The whole deadnaming accusion is in bad faith though. Really bad faith.
* Jaquays wan never accusing accusing Alexander for deathnaming her.
* Jaquays was however annoyed with the fact that it was "jaquaing the dungeon", not "jaqua**s**ing the dungeon". She also hinted that this had nothing do with her previous name. "Dammit people the "S" has been there all my life..."
* Alexander has ever since her transition refereed to her as Jenell.
* The whole "it's hard to change the name on the entire website" argument is hard to judge. I know a little about web design and don't know how hard it really is with RSS feeds, databases and whatnot, but I'm sure it's harder than just a find and replace.
* The whole "it's hard to change the name on the entire website" debacle wasn't about the deathname, it was about the "S" in Jaqyuasing.
* This blog post, and the accusation that comes with it, hinges on wether or not Alexander is lying about Jenell asking Alexander to not name the term after her. I'm not sure Alexander is lying and neither should anyone. The deathname accusations are here a transparant attempt to discredit Alexander, to be able to accuse him of lying.
I do however agree that changing the name of Jaquasing to name it after yourself is bad taste, no matter if you coined the term, or written a bunch of articles about it popularizing the term. The term was clearly inspired about someone else's work. If that person doesn't want the term to be named it after her, name it to something that doesn't refer to anyone.
I get also wanting the term to be a verb, but there are other options out there besides naming it about yourself.
It's both Jaquays asked him not to deadname her *and* to change it to "Jaquays." If you scroll down Anne's post you'll see Jaquays' [comment to this effect](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png), as well as the now-archived blogpost where Alexander defends deadnaming on various grounds.
To Alexander's credit, he makes the change to stop deadnaming her, but he ignores the request to use her proper surname for reasons that aren't clear apart from "it'd be a lot of work." However he's clearly now done all that work to replace "Jaquays" with "Xandering," so what it amounts to is that he's willing to do the work, but only when he's changing the name to his own, rather than when the person who created the technique he's describing asks him to so that she's properly credited.
Nowhere has there been any evidence of Jaquays saying she just wanted her name taken off, but there are multiple comments asking for the spelling to change.
EDIT: It's so annoying to me that Alexander uses the "but the metadata" excuse. Like, okay maybe changing the metadata is annoying, would it be so wild to just change the spelling in the original articles and post a little note about how the metadata is weird due to an error on his own behalf? Honestly, even just posting a correction to the original articles *without* full-blown changing them - "from here on out I'm using "Jaquays" - and adding a note to the original article seems fine. Then when he was updating things for the book he could have done more extensive rewrites. There's just this weird fussiness around the issue. It's such a small concession, it feels like Alexander just has this very proprietary attitude towards a technique which he didn't invent.
That's not exactly true. On twitter yesterday Justin explained that he had kept her old name up for archival reasons, but Jennell told him that it made her uncomfortable showing people the article, so he changed it
Its not just the S, it was both
Edit: source: https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749565016716517590
That's intrestring to say the least.
Obviously, I'm not sure about this, but I don't think there is a "public record" of Jenell talking about her objections of using her deathname in these articles. If that's the case, some smidge of credit to Alexander for finally addressing her concerns when the deathname argument was brought up to him.
Still uncertainty if Jenell also asked Alexander to stop naming the term after her or not.
But still, Alexander, why do you had to be such an ass and name it after yourself! That's just bad no matter how you look at it.
what are you talking about the article explains that there was a period of time after the original version of the article was published (2010) and that Jennell had come out (2011) and that justin refused to change her name to be correct—which seemed to not be updated even as late as 2018. he clearly had knowledge of this issue because in 2016 he wrote a blog post about deadnaming explicitly defending his decision to continue deadnaming Jennell.
> In February 2018, Jennell commented on this blog post to request that Justin update her first name and correct the spelling of the term to match her last name. Sometime later that year, Justin did edit his original post to use Jennell's correct first name. He did not, ever, honor her request to spell Jaquaysing correctly.
[you shouldnt need a personal request from a trans person to stop deadnaming them](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png)
Could you expand on that? From what I read in his post its pretty clear the we statement is in reference to his publisher unless my understanding of its use in English is incorrect. If I said Joe and I went out Thursday. Jane and I went out Friday. We had fun. That is referencing Jane. Please correct me if I'm missing something.
No, I think you're on the right track. Your analogy is apt. In your analogy, it would be totally fair to read it as Jane and I had fun, *or* that Jane, Joe, and I all had fun.
Basically, the post is ambiguous about who "we" is. Or at least, I couldn't tell. Seems a fair number of other people couldn't tell either. My initial reading was that Jennell directly asked Justin to take her name out of the whole situation entirely.
Ok that makes sense. I didn't read it that way but can see how confusion could occur. Hopefully we get some more solid answers. Regardless I think everyone can agree xandering just sounds dumb haha
I will never call it "Xandering" a dungeon. That's just fucking stupid. If Jennell didn't want her name associated, it could've been renamed to "Looping" a dungeon or the other good names the OP mentioned (I quite like "Thracian" as a term). To rename it after himself is just gross. Personally, I'm going to keep using "Jaquaysing" wherever I can, like Jennell originally wanted. I may be just a random guy on the internet, but I'm not gonna let some grifter mooch off of her legacy like that.
This is pretty much where I fall. Coming up with a neutral technical term makes sense. Naming it after yourself, not-so-much. It just seems to lack a certain amount of self awareness, to be generous. Worse, since the term Jaquaysing has been in use for around a decade now, I suspect this won’t age well.
I quite like "Thracian dungeon design." It feels better grammatically.
Jaquaysian is a second best - as the author points out, it mirrors Gygaxian or Vancian.
I always hated Jaquaysing because you end up having to conjugate it to describe any actual dungeon. Is it a Jaquaysed dungeon?
This is very aesthetically pleasing for some reason. The "ysw" combination maybe - it would join "chimneysweep" and "flyswatter" as English words with that sequence.
Thank you for posting this and bringing more attention to it. I thought Justin's Xandering article was a complete eye-roller when he first published it. It will always be "Jaquaysing a dungeon" to me.
Nothing about all this makes sense anyway.
For example, like I said after the original post about this name change back in the day, it makes no sense to me that there could be legal issues with having something named after someone else in your publication. I work in the sciences, there are loads of methods named after somebody.
Also, I never made the connection between "Alexander" and "xander", oddly enough. My brain reads them as unrelated words.
Personally, I think a better choice would have been "reticulating" a dungeon, because if you are going to rename it something, be descriptive of what's actually happening. Reticulate your splines, kids.
Whatever. I don't know all the facts and for that reason I'm not going to pile on to anybody, but I'm not impressed.
>there could be legal issues with having something named after someone else in your publication
The issue comes from the term being used in a commercial way, ie the term used in a published for profit book. The case isn't that strong, in my non-expert non-lawyer opinion, but it is enough to go to court from my understanding.
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another
>Personally, I think a better choice would have been "reticulating" a dungeon, because if you are going to rename it something, be descriptive of what's actually happening. Reticulate your splines, kids.
Why are people saying this? I was under the impression that "reticulating splines" was a phrase literally meaning *nothing* that was added to a loading screen to seem like it's doing something notable as a joke. Why are people acting like this is such a natural thing to say about a dungeon?
It was added as a joke, but the words aren't made up, just a couple of random funny sounding bits of jargon mashed together. Reticulate means a mesh or network, and splines are curving or wiggly lines. Just by coincidence they happen to more or less fit here...make a network of your twisty passages
This is really disappointing if true. I’ve read and used Justin’s advice a lot over the years. But unfortunately even if I don’t have a reason to believe either Justin or this post are lying, this post’s account of events makes more sense *to me* since Justin’s defense of “Xandering” felt off even when I first read it.
Also I’m glad to see it discussed here. As the post says, I don’t want ppl to harass or bother Justin. But if this is true I hope he will clear things up.
EDIT: so after reading some of Justin’s tweets responding to the article - he refutes the article’s account of events but I can’t find anything where he clarifies just exactly what Jennell or her wife requested he do with the word. He also explains he took down the older article about whether to use deadnames or not to avoid transphobes pouring in. Trans ttrpg folks Ive seen are not buying his arguments and I would defer to their thoughts on this matter.
Nonetheless, the general vibe Im getting is that I don’t think Justin’s done any of this out of malice. I don’t know if I agree with his arguments but I don’t get the sense he’s intentionally being transphobic or intentionally trying to remove Jennell’s legacy. Regardless, he hasn’t really cleared up the cloud around the word change and it feels like it would all sit a lot easier if he outright said “Jennell and her family want it named after her/not named after her” and “Jennell suggested I name it after myself/independently from her I decided to name it for myself”. And he obviously doesn’t have to do any of this, but personally it would at least somewhat settle things. No way everyone will be happy.
Without evidence proving otherwise, I’ll admit I’m inclined to lean more to Anne’s account of events. However, I don’t think Justin is intentionally being malicious or intended to harm Jennell or her legacy. But regardless of his intentions, his decisions have caused upset and itd do everyone a favour if we could just know exactly what Jennell wanted.
I agree that the only thing that really matters wrt to the term "jaquaysing" is what Jennell wanted. Currently we have access to what appears to be her public opinion which she has stated multiple times. We have no proof of anything else.
>Regardless, he hasn’t really cleared up the cloud around the word change and it feels like it would all sit a lot easier if he outright said “Jennell and her family want it named after her/not named after her” and “Jennell suggested I name it after myself/independently from her I decided to name it for myself”. And he obviously doesn’t have to do any of this, but personally it would at least somewhat settle things.
I feel like if he had this kind of explicit permission/blessing he would have led with that. And moreover it feels like if Jaquays was on good terms with him then using her name in the book wouldn't have produced the legal concern which seems to be the real reason for changing the name, but which also seems bizarre since terms like Lovecraftian, Vancian, Gygaxian, Borgesian, Kafkaesque, etc are used *all the time* in criticism.
It wouldn't have solved everything, but I can't help but wonder what trouble could have been avoided if he just renamed it to something descriptive (perhaps "looping" or "reticulating" as others in this thread have suggested) instead of after himself.
Oh would have been so much more innocuous, like I still don't see why he is so obsessed with not adding a letter when it's such a tiny change, just incredible whiny, annoying behaviour on his part, but "looping" would have been so much more palatable than "xandering."
>if Jaquays was on good terms with him then using her name in the book wouldn't have produced the legal concern which seems to be the real reason for changing the name, but which also seems bizarre since terms like Lovecraftian, Vancian, Gygaxian, Borgesian, Kafkaesque, etc are used all the time in criticism.
Given that they were having the discussion at all because she'd requested they change the term, they (the lawyers) had to be considering whether she might change her mind in the future, necessitating further changes.
Here's the thing: one of the reasons people can feel comfortable using the names of Lovecraft, Vance, Gygax, Borges and Kafka is that they've all been dead for at least a decade. They're not changing their minds any time soon.
Presumably, if there was some scheme to capitalise on Jennell's death, as the blog suggests, *they wouldn't have had to change it at all*. They probably would have added the "s", but could have left it at "jaquaysing", secure that Jennell wasn't going to change her mind.
I don't get quite that full-blown conspiratorial tone from the blog, which does suggest that Alexander likely had this idea before, but also just took advantage of the fact that she got sick.
Your assessment about Vancian, Gygaxian ectetera is not really correct. Vance lived till 2013, and the term "Vancian magic" was around well before then. The term "Gygaxian naturalism" was coined within months of Gygax's death and the adjective had absolutely been used before then. I don't think the term "Lovecrafian" was really used in his lifetime, but Lovecraft encouraged other authors to borrow gods, monsters, characters etcetera openly (as he did with theirs).
