What in the world is going on with TSR?
Lately Twitter has been abuzz with talk about "the new TSR." The buzz quickly took the form of every controversy on Twitter: a largely fact-free intertribal slap fight, with the usual malcontents pearl-clutching over the usual things. In the realm of tabletop roleplaying games, those things are the supposed history of the RPG community excluding women, minorities, trans people, etc.; the bizarre contention that brutish, evil in-game races like orcs are "code" for minorities; and other such delusions. The kerfuffle generated some classic social justice warrior behavior, like this alleged He/Him rallying the bluehairs in wannabe Braveheart style:
As usual with SJWs, words like "loving" and "open" are used in a politically coded manner that is roughly the opposite of their literal meaning--which is how He/Him can advocate being "loving" and "open" while exhorting his NPCs to "close ranks" with their "shields up" in the same tweet without a hint of irony.
Another great example of the SJW mindset is fantasy author Patrick Weekes, who seemed to be driven into a frothing rage by a rather milquetoast call to unity in the TTRPG community:
Now it's pretty common for SJWs to get themselves all worked up over nothing, but they've really outdone themselves this time. No, really. This time they really are enraged over nothing.
To understand what is (or isn't) going on here, we need to back up a bit.
What is this "new TSR"?
TSR ("Tactical Studies Rules") was the name of the company formed by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye in 1970 that gave the world Dungeons & Dragons, thereby inventing the genre of tabletop roleplaying games. This company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. Wizards of the Coast evidently abandoned the name and trademark TSR.
The trademark was picked up in 2011 by a group of game developers (including Gary Gygax's son, Luke), whose flagship product is a new version of Top Secret (on Twitter as TSRgames). Recently, however, another group (including Gary Gygax's other son, Ernie, who is now evidently going by "Gary Gygax, Jr.") noticed that the Top Secret TSR didn't file the paperwork to reregister the TSR trademark in time, so they grabbed it themselves. Among this third TSR's (on Twitter as TSR_games) planned projects is a release of a new version of Star Frontiers. When Top Secret TSR allowed their registered trademark to lapse, they did not lose legal protection for the trademark, but unwilling to pay the legal costs to fight Star Frontiers TSR for the trademark, they reached an agreement with Ernie's company whereby both companies can use the name.*
So now we have two companies called TSR, one formed in 2011 that has a tenuous connection to the original company, and one formed in 2020 that has... well, the TSR name and a guy named Gygax. The fact is, no one would be paying any attention to this new TSR at all except for a now-deleted Youtube interview Ernie Gygax did recently, in which he made a passing reference to transgender issues and something about Native Americans, I guess? Nobody seems to know exactly what he said, but all the SJWs are convinced that it was Highly Problematic, which is SJW-speak for an opinion SJWs don't like. The RPGPundit talks a bit about the interview in a post titled "Twitter D&D-SJWs Force Me to Defend the Gygax Family's Fredo" (starting around minute 13, if you don't want to watch the whole thing). RPGPundit confirms my suspicion that the SJWs are blowing Gygax's comments all out of proportion, as is their wont, but even assuming Ernie said something along the lines of "Trans people don't belong in RPGs and also my dad said that orcs were originally called 'Injuns'", the question is: WHO CARES?
Ernie Gygax being a bit of a loose cannon is the least of this new TSR's problems. The company I've been calling "Star Frontiers TSR" pretty clearly doesn't have the rights to ANY of the original company's intellectual property--not even Star Frontiers. It probably doesn't even have the rights to the TSR logo, which it has been using freely. This company has thus far produced zero games and is promising to deliver a game that it doesn't have the rights to. It's essentially a non-entity in the gaming world. There is no "there" there.
Yay, Virtue Signaling!
In a sane world, criticisms of this new TSR might go something like, "Hey, isn't it dirty pool to snag a trademark out from under another company?" and "How the hell are you guys going to produce a game you don't have the rights to?", but because today everything is politicized, and the shrillest voices get amplified, we get virtue-signaling tweets like this:
What any of this has to do with gaming is anyone's guess, but the important thing is letting people know which TSR is On the Right Side of History™.
RPGPundit is convinced the new TSR is just a cynical attempt to cash in on nostalgia about RPGs, and Ernie and company have definitely been playing up the nostalgia angle at their Twitter account.
And, their protests aside, angering the woke is clearly a part of their marketing strategy.
The Takeaway
I take it as a generally positive sign that there's now enough of a backlash against SJWs that a company can raise its online profile significantly just by positioning itself as vaguely anti-woke. None of this, however, ultimately makes for a successful game company, to say nothing of enjoyable games. Will the new TSR rise to the level of its aspirations? Its new game, Giant Lands, looks like it could be interesting.
I wish Ernie & co. the best, mostly because a return to the simple fun of classic RPGs would be welcome, but the lure of nostalgia is always suspect. Fantasy roleplaying games can take you a lot of places, but one simple fact remains: you can't go home again.
*Some of the information in this post came from a Twitter thread by Darryl Mott, which is infused with SJW-speak, but seems to be otherwise factually accurate.