”

Sounds good right!

It'll be great baby! TSR is back motherfuckers!

Right!?

Right?

Behold, The Red Flags:

All you need to know about their new TSR RPG GiantLands!...
Have a listen from a site filled with LGBTQP rainbow Motif and Burn Loot Murder virtue signaling:
http://amusementsparks.blubrry.com/2020/03/24/giantlands5/

Some tasty quotes starting 3:30 in...

"Middle class white boy."
"Remove from western mythos."
"Not for them"
"...new generation of players."


11:50 in...
"I don't believe in race."

13:30 in...
"I don't want to create a fantasy where races fight against each other."

15:00 in...
Quoting Larry Elmore "Trying to sneak in people of color into D&D early on... Just so white..."


The rot is already in the door kids.

It is only a matter of time; The woke convergence of Nu-TSR is inevitable.

You have all been warned.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 18, 2021, 02:37:52 PM
Wasn't TSR already back? They published 5 issues of Gygax magazine, almost a decade ago. With two of Gygax's sons and Tim Kask.

Yeah. Let me know when the new-new TSR puts out some product. Until then, it's hype.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 18, 2021, 03:47:15 PM
I'm confused at this point. Will have to watch this and see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3hhzW63H3k

So is the youtube video guy.

At 6:00 in
"I think D&D would have gone down a decidedly different path had Hasbro not purchased Wizards of the Coast..."

Delusional.

WOTC was already left wing, and they hired two proto-woke gamers; Jonathan tweet and Monte Cook to design 3e.

Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D before "going woke" really took off.

This can be proven from articles and post where Tweet and Cook talk about the creation of 3e.



Seeing this brings me a lot of joy. TSR coming back makes me very happy. I wish them nothing but good fortune in the products they create.

What comes of this has me very interested.

Time to prepare for disappointment kids.

Nu-TSR is a woke stillborn abortion.



TSR Games is Back
The studio behind the original Dungeons & Dragons has returned to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, under the guidance of Gary Gygax Jr. with the help of Wonderfilled, Inc.

TSR Games is BackLake Geneva, WI, June 15, 2021 --(PR.com)-- Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was founded in 1973 by E. Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Originally formed in 2020, TSR Games is officially back and under the leadership of E. Gary Gygax Jr.

“I am thrilled to be part of this next generation of gaming and hope that you all find it cut the same cloth as all my old TSR experiences as we forge a new TSR Games,” said Gygax, continuing, “Thanks to the vision of our CEO Justin LaNasa, and the help of Wonderfilled, we’re bringing TSR back home to Lake Geneva. It really means so much to me.”

TSR was behind the original Dungeons & Dragons first released in 1974, now a worldwide phenomenon owned by Hasbro on its fifth and most popular edition yet. The team includes Justin LaNasa (CEO), Ernest G. Gygax Jr (EVP), Jeff R. Leason (COO, and Stephen E. Dinehart (CCO). LaNasa is a visionary and entrepreneur that has set out to reunite brands like TSR with the original talent behind them.

“It’s with great pride that we’ve managed to secure the TSR brand, born here originally in 1973 and brought back to the people who created this new form of game that changed the world,” said LaNasa.

In addition to the classic lines of products at TSR Museum and Dungeon Hobby Shop, TSR Games is working to bring a new generation of role-playing games and more to players worldwide. “Now more than ever, the world needs TSR,” said game designer Jeff R. Leason. “We’re happy to be bringing it back for experienced and new players alike.”

Sounds good right!

It'll be great baby! TSR is back motherfuckers!

Right!?

Right?

Behold, The Red Flags:

All you need to know about their new TSR RPG GiantLands!...
Have a listen from a site filled with LGBTQP rainbow Motif and Burn Loot Murder virtue signaling:
http://amusementsparks.blubrry.com/2020/03/24/giantlands5/

Some tasty quotes starting 3:30 in...

"Middle class white boy."
"Remove from western mythos."
"Not for them"
"...new generation of players."


11:50 in...
"I don't believe in race."

13:30 in...
"I don't want to create a fantasy where races fight against each other."

15:00 in...
Quoting Larry Elmore "Trying to sneak in people of color into D&D early on... Just so white..."


The rot is already in the door kids.

It is only a matter of time; The woke convergence of Nu-TSR is inevitable.

You have all been warned.

After hearing the podcast I must say it's a hardpass for me.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 18, 2021, 06:09:04 PM
They say that the band is getting back together but since when was Bill S. Preston, Esq the 4th part of the band?

 ???
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 18, 2021, 06:31:10 PM
Greetings!

I listened to the podcast. The "game designer" sounds like he is a total cuck.

What the hell does YOUR PERSONAL racial/ethnic composition--or your particular attitudes concerning current-day, woke-racist fucking ideology have anything to do with mythical races and creatures in a fantasy game?

Such a woke fucking retard. Yeah, we need more racist politics and "consciousness" poured into the game.

What a jackass. Hard fucking pass indeed. "GiantLands" already sounds like an absolute wokefest cesspool.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:27:55 AM
Wow fuck this game.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: imurrx on June 19, 2021, 11:22:10 AM
The only thing that 3e did was started using the word “she” instead of “him” in it’s texts. It was a way to try break the gender divide and attract more females into the game. It bugged me when they did that switch. From a marketing point, they wanted a new audience instead of old aging fat men to play the game. There was not too much else they changed in my honest opinion that would invoke SJW.

I personally love the options in 3.5 but after running The Shackled City over 3 years, 3.5 was needless in the amount of time with all the rule lawyering.

This time around, we are going back to B/X with Old School Essentials and possibly throwing some of the advance rules of 1e when they release it.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Zelen on June 19, 2021, 11:26:57 AM
It sucks it has to be this way, but it's basically impossible to have any confidence in any person or product that won't at bare minimum pledge to not cave to the outrage mob.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Chris24601 on June 19, 2021, 12:18:04 PM
It sucks it has to be this way, but it's basically impossible to have any confidence in any person or product that won't at bare minimum pledge to not cave to the outrage mob.
"Why are all the characters in my book white men and hot redheads? Because I'm choosing to support the extreme demographic minorities of the world that are chronically underrepresented in the present media marketplace. Now go away you bigot!"  ;D
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 03:45:13 PM
It sucks it has to be this way, but it's basically impossible to have any confidence in any person or product that won't at bare minimum pledge to not cave to the outrage mob.

Or you know, they never caved, they were converted long ago.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 19, 2021, 03:58:35 PM
It sucks it has to be this way, but it's basically impossible to have any confidence in any person or product that won't at bare minimum pledge to not cave to the outrage mob.

Or you know, they never caved, they were converted long ago.

First article against chainmail bikini I ever read was on a very old Dragon (Or was it Dungeon?) magazine. I mean way back when the satanic panic was a thing, the proto SJWs were already on the inside.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 19, 2021, 04:06:28 PM
I remember that!

Yeah the whole new Puritanism of the Left is an internet fueled turbo-charged Heroin ball for people chronically addicted to their self-loathing. This emergent SJW thought-construct rewards them for their self-hate. The whole ideology is a destructive orgy on the backs of all the cultural edifices "normal" people enjoy, and the constituent fanbases of these artifacts are the lube.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shawn Driscoll on June 19, 2021, 04:08:42 PM
All you need to know about their new TSR RPG GiantLands!...
Have a listen from a site filled with LGBTQP rainbow Motif and Burn Loot Murder virtue signaling:
http://amusementsparks.blubrry.com/2020/03/24/giantlands5/
That podcast channel is so gay.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 19, 2021, 04:16:35 PM
I remember that!

Yeah the whole new Puritanism of the Left is an internet fueled turbo-charged Heroin ball for people chronically addicted to their self-loathing. This emergent SJW thought-construct rewards them for their self-hate. The whole ideology is a destructive orgy on the backs of all the cultural edifices "normal" people enjoy, and the constituent fanbases of these artifacts are the lube.

Yep, and it's a mind virus being spread in our schools, entertainment, etc.

A long time ago I told Pundit that D&D dying (it never will), or becoming less of a cultural touching stone was a good thing. Even if Hasbro decided to kill it and only sell life style merchandize, the hobby won't die, the OGL guarantees that.

I would posit that the rethorical destruction of WotC, Baizuo, Shitty Hat and whoever publishes Vampire is a net possitive for the hobby, there's already other games out there, we can publish more if we want/need/there's demand.

So the big guns becomming nothing is a good thing for the hobby since, like a wildfire, it clears way for the new.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: imurrx on June 19, 2021, 05:01:02 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Chris24601 on June 19, 2021, 05:43:23 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
I thought the idea was that it'd make all the enemy males want to "hit that" rather than hit that... plus everyone knows it comes with an army of White Knights just waiting to jump into the path of any attacks.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: RandyB on June 19, 2021, 06:37:27 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
I thought the idea was that it'd make all the enemy males want to "hit that" rather than hit that... plus everyone knows it comes with an army of White Knights just waiting to jump into the path of any attacks.

And those same White Knights will jump into the path of any visual admiration, too... "Stop objectifying her! She's a mighty warrior, too!"
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jamfke on June 19, 2021, 06:49:30 PM
I'm confused at this point. Will have to watch this and see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3hhzW63H3k

So is the youtube video guy.

At 6:00 in
"I think D&D would have gone down a decidedly different path had Hasbro not purchased Wizards of the Coast..."

Delusional.

WOTC was already left wing, and they hired two proto-woke gamers; Jonathan tweet and Monte Cook to design 3e.

Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D before "going woke" really took off.

This can be proven from articles and post where Tweet and Cook talk about the creation of 3e.



Seeing this brings me a lot of joy. TSR coming back makes me very happy. I wish them nothing but good fortune in the products they create.

What comes of this has me very interested.

Time to prepare for disappointment kids.

Nu-TSR is a woke stillborn abortion.



TSR Games is Back
The studio behind the original Dungeons & Dragons has returned to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, under the guidance of Gary Gygax Jr. with the help of Wonderfilled, Inc.

TSR Games is BackLake Geneva, WI, June 15, 2021 --(PR.com)-- Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was founded in 1973 by E. Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Originally formed in 2020, TSR Games is officially back and under the leadership of E. Gary Gygax Jr.

“I am thrilled to be part of this next generation of gaming and hope that you all find it cut the same cloth as all my old TSR experiences as we forge a new TSR Games,” said Gygax, continuing, “Thanks to the vision of our CEO Justin LaNasa, and the help of Wonderfilled, we’re bringing TSR back home to Lake Geneva. It really means so much to me.”

TSR was behind the original Dungeons & Dragons first released in 1974, now a worldwide phenomenon owned by Hasbro on its fifth and most popular edition yet. The team includes Justin LaNasa (CEO), Ernest G. Gygax Jr (EVP), Jeff R. Leason (COO, and Stephen E. Dinehart (CCO). LaNasa is a visionary and entrepreneur that has set out to reunite brands like TSR with the original talent behind them.

“It’s with great pride that we’ve managed to secure the TSR brand, born here originally in 1973 and brought back to the people who created this new form of game that changed the world,” said LaNasa.

In addition to the classic lines of products at TSR Museum and Dungeon Hobby Shop, TSR Games is working to bring a new generation of role-playing games and more to players worldwide. “Now more than ever, the world needs TSR,” said game designer Jeff R. Leason. “We’re happy to be bringing it back for experienced and new players alike.”

Sounds good right!

It'll be great baby! TSR is back motherfuckers!

Right!?

Right?

Behold, The Red Flags:

All you need to know about their new TSR RPG GiantLands!...
Have a listen from a site filled with LGBTQP rainbow Motif and Burn Loot Murder virtue signaling:
http://amusementsparks.blubrry.com/2020/03/24/giantlands5/

Some tasty quotes starting 3:30 in...

"Middle class white boy."
"Remove from western mythos."
"Not for them"
"...new generation of players."


11:50 in...
"I don't believe in race."

13:30 in...
"I don't want to create a fantasy where races fight against each other."

15:00 in...
Quoting Larry Elmore "Trying to sneak in people of color into D&D early on... Just so white..."


The rot is already in the door kids.

It is only a matter of time; The woke convergence of Nu-TSR is inevitable.

You have all been warned.

Pandering much? Lorty! So much speech about not wanting to talk about race and gender, but let's steer away from those white boy ways! Dude is just trying to suck in as many customers from New Woke City as he can as far as I can tell from this podcast. I was sort of interested in taking a look at this game but not anymore...
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 19, 2021, 06:50:49 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
I thought the idea was that it'd make all the enemy males want to "hit that" rather than hit that... plus everyone knows it comes with an army of White Knights just waiting to jump into the path of any attacks.

And those same White Knights will jump into the path of any visual admiration, too... "Stop objectifying her! She's a mighty warrior, too!"

Incel White Knights are the best.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 19, 2021, 09:26:29 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
Well, since female warriors were a historical rarity (especially armored ones), desperate modern historical revisionism notwithstanding, the chainmail bikini wouldn't have been an issue to begin with.  For most of human history, women have been the spoils, not the combatants.  So if we're going to be realistic...

I just saying...
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Omega on June 19, 2021, 09:57:54 PM
So is the youtube video guy.

At 6:00 in
"I think D&D would have gone down a decidedly different path had Hasbro not purchased Wizards of the Coast..."

Delusional.

WOTC was already left wing, and they hired two proto-woke gamers; Jonathan tweet and Monte Cook to design 3e.

Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D before "going woke" really took off.

This can be proven from articles and post where Tweet and Cook talk about the creation of 3e.

WOTC was already in the hands of the 90s iteration of this idiocy and is why it ended up going so downhill it was bought out by Hasbro. The 2010 wave of moral guardians under the new totle of Social Justice just stepped up the stupid to new levels.

With WOTC failure is the only option.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on June 21, 2021, 04:54:31 AM
Were any of the game devs on this podcast and bought into this garbage? I don't have the patience to listen to woke nonsense on a podcast without putting my fist through a PC monitor.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 21, 2021, 10:17:48 AM
I hate to say this, hah, but it's telling that a few years ago this would have been exciting to even ponder "TSR" (fill in whatever that means to you) is coming back.

The moment I saw the thread and went to their website, my first reaction was to laugh. None of it surprises me. We're through the looking glass. I just assume anything presented is tainted now. The question is "to what degree"? YMMV.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 21, 2021, 10:37:35 AM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 21, 2021, 12:15:50 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: horsesoldier on June 21, 2021, 01:51:46 PM
Larry Elmore, the man who very well may have the record for the most fantasy breasts ever put on canvas, is peddling woke stuff? I guess I'm not surprised. Creative types are very sensitive to the cultural zeitgeist.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 21, 2021, 02:30:53 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 21, 2021, 03:58:12 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Boxcrayon is right, we need more fantasy burkas.  Nothing says female fantasy like a full body covering
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 21, 2021, 05:03:10 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Boxcrayon is right, we need more fantasy burkas.  Nothing says female fantasy like a full body covering
Maybe a bit too far in the other direction?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 21, 2021, 05:14:13 PM
All kinds of suspect stuff going on with "new TSR"

for starters, the guy who owned the second incarnation of the company, which produced Gygax Magazine, Top Secret NWO, etc. apparently let the trademark expire accidentally. Ernie's buddy then went and snatched it up (still trying to get clarification on how and why this happened)

That same dude still owns the domain names and emails for TSR Games. Website is still up, and there is still some merchandise for sale on the interwebs from the company. That is why Ernie and co. are using tsr.games and not the proper domain name and title.

On the new company's site, we see them selling dice and t-shirts with the old, trademarked logo for TSR that WOTC still has rights to. What happens when they notice?

and Gail Gygax is lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce, as we now have another Gygax producing games under the name TSR --that creates confusion in the consumer in regards to who owns the Gygax copyrights and trademarks, so you better bet she is gonna sue

and what about the Marmoreal Tomb KS that was never delivered by Ernie and his old business buddies? $126,000 was raised for that, and it is over 5 years late. The comments and accusations on the KS page are scathing, with people claiming Ernie spent the money on a new home and wedding, and that the company doesn't even have money to print the materials. Troll Lord Games tried to come to the rescue, but the whole thing is a complete cluster

I'm sure Ken Whitman also has some new croud-funded projects going on right now as well. Is he going to create a theme park too?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: thedungeondelver on June 21, 2021, 05:25:05 PM
Note I'm not a fanboy or anything, just addressing a few topics you've brought up with info I've seen around the web.

All kinds of suspect stuff going on with "new TSR"

for starters, the guy who owned the second incarnation of the company, which produced Gygax Magazine, Top Secret NWO, etc. apparently let the trademark expire accidentally. Ernie's buddy then went and snatched it up (still trying to get clarification on how and why this happened)

That same dude still owns the domain names and emails for TSR Games. Website is still up, and there is still some merchandise for sale on the interwebs from the company. That is why Ernie and co. are using tsr.games and not the proper domain name and title.

On the new company's site, we see them selling dice and t-shirts with the old, trademarked logo for TSR that WOTC still has rights to. What happens when they notice?

So apparently WotC let all the trademarks of TSR lapse, Moon-face, Grimorley, Lizard Logo, Angled logo...so they snatched them up, all.

Quote
and Gail Gygax is lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce, as we now have another Gygax producing games under the name TSR --that creates confusion in the consumer in regards to who owns the Gygax copyrights and trademarks, so you better bet she is gonna sue

Gail's always a danger in that respect, I think.  To be honest I was kind of tensed up when The Lost Crypt dropped.  Didn't know if she'd come after Frog God or worse, me.

Quote
and what about the Marmoreal Tomb KS that was never delivered by Ernie and his old business buddies? $126,000 was raised for that, and it is over 5 years late. The comments and accusations on the KS page are scathing, with people claiming Ernie spent the money on a new home and wedding, and that the company doesn't even have money to print the materials. Troll Lord Games tried to come to the rescue, but the whole thing is a complete cluster

While I was livestreaming today, Chuck Cumbow from TLG was in the comments and he had an update: it is at the printers, the KS folks will get their promised items, future sales are still a question mark.

Quote
I'm sure Ken Whitman also has some new croud-funded projects going on right now as well. Is he going to create a theme park too?

This made me laugh. 

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Pat on June 21, 2021, 08:00:53 PM
Seems like the Gygaxes are collectively trying to do their best to ensure nobody will ever buy anything from a Gygax.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 21, 2021, 10:11:59 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...

Google Boudica.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 21, 2021, 10:13:23 PM
Were any of the game devs on this podcast and bought into this garbage? I don't have the patience to listen to woke nonsense on a podcast without putting my fist through a PC monitor.

All of them went to the podcast as far as I can tell, there's about 5-6 "chapters" and the podcast's name is GiantLands.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 21, 2021, 10:15:11 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Why is it that Thor (The Movie) had a 48% of female audience?)

Also Google Boudica.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 21, 2021, 11:03:02 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Why is it that Thor (The Movie) had a 48% of female audience?)

Also Google Boudica.

Greetings!

*Laughing* Because for females, watching a jacked, good-looking guy with blonde hair and deep blue eyes...makes them and their girlfriends really, really thirsty. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 21, 2021, 11:48:25 PM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Why is it that Thor (The Movie) had a 48% of female audience?)

Also Google Boudica.

Greetings!

*Laughing* Because for females, watching a jacked, good-looking guy with blonde hair and deep blue eyes...makes them and their girlfriends really, really thirsty. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

LOL

Also known as "Sex Sells"

ALL the covers of the bodice ripper novels feature shirtless (or almost) strong guys... What's the market demographic?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on June 22, 2021, 12:18:09 AM
Fabio romance novel covers and female adoring fans, anyone?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 22, 2021, 01:13:25 AM
...
Why is it that Thor (The Movie) had a 48% of female audience?)
...

Fun Fact:

In 2019 More Women Saw ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ Than The New ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Reboot...
https://weekinnerd.com/2019/11/21/get-woke-go-broke-more-women-saw-rambo-last-blood-than-the-new-charlies-angels-video/

ROTFL!


...
ALL the covers of the bodice ripper novels feature shirtless (or almost) strong guys... What's the market demographic?

Even better: The "50 Shades of Grey" phenomenon.

Total kinky fuckery.

35 million copies sold - the best selling book series of the past decade.

All three film adaptations opened at #1 in the box office.

Written by a woman for women.


Oh and just to bring it back to RPG's...

You can totally do a chainmail bikini ginger-swordswoman PC in 5e.

It's a 100% viable option with the Barbarian character class.

D&D has come so far...  :'(



Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 22, 2021, 02:41:31 AM
The only thing that 3e did was started using the word “she” instead of “him” in it’s texts. It was a way to try break the gender divide and attract more females into the game. It bugged me when they did that switch. From a marketing point, they wanted a new audience instead of old aging fat men to play the game. There was not too much else they changed in my honest opinion that would invoke SJW….

I disagree.

Like I said; Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D well before most people knew what an SJW was.

My Evidence:

Johnathan Tweet: 3e-and-the-feel-of-D&D
https://www.enworld.org/threads/3e-and-the-feel-of-d-d.667269/

Tweet openly talks about excising any references of or to real-world mythology when worldbuilding for official 3e D&D.

Making the game entirely self-referential.

Effectively doing a “Year Zero” of D&D lore…

Select quotes:
“…one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions."
...
"…by the time we were working on 3rd Ed, D&D had had such a big impact on fantasy that we basically used D&D as its own source."

"We were fortunate that by 2000 D&D had such a strong legacy that it could stand on its own without reference to Earth history or mythology.”



Johnathan Tweet: Diversity-in-D&D-third-edition
https://www.enworld.org/threads/diversity-in-d-d-third-edition.668462/

Tweet openly discusses pushing a “diversity and inclusion” agenda for 3e.

Select quotes:
“One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive.”

“Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.”

“By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years.”



Notice how pissed he gets when the WOTC Marketing team of the time insisted that they throw their biggest sales demographic a bone…

“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.”

And to his utter horror:
“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.”


The White male fighter hate was strong with the 3e design team:

Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”

“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”

“At least that was our intention.”

“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”



James Jacobs: ( D&D writer, and current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

This shit just speaks for itself...

Select quote:
Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”


WOTC D&D has hated its core sales demographic long before they eagerly bought their first copies of the 3e PHB.

And they have been paying WOTC to hate on them ever since.



Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 03:21:42 AM
The only thing that 3e did was started using the word “she” instead of “him” in it’s texts. It was a way to try break the gender divide and attract more females into the game. It bugged me when they did that switch. From a marketing point, they wanted a new audience instead of old aging fat men to play the game. There was not too much else they changed in my honest opinion that would invoke SJW….

I disagree.

Like I said; Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D well before most people knew what an SJW was.

My Evidence:

Johnathan Tweet: 3e-and-the-feel-of-D&D
https://www.enworld.org/threads/3e-and-the-feel-of-d-d.667269/

Tweet openly talks about excising any references of or to real-world mythology when worldbuilding for official 3e D&D.

Making the game entirely self-referential.

Effectively doing a “Year Zero” of D&D lore…

Select quotes:
“…one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions."
...
"…by the time we were working on 3rd Ed, D&D had had such a big impact on fantasy that we basically used D&D as its own source."

"We were fortunate that by 2000 D&D had such a strong legacy that it could stand on its own without reference to Earth history or mythology.”



Johnathan Tweet: Diversity-in-D&D-third-edition
https://www.enworld.org/threads/diversity-in-d-d-third-edition.668462/

Tweet openly discusses pushing a “diversity and inclusion” agenda for 3e.

Select quotes:
“One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive.”

“Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.”

“By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years.”



Notice how pissed he gets when the WOTC Marketing team of the time insisted that they throw their biggest sales demographic a bone…

“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.”

And to his utter horror:
“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.”


The White male fighter hate was strong with the 3e design team:

Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”

“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”

“At least that was our intention.”

“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”



James Jacobs: ( D&D writer, and current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

This shit just speaks for itself...

Select quote:
Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”


WOTC D&D has hated its core sales demographic long before they eagerly bought their first copies of the 3e PHB.

And they have been paying WOTC to hate on them ever since.

This settles it, first chance I get I'm publishing a game with the classic damsel grabing the hero's legs with him looking manly AF pose on the cover and lots of cheesecake interior art, plus some beefcake too, after all I know what ladies like.

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.

But hey, at least they weren't the Christian fundies!

D&D is lost
MtG is lost
Pathfinder is lost And anything published by Baizuo

And don't get me started on shitty hat.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 22, 2021, 03:39:23 AM
...

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.
...

I'll quibble a touch. No error in thinking here.

I specifically highlighted 3e because it is easier to get references. And D&D falling into WOTC's hands was a big turning point for the game.

I'm well aware that the rot started a whole hell of a lot earlier than most people would imagine.

The "chainmail bikini" outrage was manufactured back then the same way that Orcs = black people outrage was manufactured today.

Just like the whole D&D is the devil "Satanic Panic" was a media driven ratings grab where the left got to play one of their favorite games.

The cultural rot goes waaaayyyyy back.

And it is Deep.

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 04:04:36 AM
...

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.
...

I'll quibble a touch. No error in thinking here.

I specifically highlighted 3e because it is easier to get references. And D&D falling into WOTC's hands was a big turning point for the game.

I'm well aware that the rot started a whole hell of a lot earlier than most people would imagine.

The "chainmail bikini" outrage was manufactured back then the same way that Orcs = black people outrage was manufactured today.

Just like the whole D&D is the devil "Satanic Panic" was a media driven ratings grab where the left got to play one of their favorite games.

The cultural rot goes waaaayyyyy back.

And it is Deep.

In the 60's-70's there was a battle between sex positive feminists and sex negative feminists, to the eyes of the normie the sex positive ones won, truth is the other ones went into academia, infected everything and developed their pseudo science.

From there the infection started to expand into culture, the more niche a form of entertainment the easiest it was to infiltrate at first, with "small" seemingly reasonable (to the normie's eyes) requests.

The Chainmail bikini was made at the perfect time, TSR could please the phantom audience of "offended wahmen" AND take one weapon away from the fundies in one fell swoop.

But as we all are well aware by now (or should be) bending the knee is blood in the water, you did it once and will do it again, you have shown you lack the spine. In animalistic terms you're no Alpha of no pack, you're a gamma or a betta at best.

Pressure will keep on being exerted over you until you bend the knee again, and again, and again...

Sadly for the commies in charge of WotC they made the OGL, and now the genie is out of the bottle, and they have no chance of putting it back in.

Chainmal Bikini & Loincloth Armor High Fantasy RPG

How does it sound?

Enough Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee potential to harvest those sweet, sweet free publicity bucks?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 22, 2021, 04:22:38 AM
The only thing that 3e did was started using the word “she” instead of “him” in it’s texts. It was a way to try break the gender divide and attract more females into the game. It bugged me when they did that switch. From a marketing point, they wanted a new audience instead of old aging fat men to play the game. There was not too much else they changed in my honest opinion that would invoke SJW….

I disagree.

Like I said; Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D well before most people knew what an SJW was.

My Evidence:

Johnathan Tweet: 3e-and-the-feel-of-D&D
https://www.enworld.org/threads/3e-and-the-feel-of-d-d.667269/

Tweet openly talks about excising any references of or to real-world mythology when worldbuilding for official 3e D&D.

Making the game entirely self-referential.

Effectively doing a “Year Zero” of D&D lore…

Select quotes:
“…one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions."
...
"…by the time we were working on 3rd Ed, D&D had had such a big impact on fantasy that we basically used D&D as its own source."

"We were fortunate that by 2000 D&D had such a strong legacy that it could stand on its own without reference to Earth history or mythology.”



Johnathan Tweet: Diversity-in-D&D-third-edition
https://www.enworld.org/threads/diversity-in-d-d-third-edition.668462/

Tweet openly discusses pushing a “diversity and inclusion” agenda for 3e.

Select quotes:
“One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive.”

“Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.”

“By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years.”



Notice how pissed he gets when the WOTC Marketing team of the time insisted that they throw their biggest sales demographic a bone…

“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.”

And to his utter horror:
“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.”


The White male fighter hate was strong with the 3e design team:

Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”

“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”

“At least that was our intention.”

“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”



James Jacobs: ( D&D writer, and current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

This shit just speaks for itself...

Select quote:
Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”


WOTC D&D has hated its core sales demographic long before they eagerly bought their first copies of the 3e PHB.

And they have been paying WOTC to hate on them ever since.

Greetings!

Holy fuck, my friend! That's some outstanding work you have provided here! I've always known for many years that the "creative types" at WOTC were largely a bunch of cultural degenerates. Reading through the standard books at the time, you could see little glimpses of their counter-cultural myopia and hatred. The whole "Killing the Minotaur" article published from way back in the early 3E era provided additional confirmation of the growing leftist, anarchist, depraved cesspool that everyone at WOTC were becoming--and seeking to recruit more like-minded degenerates.

Your quotes here though, geesus. Very eye-opening, I confess. And sad, Jaeger. How fucking pathetic that all of these mostly middle-class professionals, all at least theoretically "educated"--and all mostly white men--are so full of self-loathing and hatred for everything that is white, traditional, and conservative. They are so fucking desperate to be accepted...by somebody...that they lift on high the constant litany of women this, minority that--regardless of how ahistorical, jarring, unrealistic, or inappropriate doing so obviously is, well beyond any kind of reasonably balanced and healthy perspective on all of it, just so they can giggle together like a bunch of shit-covered little boys, gathered around to stomp on someone they have hated forever. And these mostly white men, middle-class, educated professionals, are not in grade school, burdened by the many ignorant attitudes of such an immature age--they are all adults.

Their whole attitude seems so juvenile, so full of self-loathing, and a pathetic shrieking exclamation of "PICK ME! PICK ME!"--while they go about condescendingly and smugly disparaging (and slipping in their little needles) the vast majority of the audience that has supported this hobby for decades since the beginning.

So sad, Jaeger.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 22, 2021, 04:56:03 AM
James Jacobs: ( D&D writer, and current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.)[/b]
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

This shit just speaks for itself...

Select quote:
Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”


WOTC D&D has hated its core sales demographic long before they eagerly bought their first copies of the 3e PHB.

And they have been paying WOTC to hate on them ever since.

There is nothing wrong with killing off White Male Fighters.  I personally have had many White Male Fighters killed off over the years and, indeed, am trying to kill off one particularly stubborn one in my current campaign.

As for Monte Cook, well he has Shanna "Consent in Gaming" Germain so looks like he is set.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 22, 2021, 09:02:48 AM
Monte Cook is a hack.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 22, 2021, 09:28:19 AM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Why is it that Thor (The Movie) had a 48% of female audience?)

Also Google Boudica.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a female fantasy. I was wondering why it wasn’t criticized anywhere near as often as the bikini armor.

If I understand correctly then the logic here is that guys want to be He-Man, whereas gals want to fuck He-Man.

Quote
Also Google Boudica.
What’s your point? She never wore a chainmail bikini.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 22, 2021, 10:02:12 AM
So apparently that Giantlands KS is already 1 1/2 years late on delivery

The author is claiming COVID-19 set him back.

I worked from home all last year and got quite a bit done, including some long technical documents with diagrams, custom graphics, etc. that had to be publication-quality. I don't recall the virus shutting down all computer systems and the Internet for 12 months.

Every time these guys (a select crowd of dudes who like to make money through crowd funding and then fail to deliver) are late on anything, there are excuses: "I had to go to the doctor"! "My dog needs an operation"! (remember that one from Ernie?), "the virus"!

and speaking of Gygax family fiascos, we also have the cancellation of Garycon last year.

They sold over $150,000 in badges and merchandise, and when COVID-19 hit, they promptly cancelled the convention, and told everyone "sorry no refunds for anything"

then attendees found out that the Grand Geneva Hotel had refunded all monies involved with reserving the room block and equipment back to the organizers, meaning that they suffered no financial damages. When pressed on this, they said "we had to buy swag, so we can't refund any money"

150k went to swag and merchandise? Bullshit. Not even 10k went towards that. Every other convention in the US that was cancelled because of the virus either fully refunded badges, let attendees use the badges for the next year, or at the very least offered partial refunds.

When some attendees got pissed and started pushing back, the organizers moved the convention to a virtual platform, but  kept the money. So people ended up getting a Rol20 game for $75 - $2000 (platinum badge) that lasted one day.

And then we have the Gygax memorial statue that Gail is promising. How long has that been going for now? 11 years? Money is long gone and no statue was ever erected.

What are we up to now? 250k? makes Ken Whitman look like an amateur as far as this stuff goes.

--

Honestly guys, stop giving money to people because they have a "famous" last name. Stop assuming that they can produce a decent RPG or supplement, even though they have no credits to their name, and have never published a thing. Don't give piles of cash to a guy fo 3-4 years straight because he lost some personal items in a fire (and had insurance), when you don't even know that dude. Don't let people walk off with your money with some flimsy excuse because his last name is Gygax. You wouldn't do any of this for other people, and there would be accountability.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 22, 2021, 10:19:14 AM
...

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.
...

I'll quibble a touch. No error in thinking here.

I specifically highlighted 3e because it is easier to get references. And D&D falling into WOTC's hands was a big turning point for the game.

I'm well aware that the rot started a whole hell of a lot earlier than most people would imagine.

The "chainmail bikini" outrage was manufactured back then the same way that Orcs = black people outrage was manufactured today.

Just like the whole D&D is the devil "Satanic Panic" was a media driven ratings grab where the left got to play one of their favorite games.

The cultural rot goes waaaayyyyy back.

And it is Deep.

In the 60's-70's there was a battle between sex positive feminists and sex negative feminists, to the eyes of the normie the sex positive ones won, truth is the other ones went into academia, infected everything and developed their pseudo science.

From there the infection started to expand into culture, the more niche a form of entertainment the easiest it was to infiltrate at first, with "small" seemingly reasonable (to the normie's eyes) requests.

The Chainmail bikini was made at the perfect time, TSR could please the phantom audience of "offended wahmen" AND take one weapon away from the fundies in one fell swoop.

But as we all are well aware by now (or should be) bending the knee is blood in the water, you did it once and will do it again, you have shown you lack the spine. In animalistic terms you're no Alpha of no pack, you're a gamma or a betta at best.

Pressure will keep on being exerted over you until you bend the knee again, and again, and again...

Sadly for the commies in charge of WotC they made the OGL, and now the genie is out of the bottle, and they have no chance of putting it back in.

Chainmal Bikini & Loincloth Armor High Fantasy RPG

How does it sound?

Enough Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee potential to harvest those sweet, sweet free publicity bucks?
Sex positive versus sex negative is an overly simplistic way of putting it that misses key nuances. Namely, sex work is neither. After all the evidence I’ve seen, I don’t believe that you can support sex work (including porn) and be genuinely feminist.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 10:54:18 AM
OR... maybe we should accept that biological reality is real. That males like what they like because of their biology, and so do women regardless of what fancy-schmancy ideologies espoused by outliers to the norm?

The fact that D&D traditionally marketed to their largest demographic should *surprise NOBODY*. The fact that young Africans and Asians didn't discover D&D in the late 70's wasn't simply because of you know, it started in America which was predominantly white and culturally Western European. Why should anyone be shocked that the demographics of a small business like TSR would ignite under a largely young white-male nerdy audience... you know, the very demographic of the people that created it?

The fucked up part is that reaching out to other demographics shouldn't have *anything* to do with destroying your primary demographic. That's the part where it reveals the self-loathing of creators in the medium. In what reality would you want to hire employees that actually want to subvert your product for their own egoic issues?

Nothing prevents them from marketing to other demographics with content designed to attract those people without destroying your current IP model. It's not either-or. It's this AND that. You see this in the comicbook world now - we can't make great superheroes that are female and/or ethnic etc. instead we have to destroy the IPs that exist by race/gender swapping them out of "revenge" more than an honest attempt at trying to make something good contextually.

Yes the majority of players are white and male. Service your demographic faithfully. Appeal to your new demographics faithfully, but be prepared that *some* people will never want your product for "reasons". They are not mutually exclusive unless you have mental issues.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 10:55:00 AM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

Why is it that Thor (The Movie) had a 48% of female audience?)

Also Google Boudica.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a female fantasy. I was wondering why it wasn’t criticized anywhere near as often as the bikini armor.

If I understand correctly then the logic here is that guys want to be He-Man, whereas gals want to fuck He-Man.

Quote
Also Google Boudica.
What’s your point? She never wore a chainmail bikini.

Also women (some of them) want to be Red Sonja/Boudica. The other women would like to bang her. And both straight and gay women like to look at sexy women. The dreaded "Male Gaze" is a myth.

Correct, Boudica never wore Chainmail Bikini she didn't wear any armor at all, and the original complaint was that chainmail bikini was "unrealistic" as it offered zero protection. My guess would be it offers as much protection as your regular clothing would agasinst a very sharp gladius.

But we all know the complaint was a disingenuous attack on the hobby and nothing that women in general really found offensive (even if one were to believe that being offended is an argument).

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 10:56:38 AM
...

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.
...

I'll quibble a touch. No error in thinking here.

I specifically highlighted 3e because it is easier to get references. And D&D falling into WOTC's hands was a big turning point for the game.

I'm well aware that the rot started a whole hell of a lot earlier than most people would imagine.

The "chainmail bikini" outrage was manufactured back then the same way that Orcs = black people outrage was manufactured today.

Just like the whole D&D is the devil "Satanic Panic" was a media driven ratings grab where the left got to play one of their favorite games.

The cultural rot goes waaaayyyyy back.

And it is Deep.

In the 60's-70's there was a battle between sex positive feminists and sex negative feminists, to the eyes of the normie the sex positive ones won, truth is the other ones went into academia, infected everything and developed their pseudo science.

From there the infection started to expand into culture, the more niche a form of entertainment the easiest it was to infiltrate at first, with "small" seemingly reasonable (to the normie's eyes) requests.

The Chainmail bikini was made at the perfect time, TSR could please the phantom audience of "offended wahmen" AND take one weapon away from the fundies in one fell swoop.

But as we all are well aware by now (or should be) bending the knee is blood in the water, you did it once and will do it again, you have shown you lack the spine. In animalistic terms you're no Alpha of no pack, you're a gamma or a betta at best.

Pressure will keep on being exerted over you until you bend the knee again, and again, and again...

Sadly for the commies in charge of WotC they made the OGL, and now the genie is out of the bottle, and they have no chance of putting it back in.

Chainmal Bikini & Loincloth Armor High Fantasy RPG

How does it sound?

Enough Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee potential to harvest those sweet, sweet free publicity bucks?
Sex positive versus sex negative is an overly simplistic way of putting it that misses key nuances. Namely, sex work is neither. After all the evidence I’ve seen, I don’t believe that you can support sex work (including porn) and be genuinely feminist.

Right, because nothing says women's rights and women's liberation like limiting what they can or can't do based on YOUR morals.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 11:06:27 AM
OR... maybe we should accept that biological reality is real. That males like what they like because of their biology, and so do women regardless of what fancy-schmancy ideologies espoused by outliers to the norm?

The fact that D&D traditionally marketed to their largest demographic should *surprise NOBODY*. The fact that young Africans and Asians didn't discover D&D in the late 70's wasn't simply because of you know, it started in America which was predominantly white and culturally Western European. Why should anyone be shocked that the demographics of a small business like TSR would ignite under a largely young white-male nerdy audience... you know, the very demographic of the people that created it?

The fucked up part is that reaching out to other demographics shouldn't have *anything* to do with destroying your primary demographic. That's the part where it reveals the self-loathing of creators in the medium. In what reality would you want to hire employees that actually want to subvert your product for their own egoic issues?

Nothing prevents them from marketing to other demographics with content designed to attract those people without destroying your current IP model. It's not either-or. It's this AND that. You see this in the comicbook world now - we can't make great superheroes that are female and/or ethnic etc. instead we have to destroy the IPs that exist by race/gender swapping them out of "revenge" more than an honest attempt at trying to make something good contextually.

Yes the majority of players are white and male. Service your demographic faithfully. Appeal to your new demographics faithfully, but be prepared that *some* people will never want your product for "reasons". They are not mutually exclusive unless you have mental issues.

Exactly.

One should also remember that even if the main demographic of product X is white males that doesn't mean something nefarious has happened.

Bodice rippers, 50 shades of depravity, etc. main audience? Female, depending on the country it will be white or not. Has some crime been commited against males for not making those more like I dunno, spy thrillers?

Now you narrow your audience even more when you talk about things that used to be niche, that got you ostracized for liking them, especially as a teen and you multiply the self selecting. nNot everybody is into collecting postal stamps, has any crime been commited?

Now add that for reasons some communities think of certain things as "white" things and will pressure ppl from the community not to engage in those. Is that also whitey's blame?

RPGs started where? in middle class suburbia no? What was the main demographic there? Nothing nefarious was done, and nothing nefarious was done against women either, they just (most of them) don't like the same stuff that we nerds like. And way back when the ones that did risked ostracizing for having nerd cooties if the "nice" girls found out they did. If you want to lie the blame at someone's feet you need to go to those communities and ask them to stop self segregating and to the cool kids and ask them to stop being assholes.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 22, 2021, 11:16:29 AM
...

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.
...

I'll quibble a touch. No error in thinking here.

I specifically highlighted 3e because it is easier to get references. And D&D falling into WOTC's hands was a big turning point for the game.

I'm well aware that the rot started a whole hell of a lot earlier than most people would imagine.

The "chainmail bikini" outrage was manufactured back then the same way that Orcs = black people outrage was manufactured today.

Just like the whole D&D is the devil "Satanic Panic" was a media driven ratings grab where the left got to play one of their favorite games.

The cultural rot goes waaaayyyyy back.

And it is Deep.

In the 60's-70's there was a battle between sex positive feminists and sex negative feminists, to the eyes of the normie the sex positive ones won, truth is the other ones went into academia, infected everything and developed their pseudo science.

From there the infection started to expand into culture, the more niche a form of entertainment the easiest it was to infiltrate at first, with "small" seemingly reasonable (to the normie's eyes) requests.

The Chainmail bikini was made at the perfect time, TSR could please the phantom audience of "offended wahmen" AND take one weapon away from the fundies in one fell swoop.

But as we all are well aware by now (or should be) bending the knee is blood in the water, you did it once and will do it again, you have shown you lack the spine. In animalistic terms you're no Alpha of no pack, you're a gamma or a betta at best.

Pressure will keep on being exerted over you until you bend the knee again, and again, and again...

Sadly for the commies in charge of WotC they made the OGL, and now the genie is out of the bottle, and they have no chance of putting it back in.

Chainmal Bikini & Loincloth Armor High Fantasy RPG

How does it sound?

Enough Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee potential to harvest those sweet, sweet free publicity bucks?
Sex positive versus sex negative is an overly simplistic way of putting it that misses key nuances. Namely, sex work is neither. After all the evidence I’ve seen, I don’t believe that you can support sex work (including porn) and be genuinely feminist.

Right, because nothing says women's rights and women's liberation like limiting what they can or can't do based on YOUR morals.
You honestly think most prostitutes have a choice in the matter? They don't. They're mostly poor women being trafficked and exploited. Prostitution is not empowering, it is not liberating, and it actively violates women's rights. Prostitutes are victims, not women freely exercising their rights. Celebrities with an OnlyFans account are not representative.

https://nordicmodelnow.org/what-is-the-nordic-model/
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 11:22:23 AM
...

Your only error is thinking this wasn't in gestation well before then, the infection was already under way in the 80's. That's when the first anti chainmail bikini article ever was published in Dragon or Dungeon.
...

I'll quibble a touch. No error in thinking here.

I specifically highlighted 3e because it is easier to get references. And D&D falling into WOTC's hands was a big turning point for the game.

I'm well aware that the rot started a whole hell of a lot earlier than most people would imagine.

The "chainmail bikini" outrage was manufactured back then the same way that Orcs = black people outrage was manufactured today.

Just like the whole D&D is the devil "Satanic Panic" was a media driven ratings grab where the left got to play one of their favorite games.

The cultural rot goes waaaayyyyy back.

And it is Deep.

In the 60's-70's there was a battle between sex positive feminists and sex negative feminists, to the eyes of the normie the sex positive ones won, truth is the other ones went into academia, infected everything and developed their pseudo science.

From there the infection started to expand into culture, the more niche a form of entertainment the easiest it was to infiltrate at first, with "small" seemingly reasonable (to the normie's eyes) requests.