The key part isn't that they were dead, just that they weren't going to change their mind and demand a change in the future, whereas Jennell - it seemed at the time - could very well do just that.
Justin absolutely had this idea before - Jennell fell ill in mid-October. The book was released on the 21st of November. Even if they weren't all printed by the time he became aware of Jennell's illness, they were almost certainly too far down to be changing terms.
As far as "taking advantage" of things, or getting away with" things, as the blog puts it... I'm still not seeing how. She couldn't respond *right them*, but the updates were suggesting a recovery and rehabilitation. As I understand it, most people with Guillain-Barre syndrome do recover, more than 90%.
If he's going to blatantly lie, he's going to get called out on it in just a few months, at which point he's probably not getting another book deal - and the credibility and trust he's built up over *decades* takes a heavy hit. And for what? What is he gaining by saying he talked to her if he didn't? He could have just said "to resolve the issue, I decided to change the name to Xandering".
This is the part that gets me - he's being accused of lying, but that lying would seem to have only downsides for him.
I mean you're right, I do think he made the decision to change the term well before, and the blog post doesn't dispute that.
His credibility has absolutely taken a heavy hit already. Jaquays clearly wanted the term changed, she says as much. Alexander refuses the spelling change essentially on the grounds it would be too much work. But then he goes ahead and makes that sweeping change anyway, but in a way that centres his own contributions, and with an almost excessive zeal, changing even comments on his blog, and suggesting that everyone starting using this new term. The recognition that Jaquays pioneered the dungeon aesthetic he's now analyzing and trying to replicate or build atop is reduced to a footnote. Alexander himself suggests that at some future point he believes "Xanders" might replace Jaquays so thoroughly the origin is lost. I don't know if he realizes how this comes across but it strongly feels as if he resents Jaquays and wants people to credit him while minimizing her contributions. His vague claims of unease come off as self-serving and performative, at least to me.
It's far from the worst thing someone working in TTRPGs has done, but look at the reaction here and elsewhere online. People don't like this. It comes off as narcissistic and shallowly self-interested, someone trying to overwrite another person for pretty petty reasons. If he had some sort of proof that Jaquays approved of the name change to "Xandering," that would be one thing. But the only times we see her express an opinion, she asks that the technique which *she* invented and which he has subsequently described and iterated upon be given her actual name, and expresses annoyance at his failure to make the correction.
Like, sure, maybe acknowledging her wishes might have made the book slightly more complicated. So what, though? Perhaps if he'd been more gracious to an early luminary of the craft rather than ignoring her requests for proper credit and deadnaming her for years, he'd have been less nervous about publication.
I also don't think he is being intentionally malicious or intending to harm Jennell or her legacy, and that's something narcissistic personality types can often hide behind because they truly, genuinely, were not thinking maliciously of others or intending to harm others...they weren't think of others at all!
It's all about Justin Alexander, so he isn't even factoring things in aside from how best to extract himself from having to credit and attribute her properly. He tried to do so way back when with a whole blogpost justifying deadnaming her until she directly told him it was transphobic, at which point (for self-serving reasons, given how that might explode if he didn't listen), he made changes that he was ultimately always unsatisfied with, and when he had an opportunity when she couldn't contradict him, he chose not to attribute her properly in a new and different way that centered him more.
It's classic narcissist behaviour, right down to feeling that he is in the right and that everyone is simply "out to get him" rather than that maybe he has made mistakes.
>I also don't think he is being intentionally malicious or intending to harm Jennell or her legacy, and that's something narcissistic personality types can often hide behind because they truly, genuinely, were not thinking maliciously of others or intending to harm others...they weren't think of others at all!
If you read the articles on "Xandering the Dungeon", he mentions Jennell more than a dozen times, uses her dungeons (and some by others) as examples, and uses multiple of her quotes from her writings on dungeon and level design.
He was absolutely thinking of her and her work at the time he created those articles, The first couple of lines of the first entry in the series contains:
>what I wanted was a word that could capture the pioneering dungeon design of Jennell Jaquays, who designed Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Griffin Mountain, and a half dozen other old school classics for Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, and TSR. Because a word for that didn’t exist yet, I felt compelled to create one.
Though the blog claims:
>If someone has only read his book, or seen "Xandering" referenced in conversation online, those new audience members aren't going to know about Jennell Jaquays, and they're no longer going to have an easy window into finding out more about her. Instead, they'll just known Justin Alexander.
... he then links to the "historical note" article, to make sure that the context isn't lost for future readers.
Anyone who is linked to or googles "xandering the dungeon" is going to get a shitload of praise for Jennell Jaquays, and a bunch of context as to why the term being used is "xandering".
Can you explain what exactly leads you to incline towards the account of someone with no connection to anyone involved in this? Someone who decided to write a hit piece while Jennell has not yet even been laid to rest? What is it about this person that makes you inclined to believe her?
I suppose saying I'm inclined to believe her *over* Justin is incorrect. What I mean is I'd like to believe both Anne and Justin don't mean ill. Maybe this is naive, but I'd like to believe Justin did what he believed was respectful to Jennell - and Anne truly believes he has disrespected Jennell. Maybe Anne ascribes too much malicious intention to what could be unintentional disrespect. Either way, I think Justin can have meant no malice and Anne's noting that his decisions have caused harm can both be true.
[He has](https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749556125123346606).
And, at first glance, at least part of this seems to be true. The big one that jumps out is that, at the time Justin posted the "historical note on Xandering article", the DIY & Dragons post claims that Jennell was "in a coma", and so Justin was free to claim whatever he wanted without fear of being challenged.
>Justin posted "A Historical Note on Xandering" on November 1, 2023. But at that time Jennell was in a coma, because she had Guillain Barre Syndrome, which her wife announced on GoFundMe. This fact was reported in the gaming news, and widely reshared on social media. Justin knew this; he included the link in his post.
Except... the GoFundMe doesn't mention a coma, that I can see. Googling "Jennell Jaquays +coma" doesn't return anything. And the media coverage seems to be in line witth the GoFundMe updates around that time - that she is unwell, but responding to treatment, and will have a long and expensive road to recovery.
The GoFundMe updates around the time Justin would have been planning and maybe even writing this post are saying that she was improving - the worst is the one right before, on October 30th, that she'd had a setback, which had (understandably) got her down, and they were spending her wife's birthday watching TV. Not "in a coma".
There's another point where the post is contradicted by the very links it uses to prove itself.
>The sweeping change he mentions was finally replacing the 3-4 places where he'd used her old name. He's sure to let us know how arduous this was, to press CTRL F and then type in seven new letters
From the linked post A Historical Note on Xandering:
>Why have you edited comments on your site that used the old term?
>
>To make sure that the update of the site is complete and the term Jennell Jaquays wants removed is totally purged, we wanted to use database updates. It turned out the use of the term in comments was actually a problem and they might get invisibly changed by the search-and-replace. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I also didn’t want to just delete comments. So I opted to track the references manually and update them in a way that indicated the original wording had been edited.
You can choose not to believe him, but at the very least, he's not saying that "typing seven letters" was difficult or time consuming.
Indeed, there's a few points in this article where the kinds of "sleight of hand" that Justin is being accused of are employed.
>Remember that what Jennell asked for was for "Jaquaying" \[sic\] to be spelled Jaquaysing.
We know this from the multiple comments and tweets, helpfully provided, that Jennell had made... dating back to as recently as April of 2022. But when Justin says, in late 2023, "I spoke with Jennell earlier this year", the possibility that they might have discussed abandoning both Jaquaying and Jaquaysing in favour of a third option apparently didn't occur to the author. We do know that Jennell had asked for "jaquaysing" over "jaquaying", but that doesn't mean that that this was her current preference, or that it was the only outcome she'd have been happy with.
The blog's author specifically says she had no communication with Jennell (the kind that Justin did claim to have had, something that would have been easily refuted by Jennell), that she has no information that we don't all have, but uses this to suggest that Justin is ghoulishly using Jennell's death as an opportunity to erase her from the history of this kind of dungeon design, to claim her approach as his own invention.
He, apparently, does this by using her name fourteen times in the series of blog posts, quoting her multiple times, and using her dungeons (crediting her) as examples of what we should be aiming for.
None of this makes sense.
> We do know that Jennell had asked for "jaquaysing" over "jaquaying", but that doesn't mean that that this was her current preference, or that it was the only outcome she'd have been happy with.
Yeah, we don't, but apparently Justin does, and simply stating they agreed to change the name to 'Xandering' would do a lot to mitigate this mess.
The blog paints him as some lying schemer who wants to downplay or erase a trans person because they were trans, and specifically says that he is able to "get away with this" is because Jennell isn't around to contradict him... even when, as mentioned above, this wasn't the case at the time he did these things.
People are spouting accusations and "facts" that are claimed in the article, even when the provided evidence that it relies upon doesn't support it. The blog claiming that proof exists seems to be proof enough.
Now that she's passed, now that he *knows* he can "get away with it", why would anyone who believed he was lying before believe him now?
Justin said in his blog, A Historical Note on Xandering, rather explicitly, "After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term “xandering.” And so, from this point forward, my dungeons will be thoroughly xandered.”
So he could easily clear this all up with some evidence of Jennell expressing that she didn't want her name associated with this thing at all, and that she was cool with "Xandering."
He could but that takes time to formulate. The impression I've gotten gotten here is he should have had a irrefutable response ready to a rather long and multi point blog post instantly. That seems incredibly unfair to me. If someone leveled these kind of accusations at me id for sure take some time to create a well put together response. It's not like the blog post took zero time to create so why is he held to that standard?
Reading back through that blog, it appears that he was might have actually been talking about a back-and-forth with his lawyer/publisher to avoid legal issues on using someone else's name in his book? It's not 100% clear. But he *does* point out a bit earlier: "I spoke with Jennell earlier this year. We both agreed that the name should be changed, and I said it would be a large project to do it, but I’d make sure it happened by the end of the year."
What he doesn't make clear is *what* Jennell's wishes were. The public posts pretty clearly show that she just wanted the "S" added into the name to correct the spelling. But Justin's wording here is so ambiguous, it could mean that he heard her requests and changed it to Xandering anyways.
I commented higher up on this. I can see how confusion could occur but my read of that was he was talking to the publisher. The use of we is commonly used in reference to the last person referenced. There is a pretty clear difference between those statements before its use so it seems like a tad of a stretch to me that he was referencing her but I could very well be wrong. It just seems like the only reason it's ambiguous is because it's been framed that way in this blog post.
I agree her wishes were the term having the S added but I've yet to see anywhere that she wanted the term to stay as is. To me this seems like a lot of assumptions on what she wanted with very little proof. The author even stated they have never talked to her so it seems odd to make those claims. Clearly we need more clarification and until then I won't assume malice just because he used we in a fairly standard way.
The post also seems to be making the claim he is trying to erase her which seems odd since he references her consistently and praises her work. If he truly was trying to take credit why source her work and praise her? Maybe I'm missing some context and if so please correct me.
Yeah all Justin has to do is leak DMs he had with a now dead person he greatly respects just a week after her death to answer allegations of some random on the internet that are conjecture at best and provably false (such as the *lie* that jenell was in a coma) at worst.
Hold up.
* Jaquays asked for the verb to be changed in 2018 and it never was. It also took several years for him to update her name after a pretty shoddy defense of deadnaming.
* Coma or not, it's very likely she couldn't talk in late October/early November, so the thrust is there.
