[D&D] TSR v3

Status
Not open for further replies.
I think it's a shame the Luke Gygax TSR failed - which seemed to be due to conflict with Gail Gygax over the name of Gygax magazine etc. That was probably the best opportunity for a positive gaming legacy.

This lawsuit is nonsense, of course. New TSR may have some good arguments about the simple word mark 'TSR' which probably was out of use for a period of time, but they'd have to make that argument carefully since the reason they want to use it is its association with goods and services still provided by WotC, and by the time they started to use it, WotC had re-started using the mark in commerce (by re-starting selling old products via the DM's Guild). Their arguments about the old logos are even weaker - they can't acquire rights to use the art/design of those logos except by agreement with the copyright owner who is, almost certainly, WotC.

Twitter thread of a commercial litigator reading through and responding to the claim here:
 
I think it's a shame the Luke Gygax TSR failed - which seemed to be due to conflict with Gail Gygax over the name of Gygax magazine etc. That was probably the best opportunity for a positive gaming legacy.

This lawsuit is nonsense, of course. New TSR may have some good arguments about the simple word mark 'TSR' which probably was out of use for a period of time, but they'd have to make that argument carefully since the reason they want to use it is its association with goods and services still provided by WotC, and by the time they started to use it, WotC had re-started using the mark in commerce (by re-starting selling old products via the DM's Guild). Their arguments about the old logos are even weaker - they can't acquire rights to use the art/design of those logos except by agreement with the copyright owner who is, almost certainly, WotC.

Twitter thread of a commercial litigator reading through and responding to the claim here:
Thing is that Wizards of the Coast is looking like a spiteful corporate giant, not a good look to adopt alongside their woke makeup.

The Star Frontiers brand has little value to WoTC. If they really wanted it valuable all these years, they would have done something with it in 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons after seeing several vindies try 5e space fantasy.

One reason I initially went in big for Paizo's Starfinder was to relive some space fantasy with Dungeons and Dragons themes. Sadly, Paizo has that horrible sakes practice of using subscriptions and also linking all new Adventures Paths to ever more Alien Archives (Bestiary) books.

That is one thing I like about official 5e products from WoTC. They are all mostly independent and have internal bestiary or just reference the single official Monster Manual.
 
We’ll never know all the ins-and-outs but it’s interesting that the new Alternity didn’t face WotC opposition. The same expired/dis-used trademarks issue applied there. Perhaps something had changed by the time Evil Hat thought about using the name Star Frontiers - but perhaps they just decided not to proceed with that for their own reasons.

I think using every way possible to avoid appearing to work with the owners of this latest TSR is rational - aside from the politics and beliefs of at least some of its owners, it’s clearly not a serious and stable company. So yes, IP law is broken because WotC or someone with its resources could defeat new TSR regardless of the merits, and there are plenty of examples (including original TSR!) where creativity is diminished by over-zealous litigation. But using a trade mark to pretend you’re a different company, or have the rights to be considered the true successors to significant works, is pretty illegitimate.

It was also interesting to learn that WotC bought TSR before it went bankrupt to ensure that TSR’s IP remained intact and wasn’t auctioned by liquidators - we could have ended up with fragmentation of ownership which would have made the last 25 years very different for D&D, and perhaps killed it. (Via Ben Riggs who’s writing a book on the TSR-WotC deal: )
 
Thing is that Wizards of the Coast is looking like a spiteful corporate giant, not a good look to adopt alongside their woke makeup.

What's I find interesting here is that I kind of see your point - it's in the same ballpark as what Games Workshop has done with Simon Burley and Golden Heroes.

But I find it almost impossible to find WotC in the wrong here. They own a thing. They have the right to say yes or no, and they choose to say no. That's a fundamental thing about owning something. It's sold to you, you own it, now its yours. Beyond that comes chaos!

Nu-TSRv3.1: Now we're getting legal - the Sequel might have stood a chance if they had gathered a little of the anti-DnD feeling behind them. When everything is bad, and every mistake is a conspiracy*, it should be pretty easy to leap on that bandwagon. They couldn't even do that, could they? f**k it, even the blurb on their indiegogo about how they want games to be like they used to be in your basement just makes them out to be undeveloped man-children. Its not 1979 anymore, things have moved on. Grow up, ffs!

* Like the latest book having a printing error and missing a credit for the sensitivity reader and people talking about it like it was a conspiracy against ... everything! Sigh...
 