The Chainmail bikini was made at the perfect time, TSR could please the phantom audience of "offended wahmen" AND take one weapon away from the fundies in one fell swoop.

But as we all are well aware by now (or should be) bending the knee is blood in the water, you did it once and will do it again, you have shown you lack the spine. In animalistic terms you're no Alpha of no pack, you're a gamma or a betta at best.

Pressure will keep on being exerted over you until you bend the knee again, and again, and again...

Sadly for the commies in charge of WotC they made the OGL, and now the genie is out of the bottle, and they have no chance of putting it back in.

Chainmal Bikini & Loincloth Armor High Fantasy RPG

How does it sound?

Enough Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee potential to harvest those sweet, sweet free publicity bucks?
Sex positive versus sex negative is an overly simplistic way of putting it that misses key nuances. Namely, sex work is neither. After all the evidence I’ve seen, I don’t believe that you can support sex work (including porn) and be genuinely feminist.

Right, because nothing says women's rights and women's liberation like limiting what they can or can't do based on YOUR morals.
You honestly think most prostitutes have a choice in the matter? They don't. They're mostly poor women being trafficked and exploited. Prostitution is not empowering, it is not liberating, and it actively violates women's rights. Prostitutes are victims, not women freely exercising their rights. Celebrities with an OnlyFans account are not representative.

https://nordicmodelnow.org/what-is-the-nordic-model/

Human traficking is illegal and rigthly so, "exploited" you'll need to define that but I guess this topic isn't right for here. So I'm droping it, if you wish to continue you know where.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 22, 2021, 11:52:52 AM
Anyway, I'm ambivalent toward bikini armor. If studies show that consistent exposure to it increases objectification attitudes towards women or men alike, then I'd be against it. At the same time, I think that's treating a symptom rather than the disease itself. I support topfreedom because covering women up doesn't decrease objectification. Sorry, Buzzfeed or whatever, your covered up heroines not only don't end objectification but probably make it worse. I don't think the problem is nudity in itself (there are/were cultures where women routinely go/went topless without issue, like the Minoans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrV5hc5k3U)), but socialization: more specifically, the hyper-sexualization and dehumanization/objectification of women's bodies as compared to men's. That is, it's not the depiction of bikini armor or nudity but the way that viewers (are intended/trained to) react to it.

On a semi-related note: One of my favorite games, Planescape: Torment, has a conversation where Fall-From-Grace explains that strategically placed cloth can be more titillating than simple nudity. It's a lesson that I wish many others would learn.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 11:54:39 AM
I'm Asian - I came to this game with Conan the Barbarian and King Arthur (and whatever my childish mind had packed inbetween which is largely nothing).

I honestly didn't even register that there were overtly no Asians in our games. My GM was a Vietnamese girl, and I played with two filipinos and an American white and black kid. At no point did the fact that my black friend was playing a paladin (who by his own description wasn't even black) or the fact that I played a savage fighter who in my mind looked like a Hyrkanian (conan ftw bitches) ever matter to any of us.

Our GM - the Vietnamese girl, from Vietnam, who knew *nothing* about American culture, presented the game exactly as it was. PC's in a fantasy setting where she described the NPC's as white people in a quasi-medieval setting... you know... D&D. No one was torked up about representation.

We played the game for what it was and what we made it. The novelty of Oriental Adventure when it came out had *nothing* to do with Asian representation for me or anyone else I knew. It had to do with Golden Harvest/Shaw Bros. Representation. It had to do with Black Belt Theater/Kurosawa/Bruce Lee Representation and the crazy idea that Ho Li Phuc! Asian cinema can be turned into D&D! Genius.

All the fucking weirdos in Dragon Magazine jacking off about historical authenticity, and shit like that were missing the larger point. Sure that stuff matters to me (sort of) as an adult. But at the time - it allowed me to expand on my "normal" D&D conceits by spreading the ruleset further to include OA mechanics in my established fantasy game.

It wasn't "Asian" mechanics. And for people wanting historical accuracy, it should be pretty clear that there isn't some requirement for historical accuracy when you have motherfuckers leaping 30-ft into the air, flying kick people harder than getting hit with a zweihander, or punching holes in people from ten-feet away (Distance Death baby!). And people complained about OA being so Japanese/Chinese centric - got their cries heard by Mike Pondsmith in the Kara-Tur boxset (glorious!).

Ultimately despite many products for the line - it didn't sell well. Why? Because largely the western and white demographic likes playing in their own cultural comfort-zone. THAT'S OKAY. That should be expected, and the Real TSR(tm) made an honest-to-Galactus stab at it.

All of these is conveniently memory holed because the narrative of representation is really a crusade to destroy whatever came before in the attempts of blurring what D&D was into the freakshow it's become.

Fortunately if you take your gaming seriously you can step back and be Brand Free and realize "D&D" isn't "D&D" anywhere but in your heart and mind. The company that owns "D&D" has no claim over what you as a consumer wants "D&D" to be at your table without your consent. It's not defined by an edition, or by a system, contrary to what others might think. D&D exists as an idea we define everytime we sit down at the table.

I vote with my dollars. And at this stage in my life, my gold is there for the a taking to whomever wants it if they give me good product. Many of these companies apparently think that my gold is not worth what they think "bad thoughts" are in their heads. That's not my problem.

There are companies that recognize this and I hope they're rolling around naked on my money as long as they give me good stuff, and they deserve it. This new TSR company ain't gonna be one of them.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 22, 2021, 12:00:23 PM
Western-style fantasy is apparently quite popular in East Asian markets because it's exotic.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 12:01:04 PM
Anyway, I'm ambivalent toward bikini armor. If studies show that consistent exposure to it increases objectification attitudes towards women or men alike, then I'd be against it. At the same time, I think that's treating a symptom rather than the disease itself. I support topfreedom because covering women up doesn't decrease objectification. Sorry, Buzzfeed or whatever, your covered up heroines not only don't end objectification but probably make it worse. I don't think the problem is nudity in itself (there are/were cultures where women routinely go/went topless without issue, like the Minoans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrV5hc5k3U)), but socialization: more specifically, the hyper-sexualization and dehumanization/objectification of women's bodies as compared to men's. That is, it's not the depiction of bikini armor or nudity but the way that viewers (are intended/trained to) react to it.

On a semi-related note: One of my favorite games, Planescape: Torment, has a conversation where Fall-From-Grace explains that strategically placed cloth can be more titillating than simple nudity. It's a lesson that I wish many others would learn.

Who cares?

Unless you're making some claim that Roleplayers are going around raping people because of roleplaying. If you're saying it's bad that roleplayers can enjoy a sexual aesthetic of their own choice without forcing it on others - then why not? Are people not allowed to find something sexually appealing? Otherwise what is the point of LGBTQLMFAOPIP+ representation? Ratifying someone's sexual proclivities on any level requires what precisely?

And they are free to reject those of others. You're not free to require acceptance of it. That is the whole point of understanding your demographics. A company is there to sell a product to its consumers.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 12:01:33 PM
Western-style fantasy is apparently quite popular in East Asian markets because it's exotic.

So do you go to Asian RPG forums and tell them they need more Black Representation?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 12:09:13 PM
Anyway, I'm ambivalent toward bikini armor. If studies show that consistent exposure to it increases objectification attitudes towards women or men alike, then I'd be against it. At the same time, I think that's treating a symptom rather than the disease itself. I support topfreedom because covering women up doesn't decrease objectification. Sorry, Buzzfeed or whatever, your covered up heroines not only don't end objectification but probably make it worse. I don't think the problem is nudity in itself (there are/were cultures where women routinely go/went topless without issue, like the Minoans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrV5hc5k3U)), but socialization: more specifically, the hyper-sexualization and dehumanization/objectification of women's bodies as compared to men's. That is, it's not the depiction of bikini armor or nudity but the way that viewers (are intended/trained to) react to it.

On a semi-related note: One of my favorite games, Planescape: Torment, has a conversation where Fall-From-Grace explains that strategically placed cloth can be more titillating than simple nudity. It's a lesson that I wish many others would learn.

Yep, this here. I think the most passable argument against the chainmail bikini is the obvious "that armor would suck IRL" scenario, but since this was fantasy, it's primary attraction was to the pubescent boys playing RPGs and girls who were otherwise dealing with constant bodyshaming issues finding a way to live vicariously as amazon warriors or whatever in D&D. A lot of feminism, I have noticed, seems to focus on attacking other women as much as men, especially women who don't seem sufficiently shamed at their own appearances, or art that implies women can own their sexuality.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 12:11:07 PM
Anyway, I'm ambivalent toward bikini armor. If studies show that consistent exposure to it increases objectification attitudes towards women or men alike, then I'd be against it. At the same time, I think that's treating a symptom rather than the disease itself. I support topfreedom because covering women up doesn't decrease objectification. Sorry, Buzzfeed or whatever, your covered up heroines not only don't end objectification but probably make it worse. I don't think the problem is nudity in itself (there are/were cultures where women routinely go/went topless without issue, like the Minoans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrV5hc5k3U)), but socialization: more specifically, the hyper-sexualization and dehumanization/objectification of women's bodies as compared to men's. That is, it's not the depiction of bikini armor or nudity but the way that viewers (are intended/trained to) react to it.

On a semi-related note: One of my favorite games, Planescape: Torment, has a conversation where Fall-From-Grace explains that strategically placed cloth can be more titillating than simple nudity. It's a lesson that I wish many others would learn.

Who cares?

Unless you're making some claim that Roleplayers are going around raping people because of roleplaying. If you're saying it's bad that roleplayers can enjoy a sexual aesthetic of their own choice without forcing it on others - then why not? Are people not allowed to find something sexually appealing? Otherwise what is the point of LGBTQLMFAOPIP+ representation? Ratifying someone's sexual proclivities on any level requires what precisely?

And they are free to reject those of others. You're not free to require acceptance of it. That is the whole point of understanding your demographics. A company is there to sell a product to its consumers.

Well, the movement has never been inclusive to heteronormativity so.....
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 12:12:37 PM
Yep, this here. I think the most passable argument against the chainmail bikini is the obvious "that armor would suck IRL" scenario, but since this was fantasy, it's primary attraction was to the pubescent boys playing RPGs and girls who were otherwise dealing with constant bodyshaming issues finding a way to live vicariously as amazon warriors or whatever in D&D. A lot of feminism, I have noticed, seems to focus on attacking other women as much as men, especially women who don't seem sufficiently shamed at their own appearances, or art that implies women can own their sexuality.

So the results are: Body Positivity, removing all sexuality (unless it's non-heterosexual), Masculinity in any form where men are actually being Masculine. And "Feminists" actually attacking women for not conforming to the "Feminist" political view of their gender.

Who has the real problem here?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 12:14:06 PM
Well, the movement has never been inclusive to heteronormativity so.....

Are you saying "gaming" and being "normal" both culturally and biologically is a "Movement"?

Seriously.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 12:16:08 PM
I'm Asian - I came to this game with Conan the Barbarian and King Arthur (and whatever my childish mind had packed inbetween which is largely nothing).

I honestly didn't even register that there were overtly no Asians in our games. My GM was a Vietnamese girl, and I played with two filipinos and an American white and black kid. At no point did the fact that my black friend was playing a paladin (who by his own description wasn't even black) or the fact that I played a savage fighter who in my mind looked like a Hyrkanian (conan ftw bitches) ever matter to any of us.

Our GM - the Vietnamese girl, from Vietnam, who knew *nothing* about American culture, presented the game exactly as it was. PC's in a fantasy setting where she described the NPC's as white people in a quasi-medieval setting... you know... D&D. No one was torked up about representation.

We played the game for what it was and what we made it. The novelty of Oriental Adventure when it came out had *nothing* to do with Asian representation for me or anyone else I knew. It had to do with Golden Harvest/Shaw Bros. Representation. It had to do with Black Belt Theater/Kurosawa/Bruce Lee Representation and the crazy idea that Ho Li Phuc! Asian cinema can be turned into D&D! Genius.

All the fucking weirdos in Dragon Magazine jacking off about historical authenticity, and shit like that were missing the larger point. Sure that stuff matters to me (sort of) as an adult. But at the time - it allowed me to expand on my "normal" D&D conceits by spreading the ruleset further to include OA mechanics in my established fantasy game.

It wasn't "Asian" mechanics. And for people wanting historical accuracy, it should be pretty clear that there isn't some requirement for historical accuracy when you have motherfuckers leaping 30-ft into the air, flying kick people harder than getting hit with a zweihander, or punching holes in people from ten-feet away (Distance Death baby!). And people complained about OA being so Japanese/Chinese centric - got their cries heard by Mike Pondsmith in the Kara-Tur boxset (glorious!).

Ultimately despite many products for the line - it didn't sell well. Why? Because largely the western and white demographic likes playing in their own cultural comfort-zone. THAT'S OKAY. That should be expected, and the Real TSR(tm) made an honest-to-Galactus stab at it.

All of these is conveniently memory holed because the narrative of representation is really a crusade to destroy whatever came before in the attempts of blurring what D&D was into the freakshow it's become.

Fortunately if you take your gaming seriously you can step back and be Brand Free and realize "D&D" isn't "D&D" anywhere but in your heart and mind. The company that owns "D&D" has no claim over what you as a consumer wants "D&D" to be at your table without your consent. It's not defined by an edition, or by a system, contrary to what others might think. D&D exists as an idea we define everytime we sit down at the table.

I vote with my dollars. And at this stage in my life, my gold is there for the a taking to whomever wants it if they give me good product. Many of these companies apparently think that my gold is not worth what they think "bad thoughts" are in their heads. That's not my problem.

There are companies that recognize this and I hope they're rolling around naked on my money as long as they give me good stuff, and they deserve it. This new TSR company ain't gonna be one of them.

I just want to comment that I really appreciated your post, and it very much helps set things in perspective.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 12:16:51 PM
Well, the movement has never been inclusive to heteronormativity so.....

Are you saying "gaming" and being "normal" both culturally and biologically is a "Movement"?

Seriously.

No, I'm saying LBGTQI etc. doesn't include heteronormativity in its list last I checked.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 12:18:42 PM
Yep, this here. I think the most passable argument against the chainmail bikini is the obvious "that armor would suck IRL" scenario, but since this was fantasy, it's primary attraction was to the pubescent boys playing RPGs and girls who were otherwise dealing with constant bodyshaming issues finding a way to live vicariously as amazon warriors or whatever in D&D. A lot of feminism, I have noticed, seems to focus on attacking other women as much as men, especially women who don't seem sufficiently shamed at their own appearances, or art that implies women can own their sexuality.

So the results are: Body Positivity, removing all sexuality (unless it's non-heterosexual), Masculinity in any form where men are actually being Masculine. And "Feminists" actually attacking women for not conforming to the "Feminist" political view of their gender.

Who has the real problem here?

Yes exactly.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 12:22:16 PM
Anyway, I'm ambivalent toward bikini armor. If studies show that consistent exposure to it increases objectification attitudes towards women or men alike, then I'd be against it. At the same time, I think that's treating a symptom rather than the disease itself. I support topfreedom because covering women up doesn't decrease objectification. Sorry, Buzzfeed or whatever, your covered up heroines not only don't end objectification but probably make it worse. I don't think the problem is nudity in itself (there are/were cultures where women routinely go/went topless without issue, like the Minoans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrV5hc5k3U)), but socialization: more specifically, the hyper-sexualization and dehumanization/objectification of women's bodies as compared to men's. That is, it's not the depiction of bikini armor or nudity but the way that viewers (are intended/trained to) react to it.

On a semi-related note: One of my favorite games, Planescape: Torment, has a conversation where Fall-From-Grace explains that strategically placed cloth can be more titillating than simple nudity. It's a lesson that I wish many others would learn.

Who cares?

Unless you're making some claim that Roleplayers are going around raping people because of roleplaying. If you're saying it's bad that roleplayers can enjoy a sexual aesthetic of their own choice without forcing it on others - then why not? Are people not allowed to find something sexually appealing? Otherwise what is the point of LGBTQLMFAOPIP+ representation? Ratifying someone's sexual proclivities on any level requires what precisely?

And they are free to reject those of others. You're not free to require acceptance of it. That is the whole point of understanding your demographics. A company is there to sell a product to its consumers.

It's haram comrade, uncovered women are a temptation that certain demographics have been trained not to resist.

Truth be told the more freely available porn the less rape, yes I know correlation doesn't prove causation.

As for the art depictions in RPGs has anyone even made a study trying to prove that Gamers went around raping women in troves and that this stoped as soon as the games went sharia compliant?

Where's a woman more safe? The West or those countries we dare not name for fear of being called islamophobes?

Play as you wish, write what you wish, draw what you wish and do not even dream on imposing YOUR morals on others.

I already said so but I'm totally gonna make a game with the more hypersexualized and "sexist" cover I fucking can, I'm also gonna fill the interior with sexy women and men, many of them scantily clad. And fuck the moral bussybodies.

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 12:25:05 PM

No, I'm saying LBGTQI etc. doesn't include heteronormativity in its list last I checked.

Yeah. Okay I understood you correctly heh.

The problem is there is this inability to think of themselves as individuals. Sure culture matters. One is influenced by ones culture, but ones culture should not define someone. Thus, these people view themselves as a confederation for one reason: they're not 'heteronormative" and unironically (to them) commit their very own sin of "Othering" those not like their "Movement". The double-irony is none of the constituents of the LGBT Community have anything really in common besides this mutual hatred for their "Others". So they have to put on this charade that everything is politically driven as they are.

They are neither Pro-LGBT in relation to anything else. They are Supremacists that want to crush the very culture (Western European) that allows them to exist in this current malignant configuration, but are too stupid to realize it. This is why BoxCrayonTales quote about East Asian people finding Western Fantasy "exotic" is funny to me. He's not wrong, but the term has a totally different meaning today where "exotic" is seen as racist among SJWs. But to hold that view without context - you'll never see an SJW pull that shit on an Asian gaming forum asking for Black Representation... insinuating that Asians are racists because it causes them to short-circuit. Which is exactly the reality they don't/can't face. They've lowered the bar in trying to paint "white people" as inherently racist, they don't realize those standards as applied mean *everyone* are *more* racist by those criteria. They're just too stupid/ignorant to know or admit it.

Because you know... only "white people" can be racist, is their mantra. I hate to break it to them... they really need to go travel a bit.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 12:27:25 PM
Well, the movement has never been inclusive to heteronormativity so.....

Are you saying "gaming" and being "normal" both culturally and biologically is a "Movement"?

Seriously.

No, I'm saying LBGTQI etc. doesn't include heteronormativity in its list last I checked.

Heteronormativity is a made up term to try and demonize the vas majority of the population, it implies that somehow you're being forced by society (remember they believe in the tabula rasa) to be heterosexual by some magic means, and that if we remove every visual/written/etc representation of it then ppl will magically all become demigender pansexual 2 spirited otherkin.

It's never wise to use the enemy's terms to describe yourself.

Reject them outloud and write, play draw whatever you want, and if they cry this offends them double and triple down.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: camazotz on June 22, 2021, 12:31:38 PM

No, I'm saying LBGTQI etc. doesn't include heteronormativity in its list last I checked.

Yeah. Okay I understood you correctly heh.

The problem is there is this inability to think of themselves as individuals. Sure culture matters. One is influenced by ones culture, but ones culture should not define someone. Thus, these people view themselves as a confederation for one reason: they're not 'heteronormative" and unironically (to them) commit their very own sin of "Othering" those not like their "Movement". The double-irony is none of the constituents of the LGBT Community have anything really in common besides this mutual hatred for their "Others". So they have to put on this charade that everything is politically driven as they are.

They are neither Pro-LGBT in relation to anything else. They are Supremacists that want to crush the very culture (Western European) that allows them to exist in this current malignant configuration, but are too stupid to realize it. This is why BoxCrayonTales quote about East Asian people finding Western Fantasy "exotic" (he's not wrong, but the term has a totally different meaning today where "exotic" is seen as racist among SJWs), but to hold that view without context - you'll never see an SJW pull that shit on an Asian gaming forum asking for Black Representation... insinuating that Asians are racists because it causes them to short-circuit.

Because you know... only "white people" can be racist, is their mantra. I hate to break it to them... they really need to go travel a bit.

Very true. Man, I am enjoying your posts because I am in 100% agreement and this is making my day.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 12:34:40 PM

No, I'm saying LBGTQI etc. doesn't include heteronormativity in its list last I checked.

Yeah. Okay I understood you correctly heh.

The problem is there is this inability to think of themselves as individuals. Sure culture matters. One is influenced by ones culture, but ones culture should not define someone. Thus, these people view themselves as a confederation for one reason: they're not 'heteronormative" and unironically (to them) commit their very own sin of "Othering" those not like their "Movement". The double-irony is none of the constituents of the LGBT Community have anything really in common besides this mutual hatred for their "Others". So they have to put on this charade that everything is politically driven as they are.

They are neither Pro-LGBT in relation to anything else. They are Supremacists that want to crush the very culture (Western European) that allows them to exist in this current malignant configuration, but are too stupid to realize it. This is why BoxCrayonTales quote about East Asian people finding Western Fantasy "exotic" (he's not wrong, but the term has a totally different meaning today where "exotic" is seen as racist among SJWs), but to hold that view without context - you'll never see an SJW pull that shit on an Asian gaming forum asking for Black Representation... insinuating that Asians are racists because it causes them to short-circuit.

Because you know... only "white people" can be racist, is their mantra. I hate to break it to them... they really need to go travel a bit.

Very true. Man, I am enjoying your posts because I am in 100% agreement and this is making my day.

Thank you. It's just calling balls and strikes, brotha.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 22, 2021, 12:43:43 PM
Truth be told the more freely available porn the less rape, yes I know correlation doesn't prove causation.
Studies suggest porn increases misogynistic attitudes. https://theconversation.com/pornography-has-deeply-troubling-effects-on-young-people-but-there-are-ways-we-can-minimise-the-harm-127319

Meanwhile, leftists claim the opposite: that porn is feminist. https://ovarit.com/o/Radfemmery/34663/28000-upvotes-on-preddit-hating-porn-is-sexist-loving-porn-is-feminist
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SirGalahad on June 22, 2021, 01:17:24 PM
The only thing that 3e did was started using the word “she” instead of “him” in it’s texts. It was a way to try break the gender divide and attract more females into the game. It bugged me when they did that switch. From a marketing point, they wanted a new audience instead of old aging fat men to play the game. There was not too much else they changed in my honest opinion that would invoke SJW….