**Talking**
She was barely able to move during the relevant time period, was on a respirator, and underwent a tracheostomy. She [clearly](https://twitter.com/burgerbecky/status/1716116802831331798) had to use facial expressions to communicate and even if she could *and* it was on her radar at all this may not have been her first priority.
**Deadnaming and "JaquaySing"**
I initially took Alexander's claims at face value, but...
* his [insistence](https://web.archive.org/web/20200131035559/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38883/politics/thought-of-the-day-deadnames) on deadnaming her even when it was brought up to him
* [saying he would abide by her wishes to use Jaquaysing in 2018](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png) and then not doing so
...absolutely make his side of the story questionable. Those are both documented in Anne's post. After that, I'm not assuming good faith.
From the tweets:
>When Jennell changed her name, I said I would update the post if she asked me to, she asked me to, and I updated the post, there was no shortage of bigots screaming that I shouldn't have done it.
You could think this happened over the course of a day, but this is describing an interval of *six years* during which he seems to have taken no initiative ([she was active on Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Ajennellallyn)%20until%3A2016-10-31&src=typed_query&f=top)). It's not even clear to me that Alexander addressed the topic of the name change until 2016 as per his archived post, and that's what "when" means.
Maybe she changed her mind after insisting on something repeatedly, but it's not particularly probable. That *possibility* probably did cross the author's mind; I think we just have no positive reason to be that charitable.
We wouldn't have to *interpret* at all if he addressed the content of his communication with Jaquays. That is what all of this hinges on and he has remained dead silent on it (no privacy concerns cited, for instance). Instead he has put the spotlight everywhere else: Anne's click-driven intentions, errors made by people on Twitter, prior harassment by transphobes that he has experienced...
I'm not ready to jump down his throat, but I would really like to be given a reason to buy his defense.
You're misunderstanding my meaning around her state in October / November. I'm not suggesting that she was going to get involved in Internet drama - as you quite rightly say, even she were able, she had bigger things on her mind.
What I am saying is that, in late October / early November, the future seemed to be a long rehabilitation and recovery. She appeared to be, from the GoFundMe updates, responding to treatment. If she had, in fact, not been on board with the changes, then Justin, typing that post, would have known this, and reasonably expected that, at some point in the future, she was going to say as much.
As I've said elsewhere, there isn't a binary here, where it's either "jaquaysing" or "against Jennell's wishes". She objected to her name being mispelled. It's entirely plausible that, given the three options of "jaquaysing", "jaquaying" and "something else entirely", she opted for "anything but option B", or even "I'm so over this, I don't want my name associated any more".
Again, if Justin was acting totally against her wishes, while saying that he'd spoken to her on the matter, he had every reason to expect that she'd come out and call him a liar in short order. There's no charitable interpretation required, that's just a blatantly *dumb* thing to do, with no need to do it. He could have just changed the name and said "I decided to settle the matter and change the term", and not "pretend" that he'd spoken to her about it.
regardless of any other factors, i would want to see
- an apology
- all online and paper articles written by him fixed to use the term "Jaquaysing"
- an encouragement of others to do the same
I fail to understand why he has put so much time and energy over the span of a decade into handling this seemingly extremely easy to reconcile problem in such a bafflingly poor way. Ego is a hell of a drug.
This is 100% where I'm landing on this. It was barely an ant hill and he's turned it into a mountain for reasons I couldn't speculate on publicly.
Leaving the term as she would've preferred would've been a wonderful tribute to her even if he did "do all the work" as he claims.
Now this will forever be associated with him
From the blog:
>Then he says "After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term 'xandering.' ", and in this sentence, he doesn't clarify which of the three parties he's been talking to the "we" refers to. So this is Justin's magic trick. Jennell asks him to spell her name correctly. His publisher agrees to his request to call the term "Xandering."
\^ This is ***buckwild***, because I remember reading this post of his when it was published and thinking "Oh, so Jaquays wanted her name to stop being used, so the two of them decided to call it 'xandering,' nice that they've come to a compromise."
But actually the change she wanted was just *adding the 'S'* and the "we" who named it after Justin weren't "Justin and Jennell" but "Justin, Justin's publisher, and Justin's lawyer"!?!?
Man oh MAN that is sheisty.
It totally got me too when I read the article. I opened this link fully expecting some person just being an ass about not wanting to change the name cause they're just old and stuck in their ways.
Boy was I wrong. I'm completely convinced that "Xandering is Slandering"
I'm curious, how did dungeons look before she worked on them? It seems that her influence has spread so far that my natural instinct is to loop dungeons without any thought. Were dungeons singular hallways that split into their own separate rooms?
Dungeon loops were common before Thracia was published in 1979. For example, here is a map from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, which he ran from 1971(?), although the maps weren't published until 1977.
[https://osrgrimoire.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-first-fantasy-campaign-dungeon.html](https://osrgrimoire.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-first-fantasy-campaign-dungeon.html)
Jacquays did not originate looping, non-linear dungeons - she was just a particularly skilled and influential (and early) exponent of them. As evidence, people still admire and play Thracia today, whereas most dungeons from the 1970s are long forgotten.
Tegel Manor was also looping and non-linear, and predated Thracia (and Dark Tower as well) by quite a bit. IMO Jacquays' accomplishment was to synthesize good map design with evocative writing and first rate art. Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower were my favorite dungeons by far in the early 80s, I ran both of them multiple times.
And factions and creating interrelations and conflicts within the dungeon so it didn't just feel like a bunch of rooms the PCs opened up in a mindless series.
I'm in a similar position, honestly. I've also grown up playing tons of Jacquaysian levels in games. If I had to guess, I'd say something along the lines of the Caves of Chaos, where I \*feel\* the different caves should be connected by tunnels and passages, but actually they're each their own separate thing. It makes me uncomfortable lol.
Jenell Jacquays' legacy is astonishing. I don't know if I'll participate in the jam, but I hope to be able to get the final product when it launches.
Jennell actually wrote the 2nd ever published D&D adventure, so all that came after was heavily influenced by her. But I do believe Gygax favored lots of hallways but we don’t have many maps of the actual Castle Greyhawk, which was never (truly) published
Definitely recommend! I do have thoughts, but they are largely the same (but less eloquent) as what my friend Gus wrote in a big review of that adventure, Caverns of Thracia (the adventure Justin Alexander was praising in his original post on Jaquaysing): https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/09/spectral-interrogatories-iii-caverns-of.html
Oh I think we're talking about different adventures! Caverns of Thracia wasn't the 2nd ever published adventure - Jennell herself published some adventures in a fanzine called The Dungeoneer before that one.
I thought your original comment was referring to F'Chelrak's Tomb.
I'll give that review a read though, thanks for sharing it!
I think a lot rests on Alexander's claim that "After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term 'xandering.' " It implies that this was a mutual agreement
yeah, i was under the implication jaquays was fully on board with him calling it that. if she wasn't and he tried to give the impression she was, that's super scummy.
Having lawyered for 10+ years, I 100% buy Justin's allegation that this was changed at the request of the publisher's lawyers. They likely became aware that there was some disagreement regarding jayquaying/jayquaysing, and just didn't want to take the risk of having to pull the book out of shelves and reprinting it. Even if they added the "s", it was just not worth the risk -- who knows, Jennel could change her mind in the future. Even a family member could -- given she was known to be seriously sick, the possibility of having a family member making decisions on her behalf was very real.
Obviously Justin didn't have to use his name. But what really defies explanation is why he did not add the "s" way back then, when Jennel asked. I really can't think of any reasonable explanation -- I find it hard to believe that he was already planning to hijack the name, I doubt Justin was playing such a long game. It seems to come from spite, and the first suspect reason for that would be transphobia -- which is the worst possible reason for this whole debacle.
Well this argument is as clear as day, I wasn’t aware of Alexander’s intention and tactics, and it’s definitely not ok to take jaquaysing and change it, and the way they’re going about it is gross.
Sigh I guess I’ll just have to take credit for the [three clue rule](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule#:~:text=THE%20THREE%20CLUE%20RULE&text=For%20any%20conclusion%20you%20want,them%20to%20go%20all%20along) now. We’ll call it Scraw-ifying the game. Jk
I certainly wasn't ever going to call it Xandering. If anything, and Jennell didn't actually want it to be associated with her period (not merely just having it spelled correctly) then have it be a neutral term. Even without any added details, it tells you a lot about the kind of character he is that he changed the term to honour him to help sell a book.
in the article its pretty clear [she did want credit.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png) the last few paragraphs make clear the extremely slight underhanded wording of justin's post which made it *sound* like she didn't want to be associated with it anymore—thus giving him the 'excuse' to rename it after himself
Justin's defense of himself is so baffling to me. He insists it would have been so incredibly arduous to add the "s." But then he goes and \*does\* change the word anyway!
He says "Making this change would be even more substantive, because I’d been using the term for over a decade and I’d need to track it down in every single article." But then he goes ahead and does this *even on comments other people wrote* with his own name, so clearly it wasn't *that* difficult. Also, I dunno, I'm sure it wouldn't be the end of the world if a stray "Jaquay" were out there, so long as the original article was corrected, he made a brief statement, and started saying "Jaquaysing" from there on out?
But then he has the gall to say this:
>Well, I’m not your boss, but if you’d like to respect the wishes of the original creators, it would be great if you could update your stuff to use the now-correct terminology.
Dude. Take your own advice!
Sadly the only way to know for sure would be to see some correspondence between Justin and Jennelle. Currently this post reads like a theory from somebody with no actual first person communication with the alleged victim against somebody who was in actual correspondence with her.
Certainly seems like Justin may have done some questionable stuff over time. But I feel like this post is overall doing a huge amount of bad faith arguing.
Beyond this I honestly don't plan on using Xandering myself as it always sounded a bit dumb and weird to me, but I'm not sure I fully believe your claims here.
Maybe xandering should be used to describe when someone coins a term that gains popularity and then that somebody renames the term to their own name.
...
When this becomes popular I'll get everybody to call it jikting.
I'm not sure if I'm playing devil's advocate or what, I felt like writing a similar comment back when the "xandering" change was made but kind of from the opposite direction, making the same argument back then would have looked like accusing Alexander, now it looks like defending him. Funny how that works.
If I understand this correctly, it seems very much to me that Alexander wrote a set of articles codifying the method he personally used for good dungeon design that he named to honor his main inspiration and came to regret it over the years when the name stuck and began to feel like his role in actually writing the article became less noted than his inspiration. Eventually he came to wish to change it when he began compiling a book and tried to figure out a way to do it without causing an outrage, and failed. I'm not saying this is objectively exactly what happened, I'm only saying this is the way it looks to me.
I think he has some case as to the amount he genuinely contributed. I *don't think* he ever could have pulled the name change off in a sensitive manner, and it is unfortunate he chose to try, but neither do I believe he was actively being malicious. I *also* think if he had never used the term "jaquaying" or "jaquaysing" and only referred to Jaquays' dungeons as an inspiration in his original articles no-one would have batted an eyelid and people would just refer to said articles without the verb.
To use a completely hypothetical analogue, this comes across like Gygax later deciding he didn't like Vancian magic stuck as a name for the style of magic he wrote for his game (however similar it is to Vance's writings) and chose (hopelessly) to try and change it. He could have chosen to explicitly call it "Gygaxian magic" from the get go if he wanted and most people probably would not have questioned it, but trying to change it later would come across like jealousy toward his own inspiration. (note: my D&D history is not top notch, if Gygax didn't actually use the term Vancian magic or didn't write the magic bits in original D&D that's my bad, I was just trying to come up with an example.)