Not sure if fragmentation would be bad. The RPG market would have grown regardless, we see that with the popularity of Powered by the Apocalypse. And we may have avoided the d20 glut of the 3e OGL and the current glut of 5e OGL.

Still, what I saw of the reviews of the new Star Frontiers is a very shoddy product, riding on nostalgia rather than quality.

If you want nostalgia done right, here is Fria Ligan creating great new RPGs with shout-out to nostalgia,while using d6 dice pools with great art and production values and not dependent on the 5e OGL..
 
No, no, no. This is Old School adjacent. They expect to die heroically or pointless and re-roll. None of this pivot point nonsense.
Yes you are right GrungeMeister @Dom, the one called @Vodkashok (I tried vodka once but it made me sick) is a heretic, probably an SJW and has failed the Purity Test, flail passively as we await the one named PundZakMithRPG who shall belittle him, and possibly explain how Marxism in Venezuela is the root of all evil..
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dom
Of course, WOTC may not intend to pursue Alternity as a product but it very much does have D&D as a line. If it only went after the D&D IP here it would be odd and give them issues in the future.
 
Yes - Star Frontiers is the curious one. And in a vacuum (if it wasn’t this company trying to use it) it would be problematic to stop a separate company creating a game with a name you abandoned the use of many years previously. A general assertion that you might want to use it in the future isn’t enough (there’s an interesting discussion at moment about an American Footballer who’s applied to register a mark based on his number and nickname but then said he isn’t planning on using it yet … which probably means the application is invalid).

The use of Star Frontiers and TSR together makes it easier to argue this is abusive and free-riding on unearned goodwill though.
 
I’m pretty sure the demise of Gygax magazine was due to Gail and unresolved conflict over the Gygax estate, and nothing to do with the use TSR. It may have faced WotC opposition if it had lasted longer though - if Wikipedia is accurate the D&D Classics Drive-Thru sub-site started in 2013 and Gygax magazine had already launched, ending around 2016.

(Looking this up reminds me that LaNasa’s TSR is using/mis-using the mark used by two other companies, and pretending that not renewing a TM automatically makes it free to use, which is just not the case).
 
Last edited:
On one hand it does feel a lot like tilting at windmills -- on the other WOTC's disclaimer feels incredibly dickish and reads:

"we still want to profit from the hard work of past creators but at the same time we're going to besmirch them by retroactively declaring all of them bad/wrong regardless of whether the individual work in question is in any way problematic so we can pander to people who aren't even interested in it anyway"

So I can see why they feel aggrieved at it, on the other they're completely wasting their time that'd be far better spent making a decent product.
 
The older material is a thing of its time (something that re-reading Foundation recently reminded me of). Some things age better than others. The disclaimer really tells people to take it in the context that it was written, not the context of today. I think that bitter experience has shown that our current culture doesn't do that well.
 
The older material is a thing of its time (something that re-reading Foundation recently reminded me of). Some things age better than others. The disclaimer really tells people to take it in the context that it was written, not the context of today. I think that bitter experience has shown that our current culture doesn't do that well.
If the disclaimer by Wizards of the Coast was written like you just wrote, it would be less a political minefield, especially if along with the disclaimer WoTC divests its current business from the supposedly racist IP of decades past

Sadly, the disclaimer that WoTC presented looks both naive and offensive. Naive in trying to judge past work by present standards and offensive in that it does not deny WoTC profited from problematic works, enriched shareholders and still does nothing regarding financial reparations to supposedly aggrieved communities.

If the past work by TSR was so horrible, why are the past profits not donated to charity?

Why does WoTC still retain some of that old TSR Intellectual Property that WoTC has refused to update to a modern standard? For example the defunct Star Frontiers. Or even AD&D world's of Dark Sun, Al Qadim and Maztica. That supposedly problematic content is being used to generate profits for WoTC since it is that old it does not have writers on the payroll for it.

It gets worse. A Kickstarter using the 5e OGL that tried to bring Dark Sun to 5e outside WoTC was very likely shut down by WoTC. That is a very greedy action by WoTC. They refuse to create a new Dark Sun but also deny other crestors making one, when other IP that homage to TSR product lines have been allowed on Kickstarter, Monte Cooks Planebreaker for instance.

Probably because the current disclaimer of TSR products by Gary Gygax rt al, just shows that Wizards of the Coast is a business of Capitalist exploitation and financial aggrandizement that only virtue signals to protect current profits and score brownie points without suffering financial loss.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top