I disagree.

Like I said; Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D well before most people knew what an SJW was.

My Evidence:

Johnathan Tweet: 3e-and-the-feel-of-D&D
https://www.enworld.org/threads/3e-and-the-feel-of-d-d.667269/

Tweet openly talks about excising any references of or to real-world mythology when worldbuilding for official 3e D&D.

Making the game entirely self-referential.

Effectively doing a “Year Zero” of D&D lore…

Select quotes:
“…one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions."
...
"…by the time we were working on 3rd Ed, D&D had had such a big impact on fantasy that we basically used D&D as its own source."

"We were fortunate that by 2000 D&D had such a strong legacy that it could stand on its own without reference to Earth history or mythology.”



Johnathan Tweet: Diversity-in-D&D-third-edition
https://www.enworld.org/threads/diversity-in-d-d-third-edition.668462/

Tweet openly discusses pushing a “diversity and inclusion” agenda for 3e.

Select quotes:
“One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive.”

“Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.”

“By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years.”



Notice how pissed he gets when the WOTC Marketing team of the time insisted that they throw their biggest sales demographic a bone…

“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.”

And to his utter horror:
“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.”


The White male fighter hate was strong with the 3e design team:

Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”

“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”

“At least that was our intention.”

“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”



James Jacobs: ( D&D writer, and current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

This shit just speaks for itself...

Select quote:
Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”


WOTC D&D has hated its core sales demographic long before they eagerly bought their first copies of the 3e PHB.

And they have been paying WOTC to hate on them ever since.

Greetings!

Holy fuck, my friend! That's some outstanding work you have provided here! I've always known for many years that the "creative types" at WOTC were largely a bunch of cultural degenerates. Reading through the standard books at the time, you could see little glimpses of their counter-cultural myopia and hatred. The whole "Killing the Minotaur" article published from way back in the early 3E era provided additional confirmation of the growing leftist, anarchist, depraved cesspool that everyone at WOTC were becoming--and seeking to recruit more like-minded degenerates.

Your quotes here though, geesus. Very eye-opening, I confess. And sad, Jaeger. How fucking pathetic that all of these mostly middle-class professionals, all at least theoretically "educated"--and all mostly white men--are so full of self-loathing and hatred for everything that is white, traditional, and conservative. They are so fucking desperate to be accepted...by somebody...that they lift on high the constant litany of women this, minority that--regardless of how ahistorical, jarring, unrealistic, or inappropriate doing so obviously is, well beyond any kind of reasonably balanced and healthy perspective on all of it, just so they can giggle together like a bunch of shit-covered little boys, gathered around to stomp on someone they have hated forever. And these mostly white men, middle-class, educated professionals, are not in grade school, burdened by the many ignorant attitudes of such an immature age--they are all adults.

Their whole attitude seems so juvenile, so full of self-loathing, and a pathetic shrieking exclamation of "PICK ME! PICK ME!"--while they go about condescendingly and smugly disparaging (and slipping in their little needles) the vast majority of the audience that has supported this hobby for decades since the beginning.

So sad, Jaeger.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Looking back at the history of TSR and WOTC, you can see where the problems with degeneracy and wokeness started. It's when guys like Tweet and Cook were brought on to design games and create content. There were two distinct eras at play here

1. The Edgy (in a punk rock, lefty kind of way), juvenile stage, in which D&D became self-referential (see above) and started to become video-gamey.

A good example is the "Book of Vile Darkness" written by Cook. A tome that features references to necrophilia, incest, killing children, and other wonderful stuff. It even has pictures of topless women missing breasts, and a demonic girl pushing up against her well-endowed arch-devil father. Tracy Hickman denounced it as cheap trash, and rightfully so.

Meanwhile, "diversity" was injected into the game in a clumsy way, and the quality of he writing went to complete shit. The 3rd edition rules were a complete mess with all the feats breaking the game and making DMing difficult. There were volumes of unnecessary rules, which amounted to a cash grab.

And guys like Skip Williams, who was a minor assistant and editor in the 80s and 90s, became principal designers and authors --only his stuff was boring, uninspired, and legalistic.

2. When D&D becomes Disney

The second era involved making the game suitable for mass consumption, taking out any objectionable content, making it even more self-referential (no real-world historical elements), and completely woke. A game that can literally be sold in mainland China without making the CCP angry.

Guys like R.A. Salvatore fit right in, with his cheesy tie-in material featuring "good" Drow. And now we see races being done away with (racist!), and "essentialism" regarding evil creatures abolished.

--

In a nutshell, there has been a decline in quality all around, mixed with greater injection of woke politics into the game. Doesn't mean the game is terrible, or that you can't have fun playing it, but it isn't what it was (not to sound like grognard, but this is the truth). The intended audience is a 16-year old upper-middle-class white girl living in Boston at this point.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 22, 2021, 01:18:11 PM
Truth be told the more freely available porn the less rape, yes I know correlation doesn't prove causation.
Studies suggest porn increases misogynistic attitudes. https://theconversation.com/pornography-has-deeply-troubling-effects-on-young-people-but-there-are-ways-we-can-minimise-the-harm-127319

Meanwhile, leftists claim the opposite: that porn is feminist. https://ovarit.com/o/Radfemmery/34663/28000-upvotes-on-preddit-hating-porn-is-sexist-loving-porn-is-feminist

Take this discussion you know where, not gonna continue it here.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 22, 2021, 05:04:06 PM
2. When D&D becomes Disney

The second era involved making the game suitable for mass consumption, taking out any objectionable content, making it even more self-referential (no real-world historical elements), and completely woke. A game that can literally be sold in mainland China without making the CCP angry.

Guys like R.A. Salvatore fit right in, with his cheesy tie-in material featuring "good" Drow. And now we see races being done away with (racist!), and "essentialism" regarding evil creatures abolished.

When Salvatore was writing Drizzt, Good Drow were edgy and now you try and classify them as Disney.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SirGalahad on June 22, 2021, 05:15:42 PM
2. When D&D becomes Disney

The second era involved making the game suitable for mass consumption, taking out any objectionable content, making it even more self-referential (no real-world historical elements), and completely woke. A game that can literally be sold in mainland China without making the CCP angry.

Guys like R.A. Salvatore fit right in, with his cheesy tie-in material featuring "good" Drow. And now we see races being done away with (racist!), and "essentialism" regarding evil creatures abolished.

When Salvatore was writing Drizzt, Good Drow were edgy and now you try and classify them as Disney.

How would good Drow be edgy?

The Drow that were pure evil, had blackish-purplish skin, and who practiced human/elven sacrifice were edgy

What do Drow look like now? Pink skin and riding unicorns? Neutral alignment and non-binary?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 22, 2021, 05:17:19 PM
Drizzt conceptually was fine as a one-off fictional vehicle.

He was the exception that defined the norm of Drow society.

Now? Blech. Talk about missing the whole fucking point. Again - I have other options to run my D&D (see Savage Pathfinder) and nary a drop of SJW Cuckery is to be found.

I'm not sure what this Nu-TSR incarnation is going to bring to the table that will attract OSR/Non-OSR folks back if there is even a whiff of the usual bullshit. And that aroma is already building.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SirGalahad on June 22, 2021, 05:57:39 PM
Drizzt conceptually was fine as a one-off fictional vehicle.

He was the exception that defined the norm of Drow society.

Now? Blech. Talk about missing the whole fucking point. Again - I have other options to run my D&D (see Savage Pathfinder) and nary a drop of SJW Cuckery is to be found.

I'm not sure what this Nu-TSR incarnation is going to bring to the table that will attract OSR/Non-OSR folks back if there is even a whiff of the usual bullshit. And that aroma is already building.

I listened to that podcast with the dude who did the Giantlands KS, and he sounded like a leftist hipster quite frankly. The game doesn't sound particularly interesting, and I don't see the "catch"

contrast that with new games like Vaesen, Shadows of Esteren, or even MYFAROG, which all have carefully developed fantasy worlds that shadow European cultures, have unique mechanics that tie into these worlds, and have intriguing premises (say what you will about Varg, he has put a fair amount of effort into the game).

Giantlands looks like a scattershot hodge-podge high fantasy game that tries to be all things to all gamers --that never works.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 22, 2021, 06:08:30 PM
2. When D&D becomes Disney

The second era involved making the game suitable for mass consumption, taking out any objectionable content, making it even more self-referential (no real-world historical elements), and completely woke. A game that can literally be sold in mainland China without making the CCP angry.

Guys like R.A. Salvatore fit right in, with his cheesy tie-in material featuring "good" Drow. And now we see races being done away with (racist!), and "essentialism" regarding evil creatures abolished.

When Salvatore was writing Drizzt, Good Drow were edgy and now you try and classify them as Disney.

How would good Drow be edgy?

The Drow that were pure evil, had blackish-purplish skin, and who practiced human/elven sacrifice were edgy

In the 80s Drow that were pure evil, had blackish-purplish skin, and who practiced human/elven sacrifice was just the standard.  They were not edgy.


What do Drow look like now? Pink skin and riding unicorns? Neutral alignment and non-binary?

They look like Elves with blackish-purplish skin.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2021, 08:01:48 AM
Drizzt conceptually was fine as a one-off fictional vehicle.

He was the exception that defined the norm of Drow society.

Now? Blech. Talk about missing the whole fucking point. Again - I have other options to run my D&D (see Savage Pathfinder) and nary a drop of SJW Cuckery is to be found.

I'm not sure what this Nu-TSR incarnation is going to bring to the table that will attract OSR/Non-OSR folks back if there is even a whiff of the usual bullshit. And that aroma is already building.
Correct. Even the drow who followed Eilistraee were very much a minority.

But then that's a common problem. You develop a character as part of a literary device, and suddenly everyone wants to play knockoffs and make it as common as, well, commoners.

I'm surprised Jarlaxle doesn't get much mention in those discussions. Forget playing Drizzt, I wanted to play that smooth talking bullshit artist who dressed like he was going to hit Mardi Gras :D

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 23, 2021, 09:18:25 AM
They announced they want to bring back Star Frontiers, but don’t seem to actually have the copyrights.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: tenbones on June 23, 2021, 09:26:28 AM
I'm surprised Jarlaxle doesn't get much mention in those discussions. Forget playing Drizzt, I wanted to play that smooth talking bullshit artist who dressed like he was going to hit Mardi Gras :D

Jarlaxle was always the coolest. I had this great admiration for Uthegental, simply because he was like the Mountain That Rides - a two-dimensional killing machine that was so badass he beat a battlerager dwarf and his whole squad into knowing fear. C'mon that's a badass. I called bullshit on his death.

Watching WotC ruin the Drow (and narratively destroying their historical context) is yet another reason I'm happy Savage Worlds Pathfinder is going to be my replacement for all things D&D, where Drow remain evil Lolth-worshipping bastards.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Abraxus on June 23, 2021, 11:55:29 AM
I always figured that Jarlaxe was way cooler though less liked because while he was a likeable bastardized he still was a bastard after his own interests. While also being less emo and less full of angst than Drizzt.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on June 23, 2021, 11:57:57 AM
Watching WotC ruin the Drow (and narratively destroying their historical context) is yet another reason I'm happy Savage Worlds Pathfinder is going to be my replacement for all things D&D, where Drow remain evil Lolth-worshipping bastards.

Id wager the 1e stuff (lore and world) is more popular. Thats why they adapt that stuff and not the 2e stuff.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Spinachcat on June 23, 2021, 09:48:33 PM
Wow fuck this game.

Bingo.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Plotinus on June 24, 2021, 08:53:24 PM

Behold, The Red Flags:

All you need to know about their new TSR RPG GiantLands!...
Have a listen

and what about the Marmoreal Tomb KS that was never delivered by Ernie and his old business buddies? $126,000 was raised for that, and it is over 5 years late. The comments and accusations on the KS page are scathing, with people claiming Ernie spent the money on a new home and wedding, and that the company doesn't even have money to print the materials. Troll Lord Games tried to come to the rescue, but the whole thing is a complete cluster

Holy hell, what a disaster.

There's a pattern here, right? With people like E Gary Gygax and Beno*st and Gar*th-Michael Sk*rka? Woke creators in the RPG industry who defraud people for years, but still genuinely believe that they are the most moral, compassionate, upstanding people in the room because of their politics? It's like there's a certain personality type.

They never take responsibility. They never want to provide monthly updates on Kickstarter, even though Kickstarter is where they took everybody's money, instead preferring to only communicate on some outside website where they can block anyone who criticizes them. They spend all day posting on social media, mostly about how anyone who disagrees with them about anything important is obviously evil and motivated by malice. They only get more shrill and arrogant as their guilt at their unfulfilled obligations gnaws away at them. They genuinely seem to believe that because they are the Right Sort of People who understand Systematic Injustice and who are considered to be wonderful by their equally Morally Correct friends and family, it really doesn't matter that they personally defrauded a bunch of people out of 100 grand. They're still a way better person than you, bigot. And of course, they never deliver any actual content, because they lied about how much of the project was complete to begin with, and because they're neurotic perfectionists who keep giving into scope creep and remaking everything again and again.

I mean, look at this quote from Gygax on that Kickstarter:

Quote
People are wondering if I'm doing good right now. Let me tell you something. I've been through hell and back in another life time, way before this life took over in Canada and I became someone I could respect looking into a mirror.

I've got fantastic friends, brothers and sisters, in the Nuxalk nation in the real world, all over the place in Canada, and way beyond in the cyberspace. You know who you are, all of you. I'm proud to be who I am and I work at being the best I can be, both personally and professionally.

I am a reflection of all the trust and hopes bestowed upon me. And I am making my way into this world, creating, fulfilling my responsibilities, and hopefully making a little difference for people out there.

I've been taking a big step back from social media lately, and it's started a revolution in my mind. I've been listening to Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, the Philosopher King, you know, and trying to define the use of social media for me, and it has to be defined with a focus, an aim, a purpose, otherwise it's all procrastination and waste of time.

This is something I am thinking of and deliberating as I work my way through the Marmoreal Tomb project. I have always said I would update the KS when done with the main module, and the nature of the work, the inter-connectivity of it all, not just between main module and expansions but beyond to the projects that fuel the whole world of the Eurth, has slowed me down more than I wished.

I'm still committed to fulfillment this year, but one thing I will not do is give fuel to people who are frustrated and feed their own negativity to the point it's impossible to have conversations. I absolutely cannot be taking attacks right now that worry me and get me worried for weeks at a time before I work them out and get back to work on the module and expansions themselves. This type of interaction right now is right out for me, and so is the wasting of time arguing positions with people who have a purposeful aim to misinterpret whatever I could say or do in the most negative light possible.

The naysayers, the people who are just shitting on what we do right now, will regret it when it's done. If you are a nuisance in this critical time I'll just get you off my island on the internet -- I don't have time for this, ironically for your own sake and wishes, the very reasons why you feel like bitching in the first place.

In the meantime, I cannot be more proud, more amazed at the people who know and follow me, and who keep being positive and pump me up to go on and keep doing what needs to be done. THANK YOU. Thank you so much. You all are awesome and I love you. This is invaluable right now.

So right now let him be lost within his mountain valley and when the work is finished let it speak for itself. I'm not hard to find you will find me at Gary Con in a few weeks, running games and opening my cottage to fellow gamers from throughout the World.

Is it just me, or is this just breathtakingly self-righteous coming from a guy who was already 4 years late on delivering the thing he promised to people who gave him $126,000?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: danskmacabre on June 24, 2021, 10:51:14 PM
Yeah, after my initial Nostalgia excitement, after some reading and seeing their posts etc, I'm walking away from new TSR.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on June 25, 2021, 04:23:26 AM
So, this story keeps getting more and more interesting and weird.  I just saw tweets from Jayson Elliott with the TSR that produced the half-assed Top Secret: New World Order RPG blasting this new E. Gygax Jr. TSR on Twitter and basically he slandered their names and essentially said they were racists and transphobes, in a tirade about some past interview making its rounds on the internet.  He wanted to make sure everyone knew it was NOT his TSR company that did this.  He went on to virtue signal by making it clear that he and his TSR believe that "black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, science is real, kindness is everything." 

E. Gary Gygax Jr. days ago had responded to one of my comments personally on YouTube when I was trying to understand the news of this new TSR forming to inform me that the previous TSR had allowed the TSR IP lapse and Justin picked it up and asked Jayson to get on the bus.  Apparently, Jayson is not at all "on the bus" based on his tweets.

So, now we will essentially have 2 different TSR companies putting out different products.  Jayson's TSR will be licensing the TSR IP from Gygax's TSR while simultaneously insulting them by saying they are a bunch of old white men racists and transphobes. 

I have screenshots of all of this I am linking below for everyone to see.

https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr (https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr)

https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3 (https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3)

https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2 (https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2)

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 25, 2021, 06:12:58 AM
So, this story keeps getting more and more interesting and weird.  I just saw tweets from Jayson Elliott with the TSR that produced the half-ass Top Secret: New World Order RPG blasting this new E. Gygax Jr. TSR on Twitter and basically he slandered their names and essentially said they were racists and transphobes, in a tirade about some past interview making its rounds on the internet.  He wanted to make sure everyone knew it was NOT his TSR company that did this.  He went on to virtue signal by making it clear that he and his TSR believe that "black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, science is real, kindness is everything." 

E. Gary Gygax Jr. days ago had responded to one of my comments personally on YouTube when I was trying to understand the news of this new TSR forming to inform me that the previous TSR had allowed the TSR IP lapse and Justin picked it up and asked Jayson to get on the bus.  Apparently, Jayson is not at all "on the bus" based on his tweets.

So, now we will essentially have 2 different TSR companies putting out different products.  Jayson's TSR will be licensing the TSR IP from Gygax's TSR while simultaneously insulting them by saying they are a bunch of old white man racists and transphobes. 

I have screenshots of all of this I am linking below for everyone to see.

https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr (https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr)

https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3 (https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3)

https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2 (https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2)

Well, if they can't make games, they can at least make drama.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: RandyB on June 25, 2021, 08:46:11 AM
So, this story keeps getting more and more interesting and weird.  I just saw tweets from Jayson Elliott with the TSR that produced the half-ass Top Secret: New World Order RPG blasting this new E. Gygax Jr. TSR on Twitter and basically he slandered their names and essentially said they were racists and transphobes, in a tirade about some past interview making its rounds on the internet.  He wanted to make sure everyone knew it was NOT his TSR company that did this.  He went on to virtue signal by making it clear that he and his TSR believe that "black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, science is real, kindness is everything." 

E. Gary Gygax Jr. days ago had responded to one of my comments personally on YouTube when I was trying to understand the news of this new TSR forming to inform me that the previous TSR had allowed the TSR IP lapse and Justin picked it up and asked Jayson to get on the bus.  Apparently, Jayson is not at all "on the bus" based on his tweets.

So, now we will essentially have 2 different TSR companies putting out different products.  Jayson's TSR will be licensing the TSR IP from Gygax's TSR while simultaneously insulting them by saying they are a bunch of old white man racists and transphobes. 

I have screenshots of all of this I am linking below for everyone to see.

https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr (https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr)

https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3 (https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3)

https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2 (https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2)

Well, if they can't make games, they can at least make drama.

Storygame LARPing?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 25, 2021, 10:52:18 AM
So, this story keeps getting more and more interesting and weird.  I just saw tweets from Jayson Elliott with the TSR that produced the half-assed Top Secret: New World Order RPG blasting this new E. Gygax Jr. TSR on Twitter and basically he slandered their names and essentially said they were racists and transphobes, in a tirade about some past interview making its rounds on the internet.  He wanted to make sure everyone knew it was NOT his TSR company that did this.  He went on to virtue signal by making it clear that he and his TSR believe that "black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, science is real, kindness is everything." 

E. Gary Gygax Jr. days ago had responded to one of my comments personally on YouTube when I was trying to understand the news of this new TSR forming to inform me that the previous TSR had allowed the TSR IP lapse and Justin picked it up and asked Jayson to get on the bus.  Apparently, Jayson is not at all "on the bus" based on his tweets.

So, now we will essentially have 2 different TSR companies putting out different products.  Jayson's TSR will be licensing the TSR IP from Gygax's TSR while simultaneously insulting them by saying they are a bunch of old white men racists and transphobes. 

I have screenshots of all of this I am linking below for everyone to see.

https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr (https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr)

https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3 (https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3)

https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2 (https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2)

And Gary's TSR went to a podcast that has Burn Loot Murder all over the place along with the Rainbow Flag of Exclusion.

It's just a pissing contest to see who is more woke IMHO.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 25, 2021, 03:00:01 PM
So, this story keeps getting more and more interesting and weird.  I just saw tweets from Jayson Elliott with the TSR that produced the half-assed Top Secret: New World Order RPG blasting this new E. Gygax Jr. TSR on Twitter and basically he slandered their names and essentially said they were racists and transphobes, in a tirade about some past interview making its rounds on the internet.  He wanted to make sure everyone knew it was NOT his TSR company that did this.  He went on to virtue signal by making it clear that he and his TSR believe that "black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, science is real, kindness is everything." 

E. Gary Gygax Jr. days ago had responded to one of my comments personally on YouTube when I was trying to understand the news of this new TSR forming to inform me that the previous TSR had allowed the TSR IP lapse and Justin picked it up and asked Jayson to get on the bus.  Apparently, Jayson is not at all "on the bus" based on his tweets.

So, now we will essentially have 2 different TSR companies putting out different products.  Jayson's TSR will be licensing the TSR IP from Gygax's TSR while simultaneously insulting them by saying they are a bunch of old white men racists and transphobes. 

I have screenshots of all of this I am linking below for everyone to see.

https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr (https://ibb.co/G2LKgKr)

https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3 (https://ibb.co/GM0Gjg3)

https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2 (https://ibb.co/KwTjYg2)

what an epic clusterfuck.