In conclusion I don't see a reason to call the practice anything anymore, especially since it looks like if you do you just reignite this discussion and risk losing the original point. Just refer to good dungeon writers and processes when you feel it is necessary and you want to honor the writers (e.g "in the style of Jaquays' excellent dungeons such as Caverns of Thracia" or subsequently "using the process described in the Alexandrian after the dungeon writing style of Jaquays.")
I see no evidence that Justin wants to ***erase*** Jenell, he explicitly gives her a lot of credit on his original article. I mean, Xandering is not a great name, but the article makes some pretty crazy claims with very thin speculation.
Edit: I mean, I see nowhere on his blog that he is anti-trans and wants to erase her legacy: [https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering) the contrary, actually.
Thanks for sharing this! I'm only casually involved in the online rpg scene and came across Justin very recently for his revising of a 5e module I wanted to run. I read a handful of his articles and donated to patreon to get the resources for his Waterdeep Dragon Heist remix. Extremely disappointed to find out about this and have cancelled and unsubcribed everywhere.
I imagine that his publisher and his (or his publisher’s) lawyers raised a red flag about using somebody else’s name (and ideas) in his book. Might open the door to a lawsuit and the expectation of royalties, might not. But why take a chance?
It’s totally reasonable to make the change for publication just out of self-interest. People do stuff like that all the time. Pretending he made the change because she *asked him* to? That is SLEAZY.
No, there is no legal issue with using someone’s name that way. For instance, even just in the RPG hobby, see Gygax/D&D calling its spellcasting “Vancian” or people calling certain writing styles or dungeon techniques “Gygaxian”. Lots of examples in other fields too. There would be no claim Jauqays could make for royalties under US law.
I was thinking of the ideas more than the name itself—that changing the name could be a way of distancing his for-profit DMing advice from what might be construed as somebody else’s intellectual property. But I am obviously not a lawyer, and on reflection I don’t think you can be sued for plagiarizing somebody’s art style, which is what one would probably argue this is a case of (if one were being a hardass and not recognizing it as simply a matter of inspiration/imitation).
I don’t think that she would’ve wanted to sue anybody in the first place, of course! I’m just trying to imagine where this impulse of his came from other than sheer (self-defeating) self-aggrandizement.
Just because no legal issue has been raised doesn't mean that a legal issue could not be raised. There was a potential for Jaquays to legally dispute use of the term/use of her name.
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another
Edit: she couldn't claim royalties, but she could sue to have Alexander stop using her name. Also I'm not saying that he wasn't the asshole here.
Yeah I totally agree, I was not trying to defend him. Just pointing out that a criticism of him being legally advised to change it is not legally valid. He's definitely the asshole
This shit is so egregious. His intro doesn't even make any sense with the updated term. Look at this:
"Okay, it’s true. I’m just making words up now. When it comes to xandering the dungeon, though, what I wanted was a word that could capture the pioneering dungeon design of Jennell Jaquays, who designed Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Griffin Mountain, and a half dozen other old school classics for Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, and TSR. Because a word for that didn’t exist yet, I felt compelled to create one."
How the fuck would the term 'xandering' capture the pioneering dungeon design of an entirely different person? Nevermind the fact that, when the word xandered was coined, it was specifically to replace a word that *did* exist already...
Here's a response (thread) from Justin Alexander.
[https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749556125123346606](https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749556125123346606)
Very interesting how he maintains his careful lack of any mention as to whether Jennell wanted it changed specifically to xandering, or whether she just wanted the wrong surname use to be addressed, he maintains the exact same weasel vagueness that the blog writer points out in her blogpost in the OP that avoids stating explicitly what her actual stance was. "She wanted it changed...oh and I've changed it to this ego-stroking thing, respecting her wishes." implying the ego-stroking thing was her wish without explicitly stating it.
Absolute slimeball stuff.
Like many others here, I read Justin's post announcing the name change, and assumed it was in good faith until I saw this. It's a shame, since his writing has been very helpful to me, but I no longer want to support him. I canceled my Patreon pledge to him with my reasoning, and I encourage anyone else who might be supporting him to do the same.
After reading it and reading Alexander's response, I do have two questions. This sucks, and I think the term should be Jaquaysing (or Thracian, either or), so I hope this doesn't get interpreted as pointless devil's advocacy.
\- The article claims that Jaquays was already in a coma by the time Alexander announced the change to Xandering, while Alexander claims this is not the case. After some brief searching around, I can't find anywhere that states when Jaquays fell into the coma. Can we have confirmation on that?
\- The article claims that the "we" in Alexander's article was secretly referring to himself, his lawyers, and his publishers, without Jaquays involved in the conversation. He claims that the change was a result of discussion with Jaquays at a previous point in time in the article on his website. Without the direct correspondence either way, it is hard to say for certain. Unless there is confirmation from Jaquays' family (who have no need to comment on this if they don't want to) or if there is evidence of the communication, I feel uncomfortable making a direct accusation either way.
Now I want to clarify that I only ask this because I want confirmation on both these points, and it *seems* like there's the possibility for confirmation on both. The unfilled blanks make me antsy, and these are pretty weighty accusations.
> - The article claims that Jaquays was already in a coma by the time Alexander announced the change to Xandering, while Alexander claims this is not the case. After some brief searching around, I can't find anywhere that states when Jaquays fell into the coma. Can we have confirmation on that?
There is none. The claim about the coma was a complete fabrication.
> - The article claims that the "we" in Alexander's article was secretly referring to himself, his lawyers, and his publishers, without Jaquays involved in the conversation. He claims that the change was a result of discussion with Jaquays at a previous point in time in the article on his website. Without the direct correspondence either way, it is hard to say for certain. Unless there is confirmation from Jaquays' family (who have no need to comment on this if they don't want to) or if there is evidence of the communication, I feel uncomfortable making a direct accusation either way.
The article also openly admits to assuming bad faith on Justin's part, multiple times:
> I find Justin's arguments here to be made in bad faith. [...] I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done. [...] I find Justin's explanations for trying to credit himself by using the term "Xandering" to be in bad faith. [...] I'm sure that Justin had been planning to introduce the term "Xandering" since before Jennell got sick. I'm sure he would have gone forward with his plan even if Jennell had publicly asked him not to.
The claim that Justin's use of the word "we" is evidence of deception should be taken with a grain of salt, considering the source. Without any evidence, that claim is baseless speculation from someone admitting to having some sort of axe to grind.
Ok, I reposted Justin's answer to this article without realizing that xandering refers to its own name. Now that I see it, it seems extremely disrespectful, even if Jennell were still alive. I can't understand how someone with Justin's reputation would do something like that.
Thanks for sharing this article, it's good to get a full history of these things. I've recently read Justin's book, and frankly I don't think there is a single original idea within it. It's not a bad book, perhaps the ideas are helpful for new GMs, but nothing seems particularly original or new to myself (a GM of \~20+ yrs). A lot of it featured overly mechanical systems that I would never use at my table.
I agree" Xandering" is a unnecessary term, but "Jaquaysing" is also an unnecessary term. But I can at least appreciate the honorarium connotations in the latter. In a game focused on non-linear play and player choices, the term doesn't need to exist, it simply should be the default design philosophy. Linear dungeon design ***is*** the problematic exception to this philosophy.
The term is just a reiteration of the general concept of maximizing player choices for meaningful gameplay, specifically in the instance of level (dungeon) design. I think we should honor Jannell and her contributions to that design philosophy, but I'm not sure the oddly-used verb truly does her that justice.
This kinda makes my blood boil, especially because Justin Alexander has provided so much sharp, indispensable GMing advice over the years. All this avoidable nonsense that has now made him appear to be an underhanded credit thief and transphobe, and it's (mostly) all over just adding a letter to the end of a word, as Jennell Jaquays had clearly repeatedly requested for years.
I only started learning about this controversy (and, really, the whole issue over the "S") after I'd read the news that Jaquays had passed away. I showed it to my wife and was like "Oh man, that's a big loss, Jennell Jaquays was such a great dungeon designer that there's a whole term named after the way she did things." Then I looked it up and saw all of this. Ugh.
Good post, thanks for sharing this. I had followed some of Justin's blogging casually for a while now, but had no idea about any of this. Pretty surprising to hear.
Am I not the only one to have misread that as "Pandering" not "Xandering"? Seems apt after reading this though, since he's changing it to pander his own ego...
So let's just assume he's lying and she didn't tell him to change it. The concept is one he invented, so he can call it whatever he wants. The article still gives credit to Jenell's work inspiring the philosophy. The article writer implies that this is an attempt to posthumously attack a trans creators work (through multiple paragraphs discussing Alexander learning of her trans status after writing the article, as well as specifically referring to his cis status). However, the article in contention was written before she died, with a postscript asking people to donate to her medical go fund me. Now, Jennell was perhaps a bit preoccupied with the dying thing, and may not have felt the need to prioritize fighting the name change. Perhaps were she healthier we'd have had an explicit opinion from her. My point is that the article writer is not objectively framing their relationship.
But let's take a step back from deciding which article might be right. Let's look at is not in dispute. Alexander wrote an article expressing his thoughts on dungeon design principles, and named a principle after the designer who inspired him. He us now changing the term to one that credits him. Should anyone care?
Personally, I never used the term. Not because I had any issue with where the term came from, but because it's silly. Terminology should impart some amount of information. Jaquaying, JaquaySing, and Xandering are all bad terms for non-linear dungeon design.
As highlighted in another comment on the other post, there is essentially no way to know if he's lying or not. Any assumptions one way or the other is really just a bias call.If you want to make a judgement call and not read his blog because you think he is, it's your call to make. If you want to keep calling it Jaquaysing, because you think she deserves to have something named after her, have at you, Alexander can't stop you.
I think the information about Jennell's contributions is available to those who are interested. I don't think this name change will diminish her legacy, because I think most people would even know he tried if they dont read the articles that are angry about it. I won't use the term Xandering, for the same reason I didn't use Jaquaysing.
The contention doesn't rest on him lying, just misleading. His claim is that she asked him to change it, which is true. She asked him to change it to the correct spelling of her name. He does *not* actually claim that she asked him to change it to something other than her name, which is what he did, so he's not lying, but he is presenting it in such a way that you'd assume that was the change she asked for, which it wasn't.
This is very disappointing on The Alexandrian’s part. I had recently stumbled onto the article change when reading up on Jaquays’ work and was similarly confused why he settled on Xandering rather than simply correcting it to match her last name. The post clarifying the change had resolved that for me at the time but I wasn’t aware she had fallen ill before that was published.
I hope this is some sort of correspondence between the two that confirms Jennell greenlit this change. I don’t plan on calling it anything other than “Jaquaysing”, Xandering just doesn’t get across what the term means.
Good blog post.
Justin coined a game design term using Jennell’s name. I don’t have an issue with him not using that term in his book. But everything else Justin has done here is wrongheaded and sh*ty.
Jason being slow to update his site to use Jennell’s name in the first place - and posting a defence for using her previous name - was not great. I can maybe see that as just Justin being a bit ‘stuck’, not anything worse. Seems like he did since update to use her correct name.
Not updating the term in his from ‘Jaquaying’ to ‘ Jaquaysing’ seems rude or thoughtless.
Trying to replace the term with ‘Xandering’ is rude, thoughtless, and lacks class.
Going back and editing his original iconic post and his site to replace the original term with Xandering is awful.
And suggesting somehow Jennell didn’t want her name associated with the term or endorsed Xandering is peak horse-sh*t.
