Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
OG Dungeons & Dragons Creators PUSH BACK Against Wizards of the Coast!
Some old-school Dungeons & Dragons creators are pushing back against WotC and how they’ve used the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons to low-key throw shade at the people who actually *created* the game in the first place. It’s so much worse than Mexican Orcs... ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Games #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #TTRPG #WotC #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
Hey guys, this is the audio edition of clownfish TV. If you guys are unfamiliar with clownfish TV, please check out the video versions of these episodes on the clownfish TV YouTube channel and also on the clownfish gaming YouTube channel. Please subscribe for more podcast. Check out D-Res, that's our other podcast. The episode will begin in a couple of seconds. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) Hey guys, welcome back to clownfish TV. This is neon and we're going to talk about one D&D again. We're going to talk about wizards of the coast and Dungeons and Dragons. And what the hell this game has become in the latest incarnation of D&D. I think it's called one D&D. It's not like 5.5 or whatever. We've got more old school D&D creators kind of coming out against or making a few jabs at wizards of the coast, including Margaret Wise, including Robert J. Coons. We're going to talk about this. Some people have been sending me some stuff and we've been kind of chronicling the latest iteration of D&D. And it's about as cringy as you would have expected. A lot of people saying they think the art might actually be AI or AI-assisted because it looks a little off. But we had, you know, Mexican Orcs. We have a video out there on that. We have these gay dwarf baristas with each other's beards tattooed on their arms. That's a little weird, the bacon muffins. 'Cause that's D&D. We've got this gem here. This is more Brian Urso, tagged us in. Apparently Hillary Clinton is putting in appearance in D&D these days too. This is a D&D 60 Paladin. According to Ryan Howard, who looks like she might only turn the undead who have information on whitewater. Yeah, this is a little weird. Like we're looking at these images from the new version of D&D and they all look like Jehovah's Witness paintings. Yeah, as a kinder, gentler D&D. But somehow, according to Margaret Wise, Dragon Lance made it into the player's handbook intact. So we'll talk about this probably because they had to sue them a couple of years ago. There's a lawsuit between the creators of Dragon Lance and Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro. And they're still going ahead and releasing supplements and whatnot without the blessing of the original creators. But this is what happens when you sell your creations to a company and they have a right to take it and do with it where they want to do. We're gonna talk about this before we get into it. Today, further, please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rants, guys. Yeah, go out and watch those other videos. If you can't find them on YouTube, just go out to clownfishtv.com, do a search for Dungeons and Dragons and you can see all the videos we've been doing. And again, this is not the first time that Margaret Wise has thrown shade at Wizards of the Coast. I think it's kind of funny to see these old creators come out against Wizards. But this is not the same game it was. At all, I mean, it's not just the gameplay that's changed, it's not just the people behind it that have changed, but it literally is not the same game. They've made so many changes to D&D now that feels like a totally different system than the TSR Dungeons and Dragons. It's kind of like Disney Star Wars and Star Wars, but at least in, I guess, to Disney's credit, they kind of sort of have tried to keep it sort of kind of the same. D&D now is completely unrecognizable. If you grew up playing first or second edition D&D, what it is now is just unrecognizable. Now, a lot of people moved on years ago. A lot of old school gamers, they either kept playing their older editions or they went to OSR, which is old school Renaissance, systems that are like older D&D or they went to Pathfinder. A lot of people jumped to Pathfinder. So I don't know who D&D is for now, I guess. Barista's in Portland or something, you know? So this is Kevin Lam, put this up. Color me shocked that Dragon Lance characters somehow squeaked by unscathed in the new player's handbook artwork. Three physically fit white heterosexual heroes looking badass against a genuine threat. Someone at Watsy is definitely getting fired for laying that slip through to which Margaret Wise said, "I am astonished." And I had to explain to people that she was the co-creator of Dragon Lance, but yeah, there's a whole history of drama with the creators of Dragon Lance going against Wizards of the Coast and Dragon Lance and Forgotten Realms were the two like major campaign worlds. We're gonna talk about Greyhawk too. That was Gary Gygax's original campaign world. But when I was playing D&D, Dragon Lance and Forgotten Realms were huge. Now, Forgotten Realms has seen a resurgence because of Baldur's Gate and it was the location used in the movie too. And I think it probably is the most famous campaign world. I don't know if Ed Greenwood's getting paid every time they use it or not. I don't know if he's getting a shout at or not. I've heard that some of the creators of these campaign worlds and these characters aren't getting any mention in the movies or supplements or whatever. And it's a damn shame. I know in the case of Dragon Lance, I think Spelljammer, Watsy released new versions of those campaign worlds and they didn't consult with the original creators. I mean, technically, I guess they don't have to, but that's a very Disney-esque move. Like, we own this thing now and we're gonna make it ours and we're gonna make it modern for modern audiences. And I think it was Tracy Hickman who got in trouble for the one meme posting the one meme about rejecting modernity and they tried to cancel him too. But yeah, there was a lawsuit, not 100% clear on what was going on there. But I think that got settled out of court. And apparently there was an attempt to buy Kryn back from Watsy, but they won't