And I see Ernie getting cancelled all over FB.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Steven Mitchell on June 25, 2021, 05:42:40 PM
Looks like someone created multiple clones and the magic got out of control.  Hope they don't have access to the wish spell.   ;D
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 25, 2021, 09:39:15 PM
Now Jeff Dee is denouncing Ernie and the new TSR, and saying he will no longer work with them

Of course lol. Dee is the high priest of cancel culture and a leftist lunatic

Jennell Jaquays went on some rant about Ernie as well apparently. No surprise there

The old guard devouring each other
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Arkansan on June 26, 2021, 12:55:18 AM
Now Jeff Dee is denouncing Ernie and the new TSR, and saying he will no longer work with them

Of course lol. Dee is the high priest of cancel culture and a leftist lunatic

Jennell Jaquays went on some rant about Ernie as well apparently. No surprise there

The old guard devouring each other

What imagined faux pas is he guilty of? I avoid twitter like the plague so I'm not really up on the latest in dumbfuckery.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on June 26, 2021, 04:26:49 AM
Now Jeff Dee is denouncing Ernie and the new TSR, and saying he will no longer work with them

Of course lol. Dee is the high priest of cancel culture and a leftist lunatic

Jennell Jaquays went on some rant about Ernie as well apparently. No surprise there

The old guard devouring each other

What imagined faux pas is he guilty of? I avoid twitter like the plague so I'm not really up on the latest in dumbfuckery.

I've been wondering the same exact thing.  WTH are these leftist virtue-signaling idiots going on about now? What did Ernie do to offend their snowflake feathers?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Zalman on June 26, 2021, 11:03:47 AM
What imagined faux pas is he guilty of? I avoid twitter like the plague so I'm not really up on the latest in dumbfuckery.

Jeff Dee at least appears to be reacting to TSR's announcement apparently being intentionally misleading regarding his involvement with the company. The wording makes it sound as if Dee is a full time employee there, which sparked a rumor to that effect, which Dee fears will have a negative impact on his actual business model, which is commissioned work (as he did for Giantlands). The statement reads:

Quote
Be the first kid on your block to get our first blockbuster summer release, Giantlands! This crowdfunded game is made in Wisconsin with some of the original TSR team, like Larry Elmore, Jeff Dee, and James M. Ward. It will be among the first titles to bring TSR Games back to life.

So, technically no untruths there, but anyone who doesn't know the story ahead of time could easily draw the conclusion that these authors are more involved with TSR than they in fact are. Ward and Elmore are also working to dispel rumors to the same effect.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 26, 2021, 02:02:49 PM
There does seem to be tweets from the TSR account moving in direct opposition to the wokeists.

https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408566618628710406 for starters.

Hm. Time to wait and see.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Thornhammer on June 26, 2021, 03:35:45 PM
There does seem to be tweets from the TSR account moving in direct opposition to the wokeists.

https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408566618628710406 for starters.

Hm. Time to wait and see.

Ooh, I see a "hun" in the responses.

"Make Fantasy Great Again" would have brought forth much more hilarity.

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 26, 2021, 05:05:56 PM
I'm not saying Junior's completely redpilled.

But the fact that people are flipping their lids over 'hey, let's get back to escapism' and the TSR account is refusing to budge is... intriguing.

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Svenhelgrim on June 26, 2021, 05:23:37 PM
I hope that they don’t cave to the opposition.  I also hooe that they actually release stuff instead of crowdfunding and then pulling the plug/jerking us around like so many other game producers have done.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: BronzeDragon on June 26, 2021, 06:25:13 PM
NuTSR seems to be posting on both sides, wanting the best of both worlds.

I've seen anti-woke posts from them, and I've seen some very woke posts from the same account (the official TSR twitter account).

My biggest problems are that the product doesn't appeal to me (GiantLands seems like discount Gamma World), and the main people behind the production have become internet famous for not delivering Kickstarter promises.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on June 26, 2021, 07:51:51 PM
Worse then SJWs are grifters and opportunists. A grifter is a SJW without even the glint of a ethical core.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 26, 2021, 09:58:34 PM
NuTSR seems to be posting on both sides, wanting the best of both worlds.

I've seen anti-woke posts from them, and I've seen some very woke posts from the same account (the official TSR twitter account).

My biggest problems are that the product doesn't appeal to me (GiantLands seems like discount Gamma World), and the main people behind the production have become internet famous for not delivering Kickstarter promises.

yeah, it is pretty hilarious that they are trying to play both sides of the fence, and in a very clumsy manner

they are going to get buried as a result: their list of allies is exhausted

I would have some respect if they stuck by their guns, tried to carve out an old-school audience, and gave the middle finger to the wokeists, but they didn't.

and here is the thing

Neither Ernie Gygax or his brother Luke had  a thing to do with TSR back in the day. Ernie helped out a bit in the office, but he has no writing credits to his name, was not involved in design or production, and wasn't an employee. Luke was never involved at all until after Gary's death.

So the old guard, or guys like Tim Kask, put out videos on youtube basically saying "Ernie, who the fu** are you"? And calling into question his motives and credentials.

It's ugly all around, and it isn't going anywhere good.

Even Gary himself was irrelevant for the last 20 years of his life. The company he founded moved way beyond him, and some of the best writers and designers worked for TSR after he left (Aarom Allston for instance).

The players and the DMs are what makes the game. Nostalgic cash grabs are nonsense

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Arkansan on June 27, 2021, 12:41:05 AM
Seems like the best direction this cluster fuck can go is away.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 27, 2021, 02:28:46 AM
Greetings!

Where I used to live, on my way to work in the morning I used to stop often at this little donut shop and bakery to get a morning coffee and a few donuts. The place was always packed, every day. I gradually got to know the manager of the donut shop and bakery. She was a tiny Vietnamese woman, about 30, the eldest daughter of her family, and immigrated here when she was a kid. English was not her first language. Despite such potential cultural and linguistic challenges, this little Vietnamese woman had charisma, grace, and charm in spades. She smiled radiantly, laughed sincerely, and managed all kinds of conversations with customers all day long, starting at 0500 AM in the morning--while supervising three other girls, and several bakers in back, all usually working up a sweat. She kept her crew *moving* tight, all with such charm.

I wonder why whenever I hear about so many of these old TSR guys--it always strikes me that my Vietnamese Donut girl had more charm, grace, and social skills going for her on a bad day than most of these TSR people? They so often come across as being socially retarded in so many ways, it's sad. Add in there often inept business and marketing sense--and again, my little Vietnamese Donut girl had been successfully running her show for over 10 years straight. She was always sharp as a razor, and her professionalism and skill was obvious, just like her charm, grace, and friendliness, despite having a distinct accent and not having fluent mastery of English. I would put money on her running a successful business, and actually winning and cultivating lots of fans and customers, paying her well every day, compared to many of the TSR guys.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: crkrueger on June 27, 2021, 05:05:14 AM
The chainmail bikini offers no protection except as a distraction or unless they have been "enhanced".

I just saying...
The fur loincloth offers a comparable lack of protection for our barbarian heroes.

Never played with a woman playing a female barbarian, have you?
... and yet no one really complains about that.

It's almost like the people that do the complaining about these things really have to get cyclopian in their squinting to find something to complain about.

Edit: As an aside, I loved how Beasts and Barbarians created an Edge - Loincloth Hero, to allow people to play that (works as a Chainmail Bikini too).
Maybe being big and strong and scantily clad is a male fantasy or something? But conversely a chainmail bikini is not a female fantasy?

You’ve never played with a female who played a female barbarian, have you?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: crkrueger on June 27, 2021, 05:31:13 AM
I'm Asian - I came to this game with Conan the Barbarian and King Arthur (and whatever my childish mind had packed inbetween which is largely nothing).

I honestly didn't even register that there were overtly no Asians in our games. My GM was a Vietnamese girl, and I played with two filipinos and an American white and black kid. At no point did the fact that my black friend was playing a paladin (who by his own description wasn't even black) or the fact that I played a savage fighter who in my mind looked like a Hyrkanian (conan ftw bitches) ever matter to any of us.

Our GM - the Vietnamese girl, from Vietnam, who knew *nothing* about American culture, presented the game exactly as it was. PC's in a fantasy setting where she described the NPC's as white people in a quasi-medieval setting... you know... D&D. No one was torked up about representation.

We played the game for what it was and what we made it. The novelty of Oriental Adventure when it came out had *nothing* to do with Asian representation for me or anyone else I knew. It had to do with Golden Harvest/Shaw Bros. Representation. It had to do with Black Belt Theater/Kurosawa/Bruce Lee Representation and the crazy idea that Ho Li Phuc! Asian cinema can be turned into D&D! Genius.

All the fucking weirdos in Dragon Magazine jacking off about historical authenticity, and shit like that were missing the larger point. Sure that stuff matters to me (sort of) as an adult. But at the time - it allowed me to expand on my "normal" D&D conceits by spreading the ruleset further to include OA mechanics in my established fantasy game.

It wasn't "Asian" mechanics. And for people wanting historical accuracy, it should be pretty clear that there isn't some requirement for historical accuracy when you have motherfuckers leaping 30-ft into the air, flying kick people harder than getting hit with a zweihander, or punching holes in people from ten-feet away (Distance Death baby!). And people complained about OA being so Japanese/Chinese centric - got their cries heard by Mike Pondsmith in the Kara-Tur boxset (glorious!).

Ultimately despite many products for the line - it didn't sell well. Why? Because largely the western and white demographic likes playing in their own cultural comfort-zone. THAT'S OKAY. That should be expected, and the Real TSR(tm) made an honest-to-Galactus stab at it.

All of these is conveniently memory holed because the narrative of representation is really a crusade to destroy whatever came before in the attempts of blurring what D&D was into the freakshow it's become.

Fortunately if you take your gaming seriously you can step back and be Brand Free and realize "D&D" isn't "D&D" anywhere but in your heart and mind. The company that owns "D&D" has no claim over what you as a consumer wants "D&D" to be at your table without your consent. It's not defined by an edition, or by a system, contrary to what others might think. D&D exists as an idea we define everytime we sit down at the table.

I vote with my dollars. And at this stage in my life, my gold is there for the a taking to whomever wants it if they give me good product. Many of these companies apparently think that my gold is not worth what they think "bad thoughts" are in their heads. That's not my problem.

There are companies that recognize this and I hope they're rolling around naked on my money as long as they give me good stuff, and they deserve it. This new TSR company ain't gonna be one of them.

Man, my group of Whiteys loved OA and Kara-Tur.  So did the black, brown and yellow peeps who also played.  :o  In the 80’s our knowledge of the Orient were Shaw Brothers and Sho Kosugi movies.  In other words, fantasy mythology, you know...like D&D. :D

I discovered Bushido, and Land of the Rising Sun, so the “real” Japan became more known to me, but then again, so did the “real” Antiquity, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and Renaissance, and that didn’t make me change my D&D campaign either.  :P

I’d already read about Temujin when Kara-Tur came out, and The Horde totally psyched me up.  I started a side campaign with PCs part of the Tuigan.  Everybody I knew understood how important Alexander the Great was, and everyone knew the names of Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan, but no one knew what they were famous for.  It was so crazy reading about this guy and his grandson that conquered nearly all of China and almost did the same to Europe.

Indiana Jones got me psyched up to read more about the real Ancient Israel, and India, the same way those books got me psyched up to read more about the real Orient.  If they were never written because there wasn’t a demographically appropriate person at the time, oh well, there’s always the Shaw Brothers, because I wasn’t a History Major.

I’d be a lot less critical of The Woke, if they weren’t in almost every fucking goddamn arena, ending up with a result the exact opposite of what they claim they want.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: crkrueger on June 27, 2021, 06:15:16 AM
You guys really don’t know what Ernie said?  Here’s the wrongthink from the interview...


On Cooperating with WotC

I would hope so but they just put out a big disclaimer recently trying to divorce themselves from the ethics and style of play that was involved in the origins of the game. They're basically trying to say 'we're a better company and a better type of person' than those who started playing. At least that's somewhat of the impression they've given and 'please switch over and be part of the new wave'. You know. Join the pack of lemmings, oh yeah!

Why A New TSR?

TSR has been gone. There's a ton of artists and game designers and people that play..... and recently they were dissed for being old-fashioned, possibly anti modern trends, and enforcing, or even having the concepts of gender identity (laughs).

People were non-plussed.

Then the TSR Twitter account (not Ernie) said these.
https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408852128341372938?s=20 (https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408852128341372938?s=20)
https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408566618628710406?s=20 (https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408566618628710406?s=20)

Saying these things to the Woke is a “dog whistle” saying you’re essentially Himmler reincarnated.

Then, whoever is in charge of the Giantlands Twitter account (it’s also not Ernie) delivered the Coup de Grace...

https://twitter.com/Orangesuitcases/status/1408784995800563713/photo/1 (https://twitter.com/Orangesuitcases/status/1408784995800563713/photo/1)

They followed it up with this...

“It's got nothing to do with her choices, but attacking us & trying to force us to make statements by bulling us? Please go away.”

But, we all know they’re done.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 27, 2021, 05:50:55 PM
You guys really don’t know what Ernie said?

Is Ernie famous for being anything other than the Boss' son?

And I'm even using the term famous really loosely.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Mistwell on June 27, 2021, 06:13:03 PM
and what about the Marmoreal Tomb KS that was never delivered by Ernie and his old business buddies? $126,000 was raised for that, and it is over 5 years late. The comments and accusations on the KS page are scathing, with people claiming Ernie spent the money on a new home and wedding, and that the company doesn't even have money to print the materials. Troll Lord Games tried to come to the rescue, but the whole thing is a complete cluster

Those "claims" are patently false (and were never phrased as claims - you just "recharacterize" them that way, I assume for attention and to spread rumor). And even a moment of research would have shown that. Troll Lord has the funds. They were not spent, with the exception of some early money being paid to the actual artists hired for artwork early on before Troll Lord took over. Troll Lord is printing the books - in fact their latest June update specifies the box and maps are already at the printers. Those who invested in the kickstarter have been getting pretty regular updates from Troll Lord, the main book is complete, and they're working on the extras now. Yes, it's very late. Yes Troll Lord had to come to the rescue. But no, it's not a complete cluster any more, it's on a pretty good schedule now.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: 1989 on June 27, 2021, 09:49:15 PM
The only thing that 3e did was started using the word “she” instead of “him” in it’s texts. It was a way to try break the gender divide and attract more females into the game. It bugged me when they did that switch. From a marketing point, they wanted a new audience instead of old aging fat men to play the game. There was not too much else they changed in my honest opinion that would invoke SJW….

I disagree.

Like I said; Critical Theory based "inclusive" politics were actively being injected in 3e D&D well before most people knew what an SJW was.

My Evidence:

Johnathan Tweet: 3e-and-the-feel-of-D&D
https://www.enworld.org/threads/3e-and-the-feel-of-d-d.667269/

Tweet openly talks about excising any references of or to real-world mythology when worldbuilding for official 3e D&D.

Making the game entirely self-referential.

Effectively doing a “Year Zero” of D&D lore…

Select quotes:
“…one part of the process I enjoyed was describing the world of D&D in its own terms, rather than referring to real-world history and mythology. When writing roleplaying games, I enjoy helping the player get immersed in the setting, and I always found these references to the real world to be distractions."
...
"…by the time we were working on 3rd Ed, D&D had had such a big impact on fantasy that we basically used D&D as its own source."

"We were fortunate that by 2000 D&D had such a strong legacy that it could stand on its own without reference to Earth history or mythology.”



Johnathan Tweet: Diversity-in-D&D-third-edition
https://www.enworld.org/threads/diversity-in-d-d-third-edition.668462/

Tweet openly discusses pushing a “diversity and inclusion” agenda for 3e.

Select quotes:
“One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive.”

“Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.”

“By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years.”



Notice how pissed he gets when the WOTC Marketing team of the time insisted that they throw their biggest sales demographic a bone…

“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.”

And to his utter horror:
“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.”


The White male fighter hate was strong with the 3e design team:

Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”

“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”

“At least that was our intention.”

“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”



James Jacobs: ( D&D writer, and current Creative Director for the Pathfinder Adventure Paths.)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

This shit just speaks for itself...

Select quote:
Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”


WOTC D&D has hated its core sales demographic long before they eagerly bought their first copies of the 3e PHB.

And they have been paying WOTC to hate on them ever since.

I have to say, that's some pretty good research right there. Thanks for posting that.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 27, 2021, 10:28:25 PM
Greetings!

*Laughing* Notice the stark contrast between what the average, dopey, naïve gamer likes to believe--there's just a few changes made, so the game is more appealing to a broader audience than old, fat white men--and the true, malicious ideologies and attitudes embraced by the lead designers and writers, and their insidious intentions to steadily subvert and corrupt the game.

The sharp contrast between the jello propaganda these people are perfectly happy to swallow--while fiercely defending WOTC and others from criticism--and the deeper truth is mind-boggling. It's like, "NO! NO! My favourite cuck game designers can't really be terrible degenerate scum, desperately committed to corrupting a treasured game hobby! REEE!!!!"

It's pretty sad and pathetic at how deep the cultural rot has destroyed our cultural foundations, and made so many seemingly-talented and bright people into willing change agents set on corrupting and fucking up everything they get their hands on.

I've been saying that forever. The SJW's--and the "Proto-SJW's" in decades before now have this driving hatred of our culture and Western Civilization, and they are themselves so deeply afflicted with nihilistic, self-loathing, and a giggling joy at corrupting and destroying everything.

They are absolutely disgusting.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Spinachcat on June 28, 2021, 12:41:21 AM
"Make Fantasy Great Again" would have brought forth much more hilarity.

That would have required balls.

And it would have made them lots of money.

There's plenty of people with disposable income on the non-SJW side of the culture war and for many people, that cash is burning in their pockets to support good product.

And anti-woke company hosting anti-woke cons would make cash, and notable cash if their products were actually good.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: oggsmash on June 28, 2021, 09:45:44 AM
  Well I guess that explains why Redgar was always getting his ass kicked.  I scratch my head at these people.  I also think, maybe this is why there really have not been many fantasy creatives to come along who can emulate REH.  He actually exercised and did all sorts of physical manly shit and respected physical manly shit.  The being a gifted writer was IMO, a bit of a gift (I do not think everyone can be a good dramatic writer) but the gift combined with actual experience of .... being in an actual fight and appreciation  for what it takes in such manly pursuits, created a form of writing that is realistic and never has to be overly detailed to communicate exactly what is happening.

    Reading how these clowns tried to make the character they viewed as the 'MAN", especially the hu-white MAN as the dunce getting clowned at all turns says a whole lot about how they view people like...me. I will keep this in mind when i see their names on products I guess.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: 1989 on June 28, 2021, 10:40:27 AM
"Make Fantasy Great Again" would have brought forth much more hilarity.

That would have required balls.

And it would have made them lots of money.

There's plenty of people with disposable income on the non-SJW side of the culture war and for many people, that cash is burning in their pockets to support good product.

And anti-woke company hosting anti-woke cons would make cash, and notable cash if their products were actually good.

That's for sure! That describes me exactly.

I just don't understand why people (e.g. Cook, Tweet, Jacobs) would become involved in Dungeons and Dragons if they secretly harbour hate for its foundation, creators, and fans.

It boggles the mind.

It goes beyond personal preference and into malice. It's extremely passive aggressive and cowardly.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: oggsmash on June 28, 2021, 11:29:50 AM
"Make Fantasy Great Again" would have brought forth much more hilarity.

That would have required balls.

And it would have made them lots of money.

There's plenty of people with disposable income on the non-SJW side of the culture war and for many people, that cash is burning in their pockets to support good product.

And anti-woke company hosting anti-woke cons would make cash, and notable cash if their products were actually good.

That's for sure! That describes me exactly.

I just don't understand why people (e.g. Cook, Tweet, Jacobs) would become involved in Dungeons and Dragons if they secretly harbour hate for its foundation, creators, and fans.

It boggles the mind.

It goes beyond personal preference and into malice. It's extremely passive aggressive and cowardly.

  I think it is the case of narcissists who are RAGING at the fact that a person they consider less talented than themselves came up with something so much better than anything they have ever done in their lives.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: JeffB on June 28, 2021, 11:33:25 AM
If they are back, I'm guessing at this point they are on Life Support again  ;D :P
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: 1989 on June 28, 2021, 11:38:20 AM
You know, it's funny, I used to think that most gamers were basically like me, and, for sure, the creators even more so. We were all just one big/small community of gamers who loved smiting evil. How naïve I was.

It turns out that the evil these designers want to smite is . . . heterosexual white men.

Pathetic.

Complete faggotry!
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 28, 2021, 12:18:26 PM
We are a couple years out from man-boy-love being normalized within the WOTC gameworld
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on June 28, 2021, 12:22:48 PM
We are a couple years out from man-boy-love being normalized within the WOTC gameworld

  The cynic in me says it would have been normalized already if it weren't such a handy stick to beat the Catholic Church with.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: rgalex on June 28, 2021, 12:32:20 PM
And in case anyone missed it, GenCon put out this statement on their Twitter:

Quote
"Gen Con is not associated with TSR Games and we don't support their recent statements. While the foundation of Gen Con is tied with the history of TTRPGs, our goal is to build off the good, acknowledge the bad, and work toward a present free from racism, misogyny, and homophobia."

Then they banned TSR and Ernie from the convention.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: RandyB on June 28, 2021, 12:52:57 PM
"Make Fantasy Great Again" would have brought forth much more hilarity.

That would have required balls.

And it would have made them lots of money.

There's plenty of people with disposable income on the non-SJW side of the culture war and for many people, that cash is burning in their pockets to support good product.

And anti-woke company hosting anti-woke cons would make cash, and notable cash if their products were actually good.

That's for sure! That describes me exactly.

I just don't understand why people (e.g. Cook, Tweet, Jacobs) would become involved in Dungeons and Dragons if they secretly harbour hate for its foundation, creators, and fans.

It boggles the mind.

It goes beyond personal preference and into malice. It's extremely passive aggressive and cowardly.

  I think it is the case of narcissists who are RAGING at the fact that a person they consider less talented than themselves came up with something so much better than anything they have ever done in their lives.

Well, that was the original reaction to OD&D from the West Coast Fandom crowd - "How dare those Midwestern rubes produce something popular! And based on those stories, after we worked so hard to make them go away!"
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 28, 2021, 02:18:54 PM
Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”
You know, it's funny, I used to think that most gamers were basically like me, and, for sure, the creators even more so. We were all just one big/small community of gamers who loved smiting evil. How naïve I was.