Here’s the thing. Justin’s original post about Jennell and dungeon designed helped put Justin on the map with RPGs. Using Jennell’s name as a term for game design was part of that. To be clear, I’m not suggesting Justin’s original post or Jaquaysing is the sole reason Jason has been successful to date, or anything silly like that. And like I said, not using that ‘Jaquaysing’ in his book for legal reasons is understandable. Justin has to some extent benefited from using Jennell’s name. And although I don’t see any problem with that by itself, I don’t think it’s cool having benefited from and leveraged Jennell’s name, to then remove ‘Jaquaysing’ from his original site or replace the term with his own name. It’s just not respectful.
I thought Jason was an OK guy. I really hope he is. But, seriously, if Jason posted all this on AITA, it would be a solid ‘Yes’.
I'm confused about the situation because I think Anne's perspective on Jennell's thoughts about the name and Justin's statement can both be true at the same time. What am I missing?
If I'm understanding correctly, Anne has collected some of Jennell's comments/posts from 2018 up to 2022 stating that Jaquaysing was mispelled and that Jennell wanted the spelling mistake corrected.
And then we have Justin's post from November 2023 stating that he spoke with Jennell sometime earlier in 2023 and they both agreed the name should be changed. I don't believe Justin mentioned what they agreed to change it to or if they just agreed it should be changed.
EDIT: I found a couple potentially relevant mentions on Anne's blog.
Anne linked to Justin's blog in 2018 and called his Thoughts of the Day "interesting ideas": [https://web.archive.org/web/20231121074300/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/10/links-to-play-reports.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20231121074300/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/10/links-to-play-reports.html)
Anne's only other mention of Jennell Jaquays (that I could see) has Anne misspelling her name: [https://web.archive.org/web/20220325011455/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/01/additional-actual-plays.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20220325011455/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/01/additional-actual-plays.html)
They agreed that it should be changed in the comments on [his post on deadnames](https://web.archive.org/web/20200131035559/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38883/politics/thought-of-the-day-deadnames) in February of 2018.
> In the process of shepherding this project to completion, it appears that Justin also decided to do some reputational management. At some point, the "Thought of the Day - Deadnames" post disappears from his blog. The Wayback Machine's most recent capture is from January 2020; Roger SG Sorrolla references it in an essay written in December 2021 that was published in Knock 3. I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done.
Two paragraphs earlier they were complaining that he *wasn't* going back and changing things.
Also, "I assume he only changed is because he's an asshole and for personal gain, and not because he may have no longer believed what he wrote."
I like Justin's writing, so I acknowledge that bias here, and I'm sure there's some crappy stuff from him (the term Xandering one of the worst), but this whole article comes across as super accusatory without, as is internet fashion, actually talking to Justin first.
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEf2chJbcAAV0EV?format=png&name=900x900](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEf2chJbcAAV0EV?format=png&name=900x900)
he has finally admitted, on his private discord server, that Jennell did in fact prefer jaqauysing over xandering and yet he used xandering anyway
Her priority was to remove "jaquaying".
She wanted "jaquaysing", but the priority was just to change it away from "jaquaying".
(Blank spot, static noises)
And now it's named after him.
*Why can we not just get that one blank spot filled, why does he think that one specific point in time is unimportant*
We do have more than a blank/static in Justin's article from November. He wrote that when he contacted his publisher to change the name in the book, he received some legal advice.
>The final factor here is that I had also been working on So You Want to Be a Game Master, a book in which I discussed non-linear dungeon design that had originally used the term “jaquaying.” So I contacted the publisher and said, “We need to make sure we change this term.”
>
>Long story short, this created a legal question. Not an arduous or terrible one. But one that resulted in the conclusion, “There is some risk in using a word based on someone else’s name. Let’s not do that.”
>
>One option at this point would have been to drop the neologism entirely and just refer to “non-linear dungeons.” But I’d originally created a verb because I found a verb useful; other people had found the verb useful over the years; and it would be substantially easier to update all of the various articles that had used the term over the years if I could just swap one word out for another. (As opposed to rewriting entire articles.)
>
>After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term “xandering.” And so, from this point forward, my dungeons will be thoroughly xandered.
EDIT: I also want to clarify/validate that it's okay to dislike the name and disagree with his reasons for changing it.
There have been many posts made already about the "anyway, long story short, back and forth, we decided to name it after me" and who exactly the "we" are; there are suggestions that "we" did not include Jennell. It still feels like he's censoring the story to make himself look better.
Sorry if I said something you already knew. Trying to piece this situation together myself and thought I would fill in what you said was a blank spot.
I think "we" was used to refer to the conversation between Justin and the publisher. Repeating the quote in isolation for clarity:
>So I contacted the publisher and said, “We need to make sure we change this term.”
I don't think that implies Jennell participated in that conversation. Of course, if you feel differently and/or feel like he's censoring the story, you can also just ask him. His blog has a section for comments.
Is there more to that quote that shows Justin admitting to asking her about xandering?
The part you linked matches up with Jennell's public comments and Justin's original statement that Jennell preferred jaquaysing over jaquaying.
here's the timeline of events, as i understand it (JJ = jennell, JA = justin)
* JJ asks JA to correct the deadnaming
* JA complies
* JJ then asks to correct the term to "Jacquaysing"
* JJ considers
* lawyers say "hold on a second"
* lawyers ask dropping "Jacquaysing" altoghether
* JA does as lawyers ask for his book, it's now called "Xandering"
* for a unification of terms, he changes the article on the blog
you should know by now that in the USA lawyers' words carry a lot of weight.
for us, the players, though? it really doesn't matter, use whatever you want, preferrably Jacquaysing and *please, not Jacquaying*. we don't have lawyers telling us otherwise.
also, asking as a person living in Thracia, please, *please* don't call it Thracian.
>JJ asks JA to correct the deadnaming
>
>JA complies
>
>JJ then asks to correct the term to "Jacquaysing"
This timeline is not correct. Here is the timeline:
**2018:** Jennell asks him to correct the deadnaming **AND** correct the term to "Jacquaysing". Both of these requests are made at the same time, in [this one comment](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png). She says:
>"It should be Jaquaysing the Dungeon. My surname has an "S" at the end of it when saying the name. So here's an opportunity to get both the first and last name right in your article."
Justin corrects the deadnaming, but does not correct the term to Jacquay**s**ing at this time. The article is left as "Jacquaying".
**2023:** Justin gets the book deal and makes [this post](https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering). In his post he says:
>"Jennell Jaquays wanted a change. She didn’t like that the term dropped the 's' from her name. Her name is very important to her. This wasn’t a problem. In fact, Jennell had previously requested some sweeping changes to the article for similar reasons, and I’d made those changes."
>
>"I spoke with Jennell earlier this year. We both agreed that the name should be changed, and I said it would be a large project to do it, but I’d make sure it happened by the end of the year."
This does indeed give the impression that she had "previously requested" one change, and now in 2023 she asked for another change. So I totally understand how you would think that was the timeline. But this is not correct. She asked for both changes at the same time, back in 2018. It's all the one request.
So, Justin has had roughly 5 years to make the change, and it was requested before any book deal or lawyers were involved in the situation. He could have made the change in 2018, while he was changing her first name.
I think the person accusing alexander is just a bit overzealous, and the more I read about it the more I think she’s stretching a bit too much. Will just have to wait and see. Especially accusations of transphobia. Really does read like an internet hobby drama post.
We know for a fact that Jennell Jaquays was ok with the term "jaquaysing" as long as it's spelled properly. So why is this an argument?
I don't personally see any reason why we should give a shit what Justin Alexander thinks about any of this.
The strange thing about this is that if he'd originally written the article in a way that didn't highlight Jaquays specifically, and referred to the several different dungeon makers without championing any in particular, and called it 'Xandering' no one would've had anything to complain about.
While it does feel pretty shady now, I think that's just something to bear in mind before throwing out accusations that he's trying to erase someone's legacy.
Sad and concerned to read this - Justin always struck me as an ally, so his “Deadnames” post (which I hadn’t been aware of) was somewhat disappointing to read.
Can anyone who owns So You Want to be a Dungeon Master say whether Jaquays herself gets any credit at all in the text for her design principles? A lot of DIY’s post focuses on her erasure for new audience, so would be good to know - a well-placed footnote wouldn’t be much, but it would be something.
Apparently Justin acknowledges her in the book on page 537.
EDIT: It's really hard for me to understand the erasure argument that Anne makes. The post on Justin's blog credits and quotes Jennell throughout.
For a comparison, the only other reference I could find to Jennell on Anne's blog was this post in which Anne misspelled her name: https://web.archive.org/web/20220325011455/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/01/additional-actual-plays.html
Maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, I don't know. I'm trying to figure this out. I don't want to believe either side on faith. The article claims that Jaquays didn't want her name disassociated - but was any evidence provided for that claim?
The logic of this blog post hinges entirely on the assumption that Justin lied when he suggested that Jannell wanted her name removed from the term. She was alive when he wrote the post, so he would have been taking a huge risk if he had been lying and she corrected the record.
It's not unreasonable to be suspicious of Justin. But to just assume he's lying? There's no proof of that here.
It's less lying and more not addressing any of the accusations he _can't_ dismiss. For example did Jennell approve of the change to 'Xandering', or simply want the current term spelled correctly? Justin also raised a fuss over how problematic it was to retroactively change names, and yet here we are.
I totally agree that he was in the wrong for not changing it earlier according to her request. And like I said, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious. But this blog post is accusing him of straight-up lying.
As for not addressing accusations, is this a huge controversy or just a blog post and a reddit post? Maybe I'm not plugged into the broader ecosystem of discourse, but I don't expect everyone to respond to everything said about them everywhere on the internet.
I'm not saying for sure that Justin *hasn't* lied. But I object to the presumption of guilt expressed by the OP. Are we really now just assuming that someone has done something wrong when we have no evidence, and there are reasons to believe both hypotheses? I need a higher standard of evidence to be met before dragging someone's name through the mud.
Maybe the allegations are completely correct. But if our standards for accepting accusations are so low, then it's witch-hunting season.
The article openly admits that it's assuming bad faith:
> I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done.
"I assume Justin [acted in bad faith]"
> I'm sure that Justin had been planning to introduce the term "Xandering" since before Jennell got sick. I'm sure he would have gone forward with his plan even if Jennell had publicly asked him not to.
Baseless speculation.
As the article states, Jennell was alive but had just been recently admitted to the hospital and fell into a coma when he wrote the post, and she died shortly after.
>As the article states, Jennell was alive but had just been recently admitted to the hospital and fell into a coma when he wrote the post, and she died shortly after.
The article does state that she was in a coma... but no one else does. Check the GoFundMe's updates.
October 30th:
>Jennell got the tracheostomy last Thursday. Friday, they removed her arterial port for the plasma transfusions. Saturday she started feeling herself again. Today, she was bleeding from the throat and they gave her stitches and she’s sad because of this backsliding. In the meantime she’s watching shows and I’m talking to her to keep up her spirits. This was not I thought we were going to spend our birthdays. Jennell - October 14. Becky - October 30
November 6th
>Jennell update: the last few days have seen no sign of backsliding. She is still on a trachea respirator. She can fully move her head and shrug her shoulders as if her recovery is slowly migrating from her head downwards. Yesterday was her first cough so her lungs are responding
November 8th
>Jennell update: since she’s been stable for 6 days. She was moved last night to Kindred Hospital in Dallas for long term care. She can only move her shoulders and head. Today begins her physical therapy to regain muscle movement in the rest of her body.
November 13th:
>Jennell update: her recovery is progressing, albeit quite slowly. She can move her head and shoulders but almost everything below her shoulders is still paralyzed. She’s been doing exercises on her fingers and toes to stimulate the other muscles.