sell it because they wanna milk it, you know, to use that brand. They've run it into the ground. They've run D&D into the ground. I don't know why they couldn't come apart with it. But it's not just, it's not just Margaret Wise either. It's actually Robert J. Kuntz. And I have Michael Hovermail sent me this morning. I'd missed it on Twitter that he's actually having some issues too. He's gonna take a break from posting. And there is a lot of vitriol being thrown at TSR, the company that created D&D. And this is what I remember again, getting into D&D when I was a kid. I started playing, I'd say early the mid 80s, I'd say probably 80, 45 is when I first remember playing D&D, like actually playing it. And, you know, I had the action figures and stuff from the cartoon show, but actually playing the game, I'd say it was probably about 85. And that was pretty young. And I didn't know what the hell, we didn't know what the hell we're doing. And then I would say like actually getting into playing regularly and doing it the right way. It was probably late 80s, early 90s. So everything that we had was TSR. And that is the company that created D&D. And there were so many creators that their names would come up on all these supplements and books and novels and so many of them. We've either lost them or Wizards of the Coast has gone out of their way to attack and disparage them. We know what happened with that disclaimer they were putting on the old supplement saying that, "Hey, this, you know, it wasn't diversity inclusive enough, "but we have no problem selling the PDFs "on, you know, drive through RPG or whatever." But so there is that debacle. And then, you know, we had the recent incident with, and you can check our previous videos on that, where they took the warrior from the cover of the basic set. And for the 50th anniversary, they decided they were gonna make the clearly male warrior and obese black female, and that they were gonna do a face reveal, which is so weird because they did a face reveal before, they had an action figure of that character before. But, you know, it was so bad that Larry Elmore had to come out and say, "No, that's not what I painted. "I wouldn't have painted a woman that way anyway." Everybody knows what my women look like, and that's not how I would have painted a woman, especially back in the early 1980s. But there have been a lot of attacks on TSR. One of the most disgusting was, and again, covered this in a video. You can go check it out, but one of the most disgusting attacks I thought was the people that are working on D&D currently at Wizards, the people in charge of D&D, had made disparaging comments against the OG creators. They basically said they were a bunch of old white men from the Midwest, and they're so much more progressive now, 'cause, you know, they're giving us stuff like this now. This is much more progressive. But now we have Robert J. Kunz, who worked on a number of TSR projects back in the day. Most famously, I know him from Greyhawk being the co-author of Greyhawk. But yeah, he worked on a lot of stuff, and then he left when they pushed out the Gary Gygax, as I understand it, and he's coming out and saying that he's at the door. For now, like he's not gonna post for a while. Throughline Studios, his company, and I gotta give a hat tip to Secrets of Blackmore, and we'll read his comments too. But this is what he said. He said, you know, I have to take a break from posting. This whole attack upon old TSR has really tripped my trigger. A 50th year celebration, this is it. Of the original D&D authors and its supplements, Gary, Dave, Jim Ward, and Brian Bloom are gone. Yeah, Jim Ward passed not too long ago. That leaves me alone as the last man standing, the last author. It really is a burden watching this slanderous episode unfold. And it was done with that one bat of an eyelash, a wazzy fate, a complay, done in such an asympto manner as if they wield the holy articles on morality, of which they enact with their reprehensible judge. You can tell this guy's an author. He's using very large words, but I can appreciate it. I can't pronounce some of what he's saying, but I can appreciate it. Judge, jury, and executioner demeanor. They're probably wincing and wondering us, the saints of truth, more like snakes, anyone who had wait until the majority of authors who created the game were gone to stick it to them in this manner as a vile snake. And just to complete the deed, to do it on the 50th, show their admirers who's in charge, show them who's in control of the IP. They fear those times, times they had no hand in creating, and they especially fear Gary Gygax. They have tried to unperson Gary Gygax. Even people associated with GenCon, I remember watching a GenCon video a couple of years ago, and these were volunteers, and it was on their YouTube channel. They couldn't even pronounce his name. Gary Gygax, or like, who's that? I'm like, he started GenCon, bitch. So he is, he's like, you dumb, dumb, dumb people. It's like, I have nothing against Matt Mercer. I met him once, he was actually a very nice guy, but like, he didn't create Dungeons and Dragons people. I don't know what you're smoking. Gary Gygax's name sends shivers up and down their crooked spines, and as if it wasn't enough to have hounded him in life, let's do a Houdini and trample on his grave. They would love to detach D&D from Gary Gygax completely, 'cause they did not like him personally. They had like his politics, he was conservative. He had a lot of guns, and he wouldn't have put up with any of his bullshit. He made a lot of bad business decisions, and that's how Watson wound up with all of it. Disgusting slime, but it's not just Gary or Dave and others. It's also about wanting to wipe out that success and claim it as their own. In order to do that, the fandom must be attacked as well as that history. Yeah, it's disgusting. All of it must be purged and never again allowed to exist. These people are the epitome of evil robber barons parading around as the good guys. Remember guys, these are the good guys. Chris Cox, who's gonna strip mine all this stuff and use AI to generate modules, and fire people and use AI to paint paintings of Mexican orcs. A sleight of hand, bullshit from gold hobbled, pressed to digitators who don't know fantasy or how to summit it. What they notice have pushed down on their