It turns out that the evil these designers want to smite is . . . heterosexual white men.

The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NR71MsMOcVE/UQ9XhEvAghI/AAAAAAAABVg/mmt39hWHCqE/s1600/Otus-BDD-cover.jpg)

However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: 1989 on June 28, 2021, 02:32:56 PM
Even after the requirement was lifted in the WotC era, he still reveled in seeing the white male character repeatedly thrashed/killed, etc.

Sick. Pathological.

This is the sort of cuck that would take a knee for BLM. Or worse.

This is all kind of coming together these days. Violence against Redgar. A couple decades later, violence against whites, Critical Race Theory, etc.

It's degenerate minds of people like him who allow this to happen.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 28, 2021, 02:33:05 PM
Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”
You know, it's funny, I used to think that most gamers were basically like me, and, for sure, the creators even more so. We were all just one big/small community of gamers who loved smiting evil. How naïve I was.

It turns out that the evil these designers want to smite is . . . heterosexual white men.

The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NR71MsMOcVE/UQ9XhEvAghI/AAAAAAAABVg/mmt39hWHCqE/s1600/Otus-BDD-cover.jpg)

Yes, the 80's where we got our first taste of token diversity. It went down ok because it wasn't so pandering and agenda driven as it is now. Just a bit clumsy and ham handed.

Quote
However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

Theoretically, yes. In the current culture? My money is on hating white men.

To avoid risking the wrath of Pundit, Imagine I put a link to your favorite article about over the top "toxic whiteness" here.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 28, 2021, 02:48:16 PM

I have to say, that's some pretty good research right there. Thanks for posting that.

Your welcome.

One truth about the left that I have learned is that these guys are very proud of what they do, and always ‘out’ themselves sooner or later.




*Laughing* Notice the stark contrast between what the average, dopey, naïve gamer likes to believe--there's just a few changes made, so the game is more appealing to a broader audience than old, fat white men--and the true, malicious ideologies and attitudes embraced by the lead designers and writers, and their insidious intentions to steadily subvert and corrupt the game.



Yes, This!

Even some people on this board are in utter denial. “It’s barely there…” “Easy to ignore…” etc.

Not only should that crap not be there in the first place, but the dial always gets turned up never down. To the left we are all just a bunch of lobsters on slow boil. And they will milk and shame you for all the cash that they can before they boil you to death.

The stuff I cited in my little research bit is readily available. It was always there. The truth is easy to see for those with open eyes.

These guys have hated the mainstream RPG demographic for years. Because they have been taught to hate themselves, and so they hate you too.

People need to wake up and understand; The left is incapable of understanding hyperbole, or figures of speech, and they take everything literally.

The Left/SJW’s are not joking about what they want to do to us. They mean every word.



There's plenty of people with disposable income on the non-SJW side of the culture war and for many people, that cash is burning in their pockets to support good product.

And anti-woke company hosting anti-woke cons would make cash, and notable cash if their products were actually good. …

I agree.

To be anti-woke you don’t need to be explicitly right-wing in any way. You just need to not cater to the woke in any form.


Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 28, 2021, 03:07:18 PM
Greetings!

You know, the condescending self-righteous attitude of all of the woke fucking cucks is especially infuriating to my mind. Diversity? Inclusiveness? Such ideological bullshit. They can all choke on it. For decades, I have run my campaigns with players as well as featuring NPC's that are Asian-like, brown, black, as well as white. Geesus. How about purple, red, and lemon yellow coloured people for fucking diversity?

Strange though, none of the players in my groups were ever "offended" at mixing with different races and cultures, or also meeting prominent females of different classes, either. None of my players have ever accused me of somehow forcing "diversity" on them. No one ever thought, "Hmmm...SHARK has us meeting some elephant people, and a group of lemon-yellow coloured humanoids. He must be trying to ram some terrible SJW mind-fucking agenda down our throats!"

All of these woke fuckers are disgusting and terrible.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 28, 2021, 04:37:39 PM

I have to say, that's some pretty good research right there. Thanks for posting that.

Your welcome.

One truth about the left that I have learned is that these guys are very proud of what they do, and always ‘out’ themselves sooner or later.




*Laughing* Notice the stark contrast between what the average, dopey, naïve gamer likes to believe--there's just a few changes made, so the game is more appealing to a broader audience than old, fat white men--and the true, malicious ideologies and attitudes embraced by the lead designers and writers, and their insidious intentions to steadily subvert and corrupt the game.



Yes, This!

Even some people on this board are in utter denial. “It’s barely there…” “Easy to ignore…” etc.

Not only should that crap not be there in the first place, but the dial always gets turned up never down. To the left we are all just a bunch of lobsters on slow boil. And they will milk and shame you for all the cash that they can before they boil you to death.

The stuff I cited in my little research bit is readily available. It was always there. The truth is easy to see for those with open eyes.

These guys have hated the mainstream RPG demographic for years. Because they have been taught to hate themselves, and so they hate you too.

People need to wake up and understand; The left is incapable of understanding hyperbole, or figures of speech, and they take everything literally.

The Left/SJW’s are not joking about what they want to do to us. They mean every word.



There's plenty of people with disposable income on the non-SJW side of the culture war and for many people, that cash is burning in their pockets to support good product.

And anti-woke company hosting anti-woke cons would make cash, and notable cash if their products were actually good. …

I agree.

To be anti-woke you don’t need to be explicitly right-wing in any way. You just need to not cater to the woke in any form.

good post

I would add that it is very true that to be "anti-woke" is not to be a member of any political ideology

to be anti-woke means to be rational, reasonable, and prudent in one's worldview

You don't need to be a right-winger to reject the following woke propositions / agendas

1. The idea that biological sex is "non-binary" and that gender is "assigned" at birth. The idea that gender is totally fluid and without environmental or genetic drivers.

This is patently nonsense and non-scientific. Sex is not arbitrarily assigned by a doctor at birth: it is recognized through a criteria that involves numerous things, such as genetics / chromosomes, muscular-skeletal differences (women have a wider pelvis), reproductive organs, etc. There has NEVER been a confirmed "third biological sex" confirmed anywhere. There is no XYZ, but only variation within the given binary system of male and female.

Likewise, this idea that there are 73 genders (or whatever it is) is not based on science, but is a capricious and arbitrary fantasy without criteria or standard.

2. That "green energy" consists of solar and wind, and that stuff can power the whole world.

Bullshit: that stuff isn't green--it requires massive mining projects, rare-earth metals, shipping equipment via fossil-fuel powered ships and trucks, and has a limited lifespan, leading to toxic solar panels in landfills or in the oceans. Likewise, it has been demonstrated many times that such technology cannot provide all the energy we need going forward --it can't even provide a small percentage. It is inefficient and unreliable (requires natural gas backup).

3. That institutional and systemic racism exists in the US and will always exist.

Again, bullshit. There is not a right or immunity that I enjoy as a white guy in the USA that a black guy does not also enjoy. We have equal protection under the law, and we are subject to the same rules, laws, and regulations. There is no separate legal system for black people, or separate banking system for whites. In cases of private-sector, illegal discrimination, the government sought redress through the EEOC, Affirmative Action, and anti-redlining laws.

the left takes localized, individual cases or prejudice, or (illegal) discrimination against blacks, and then extends them to the culture and society in general. Black gets beaten up by a cop in Alabama? All cops nationwide are racist and precincts promote violence against POC. Black woman is turned down for a home loan? Banks are racist. Black people earn less in income than whites? Must be due to institutional racism --it is impossible that it has more to do with education levels, single-parent households, etc.

--

I could go on and on, but the basic problem here is that we are dealing with people who have deliberately dispensed with logic, science, and reason in order to embrace this fantastical perception of reality. They have selected an ideology, and then manipulate data, history, and social reality to fit that ideology. It goes from gender identity, to environmentalism, to race relations.

I am not required to respect this or to indulge these ideas. I see no reason to argue with someone over flat-earth or 73 genders.

and we have WOTC, Gencon, Origins, etc. all paying lip-service to this stuff and creating policy on it.


Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Mistwell on June 28, 2021, 05:01:36 PM
Even after the requirement was lifted in the WotC era, he still reveled in seeing the white male character repeatedly thrashed/killed, etc.

Sick. Pathological.

This is the sort of cuck that would take a knee for BLM. Or worse.

This is all kind of coming together these days. Violence against Redgar. A couple decades later, violence against whites, Critical Race Theory, etc.

It's degenerate minds of people like him who allow this to happen.

Hey old man yelling at the clouds, have you considered that Redgar getting his ass kicked was just a funny running in-joke in the company at that point and not some giant conspiracy to trash white men in general? I feel very confident Redgar getting his butt kicked on the cover of some books did not lead to "violence against whites" in general nor "critical race theory" in general.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: HappyDaze on June 28, 2021, 05:03:27 PM
Even after the requirement was lifted in the WotC era, he still reveled in seeing the white male character repeatedly thrashed/killed, etc.

Sick. Pathological.

This is the sort of cuck that would take a knee for BLM. Or worse.

This is all kind of coming together these days. Violence against Redgar. A couple decades later, violence against whites, Critical Race Theory, etc.

It's degenerate minds of people like him who allow this to happen.

Hey old man yelling at the clouds, have you considered that Redgar getting his ass kicked was just a funny running in-joke in the company at that point and not some giant conspiracy to trash white men in general? I feel very confident Redgar getting his butt kicked on the cover of some books did not lead to "violence against whites" in general nor "critical race theory" in general.
Did it contribute to the ideas that Fighters were the butt monkeys of 3e?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Mistwell on June 28, 2021, 05:07:01 PM
Even after the requirement was lifted in the WotC era, he still reveled in seeing the white male character repeatedly thrashed/killed, etc.

Sick. Pathological.

This is the sort of cuck that would take a knee for BLM. Or worse.

This is all kind of coming together these days. Violence against Redgar. A couple decades later, violence against whites, Critical Race Theory, etc.

It's degenerate minds of people like him who allow this to happen.

Hey old man yelling at the clouds, have you considered that Redgar getting his ass kicked was just a funny running in-joke in the company at that point and not some giant conspiracy to trash white men in general? I feel very confident Redgar getting his butt kicked on the cover of some books did not lead to "violence against whites" in general nor "critical race theory" in general.
Did it contribute to the ideas that Fighters were the butt monkeys of 3e?

You mis-spelled bards?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Valatar on June 28, 2021, 05:16:14 PM
Hey old man yelling at the clouds, have you considered that Redgar getting his ass kicked was just a funny running in-joke in the company at that point and not some giant conspiracy to trash white men in general? I feel very confident Redgar getting his butt kicked on the cover of some books did not lead to "violence against whites" in general nor "critical race theory" in general.

While I don't disagree with this, I am curious whether you'd be quite as sanguine if they'd been intentionally making a black character get murdered in as many pictures as possible because he was foisted on them by corporate.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 28, 2021, 05:36:08 PM
These guys have hated the mainstream RPG demographic for years. Because they have been taught to hate themselves, and so they hate you too.

People need to wake up and understand; The left is incapable of understanding hyperbole, or figures of speech, and they take everything literally.

The Left/SJW’s are not joking about what they want to do to us. They mean every word.

I would add that it is very true that to be "anti-woke" is not to be a member of any political ideology

to be anti-woke means to be rational, reasonable, and prudent in one's worldview

As far as I can see, Jaeger is saying that *all* of the Left are SJWs and all hate hetero white men. i.e. Being woke, SJW, or Left are the same thing.

I've been playing RPGs since grade school in the 1970s, with mostly other left-leaning players (since I've lived in primarily liberal areas). Overwhelmingly, we've just been interested in having fun play for ourselves, nothing about hating others. What our games have featured is plenty of variety in game systems, settings, and players.

There isn't a giant conspiracy of the left to destroy play. Since the beginning, liberals have been roughly half of all players, and they've tended to create and play games with more liberal themes. What there has been is increasing drive - particularly online - to make everything more politically partisan and hateful. And this forum has been just as full of that hate and acrimony as anywhere else.


You don't need to be a right-winger to reject the following woke propositions / agendas

This isn't the place to discuss political points. I'd encourage you to post about it on Pundit's Forum.


I am not required to respect this or to indulge these ideas. I see no reason to argue with someone over flat-earth or 73 genders.

and we have WOTC, Gencon, Origins, etc. all paying lip-service to this stuff and creating policy on it.

Here's the thing. One doesn't have to argue about this stuff. If I play with someone who is a Mormon, and I don't agree that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God -- I don't have to argue with them about it. I can just play a game with them. I just have to treat them with respect as a fellow player. If someone is a Flat-Earther, I'll disagree with them too, but if they can treat the other players with respect, then I'm fine playing with them.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: 1989 on June 28, 2021, 05:54:17 PM
These guys have hated the mainstream RPG demographic for years. Because they have been taught to hate themselves, and so they hate you too.

People need to wake up and understand; The left is incapable of understanding hyperbole, or figures of speech, and they take everything literally.

The Left/SJW’s are not joking about what they want to do to us. They mean every word.

I would add that it is very true that to be "anti-woke" is not to be a member of any political ideology

to be anti-woke means to be rational, reasonable, and prudent in one's worldview

As far as I can see, Jaeger is saying that *all* of the Left are SJWs and all hate hetero white men. i.e. Being woke, SJW, or Left are the same thing.

I've been playing RPGs since grade school in the 1970s, with mostly other left-leaning players (since I've lived in primarily liberal areas). Overwhelmingly, we've just been interested in having fun play for ourselves, nothing about hating others. What our games have featured is plenty of variety in game systems, settings, and players.

There isn't a giant conspiracy of the left to destroy play. Since the beginning, liberals have been roughly half of all players, and they've tended to create and play games with more liberal themes. What there has been is increasing drive - particularly online - to make everything more politically partisan and hateful. And this forum has been just as full of that hate and acrimony as anywhere else.


You don't need to be a right-winger to reject the following woke propositions / agendas

This isn't the place to discuss political points. I'd encourage you to post about it on Pundit's Forum.


I am not required to respect this or to indulge these ideas. I see no reason to argue with someone over flat-earth or 73 genders.

and we have WOTC, Gencon, Origins, etc. all paying lip-service to this stuff and creating policy on it.

Here's the thing. One doesn't have to argue about this stuff. If I play with someone who is a Mormon, and I don't agree that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God -- I don't have to argue with them about it. I can just play a game with them. I just have to treat them with respect as a fellow player. If someone is a Flat-Earther, I'll disagree with them too, but if they can treat the other players with respect, then I'm fine playing with them.

That's all fine and dandy, but the problem arises when WotC writes it into the game with an agenda:

- every WotC adventure must now have a gay NPC (says Crawford)
- "gender" inserted into the Race & Sex section in the PHB
- Mearls calling everyone a bigot if they don't condone sodomy
- all old TSR products (PDFs) carrying a disclaimer (because of those bad old racist white men)
- etc.

- and the example in this thread:

- being forced to include a black female iconic character in the D&D rulebooks and then always killing her off in the artwork just because she is a black woman

(Oh, sorry, that was a white male fighter)
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Chris24601 on June 28, 2021, 06:10:25 PM
"Make Fantasy Great Again" would have brought forth much more hilarity.
Thank you... I now have the tagline for the back cover of my book;

"Make Adventuring Great Again!"
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 28, 2021, 06:41:24 PM
As far as I can see, Jaeger is saying that *all* of the Left are SJWs and all hate hetero white men. i.e. Being woke, SJW, or Left are the same thing.

I've been playing RPGs since grade school in the 1970s, with mostly other left-leaning players (since I've lived in primarily liberal areas). Overwhelmingly, we've just been interested in having fun play for ourselves, nothing about hating others. What our games have featured is plenty of variety in game systems, settings, and players.

There isn't a giant conspiracy of the left to destroy play. Since the beginning, liberals have been roughly half of all players, and they've tended to create and play games with more liberal themes. What there has been is increasing drive - particularly online - to make everything more politically partisan and hateful. And this forum has been just as full of that hate and acrimony as anywhere else.

I think that jhkim is right.  There is not an exact Venn diagram overlap between "the left" and "bigoted jerk," despite the best efforts of bigoted jerks to make it seem so.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 28, 2021, 06:44:10 PM
That's all fine and dandy, but the problem arises when WotC writes it into the game with an agenda:

- every WotC adventure must now have a gay NPC (says Crawford)
- "gender" inserted into the Race & Sex section in the PHB
- Mearls calling everyone a bigot if they don't condone sodomy
- all old TSR products (PDFs) carrying a disclaimer (because of those bad old racist white men)
- etc.

- and the example in this thread:

- being forced to include a black female iconic character in the D&D rulebooks and then always killing her off in the artwork just because she is a black woman

(Oh, sorry, that was a white male fighter)

It is funny, in my current Paizo produced adventure path, how many evil white female slavers the party has had to kill.

Well thats equality for you.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: oggsmash on June 28, 2021, 07:29:32 PM
Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”
You know, it's funny, I used to think that most gamers were basically like me, and, for sure, the creators even more so. We were all just one big/small community of gamers who loved smiting evil. How naïve I was.

It turns out that the evil these designers want to smite is . . . heterosexual white men.

The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NR71MsMOcVE/UQ9XhEvAghI/AAAAAAAABVg/mmt39hWHCqE/s1600/Otus-BDD-cover.jpg)

However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 28, 2021, 07:43:50 PM
Even after the requirement was lifted in the WotC era, he still reveled in seeing the white male character repeatedly thrashed/killed, etc.

Sick. Pathological.

This is the sort of cuck that would take a knee for BLM. Or worse.

This is all kind of coming together these days. Violence against Redgar. A couple decades later, violence against whites, Critical Race Theory, etc.

It's degenerate minds of people like him who allow this to happen.

Hey old man yelling at the clouds, have you considered that Redgar getting his ass kicked was just a funny running in-joke in the company at that point and not some giant conspiracy to trash white men in general? I feel very confident Redgar getting his butt kicked on the cover of some books did not lead to "violence against whites" in general nor "critical race theory" in general.
Did it contribute to the ideas that Fighters were the butt monkeys of 3e?

You mis-spelled bards?
Stop being retarded. I've gone into extensive detail explaining why fighters in 3E got the shit end of the stick. If you want I'll link you to my number crunching and lay out the issues.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 28, 2021, 08:11:09 PM
Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”
You know, it's funny, I used to think that most gamers were basically like me, and, for sure, the creators even more so. We were all just one big/small community of gamers who loved smiting evil. How naïve I was.

It turns out that the evil these designers want to smite is . . . heterosexual white men.

The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NR71MsMOcVE/UQ9XhEvAghI/AAAAAAAABVg/mmt39hWHCqE/s1600/Otus-BDD-cover.jpg)

However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

Yeah, I don't think Erol Otis is a great example of "diversity" I think he just drew what he wanted and they bought it and slapped it in a game book.
Most of the women in early D&D art were supermodel-ish with perky boobs and sexy figures. Elmore and Parkinson spring to mind there. We've been treated to the reaction to those hussies being sexist and degrading!
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: SHARK on June 28, 2021, 08:25:12 PM
Monte Cook: Originally Posted by Monte Cook on his now defunct livejournal blog.
https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

Select quotes:
“When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”
You know, it's funny, I used to think that most gamers were basically like me, and, for sure, the creators even more so. We were all just one big/small community of gamers who loved smiting evil. How naïve I was.

It turns out that the evil these designers want to smite is . . . heterosexual white men.

The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NR71MsMOcVE/UQ9XhEvAghI/AAAAAAAABVg/mmt39hWHCqE/s1600/Otus-BDD-cover.jpg)

However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

Yeah, I don't think Erol Otis is a great example of "diversity" I think he just drew what he wanted and they bought it and slapped it in a game book.
Most of the women in early D&D art were supermodel-ish with perky boobs and sexy figures. Elmore and Parkinson spring to mind there. We've been treated to the reaction to those hussies being sexist and degrading!

Greetings!

Excellent points, Ratman!

Your commentary reminds me--and the shrieking about sexism, etc by the morons--about how in *decades* of playing and DMing campaigns, of the many women I have gamed with, not ONE OF THEM has said, "Yeah, my female character is a fugly, bloated hogg-beast. But she has a good personality! She's talented, strong and independent!"

NOT ONE WOMAN GAMER.

All of the women characters--the vast majority--have been gorgeous, yummy, sexy chewy things. A very few have been "Average Looking" at worst.

Women love playing sexy hot goddesses all the time. And they also make it explicitly clear that their characters are vamped up in style, too, dressed to kill, smelling good, and always looking fantastic. Again, the only exceptions to that being when the girls knew for certain they were going into some filthy, diseased dungeon. Only THEN did they leave the sexy vamp outfits and perfume packed away, and reluctantly put on something boring and practical.

I guarantee that most of the sexism whining comes from self-loathing "Male Feminists" or card-carrying feminist women. Most normal women love having sexy hot characters.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 28, 2021, 08:30:03 PM

As far as I can see, Jaeger is saying that *all* of the Left are SJWs and all hate hetero white men. i.e. Being woke, SJW, or Left are the same thing.
...

All headed in the same direction, just at different points on the same path...

The Left as a movement has continually been moving further into SJW marxist territory this past century, it has just kicked into a really visible high gear in the past 20 years.

Yes you can find "reasonable" people on 'the left' to game with. I have done so myself

They are reasonable because they have not drifted as far left as the current year SJW's, and are in complete denial of the totalitarian direction that left wing politics has taken.

So yeah if you find some actual adults who are there to game and choose not to lose their shit over politics: i.e. 'agree to disagree' nothing wrong with that.

Congrats. You found some people with some modicum of self-respect left.

I know of some myself.

And they all still voted for Biden.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 28, 2021, 08:30:27 PM
That's all fine and dandy, but the problem arises when WotC writes it into the game with an agenda:

- every WotC adventure must now have a gay NPC (says Crawford)
- "gender" inserted into the Race & Sex section in the PHB
- Mearls calling everyone a bigot if they don't condone sodomy
- all old TSR products (PDFs) carrying a disclaimer (because of those bad old racist white men)
- etc.

- and the example in this thread:

- being forced to include a black female iconic character in the D&D rulebooks and then always killing her off in the artwork just because she is a black woman

(Oh, sorry, that was a white male fighter)

Saying that a white male must appear *somewhere* in each module doesn't seem like a big deal to me - certainly much less so than a requirement of the cover image. If one would prefer a module with no white males, it's trivial enough to change. (Oh, sorry, that was a gay character.)

Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.



The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.
...
However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

These aren't mutually exclusive. I think the damsel-in-distress in the metal bikini on the first DMG was about sex appeal and not diversity. However, the Basic Set magic user is in a more prominent position than the fighter and appears as a real adventurer in a position of power. So I would say this is a cross-over of both. Likewise, in the D&D cartoon, Diana was in a fur bikini which appealed to boys in the audience, but she was also a leader in the group who spoke for herself.

More broadly, diversity isn't exclusively for appealing to alternate audiences. The theory of some is that gender and racial identity is always foremost. i.e. So if there is a black character on the cover, that will only appeal to black players and not white players - and vice-versa if there is a white character on the cover. There might be some statistical tendency to that effect, but I think there is plenty of exceptions.

It was more notable to me that later sets and AD&D2 abandoned this and had lone white men - which I found strange particularly as it doesn't illustrate the typical adventuring party.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 28, 2021, 08:38:00 PM
...

All of the women characters--the vast majority--have been gorgeous, yummy, sexy chewy things. A very few have been "Average Looking" at worst.

Women love playing sexy hot goddesses all the time. And they also make it explicitly clear that their characters are vamped up in style, too, dressed to kill, smelling good, and always looking fantastic. ...

ROTFL!! So true my brother.

I GM a group in which 3 of 5 players are women.

Some of which profess 'feminist' values.

I have yet to see a single one of them make an ugly PC.

Funny how that works...
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 28, 2021, 08:45:00 PM
  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

Yeah, I don't think Erol Otis is a great example of "diversity" I think he just drew what he wanted and they bought it and slapped it in a game book.
Most of the women in early D&D art were supermodel-ish with perky boobs and sexy figures. Elmore and Parkinson spring to mind there. We've been treated to the reaction to those hussies being sexist and degrading!


Women love playing sexy hot goddesses all the time. And they also make it explicitly clear that their characters are vamped up in style, too, dressed to kill, smelling good, and always looking fantastic. Again, the only exceptions to that being when the girls knew for certain they were going into some filthy, diseased dungeon. Only THEN did they leave the sexy vamp outfits and perfume packed away, and reluctantly put on something boring and practical.

Huh? This is the exact opposite of oggsmash's claim. oggsmash claims that the Basic Set cover couldn't possibly appeal to women wanting to play - that the image was clearly only for sex appeal to sweaty preteen boys.

But SHARK is saying (and I agree) that sexy women characters can be appealing to women players.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: oggsmash on June 28, 2021, 09:03:42 PM
  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

Yeah, I don't think Erol Otis is a great example of "diversity" I think he just drew what he wanted and they bought it and slapped it in a game book.
Most of the women in early D&D art were supermodel-ish with perky boobs and sexy figures. Elmore and Parkinson spring to mind there. We've been treated to the reaction to those hussies being sexist and degrading!


Women love playing sexy hot goddesses all the time. And they also make it explicitly clear that their characters are vamped up in style, too, dressed to kill, smelling good, and always looking fantastic. Again, the only exceptions to that being when the girls knew for certain they were going into some filthy, diseased dungeon. Only THEN did they leave the sexy vamp outfits and perfume packed away, and reluctantly put on something boring and practical.

Huh? This is the exact opposite of oggsmash's claim. oggsmash claims that the Basic Set cover couldn't possibly appeal to women wanting to play - that the image was clearly only for sex appeal to sweaty preteen boys.

But SHARK is saying (and I agree) that sexy women characters can be appealing to women players.

  That is not what I said.  I said it was obviously intended to attract the target audience.  I never said couldn't possibly.  For a guy I know is very smart,  you have a whole lot of all or nothing assumptions?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on June 28, 2021, 09:05:36 PM
I've learned several things from this whole mess, but one that surprised me is how fervent the crowd at EN World has gotten about being progressive.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: shoplifter on June 28, 2021, 09:20:14 PM
I've learned several things from this whole mess, but one that surprised me is how fervent the crowd at EN World has gotten about being progressive.

Crazy, right? I vividly remember reading EGG's posts there with great delight. He'd have been run out on a rail there, now. They're mega-pozzed.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 28, 2021, 09:26:23 PM
I've learned several things from this whole mess, but one that surprised me is how fervent the crowd at EN World has gotten about being progressive.

Crazy, right? I vividly remember reading EGG's posts there with great delight. He'd have been run out on a rail there, now. They're mega-pozzed.

I thought I had gone to the other more purple "RPG" site on accident.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Zelen on June 28, 2021, 09:28:37 PM

Saying that a white male must appear *somewhere* in each module doesn't seem like a big deal to me - certainly much less so than a requirement of the cover image. If one would prefer a module with no white males, it's trivial enough to change. (Oh, sorry, that was a gay character.)

Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.

Gay characters in settings derived from history would be fairly rare, and presenting 2020 PRIDEology conception of sexuality doesn't align to historical practices. Of course we can argue about the relationship of reality to fantasy settings, etc etc. Big non-sequitur guaranteed to follow.

On a game level I think the discussion is that D&D generally isn't concerned with romance. Romance basically never comes up in D&D games I've played and is at-most restrained to banter talk and then fade-to-black moments. What is this actually adding to the game?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Zelen on June 28, 2021, 09:39:09 PM
I've learned several things from this whole mess, but one that surprised me is how fervent the crowd at EN World has gotten about being progressive.

That thread over at ENWorld basically reinforces that there's no point in spending my time & energy contributing to that site in any way. These are people who argue completely in bad faith attempting to present everyone who isn't in their cult as responsible for everything evil in the world. Fucking psychotic and actually legitimately evil.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 28, 2021, 09:44:07 PM
That's all fine and dandy, but the problem arises when WotC writes it into the game with an agenda:

- every WotC adventure must now have a gay NPC (says Crawford)
- "gender" inserted into the Race & Sex section in the PHB
- Mearls calling everyone a bigot if they don't condone sodomy
- all old TSR products (PDFs) carrying a disclaimer (because of those bad old racist white men)
- etc.

- and the example in this thread:

- being forced to include a black female iconic character in the D&D rulebooks and then always killing her off in the artwork just because she is a black woman

(Oh, sorry, that was a white male fighter)

Saying that a white male must appear *somewhere* in each module doesn't seem like a big deal to me - certainly much less so than a requirement of the cover image. If one would prefer a module with no white males, it's trivial enough to change. (Oh, sorry, that was a gay character.)

Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.



The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.
...
However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

These aren't mutually exclusive. I think the damsel-in-distress in the metal bikini on the first DMG was about sex appeal and not diversity. However, the Basic Set magic user is in a more prominent position than the fighter and appears as a real adventurer in a position of power. So I would say this is a cross-over of both.

But in the Expert cover, the wizard is prominent over the woman! It's a symptom of heteropatriarchal oppression!

(https://res.cloudinary.com/rdg/image/upload/v1606617424/70_mxeszn.jpg)

Or maybe you're reading a bit more into it than what's there.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: oggsmash on June 28, 2021, 10:17:02 PM
That's all fine and dandy, but the problem arises when WotC writes it into the game with an agenda:

- every WotC adventure must now have a gay NPC (says Crawford)
- "gender" inserted into the Race & Sex section in the PHB
- Mearls calling everyone a bigot if they don't condone sodomy
- all old TSR products (PDFs) carrying a disclaimer (because of those bad old racist white men)
- etc.

- and the example in this thread:

- being forced to include a black female iconic character in the D&D rulebooks and then always killing her off in the artwork just because she is a black woman

(Oh, sorry, that was a white male fighter)

Saying that a white male must appear *somewhere* in each module doesn't seem like a big deal to me - certainly much less so than a requirement of the cover image. If one would prefer a module with no white males, it's trivial enough to change. (Oh, sorry, that was a gay character.)

Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.



The move towards diversity has been going on for a while. The 1970s and 1980s had a lot of intentional branching out from white men in general -- like 1980s Saturday morning cartoons with deliberate diversity. The D&D cartoon had a black girl and white girl as two of the three leaders (with Bobby, Presto, and Eric as younger and/or comic relief). The 1980 Basic Set had a woman as the most prominent lead.
...
However, the later BECMI sets and 2nd edition went back to only white men on the cover. Cook's comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.

  I have to LOL at you calling this a reach towards diversity.  This is marketing people knowing what is going to get a 12 year old boy's pulse to quicken. I have no doubt they wanted more women to play (being half the population and all), but that cover has jack shit to do with getting women to play.

These aren't mutually exclusive. I think the damsel-in-distress in the metal bikini on the first DMG was about sex appeal and not diversity. However, the Basic Set magic user is in a more prominent position than the fighter and appears as a real adventurer in a position of power. So I would say this is a cross-over of both.

But in the Expert cover, the wizard is prominent over the woman! It's a symptom of heteropatriarchal oppression!

(https://res.cloudinary.com/rdg/image/upload/v1606617424/70_mxeszn.jpg)

Or maybe you're reading a bit more into it than what's there.
  Well...That is obviously a frail, effeminate man as the wizard...meaning of course he is coded gay for anyone who can read such obvious clues.  I guess the diversity was full bore all the way back then.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 29, 2021, 02:54:39 AM
But in the Expert cover, the wizard is prominent over the woman! It's a symptom of heteropatriarchal oppression!
...
Or maybe you're reading a bit more into it than what's there.
  Well...That is obviously a frail, effeminate man as the wizard...meaning of course he is coded gay for anyone who can read such obvious clues.  I guess the diversity was full bore all the way back then.

The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: yancy on June 29, 2021, 04:07:23 AM
Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.

Seriously - because of Gary Gygax, and his drinking buddy Ronald Reagan, you and your liberal friends had to suffer through D&D modules for *years* without a single gay owlbear to make out with?

That's quite a cross to bear, if you'll pardon my use of the word 'bear' in this context :/
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: oggsmash on June 29, 2021, 09:18:37 AM
But in the Expert cover, the wizard is prominent over the woman! It's a symptom of heteropatriarchal oppression!
...
Or maybe you're reading a bit more into it than what's there.
  Well...That is obviously a frail, effeminate man as the wizard...meaning of course he is coded gay for anyone who can read such obvious clues.  I guess the diversity was full bore all the way back then.

The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?

  Since you quoted me to talk at ratman, I will give you the *thooper real* interpretation of that portrait.  It is obviously a single, independent, fully liberated, powerful Womxn.  She can sleep with whoever she wants, has no need for a man (not even the Barbarian who knocked her up with a son 4 years ago, but no worries Grandma is raising him, and he is getting over cutting up all the household pets, and she plans on letting them pick their gender when ready) and no obligation to the big simp beside who would die for a whiff of her undergarments.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 29, 2021, 10:09:37 AM
But in the Expert cover, the wizard is prominent over the woman! It's a symptom of heteropatriarchal oppression!
...
Or maybe you're reading a bit more into it than what's there.
  Well...That is obviously a frail, effeminate man as the wizard...meaning of course he is coded gay for anyone who can read such obvious clues.  I guess the diversity was full bore all the way back then.

The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?

No, the "radical feminist marxist" takeover of gaming is in the blatant "progressive" references that Jaeger dug up, where their intention was not to make the game more inclusive, positive and welcoming for all gamers, but to put spiteful digs against the TSR status quo and be a bunch of mean, spiteful little goblin people in the name of "diversity".
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Merrill on June 29, 2021, 10:30:52 AM
Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.

Seriously - because of Gary Gygax, and his drinking buddy Ronald Reagan, you and your liberal friends had to suffer through D&D modules for *years* without a single gay owlbear to make out with?

That's quite a cross to bear, if you'll pardon my use of the word 'bear' in this context :/

LOL!
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 29, 2021, 10:55:02 AM
The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?

No, the "radical feminist marxist" takeover of gaming is in the blatant "progressive" references that Jaeger dug up, where their intention was not to make the game more inclusive, positive and welcoming for all gamers, but to put spiteful digs against the TSR status quo and be a bunch of mean, spiteful little goblin people in the name of "diversity".

And this picture is an illustration of exactly what Jaeger was talking about - an example of those spiteful digs. I mean, just look at it. There's no white man there.

Clearly this shows how much hetero white men are winning the oppression olympics. They have to suffer through material like this just to play D&D.

It's an enormous cross to bear.


Seriously - liberals and gay people played for years when modules weren't allowed to have gay characters, which was enforced by conservative politics. We generally didn't like this requirement, but we dealt with it and kept playing.

Seriously - because of Gary Gygax, and his drinking buddy Ronald Reagan, you and your liberal friends had to suffer through D&D modules for *years* without a single gay owlbear to make out with?

That's quite a cross to bear, if you'll pardon my use of the word 'bear' in this context :/

Except that's exactly my point. I'm saying that the presence or absence of gay characters in modules isn't a big deal. It's 1989 who claimed that it was a problem.

I'm on the side that this makes little difference to people who are just concerned with playing their game. They're mostly an issue for Internet partisans to argue over.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 29, 2021, 11:12:53 AM
The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?

No, the "radical feminist marxist" takeover of gaming is in the blatant "progressive" references that Jaeger dug up, where their intention was not to make the game more inclusive, positive and welcoming for all gamers, but to put spiteful digs against the TSR status quo and be a bunch of mean, spiteful little goblin people in the name of "diversity".

And this picture is an illustration of exactly what Jaeger was talking about - an example of those spiteful digs. I mean, just look at it. There's no white man there.

Clearly this shows how much hetero white men are winning the oppression olympics. They have to suffer through material like this just to play D&D.

It's an enormous cross to bear.

I'll leave you to beat up your strawmen, then.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 29, 2021, 03:36:28 PM

https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg

And this picture is an illustration of exactly what Jaeger was talking about - an example of those spiteful digs. I mean, just look at it. There's no white man there.

In this specific example, jhkim is correct. This is a 4th edition book, and as current WOTC is on the record hating white male fighters, the prominence of a furry and POC on the players handbook must be taken as a deliberate choice. But this is just an attempt at conflation to obscure his earlier strawman.

In a more normal world a picture is drawn and selected because everyone involved thought it was cool looking. Without additional context one cannot place intent on the selection of the Erol Otus B/X covers.

Unless one can give a quote from Erol Otus or the designers of B/X on their intent; they are intentionally misrepresenting things in order to try to score rhetorical points.

In his "example" of the Erol Otus B/X covers, jhkim is pulling the dictionary definition of a Strawman argument: "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument."

He is taking a piece of cover art from the TSR era for which he has no sources to place reason, motive, or intent, and then applying a dash of critical theory misinterpretation to try and conflate it as being equivalent to what is being done 30 years later by WOTC whose motives and intent are known.

WOTC designers and writers have been very explicit and forthright in their intentions, and the reasons that they select certain types of art over others.

And we have the quotes to prove it.

We have no reason to give WOTC the benefit of the doubt, as they have been very public about what they are doing and the intent behind it.



Clearly this shows how much hetero white men are winning the oppression olympics. They have to suffer through material like this just to play D&D.

It's an enormous cross to bear.
 

Yes, yes it is.

Hetero white men have been very liberal and welcoming to diverse groups.

As a reward for our magnanimity we now have the privilege of being told we are the BAD guys.

That our silence is literally violence. We need to check our privilege, and that we are systematically racist.

At a certain point one simply gets tired of all the BS.

I and others have chosen to end our 'suffering' by not giving WOTC our money.

That doesn't mean that we should stop pointing out what the SJW's in the hobby are trying to do.



Except that's exactly my point. I'm saying that the presence or absence of gay characters in modules isn't a big deal. It's 1989 who claimed that it was a problem.

I'm on the side that this makes little difference to people who are just concerned with playing their game. They're mostly an issue for Internet partisans to argue over.

As this is not the first time you have stated that you do not care about these issues, or do not see them as a big deal; why not avoid these threads then?

I can only conclude that you feel some need to come in and post how you are playing the world's smallest violin for those who do do not share your view. But I am open to correction on this point.

Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 29, 2021, 05:06:46 PM
Except that's exactly my point. I'm saying that the presence or absence of gay characters in modules isn't a big deal. It's 1989 who claimed that it was a problem.

I'm on the side that this makes little difference to people who are just concerned with playing their game. They're mostly an issue for Internet partisans to argue over.

As this is not the first time you have stated that you do not care about these issues, or do not see them as a big deal; why not avoid these threads then?

I can only conclude that you feel some need to come in and post how you are playing the world's smallest violin for those who do do not share your view. But I am open to correction on this point.

I can have a definite opinion that something is unimportant. That's not the same as my not caring about the debate.


In this specific example, jhkim is correct. This is a 4th edition book, and as current WOTC is on the record hating white male fighters, the prominence of a furry and POC on the players handbook must be taken as a deliberate choice. But this is just an attempt at conflation to obscure his earlier strawman.

In a more normal world a picture is drawn and selected because everyone involved thought it was cool looking. Without additional context one cannot place intent on the selection of the Erol Otus B/X covers.

According to your own quoted source (Monte Cook), TSR covers were not chosen just to be cool - they generally had the requirement that "the central figure had to be a white male". And indeed, when I look at the BECMI covers and the 2nd edition AD&D covers, that is exactly what I see - a lone white male in every case. The original AD&D1 books also had white men with the exception of the damsel-in-distress in a metal bikini. The 1980 Basic Set is an exception.

You claim that in a normal world, pictures are chosen based on just being cool looking. I think in a normal world, the cover image of a multi-million-dollar company's flagship product is going to be carefully thought out in terms of branding and marketing and target audience appeal, including demographics and the race and gender of the figure(s). This isn't some new-fangled 21st century notion. I'm sure that Parker Brothers carefully considered the cover images of their board games in the 1930s.

You're trying to project that TSR was liberal and welcoming to diverse groups, but by your own quote and the actual published results, they were selectively only putting white men on their covers. Now, one could make the argument that this was just trying to appeal to their target demographic, and D&D was still welcoming to diverse groups. But if you say that, then it would follow that covers that *don't* have white men can still be liberal and welcoming to white male players.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jaeger on June 29, 2021, 09:02:58 PM

According to your own quoted source (Monte Cook), TSR covers were not chosen just to be cool - they generally had the requirement that "the central figure had to be a white male". And indeed, when I look at the BECMI covers and the 2nd edition AD&D covers, that is exactly what I see - a lone white male in every case. The original AD&D1 books also had white men with the exception of the damsel-in-distress in a metal bikini. The 1980 Basic Set is an exception.


So the 1980 Otus cover art has gone from example to prove your point, to an exception.

Ok, no big deal, let's move on...


Now we are to: AD&D1e-2e and BCMI.

Yes, TSR did those covers with a white male fighter.

I personally see no reason for Monte Cook to lie about that.

The logical inference is that it was done to appeal to their biggest target demo.

No one has made claims to the contrary.

Yes, of course there were exceptions. There always are.



You claim that in a normal world, pictures are chosen based on just being cool looking. I think in a normal world, the cover image of a multi-million-dollar company's flagship product is going to be carefully thought out in terms of branding and marketing and target audience appeal, including demographics and the race and gender of the figure(s). This isn't some new-fangled 21st century notion. I'm sure that Parker Brothers carefully considered the cover images of their board games in the 1930s.

I really have to spell out every little bit of common sense???

Of course any company would carefully choose their cover art.

I seriously doubt the Otus cover art was done with no input.

But unless you have a quote to the contrary, we cannot assign any malice or critical theory nonsense to their thought process when they selected it.

And here I thought the Otus cover art was an exception and we were moving on...

Although being an exception, maybe they did just pick it because it looked cool!?!?!?!?!

Who knows!



You're trying to project that TSR was liberal and welcoming to diverse groups, but by your own quote and the actual published results, they were selectively only putting white men on their covers.

I never said TSR was liberal, I don't know what their politics were.

(I know what you are getting at, but I'm returning the favor of being as literal and pedantic as possible in reading this sentence so I could selectively reply to score rhetorical 'gotcha' points.)

I do think that it can be safely said that TSR was largely apolitical for most of its tenure with D&D. But that is not my argument.

You'll have to explain to me how selecting your cover art to appeal to your biggest sales demographic is a political act.

Or how appealing to your biggest sales demographic is the equivalent of holding up a big neon sign that says: "If you don't look like the guy on the cover - this game is not for you!"

Come up with something original please, I already know the argument critical theorists make.


We finally get to the real question:

 Now, one could make the argument that this was just trying to appeal to their target demographic, and D&D was still welcoming to diverse groups. But if you say that, then it would follow that covers that *don't* have white men can still be liberal and welcoming to white male players.

I agree, in a sane world it would absolutely follow that covers/art without "white men" can still be liberal and welcoming to "white male" players. Like the Erol Otus B/X cover - nobody gave a shit.

I have not made an argument to the contrary.

My point is that with WOTC D&D its writers have been publicly outspoken in their distain for catering to that sales demo.

Let's read more of that Monte quote that you liked so much:


https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=16418

When I worked at TSR, there was always basically a truism in cover art--the central figure had to be a white male. Most of us actually helping to create the cover art, either by conceiving it or actually creating it, hated that kind of outlook, …”

“…when D&D was bought by WotC and we started working on 3E, we really felt that this was a time when we could break this mold. …”

“It was a thumb to the nose of the old TSR requirement.”

“At least that was our intention.”

“…to the credit of a number of people--artists, art directors, designers and editors alike--our disdain for Regdar made its way into a lot of art. If you look closely, Regdar is getting thrashed on most of the early pieces he shows up in. (Look for his ignominious fate on the original DM's Screen, for example.) …”

The desire for covers/art without "white men" was not born out of a desire to do something different yet still be liberal and welcoming to "white male" players.

It was a middle finger to the very idea of appealing to a demographic that just happened to be white males through no fault of their own.

They actually got mad at the very notion!



https://www.enworld.org/threads/diversity-in-d-d-third-edition.668462/

“…the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped.

(This is too good not to repeat...)

And To His Utter Horror:


“… Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.

Ohhh snap! Backhand compliment much Mr. tweet?

It seems that such dissenters were purged from the marketing team before 4e rolled around...