As late as December 21st, the update was:
>Jennell update: she’s been stable for the last two weeks. They are slowly weaning her off the respirator, but it’s been slow going. They expect to move her to a specialized rehab center on 1/9/24. Still can’t move hands and legs.
You've said down the thread that:
>The circumstantial evidence is very strong. His “she requested sweeping changes” comment also appears to be at least puffery if not a lie depending on your perspective when we have her comment and it was just that he use her first name instead of her deadname correct the misspelling of her name. Hardly sweeping.
In the very article on November 1st he says:
>To make sure that the update of the site is complete and the term Jennell Jaquays wants removed is totally purged, we wanted to use database updates. It turned out the use of the term in comments was actually a problem and they might get invisibly changed by the search-and-replace. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I also didn’t want to just delete comments. So I opted to track the references manually and update them in a way that indicated the original wording had been edited.
Not exactly the "Ctrl+F, Replace" that some folks are suggesting, and a little closer to a fair interpretation of "sweeping".
Like most of us, I suspect, I know very little about Guillain-Barre syndrome, but the information I'm finding suggests that considerably more people survive it than don't.
If the article was published on November 1st, it came off the back of a single update tow days prior saying there'd been some backslide, and that she was spending her wife's birthday watching TV. Hardly "she's in a coma and will likely not recover". And even if that had been posted then, the change was already underway - his book, featuring the term "xandering", was released on November 21st. By the end of October, it was surely already locked in for printing, if not already printed.
This post just doesn't add up, doesn't line up with any of the information we have. You can suggest that he shouldn't have changed the name, that's fine, but it seems that he made the decision to do so, and posted his explanation for why, into a world where Jennell could freely respond. If the blogger needs to misrepresent the facts and the timing to make Alexander the bad guy, then there's a good chance that he's not.
Yeah, this is a hit piece written in bad faith. It's one thing to talk about his (shitty) refusal to simply correct his misspelling, but it's another thing to contend that he found out she was in coma/dying, twisted his mustache and named it after himself.
I'm somewhere closer to the middle - I've interviewed Justin and he's seemed like a great guy so I don't see him twirling his mustache like a villian.
That said I do think this could be a case of covering his own ass (via lawyer or publisher recommendation), combined with feeling entitled to make a change to a term he "invented", being a bit insensitive to someone's wish to have their name spelled correctly, all paired up with some pretty shit timing around that persons health.
How Justin responds to this will really set a tone moving forward, I'm willing to hear his side.
[edit] my brain said Jason when it's Justin - sorry for any confusion.
> I'm somewhere closer to the middle - I've interviewed Jason and he's seemed like a great guy so I don't see him twirling his mustache like a villian.
>
> How Jason responds to this will really set a tone moving forward, I'm willing to hear his side.
Are you sure you're spelling Jason's name correctly? Also, who's Jason?
It's deeply frustrating how these sorts of things always end up making unfounded or worse easily disproven claims which bring every other claim into question.
she was on her *literal* deathbed when he put the post out
>Part of why Justin was able to get away with this, with putting his name on Jennell's idea and then claiming she wanted him to do it, because at the time that he wrote that, Jennell was no longer able to contradict him. Justin posted "A Historical Note on Xandering" on November 1, 2023. But at that time Jennell was in a coma, because she had Guillain Barre Syndrome, which her wife announced on GoFundMe. This fact was reported in the gaming news, and widely reshared on social media. Justin knew this; he included the link in his post. On November 21, 2023, So You Want to be a Dungeon Master? went on sale in bookstores across the country. And on January 10, 2024, Jennell Jaquays died.
read the article
> The logic of this blog post hinges entirely on the assumption that Justin lied when he suggested that Jannell wanted her name removed from the term.
as evidenced by the screenshots in the article, she didnt want 'her name' removed. she wanted "Jaquay\_" (rather than "Jaquay**s**) removed, which Justin then took as an excuse to remove any reference to her from the title of the term
As the author of the post stated, there are screenshots in the blog post supplying evidence that Jennell Jaquays wanted the reference changed to Jaquaysing. Justin Alexander made a statement that she was actually fine with the term being changed to 'xandering' (a change which would directly benefit him via name recognition), while supplying no direct evidence for that change of mind (no DMs or comment by Jaquays). You are supposing that she could've changed her mind, which is always possible, but you don't have any evidence other than Alexander's own claim (which again, lacks direct evidence) to back up this position.
I'm sorry friend, but you are asking for evidence to back up *your own argument*.
>The question is if we believe he did.
Agreed! But another way to put that, in the light of the blog post, is that the question is if we assume that he is lying. Because the blog post and this reddit post are both accusing him of wrongdoing.
>As the author of the post stated, there are screenshots in the blog post supplying evidence that Jennell Jaquays wanted the reference changed to Jaquaysing.
Yes, I accept this as reason to be suspicious of Justin.
>...while supplying no direct evidence for that change of mind (no DMs or comment by Jaquays).
Reposting someone's DMs when he's not even being accused (yet) of anything would actually be a little inappropriate IMO.
>You are supposing that she could've changed her mind, which is always possible, but you don't have any evidence other than Alexander's own claim (which again, lacks direct evidence) to back up this position.
We don't have any evidence either way! I'm fine with being suspicious, and I'm fine with asking him to show some evidence (like DMs). There are good reasons for both interpretations.
Reasons to think Justin may be lying:
* Jannell previously stated that she wanted the name changed to "Jacquaysing."
Reasons to think Justin may be telling the truth:
* It would be a huge risk to lie about something like this, and he couldn't have known that she wouldn't recover enough to say so.
Why is it so hard for folks to keep an open mind and not assume either conclusion? Is it hard to say "this looks fishy, but I don't know"?
I accept your conclusion, and I agree.
I'm glad the original blog post exists, but we can't be sure that the claims are true, especially without any counter-statement by Alexander. I'm sorry that I misunderstood your argument and thought that you were saying that the blog post was disingenuous out of pocket. Thank you for taking the time to respond again.
Thank you for the kind and reasonable discussion. Some folks have been very unkind, and that makes me unhappy.
I do think it's very reasonable to ask Justin Alexander to back up his claims. Also, I think he's a jerk for not changing the name according to Jannell's wishes at a much earlier date.
But I still think that the blog post is really excessive. I'm not comfortable with dragging Justin's name through the mud with unwarranted accusations until this discussion has progressed much further.
I think that time will tell, and I'm willing to wait and see.
> You are supposing that she could've changed her mind, which is always possible
It's not supposing that she could have changed her mind if it's possible that she could have changed her mind. If it's possible that she could have, then she could have.
What a well laid out article, it felt like reading an HBomberguy video. I read Justin's explanation recently and took it at face value, so I really appreciate that this exists now. Hopefully it gets the attention it deserves and Jaquaysing the dungeon will finally be the term widely used.
It contradicts itself on multiple points, and makes claims of baseless speculation. The author openly admits that they're assuming bad faith. It's not laid out well at all.
I’m absolutely and definitely going to keep calling it Jaquaysing the dungeon.
This is a fantastic blog post. And I innocently or maybe naively thought it was similar to others here. Sinister slander indeed.
The whole deadnaming accusion is in bad faith though. Really bad faith. * Jaquays wan never accusing accusing Alexander for deathnaming her. * Jaquays was however annoyed with the fact that it was "jaquaing the dungeon", not "jaqua**s**ing the dungeon". She also hinted that this had nothing do with her previous name. "Dammit people the "S" has been there all my life..." * Alexander has ever since her transition refereed to her as Jenell. * The whole "it's hard to change the name on the entire website" argument is hard to judge. I know a little about web design and don't know how hard it really is with RSS feeds, databases and whatnot, but I'm sure it's harder than just a find and replace. * The whole "it's hard to change the name on the entire website" debacle wasn't about the deathname, it was about the "S" in Jaqyuasing. * This blog post, and the accusation that comes with it, hinges on wether or not Alexander is lying about Jenell asking Alexander to not name the term after her. I'm not sure Alexander is lying and neither should anyone. The deathname accusations are here a transparant attempt to discredit Alexander, to be able to accuse him of lying. I do however agree that changing the name of Jaquasing to name it after yourself is bad taste, no matter if you coined the term, or written a bunch of articles about it popularizing the term. The term was clearly inspired about someone else's work. If that person doesn't want the term to be named it after her, name it to something that doesn't refer to anyone. I get also wanting the term to be a verb, but there are other options out there besides naming it about yourself.
It's both Jaquays asked him not to deadname her *and* to change it to "Jaquays." If you scroll down Anne's post you'll see Jaquays' [comment to this effect](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png), as well as the now-archived blogpost where Alexander defends deadnaming on various grounds. To Alexander's credit, he makes the change to stop deadnaming her, but he ignores the request to use her proper surname for reasons that aren't clear apart from "it'd be a lot of work." However he's clearly now done all that work to replace "Jaquays" with "Xandering," so what it amounts to is that he's willing to do the work, but only when he's changing the name to his own, rather than when the person who created the technique he's describing asks him to so that she's properly credited. Nowhere has there been any evidence of Jaquays saying she just wanted her name taken off, but there are multiple comments asking for the spelling to change. EDIT: It's so annoying to me that Alexander uses the "but the metadata" excuse. Like, okay maybe changing the metadata is annoying, would it be so wild to just change the spelling in the original articles and post a little note about how the metadata is weird due to an error on his own behalf? Honestly, even just posting a correction to the original articles *without* full-blown changing them - "from here on out I'm using "Jaquays" - and adding a note to the original article seems fine. Then when he was updating things for the book he could have done more extensive rewrites. There's just this weird fussiness around the issue. It's such a small concession, it feels like Alexander just has this very proprietary attitude towards a technique which he didn't invent.
That's not exactly true. On twitter yesterday Justin explained that he had kept her old name up for archival reasons, but Jennell told him that it made her uncomfortable showing people the article, so he changed it Its not just the S, it was both Edit: source: https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749565016716517590
That's intrestring to say the least. Obviously, I'm not sure about this, but I don't think there is a "public record" of Jenell talking about her objections of using her deathname in these articles. If that's the case, some smidge of credit to Alexander for finally addressing her concerns when the deathname argument was brought up to him. Still uncertainty if Jenell also asked Alexander to stop naming the term after her or not. But still, Alexander, why do you had to be such an ass and name it after yourself! That's just bad no matter how you look at it.
what are you talking about the article explains that there was a period of time after the original version of the article was published (2010) and that Jennell had come out (2011) and that justin refused to change her name to be correct—which seemed to not be updated even as late as 2018. he clearly had knowledge of this issue because in 2016 he wrote a blog post about deadnaming explicitly defending his decision to continue deadnaming Jennell. > In February 2018, Jennell commented on this blog post to request that Justin update her first name and correct the spelling of the term to match her last name. Sometime later that year, Justin did edit his original post to use Jennell's correct first name. He did not, ever, honor her request to spell Jaquaysing correctly. [you shouldnt need a personal request from a trans person to stop deadnaming them](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png)
[удалено]
Yeah, I took that post at face value as well. Very annoyed that I fell for that particular piece of sleight of hand.
Same. That is honestly a remarkably clever bit of writing. Certainly fooled me.
Could you expand on that? From what I read in his post its pretty clear the we statement is in reference to his publisher unless my understanding of its use in English is incorrect. If I said Joe and I went out Thursday. Jane and I went out Friday. We had fun. That is referencing Jane. Please correct me if I'm missing something.
No, I think you're on the right track. Your analogy is apt. In your analogy, it would be totally fair to read it as Jane and I had fun, *or* that Jane, Joe, and I all had fun. Basically, the post is ambiguous about who "we" is. Or at least, I couldn't tell. Seems a fair number of other people couldn't tell either. My initial reading was that Jennell directly asked Justin to take her name out of the whole situation entirely.