little man's syndromes by stepping on those whose shoes they can never walk in, that in preaching righteous indignation while counting their bottom lines, taking their vacations and dreaming about their next cafe latte. Poser's won and all. We fought these establishment pukes back in the mid 70s as they gathered about a fledgling TSR to bring it down. Now it's the second round. Wow. You have made a permanent enemy of many you stupid coastal wizards. Let's see how many real magic cards you hold besides illusionary ones for this battle neither sought after nor wanted by me and others. It's just beginning. You'll get sick of hearing my name soon enough. It's spelled Kunz. We post this as I'm taking a few days off peace to the brothers. Damn. Secrets of black more. I imagine it's hard to sit back and watch what are your own life events, spending time with Gary, Dave and everyone else who is there a singular time as the creation of a phenomenon was happening before you rise and somehow you're a part of it. But now the recollection of these events is put into the hands of corporate mouthpieces who can only think of one thing, which is to denigrate the great minds that brought the hobby into existence out of nothing. Yeah, that's what they do. That's what these companies do. And that's like Disney. They act like they created all of these things and they do like to leave Walt out of the equation or if they invoke Walt Disney, they have a very sanitized Colonel Sanders kind of mascot version of Walt Disney. I saw the, how Disney built America. And the guy they had playing Walt Disney is such a pussy. Like Walt Disney was not a pussy. Walt Disney was a businessman. And yeah, he could be Uncle Walt, but for the most part, the Uncle Walt persona was just that, was a persona. He had brass balls. I mean, his brother definitely helped make things happen but Walt was a driving force and he knew what he wanted and he did what he had to do to get what he wanted. And these guys had to fight an uphill battle 'cause they had like all middle America freaked out like, oh my God, D&D is summoning the devil. And now it's like, oh my God, D&D is summoning racists. But yeah, Secrets of Black War continues the arrogance of it all. Like when Jason Tondro is in the teaser video about how the new history book and claims he's the one person who should be in charge of such a project. There are some of those guys left. Some of the guys that worked on those books are left and you could have interviewed them. Then Tondro goes on to talk about how the history of D&D is full of things, which their sensitivity readers will find offensive without making a single mention about how profound the content, within the pages of the book is, how they make sense of it. Their entire business is built on the ingenuity of other people. Hasbro just acquires stuff. They're just like Disney now. They don't have any creative people. They acquire. They've acquired almost all of their assets at this point. There are only a few things that they created themselves. And even then like you look at G.I. Joe, the G.I. Joe mythos was created mostly by Larry Hama. And the people working at Marvel and Larry Hama does not get royalties from that. He's 75 years old and he's still working himself to the bone 'cause he's not getting paid every time you buy a Destro action figure or whatever, Storm Shadow action figure. They don't have a single original thought in their heads. Yet they fling insults at the people who created our entire hobby and who are effectively writing the paychecks for these same smug egos at Watson. All those designers should feel ashamed for how they're smearing all the real innovators. Merle's Crawford is really how you feel about the people you built your careers off of. Yeah, it is. It is. And Gencon's the same way. Like Gary Gygax himself found a Gencon and I can almost guarantee you they would not let him in because of his position on politics and guns and whatever. And for all its talk of D&D being this satanic game, the people who created D&D, a lot of them were Christians. Did you know that? They were conservative Christians and that's why the demons were the bad guys. I'm just saying like dummies, you dummies. I wasn't there and I don't get to do it either. It makes me feel rage as well. Yeah. I get more likes if I could. Gauntlets have been cast. My letter to Hasbro will decide next course of action. Mark my words. Merle's isn't there. He was fired or left on his own. Merle's was a big fan of Greyhawk and never to my knowledge ever slay the old Garret Tisser. I don't think he did either, but yeah, this is some bullshit and they keep doing this. This is how they celebrate the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons by throwing shade at the original creators and I've been following this and I'm just, I'm gobsmacked. I mean, Disney has kind of tried to step away from Walt to some degree, but they've never thrown him under the bus. Abigail Disney did. She said Uncle Walt was a bigot or something. You know, I'm just, I just think he was a man of his time. But yeah, Wizards of the Coast are basically wearing the skin suit of Dungeons and Dragons now and they're treating the original creators like Trash and the new audience. They're not going to stick with you. They're not. They're going to move on to the next thing, right? I think it's already starting to kind of peter out a little bit. A lot of people are moving on to other hobbies. They had a big boost during the pandemic, but it's not going to last. And yeah, if you're going to double down on the AI art and stuff, they're not going to like it. They're not going to like it. I'm sorry. Anyway, this game's not for me. Lots of other games to play. I'm going to wrap this up. Please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rants. We'll talk later. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com and on our YouTube channel, clownfishtv. You can buy official merchandise, clownfish comic books, and more at shopclownfish.com. If you like this show, please consider subscribing and leaving us a positive review on iTunes and other podcast platforms. If you're looking to help support this show financially, go to clownfishsupport.com. If you'd like to sponsor an episode of this show, send us an email at business@webrief.io. 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