But wait. There's more!


https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2iha2?Monte-Cook-on-Gender-and-Race-in-DD-Art

Killing off Captain Whitebread is indeed a time-honored tradition in WotC books. I've written my fair share of art orders for those books, and have made sure to have Regdar get blasted or ruined or murdered a few times myself (such as at the end of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk). It's a fun little semi-secret D&D tradition!”

I don't know about you, but phrases like "Captain Whitebread", do not exactly come across as terms of endearment!

One could get the impression that they were being downright insulting!

What is one to think when they brag about going out of their way to ensure "Captain Whitebread" is "blasted or ruined or murdered".

That doesn't come across as someone who has put much thought into their 'inclusive art' still being "liberal and welcoming to white male players".


When reading such a display of contempt and spite, it can hardly be surprising that many of us do not believe that their reasons for wanting RPG covers and art that *don't* have 'white men' comes from a place of magnanimity and brotherly love.

WOTC's D&D design team was, and currently is taking an openly political stance, and we have proof from their own statements past and present that they have actively sought to inject their own ideological worldview into the game.

The quotes I provided, and the current twitter feeds of their own employees show that they are all in lockstep with a woke critical theory ideology that HATES straight white men who won't bend the knee.

So yeah:

(https://i.imgflip.com/5eyueu.jpg)
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on June 29, 2021, 09:26:54 PM
I've learned several things from this whole mess, but one that surprised me is how fervent the crowd at EN World has gotten about being progressive.

That thread over at ENWorld basically reinforces that there's no point in spending my time & energy contributing to that site in any way. These are people who argue completely in bad faith attempting to present everyone who isn't in their cult as responsible for everything evil in the world. Fucking psychotic and actually legitimately evil.

I hold no brief for Ernie Gygax, think LaNasa sounds like a slimy operator, and have mixed feelings about Gygax Sr. and old-school D&D ... but the vituperation, hostility, and tendency to judge the father for the sins of the son that I’ve seen on that thread over the past day or two has been repulsive and unsettling.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 29, 2021, 09:35:28 PM
The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?

No, the "radical feminist marxist" takeover of gaming is in the blatant "progressive" references that Jaeger dug up, where their intention was not to make the game more inclusive, positive and welcoming for all gamers, but to put spiteful digs against the TSR status quo and be a bunch of mean, spiteful little goblin people in the name of "diversity".

And this picture is an illustration of exactly what Jaeger was talking about - an example of those spiteful digs. I mean, just look at it. There's no white man there.

Clearly this shows how much hetero white men are winning the oppression olympics. They have to suffer through material like this just to play D&D.

It's an enormous cross to bear.

Its even worse then that jhkim, hetero white men had to suffer through this as well:

(https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/e/e0/Player%27s_Handbook.jpg)

I honestly dont know how they managed to survive not having a white man on the cover for so long.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: moonsweeper on June 29, 2021, 09:48:57 PM
Since Cook wasn't even a freelancer at TSR until the early 90s, I don't really think any opinions he had about 'old TSR' are really useful.  Williams had been in charge for the better part of a decade before he even cashed his first check.  If he wants to lay that at her feet that's fine but it has jack shit to do with anything 1E or B/X related.

As far as the Moldvay Basic set goes...

The LaForce piece on pg B6 shows two players creating characters, 1 male and 1 female.
The character creation example only uses the term 'player' until the last sentence when it mentions that since this player is female, their character will be as well.

Sounds to me like a bunch of 'toxic white males' must have actually thought it was ok for girls to play D&D...
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 29, 2021, 10:31:29 PM
The prior claim is that this...

(https://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_4th_edition.jpg)

is a radical feminist marxist takeover to destroy gaming with its hatred for white men,

and you call *me* out for reading more than what's there?

No, the "radical feminist marxist" takeover of gaming is in the blatant "progressive" references that Jaeger dug up, where their intention was not to make the game more inclusive, positive and welcoming for all gamers, but to put spiteful digs against the TSR status quo and be a bunch of mean, spiteful little goblin people in the name of "diversity".

And this picture is an illustration of exactly what Jaeger was talking about - an example of those spiteful digs. I mean, just look at it. There's no white man there.

Clearly this shows how much hetero white men are winning the oppression olympics. They have to suffer through material like this just to play D&D.

It's an enormous cross to bear.

Its even worse then that jhkim, hetero white men had to suffer through this as well:

(https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/e/e0/Player%27s_Handbook.jpg)

I honestly dont know how they managed to survive not having a white man on the cover for so long.

I hope we can all agree that those covers were the very lowest point for cover "art" in the D&D editions.
At the time, I didnt' think much about them, but in hindsight... ugh.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 29, 2021, 10:58:27 PM
I hope we can all agree that those covers were the very lowest point for cover "art" in the D&D editions.
At the time, I didnt' think much about them, but in hindsight... ugh.

It was not meant to be "art" it was supposed to represent an actual physical tome that white men would carry around the world with them as they conquered and oppressed the noble savage.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on June 30, 2021, 04:48:59 AM
At this stage in the game, assuming that there is not political motivation up at WOTC thats not motivated largely by hate and spite would be borderline willful ignorance. I don't care who they put on the cover: I care who they say CANNOT be put on the cover. It was the same thing with guns for me. I didn't care for them, until I started hearing about the warped reasoning I couldn't have one.

The principle of wokeness is that only white men have any sort of agency, tolerance, self-control, or ability to improve or empathize with others. Everybody else is a idiotic victim, that crumbles at the smallest issue. Alternatively, they simply want to kill all the white men (and then the women eventually).
It tends to flip-flop between these two states depending on if misplaced empathy or malice dominates the conversation.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 30, 2021, 08:08:37 AM
Monte Cook is a hack. His opinion isn't worth a cupful of cold spit.

Oddly, I rather liked the 3E cover. Minimalism is sometimes a good thing.

The BECMI covers were kind of interesting. The Basic and Expert covers only showed the hero from the back, not the front -- so you could imagine any kind of face on him. Companion set had the guy in full armor and you couldn't tell who he was.

I always took that as an inference of 'imagine this is YOUR character, make him who YOU want him to be'.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on June 30, 2021, 09:52:44 AM
Jaeger, you have won the thread, good sir.

Bravo!
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on June 30, 2021, 09:53:31 AM
Monte Cook is a hack. His opinion isn't worth a cupful of cold spit.

Oddly, I rather liked the 3E cover. Minimalism is sometimes a good thing.

The BECMI covers were kind of interesting. The Basic and Expert covers only showed the hero from the back, not the front -- so you could imagine any kind of face on him. Companion set had the guy in full armor and you couldn't tell who he was.

I always took that as an inference of 'imagine this is YOUR character, make him who YOU want him to be'.

This is how I see it as well on those covers.  They do not show the character's face so you can fill it in inside your imagination in an attempt to say this could be your character.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 30, 2021, 10:44:14 AM
Monte Cook is a hack. His opinion isn't worth a cupful of cold spit.

Oddly, I rather liked the 3E cover. Minimalism is sometimes a good thing.

The BECMI covers were kind of interesting. The Basic and Expert covers only showed the hero from the back, not the front -- so you could imagine any kind of face on him. Companion set had the guy in full armor and you couldn't tell who he was.

I always took that as an inference of 'imagine this is YOUR character, make him who YOU want him to be'.

This is how I see it as well on those covers.  They do not show the character's face so you can fill it in inside your imagination in an attempt to say this could be your character.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: The Spaniard on June 30, 2021, 11:29:16 AM
Monte Cook is a hack. His opinion isn't worth a cupful of cold spit.

Oddly, I rather liked the 3E cover. Minimalism is sometimes a good thing.

The BECMI covers were kind of interesting. The Basic and Expert covers only showed the hero from the back, not the front -- so you could imagine any kind of face on him. Companion set had the guy in full armor and you couldn't tell who he was.

I always took that as an inference of 'imagine this is YOUR character, make him who YOU want him to be'.

This is how I see it as well on those covers.  They do not show the character's face so you can fill it in inside your imagination in an attempt to say this could be your character.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'
Or play any of the characters in the book at all?  How many games are really run BTB?  I run my game my way, everyone else can run their game in their own way.  They don't need my approval or permission, but I sure as hell don't need anyone's permission/approval/acceptance either.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 30, 2021, 12:17:10 PM
What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'

Right. This is exactly what I am saying, and what I've done. I claim that who is on the cover is relatively unimportant.

If we were back in the 1990s and some liberal posters were calling to not play TSR D&D because there were only white men on the covers, then this would be on point - especially if they were going over interviews of TSR designers line by line to determine their political stance. Instead, we're in 2021, and the complaint is that WotC *doesn't* put white men on the cover - and that calls for going line by line through designer interviews for their politics, and means people shouldn't play WotC D&D.

If Jaeger and others want to obsess and go over the politics of particular designers, that's their business. But I don't consider it relevant to my play, and I'm just going ahead and rolling my dice.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: FingerRod on June 30, 2021, 01:03:01 PM
What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'

Right. This is exactly what I am saying, and what I've done. I claim that who is on the cover is relatively unimportant.

If we were back in the 1990s and some liberal posters were calling to not play TSR D&D because there were only white men on the covers, then this would be on point - especially if they were going over interviews of TSR designers line by line to determine their political stance. Instead, we're in 2021, and the complaint is that WotC *doesn't* put white men on the cover - and that calls for going line by line through designer interviews for their politics, and means people shouldn't play WotC D&D.

If Jaeger and others want to obsess and go over the politics of particular designers, that's their business. But I don't consider it relevant to my play, and I'm just going ahead and rolling my dice.

The mistake that you and others made was conflating Cook saying it was basically a truism and turning it into a supposed requirement. Truisms and requirements are not the same thing.

Cook was sucking his own dick telling everybody how great he was because he was going against a truism stemming from his imagination. There has been no evidence of a memo, standard, or requirement for the art. If something like that existed, I suspect he would have indicated as such.

But this is what people like Cook do. It is classic virtue signaling, weak and pathetic. Politics aside, it is reason enough not to support a creative who constantly constructs platforms for themselves like this. At best, it shows insecurity. At worst, it is bigotry.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 30, 2021, 01:11:00 PM
What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'

Right. This is exactly what I am saying, and what I've done. I claim that who is on the cover is relatively unimportant.

If we were back in the 1990s and some liberal posters were calling to not play TSR D&D because there were only white men on the covers, then this would be on point - especially if they were going over interviews of TSR designers line by line to determine their political stance. Instead, we're in 2021, and the complaint is that WotC *doesn't* put white men on the cover - and that calls for going line by line through designer interviews for their politics, and means people shouldn't play WotC D&D.

If Jaeger and others want to obsess and go over the politics of particular designers, that's their business. But I don't consider it relevant to my play, and I'm just going ahead and rolling my dice.

The mistake that you and others made was conflating Cook saying it was basically a truism and turning it into a supposed requirement. Truisms and requirements are not the same thing.

Cook was sucking his own dick telling everybody how great he was because he was going against a truism stemming from his imagination. There has been no evidence of a memo, standard, or requirement for the art. If something like that existed, I suspect he would have indicated as such.

But this is what people like Cook do. It is classic virtue signaling, weak and pathetic. Politics aside, it is reason enough not to support a creative who constantly constructs platforms for themselves like this. At best, it shows insecurity. At worst, it is bigotry.
As far as I'm concerned, the only excuse for Monte Cook's existence is that he drove Larry Elmore to the hospital when Elmore suffered a heart attack.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: FingerRod on June 30, 2021, 01:26:45 PM
As far as I'm concerned, the only excuse for Monte Cook's existence is that he drove Larry Elmore to the hospital when Elmore suffered a heart attack.

I never knew that story. Score one for old Monte! Elmore is great.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Mistwell on June 30, 2021, 01:28:05 PM
Hey old man yelling at the clouds, have you considered that Redgar getting his ass kicked was just a funny running in-joke in the company at that point and not some giant conspiracy to trash white men in general? I feel very confident Redgar getting his butt kicked on the cover of some books did not lead to "violence against whites" in general nor "critical race theory" in general.

While I don't disagree with this, I am curious whether you'd be quite as sanguine if they'd been intentionally making a black character get murdered in as many pictures as possible because he was foisted on them by corporate.

I think at the time they were doing it they would have done it to a beholder, if that's what they felt was being shoved on them and suppressing their artistic choices. It reads like, "these schmucks hired us for this artwork and our experience in this field, and then guys who knew nothing about this aspect of the field dictated to us how we'd do our job. So, we protested however we could."
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: jhkim on June 30, 2021, 01:31:23 PM
What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'

Right. This is exactly what I am saying, and what I've done. I claim that who is on the cover is relatively unimportant.

If we were back in the 1990s and some liberal posters were calling to not play TSR D&D because there were only white men on the covers, then this would be on point - especially if they were going over interviews of TSR designers line by line to determine their political stance. Instead, we're in 2021, and the complaint is that WotC *doesn't* put white men on the cover - and that calls for going line by line through designer interviews for their politics, and means people shouldn't play WotC D&D.

If Jaeger and others want to obsess and go over the politics of particular designers, that's their business. But I don't consider it relevant to my play, and I'm just going ahead and rolling my dice.

The mistake that you and others made was conflating Cook saying it was basically a truism and turning it into a supposed requirement. Truisms and requirements are not the same thing.

This is exactly the obsessing that I'm arguing against. You're trying to micro-analyze what Cook meant by "truism" and how that's different than a "requirement", but my point is that I don't care. I don't know exactly how TSR decided on their covers, and I didn't consider it an important thing to know in order to play TSR D&D. In general, I don't know the politics of most of the authors of RPGs I play.

Obviously, you're free to play whatever you like. If you want to go over the interviews or Twitter feeds of your RPG authors to see if they pass your purity tests, that's your business.

The bottom line is consistency. I don't obsess over author intent to decide what I'm going to play either way.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Chris24601 on June 30, 2021, 02:03:54 PM
All I know is that all the available white manly men and hot redheads because WotC isn’t using them means I can afford to have two of each on my book’s cover!  ;D
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: FingerRod on June 30, 2021, 02:08:08 PM
What annoys me is this 'well there aren't any black people so they're marginalized'. Motherfucker, what makes you think you HAVE to play the guy on the cover?

To quote M.C. Hammer's 'Addams Family Values', you can play what you wanna play. I wanna grab my hair and scream, 'STOP OBSESSING AND ROLL THOSE DICE!'

Right. This is exactly what I am saying, and what I've done. I claim that who is on the cover is relatively unimportant.

If we were back in the 1990s and some liberal posters were calling to not play TSR D&D because there were only white men on the covers, then this would be on point - especially if they were going over interviews of TSR designers line by line to determine their political stance. Instead, we're in 2021, and the complaint is that WotC *doesn't* put white men on the cover - and that calls for going line by line through designer interviews for their politics, and means people shouldn't play WotC D&D.

If Jaeger and others want to obsess and go over the politics of particular designers, that's their business. But I don't consider it relevant to my play, and I'm just going ahead and rolling my dice.

The mistake that you and others made was conflating Cook saying it was basically a truism and turning it into a supposed requirement. Truisms and requirements are not the same thing.

This is exactly the obsessing that I'm arguing against. You're trying to micro-analyze what Cook meant by "truism" and how that's different than a "requirement", but my point is that I don't care. I don't know exactly how TSR decided on their covers, and I didn't consider it an important thing to know in order to play TSR D&D. In general, I don't know the politics of most of the authors of RPGs I play.

Obviously, you're free to play whatever you like. If you want to go over the interviews or Twitter feeds of your RPG authors to see if they pass your purity tests, that's your business.

The bottom line is consistency. I don't obsess over author intent to decide what I'm going to play either way.

I am not obsessing over anything. What I am saying is you lack reading comprehension. You are the one who took his quote and turned it into:

“Cook’s comment is that TSR created a corporate requirement that *only* white men appear on the cover. Maybe Cook does hate white men, but I think it is possible to be against a corporate requirement for only white men on the cover, and not hate white men.”

I was directly addressing you. You incorrectly defined his comment.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Jam The MF on June 30, 2021, 02:20:22 PM
I hope we can all agree that those covers were the very lowest point for cover "art" in the D&D editions.
At the time, I didnt' think much about them, but in hindsight... ugh.

It was not meant to be "art" it was supposed to represent an actual physical tome that white men would carry around the world with them as they conquered and oppressed the noble savage.


Yes!!!  Yes!!!  Ha!!!
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Shasarak on June 30, 2021, 04:46:33 PM
Monte Cook is a hack. His opinion isn't worth a cupful of cold spit.

Oddly, I rather liked the 3E cover. Minimalism is sometimes a good thing.

The BECMI covers were kind of interesting. The Basic and Expert covers only showed the hero from the back, not the front -- so you could imagine any kind of face on him. Companion set had the guy in full armor and you couldn't tell who he was.

I always took that as an inference of 'imagine this is YOUR character, make him who YOU want him to be'.

This is how I see it as well on those covers.  They do not show the character's face so you can fill it in inside your imagination in an attempt to say this could be your character.

But Batjon, how are you supposed to know what character to make if the book does not explicitly show you what character to make?

Complete freedom would result in madness! Cats and Dogs living together!

Wont anyone think of the children?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: LiferGamer on July 04, 2021, 08:38:09 PM
The more I dig the more I regret it but I went ahead and pre-ordered Giantlands; I didn't know about the kickstarter shenanigans.

I'm going to keep my order report on when and if I get it and review it.

The thread has been a good read.

I have yet to be impressed by anything either of the cooks have done, Zeb or Monty. I'm still aggravated at Zeb bending the knee to the church ladies, and the rise of the Forgotten Realms kickng Grayhawk to the curb.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: GeekyBugle on July 04, 2021, 10:22:26 PM
Looks like they fired the guy that posted this:

https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1410569117195816963 (https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1410569117195816963)



https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1410772470211043329 (https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1410772470211043329)
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Omega on July 10, 2021, 09:14:56 PM
I hate to say this, hah, but it's telling that a few years ago this would have been exciting to even ponder "TSR" (fill in whatever that means to you) is coming back.

The moment I saw the thread and went to their website, my first reaction was to laugh. None of it surprises me. We're through the looking glass. I just assume anything presented is tainted now. The question is "to what degree"? YMMV.

That is always the problem with each wave of these moral guardians. They poison the well so badly that you literally can not look at anything without a bit of suspicion. Especially if it can be read as part of the agenda routine. Even if it was not intended to be.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on July 11, 2021, 04:07:44 AM
And now Giantlands has left TSR and has been fished out to another company to complete.  What a mess.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: rocksfalleverybodydies on July 11, 2021, 12:58:05 PM
<edit>
Ah Batjon, I now see what you mean.
Reading the announcement on discord, didn't realise that Dinehart is taking Giantlands with him. heh
So what happens with the preorders people made?
They still have a channel for it on the discord so confusing to say the least.
<edit>

Their discord is still going strong though and likely easier to manage anything that goes off the rails.
A logo change and a stricter control by mods of topics.
Also seems like a nice way to connect with older D&D edition lovers.

I'm fine with that as Twitter displayed, once some perceived slight has been made, it becomes a pile-on of tit-for-tat and kills off any meaningful discussion of the game itself.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: hedgehobbit on July 12, 2021, 05:07:13 PM
And now Giantlands has left TSR and has been fished out to another company to complete.  What a mess.

I saw an article but I don't really understand what is going on. It seems that there were two different companies that were both calling themselves TSR. One that Ernie Gygax was involved in (or owned??) and some other owned by randos. Now Giantlands is being offered by a third company or some such.

It is a mess but I can't tell which one is the one getting screwed.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: palaeomerus on July 13, 2021, 07:01:02 PM


Quote
Also Google Boudica.
What’s your point? She never wore a chainmail bikini.
[/quote]

Well.....Wendy Pini did. So there! Back when sci fi and fantasy and comics were about fun and not some weird quest for clout/status/influence.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: palaeomerus on July 13, 2021, 07:01:38 PM
Sorry I dicked that quote up.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Tubesock Army on December 08, 2021, 04:56:19 PM
LMAO these guys are the gift that keeps on giving.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/support-tsr-against-wizards-of-the-coast#/discussion
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: APN on December 09, 2021, 06:14:33 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/fThdVD3v/nutsr-vs-wotc.png)

I'm surprised it's this high. A fool and his money are soon parted etc.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: David Johansen on December 09, 2021, 09:46:23 AM
A beggar will generally seed the hat with a bill and some change.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on December 09, 2021, 11:15:12 AM
They are suing WotC because they turned D&D woke? Say what?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Ghostmaker on December 09, 2021, 11:44:31 AM
As near as I can tell, TSR is suing WOTC over defamation.. which of course is going to be a wonderful can of worms to open up.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on December 09, 2021, 11:55:35 AM
I hope TSR wins.  I despise Wokesters of the Coast.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Hakdov on December 09, 2021, 10:29:34 PM
sigh... this is a grift to bilk boomer idiots out of their money.  This will never go to court. 
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on December 10, 2021, 09:56:17 AM
Can they both lose?  ;)
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on December 10, 2021, 11:44:48 AM
This smacks of suspicious.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Batjon on December 10, 2021, 11:46:02 AM
Can they both lose?  ;)

You win the thread.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: DragonBane on December 10, 2021, 01:56:48 PM
If theyre gonna make old-style d&d stuff man, I hope it works for them.

But nah- if they try leftists will go after them, the other side will do nothing but whine like always, and the SJWs win again. Like always.

I know your not reading this TSR but if you are don't count on any support against the left because you ain't gonna get any.
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: Svenhelgrim on December 11, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
So has 3SR put out any games yet?
Title: Re: TSR is Coming Back? Or it is Back?
Post by: hoshisabi on December 11, 2021, 10:30:18 AM
There's reports on a lot of the D&D news sites that they've already dropped the lawsuit, but they're still raising money in the Indigogo. So... take that for what you like.

But there's been analysis done of the lawsuit, and it's a dangerous path for them to tread (so says the IP lawyer that weighed in on Twitter). They're trying to claim abandonment of trademarks and copyrights for which they also received a Cease and Desist to not use themselves, but in the same lawsuit they point out how those trademarks and copyrights are being sold with a disclaimer which they don't like.

So you have to wonder: are they NOT being sold, and thus abandoned and thus there's no disclaimer for them to object to, or is there a disclaimer on some things that are being sold and thus the trademarks and copyrights aren't abanadoned?