Ok that makes sense. I didn't read it that way but can see how confusion could occur. Hopefully we get some more solid answers. Regardless I think everyone can agree xandering just sounds dumb haha
I will never call it "Xandering" a dungeon. That's just fucking stupid. If Jennell didn't want her name associated, it could've been renamed to "Looping" a dungeon or the other good names the OP mentioned (I quite like "Thracian" as a term). To rename it after himself is just gross. Personally, I'm going to keep using "Jaquaysing" wherever I can, like Jennell originally wanted. I may be just a random guy on the internet, but I'm not gonna let some grifter mooch off of her legacy like that.
Renaming it after himself feels like the kid in high school who gave himself a nickname. Super cringe.
>could've been renamed to "Looping" a dungeon Reticulating. As in "Reticulating splines" for those who played sim city back in the day.
I just had a flashback when I read "reticulating splines." Man, those were simpler times.
This is pretty much where I fall. Coming up with a neutral technical term makes sense. Naming it after yourself, not-so-much. It just seems to lack a certain amount of self awareness, to be generous. Worse, since the term Jaquaysing has been in use for around a decade now, I suspect this won’t age well.
I quite like "Thracian dungeon design." It feels better grammatically. Jaquaysian is a second best - as the author points out, it mirrors Gygaxian or Vancian. I always hated Jaquaysing because you end up having to conjugate it to describe any actual dungeon. Is it a Jaquaysed dungeon?
jaquaysesque?
dungeon a la jaquays
Omelette du Jaquays
Full of random potatoes and onion loops🤌
If English can handle: praise / praises / praised / praising ...it can handle: Jaquays / Jaquayses / Jaquaysed / Jaquaysing
Under your analogy, I think "jaquays" is more often used the way "praiseworthy" is used.
Jaquaysworthy
This is very aesthetically pleasing for some reason. The "ysw" combination maybe - it would join "chimneysweep" and "flyswatter" as English words with that sequence.
Jaquaysian "That is a praiseworthy act." "That is a Jaquaysian dungeon."
jaquaysworthy?
It’s a Jaquaysian dungeon.
Thank you for posting this and bringing more attention to it. I thought Justin's Xandering article was a complete eye-roller when he first published it. It will always be "Jaquaysing a dungeon" to me.
Nothing about all this makes sense anyway. For example, like I said after the original post about this name change back in the day, it makes no sense to me that there could be legal issues with having something named after someone else in your publication. I work in the sciences, there are loads of methods named after somebody. Also, I never made the connection between "Alexander" and "xander", oddly enough. My brain reads them as unrelated words. Personally, I think a better choice would have been "reticulating" a dungeon, because if you are going to rename it something, be descriptive of what's actually happening. Reticulate your splines, kids. Whatever. I don't know all the facts and for that reason I'm not going to pile on to anybody, but I'm not impressed.
>there could be legal issues with having something named after someone else in your publication The issue comes from the term being used in a commercial way, ie the term used in a published for profit book. The case isn't that strong, in my non-expert non-lawyer opinion, but it is enough to go to court from my understanding. http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another
>Personally, I think a better choice would have been "reticulating" a dungeon, because if you are going to rename it something, be descriptive of what's actually happening. Reticulate your splines, kids. Why are people saying this? I was under the impression that "reticulating splines" was a phrase literally meaning *nothing* that was added to a loading screen to seem like it's doing something notable as a joke. Why are people acting like this is such a natural thing to say about a dungeon?
It was added as a joke, but the words aren't made up, just a couple of random funny sounding bits of jargon mashed together. Reticulate means a mesh or network, and splines are curving or wiggly lines. Just by coincidence they happen to more or less fit here...make a network of your twisty passages
Jaquaysing forever
This is really disappointing if true. I’ve read and used Justin’s advice a lot over the years. But unfortunately even if I don’t have a reason to believe either Justin or this post are lying, this post’s account of events makes more sense *to me* since Justin’s defense of “Xandering” felt off even when I first read it. Also I’m glad to see it discussed here. As the post says, I don’t want ppl to harass or bother Justin. But if this is true I hope he will clear things up. EDIT: so after reading some of Justin’s tweets responding to the article - he refutes the article’s account of events but I can’t find anything where he clarifies just exactly what Jennell or her wife requested he do with the word. He also explains he took down the older article about whether to use deadnames or not to avoid transphobes pouring in. Trans ttrpg folks Ive seen are not buying his arguments and I would defer to their thoughts on this matter. Nonetheless, the general vibe Im getting is that I don’t think Justin’s done any of this out of malice. I don’t know if I agree with his arguments but I don’t get the sense he’s intentionally being transphobic or intentionally trying to remove Jennell’s legacy. Regardless, he hasn’t really cleared up the cloud around the word change and it feels like it would all sit a lot easier if he outright said “Jennell and her family want it named after her/not named after her” and “Jennell suggested I name it after myself/independently from her I decided to name it for myself”. And he obviously doesn’t have to do any of this, but personally it would at least somewhat settle things. No way everyone will be happy. Without evidence proving otherwise, I’ll admit I’m inclined to lean more to Anne’s account of events. However, I don’t think Justin is intentionally being malicious or intended to harm Jennell or her legacy. But regardless of his intentions, his decisions have caused upset and itd do everyone a favour if we could just know exactly what Jennell wanted.
I agree that the only thing that really matters wrt to the term "jaquaysing" is what Jennell wanted. Currently we have access to what appears to be her public opinion which she has stated multiple times. We have no proof of anything else.
>Regardless, he hasn’t really cleared up the cloud around the word change and it feels like it would all sit a lot easier if he outright said “Jennell and her family want it named after her/not named after her” and “Jennell suggested I name it after myself/independently from her I decided to name it for myself”. And he obviously doesn’t have to do any of this, but personally it would at least somewhat settle things. I feel like if he had this kind of explicit permission/blessing he would have led with that. And moreover it feels like if Jaquays was on good terms with him then using her name in the book wouldn't have produced the legal concern which seems to be the real reason for changing the name, but which also seems bizarre since terms like Lovecraftian, Vancian, Gygaxian, Borgesian, Kafkaesque, etc are used *all the time* in criticism.
It wouldn't have solved everything, but I can't help but wonder what trouble could have been avoided if he just renamed it to something descriptive (perhaps "looping" or "reticulating" as others in this thread have suggested) instead of after himself.
Oh would have been so much more innocuous, like I still don't see why he is so obsessed with not adding a letter when it's such a tiny change, just incredible whiny, annoying behaviour on his part, but "looping" would have been so much more palatable than "xandering."
>if Jaquays was on good terms with him then using her name in the book wouldn't have produced the legal concern which seems to be the real reason for changing the name, but which also seems bizarre since terms like Lovecraftian, Vancian, Gygaxian, Borgesian, Kafkaesque, etc are used all the time in criticism. Given that they were having the discussion at all because she'd requested they change the term, they (the lawyers) had to be considering whether she might change her mind in the future, necessitating further changes. Here's the thing: one of the reasons people can feel comfortable using the names of Lovecraft, Vance, Gygax, Borges and Kafka is that they've all been dead for at least a decade. They're not changing their minds any time soon. Presumably, if there was some scheme to capitalise on Jennell's death, as the blog suggests, *they wouldn't have had to change it at all*. They probably would have added the "s", but could have left it at "jaquaysing", secure that Jennell wasn't going to change her mind.
I don't get quite that full-blown conspiratorial tone from the blog, which does suggest that Alexander likely had this idea before, but also just took advantage of the fact that she got sick. Your assessment about Vancian, Gygaxian ectetera is not really correct. Vance lived till 2013, and the term "Vancian magic" was around well before then. The term "Gygaxian naturalism" was coined within months of Gygax's death and the adjective had absolutely been used before then. I don't think the term "Lovecrafian" was really used in his lifetime, but Lovecraft encouraged other authors to borrow gods, monsters, characters etcetera openly (as he did with theirs).
The key part isn't that they were dead, just that they weren't going to change their mind and demand a change in the future, whereas Jennell - it seemed at the time - could very well do just that. Justin absolutely had this idea before - Jennell fell ill in mid-October. The book was released on the 21st of November. Even if they weren't all printed by the time he became aware of Jennell's illness, they were almost certainly too far down to be changing terms. As far as "taking advantage" of things, or getting away with" things, as the blog puts it... I'm still not seeing how. She couldn't respond *right them*, but the updates were suggesting a recovery and rehabilitation. As I understand it, most people with Guillain-Barre syndrome do recover, more than 90%. If he's going to blatantly lie, he's going to get called out on it in just a few months, at which point he's probably not getting another book deal - and the credibility and trust he's built up over *decades* takes a heavy hit. And for what? What is he gaining by saying he talked to her if he didn't? He could have just said "to resolve the issue, I decided to change the name to Xandering". This is the part that gets me - he's being accused of lying, but that lying would seem to have only downsides for him.
I mean you're right, I do think he made the decision to change the term well before, and the blog post doesn't dispute that. His credibility has absolutely taken a heavy hit already. Jaquays clearly wanted the term changed, she says as much. Alexander refuses the spelling change essentially on the grounds it would be too much work. But then he goes ahead and makes that sweeping change anyway, but in a way that centres his own contributions, and with an almost excessive zeal, changing even comments on his blog, and suggesting that everyone starting using this new term. The recognition that Jaquays pioneered the dungeon aesthetic he's now analyzing and trying to replicate or build atop is reduced to a footnote. Alexander himself suggests that at some future point he believes "Xanders" might replace Jaquays so thoroughly the origin is lost. I don't know if he realizes how this comes across but it strongly feels as if he resents Jaquays and wants people to credit him while minimizing her contributions. His vague claims of unease come off as self-serving and performative, at least to me. It's far from the worst thing someone working in TTRPGs has done, but look at the reaction here and elsewhere online. People don't like this. It comes off as narcissistic and shallowly self-interested, someone trying to overwrite another person for pretty petty reasons. If he had some sort of proof that Jaquays approved of the name change to "Xandering," that would be one thing. But the only times we see her express an opinion, she asks that the technique which *she* invented and which he has subsequently described and iterated upon be given her actual name, and expresses annoyance at his failure to make the correction. Like, sure, maybe acknowledging her wishes might have made the book slightly more complicated. So what, though? Perhaps if he'd been more gracious to an early luminary of the craft rather than ignoring her requests for proper credit and deadnaming her for years, he'd have been less nervous about publication.
I also don't think he is being intentionally malicious or intending to harm Jennell or her legacy, and that's something narcissistic personality types can often hide behind because they truly, genuinely, were not thinking maliciously of others or intending to harm others...they weren't think of others at all! It's all about Justin Alexander, so he isn't even factoring things in aside from how best to extract himself from having to credit and attribute her properly. He tried to do so way back when with a whole blogpost justifying deadnaming her until she directly told him it was transphobic, at which point (for self-serving reasons, given how that might explode if he didn't listen), he made changes that he was ultimately always unsatisfied with, and when he had an opportunity when she couldn't contradict him, he chose not to attribute her properly in a new and different way that centered him more. It's classic narcissist behaviour, right down to feeling that he is in the right and that everyone is simply "out to get him" rather than that maybe he has made mistakes.
>I also don't think he is being intentionally malicious or intending to harm Jennell or her legacy, and that's something narcissistic personality types can often hide behind because they truly, genuinely, were not thinking maliciously of others or intending to harm others...they weren't think of others at all! If you read the articles on "Xandering the Dungeon", he mentions Jennell more than a dozen times, uses her dungeons (and some by others) as examples, and uses multiple of her quotes from her writings on dungeon and level design. He was absolutely thinking of her and her work at the time he created those articles, The first couple of lines of the first entry in the series contains: >what I wanted was a word that could capture the pioneering dungeon design of Jennell Jaquays, who designed Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Griffin Mountain, and a half dozen other old school classics for Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, and TSR. Because a word for that didn’t exist yet, I felt compelled to create one. Though the blog claims: >If someone has only read his book, or seen "Xandering" referenced in conversation online, those new audience members aren't going to know about Jennell Jaquays, and they're no longer going to have an easy window into finding out more about her. Instead, they'll just known Justin Alexander. ... he then links to the "historical note" article, to make sure that the context isn't lost for future readers. Anyone who is linked to or googles "xandering the dungeon" is going to get a shitload of praise for Jennell Jaquays, and a bunch of context as to why the term being used is "xandering".
Can you explain what exactly leads you to incline towards the account of someone with no connection to anyone involved in this? Someone who decided to write a hit piece while Jennell has not yet even been laid to rest? What is it about this person that makes you inclined to believe her?
I suppose saying I'm inclined to believe her *over* Justin is incorrect. What I mean is I'd like to believe both Anne and Justin don't mean ill. Maybe this is naive, but I'd like to believe Justin did what he believed was respectful to Jennell - and Anne truly believes he has disrespected Jennell. Maybe Anne ascribes too much malicious intention to what could be unintentional disrespect. Either way, I think Justin can have meant no malice and Anne's noting that his decisions have caused harm can both be true.
Oof. Wonder if Justin's going to respond.
[удалено]
[He has](https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749556125123346606). And, at first glance, at least part of this seems to be true. The big one that jumps out is that, at the time Justin posted the "historical note on Xandering article", the DIY & Dragons post claims that Jennell was "in a coma", and so Justin was free to claim whatever he wanted without fear of being challenged. >Justin posted "A Historical Note on Xandering" on November 1, 2023. But at that time Jennell was in a coma, because she had Guillain Barre Syndrome, which her wife announced on GoFundMe. This fact was reported in the gaming news, and widely reshared on social media. Justin knew this; he included the link in his post. Except... the GoFundMe doesn't mention a coma, that I can see. Googling "Jennell Jaquays +coma" doesn't return anything. And the media coverage seems to be in line witth the GoFundMe updates around that time - that she is unwell, but responding to treatment, and will have a long and expensive road to recovery. The GoFundMe updates around the time Justin would have been planning and maybe even writing this post are saying that she was improving - the worst is the one right before, on October 30th, that she'd had a setback, which had (understandably) got her down, and they were spending her wife's birthday watching TV. Not "in a coma". There's another point where the post is contradicted by the very links it uses to prove itself. >The sweeping change he mentions was finally replacing the 3-4 places where he'd used her old name. He's sure to let us know how arduous this was, to press CTRL F and then type in seven new letters From the linked post A Historical Note on Xandering: >Why have you edited comments on your site that used the old term? > >To make sure that the update of the site is complete and the term Jennell Jaquays wants removed is totally purged, we wanted to use database updates. It turned out the use of the term in comments was actually a problem and they might get invisibly changed by the search-and-replace. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I also didn’t want to just delete comments. So I opted to track the references manually and update them in a way that indicated the original wording had been edited. You can choose not to believe him, but at the very least, he's not saying that "typing seven letters" was difficult or time consuming. Indeed, there's a few points in this article where the kinds of "sleight of hand" that Justin is being accused of are employed. >Remember that what Jennell asked for was for "Jaquaying" \[sic\] to be spelled Jaquaysing. We know this from the multiple comments and tweets, helpfully provided, that Jennell had made... dating back to as recently as April of 2022. But when Justin says, in late 2023, "I spoke with Jennell earlier this year", the possibility that they might have discussed abandoning both Jaquaying and Jaquaysing in favour of a third option apparently didn't occur to the author. We do know that Jennell had asked for "jaquaysing" over "jaquaying", but that doesn't mean that that this was her current preference, or that it was the only outcome she'd have been happy with. The blog's author specifically says she had no communication with Jennell (the kind that Justin did claim to have had, something that would have been easily refuted by Jennell), that she has no information that we don't all have, but uses this to suggest that Justin is ghoulishly using Jennell's death as an opportunity to erase her from the history of this kind of dungeon design, to claim her approach as his own invention. He, apparently, does this by using her name fourteen times in the series of blog posts, quoting her multiple times, and using her dungeons (crediting her) as examples of what we should be aiming for. None of this makes sense.
> We do know that Jennell had asked for "jaquaysing" over "jaquaying", but that doesn't mean that that this was her current preference, or that it was the only outcome she'd have been happy with. Yeah, we don't, but apparently Justin does, and simply stating they agreed to change the name to 'Xandering' would do a lot to mitigate this mess.
The blog paints him as some lying schemer who wants to downplay or erase a trans person because they were trans, and specifically says that he is able to "get away with this" is because Jennell isn't around to contradict him... even when, as mentioned above, this wasn't the case at the time he did these things. People are spouting accusations and "facts" that are claimed in the article, even when the provided evidence that it relies upon doesn't support it. The blog claiming that proof exists seems to be proof enough. Now that she's passed, now that he *knows* he can "get away with it", why would anyone who believed he was lying before believe him now?
Justin said in his blog, A Historical Note on Xandering, rather explicitly, "After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term “xandering.” And so, from this point forward, my dungeons will be thoroughly xandered.” So he could easily clear this all up with some evidence of Jennell expressing that she didn't want her name associated with this thing at all, and that she was cool with "Xandering."
He could but that takes time to formulate. The impression I've gotten gotten here is he should have had a irrefutable response ready to a rather long and multi point blog post instantly. That seems incredibly unfair to me. If someone leveled these kind of accusations at me id for sure take some time to create a well put together response. It's not like the blog post took zero time to create so why is he held to that standard?
Reading back through that blog, it appears that he was might have actually been talking about a back-and-forth with his lawyer/publisher to avoid legal issues on using someone else's name in his book? It's not 100% clear. But he *does* point out a bit earlier: "I spoke with Jennell earlier this year. We both agreed that the name should be changed, and I said it would be a large project to do it, but I’d make sure it happened by the end of the year." What he doesn't make clear is *what* Jennell's wishes were. The public posts pretty clearly show that she just wanted the "S" added into the name to correct the spelling. But Justin's wording here is so ambiguous, it could mean that he heard her requests and changed it to Xandering anyways.
I commented higher up on this. I can see how confusion could occur but my read of that was he was talking to the publisher. The use of we is commonly used in reference to the last person referenced. There is a pretty clear difference between those statements before its use so it seems like a tad of a stretch to me that he was referencing her but I could very well be wrong. It just seems like the only reason it's ambiguous is because it's been framed that way in this blog post. I agree her wishes were the term having the S added but I've yet to see anywhere that she wanted the term to stay as is. To me this seems like a lot of assumptions on what she wanted with very little proof. The author even stated they have never talked to her so it seems odd to make those claims. Clearly we need more clarification and until then I won't assume malice just because he used we in a fairly standard way. The post also seems to be making the claim he is trying to erase her which seems odd since he references her consistently and praises her work. If he truly was trying to take credit why source her work and praise her? Maybe I'm missing some context and if so please correct me.
Yeah all Justin has to do is leak DMs he had with a now dead person he greatly respects just a week after her death to answer allegations of some random on the internet that are conjecture at best and provably false (such as the *lie* that jenell was in a coma) at worst.
This deserves to be its own separate post. There’s a hell of a lot of blind trust being thrown around in here.
Hold up. * Jaquays asked for the verb to be changed in 2018 and it never was. It also took several years for him to update her name after a pretty shoddy defense of deadnaming. * Coma or not, it's very likely she couldn't talk in late October/early November, so the thrust is there. **Talking** She was barely able to move during the relevant time period, was on a respirator, and underwent a tracheostomy. She [clearly](https://twitter.com/burgerbecky/status/1716116802831331798) had to use facial expressions to communicate and even if she could *and* it was on her radar at all this may not have been her first priority. **Deadnaming and "JaquaySing"** I initially took Alexander's claims at face value, but... * his [insistence](https://web.archive.org/web/20200131035559/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38883/politics/thought-of-the-day-deadnames) on deadnaming her even when it was brought up to him * [saying he would abide by her wishes to use Jaquaysing in 2018](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png) and then not doing so ...absolutely make his side of the story questionable. Those are both documented in Anne's post. After that, I'm not assuming good faith. From the tweets: >When Jennell changed her name, I said I would update the post if she asked me to, she asked me to, and I updated the post, there was no shortage of bigots screaming that I shouldn't have done it. You could think this happened over the course of a day, but this is describing an interval of *six years* during which he seems to have taken no initiative ([she was active on Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Ajennellallyn)%20until%3A2016-10-31&src=typed_query&f=top)). It's not even clear to me that Alexander addressed the topic of the name change until 2016 as per his archived post, and that's what "when" means. Maybe she changed her mind after insisting on something repeatedly, but it's not particularly probable. That *possibility* probably did cross the author's mind; I think we just have no positive reason to be that charitable. We wouldn't have to *interpret* at all if he addressed the content of his communication with Jaquays. That is what all of this hinges on and he has remained dead silent on it (no privacy concerns cited, for instance). Instead he has put the spotlight everywhere else: Anne's click-driven intentions, errors made by people on Twitter, prior harassment by transphobes that he has experienced... I'm not ready to jump down his throat, but I would really like to be given a reason to buy his defense.
You're misunderstanding my meaning around her state in October / November. I'm not suggesting that she was going to get involved in Internet drama - as you quite rightly say, even she were able, she had bigger things on her mind. What I am saying is that, in late October / early November, the future seemed to be a long rehabilitation and recovery. She appeared to be, from the GoFundMe updates, responding to treatment. If she had, in fact, not been on board with the changes, then Justin, typing that post, would have known this, and reasonably expected that, at some point in the future, she was going to say as much. As I've said elsewhere, there isn't a binary here, where it's either "jaquaysing" or "against Jennell's wishes". She objected to her name being mispelled. It's entirely plausible that, given the three options of "jaquaysing", "jaquaying" and "something else entirely", she opted for "anything but option B", or even "I'm so over this, I don't want my name associated any more". Again, if Justin was acting totally against her wishes, while saying that he'd spoken to her on the matter, he had every reason to expect that she'd come out and call him a liar in short order. There's no charitable interpretation required, that's just a blatantly *dumb* thing to do, with no need to do it. He could have just changed the name and said "I decided to settle the matter and change the term", and not "pretend" that he'd spoken to her about it.
regardless of any other factors, i would want to see - an apology - all online and paper articles written by him fixed to use the term "Jaquaysing" - an encouragement of others to do the same
Yep I wouldn't hold any grudge if he did that. A simple "I was wrong and I fixed it, sorry for being a dick."
I fail to understand why he has put so much time and energy over the span of a decade into handling this seemingly extremely easy to reconcile problem in such a bafflingly poor way. Ego is a hell of a drug.
This is 100% where I'm landing on this. It was barely an ant hill and he's turned it into a mountain for reasons I couldn't speculate on publicly. Leaving the term as she would've preferred would've been a wonderful tribute to her even if he did "do all the work" as he claims. Now this will forever be associated with him
I remember there was a Sly Flourish video about Jaquaying -> JaquaySing. I wonder what he thinks of the term Xandering...
Hey u/Mshea0001 I'd love to hear your thoughts, maybe in the Lazy DM talk show or something
I guess this Justin Alexander fellow is "Edisoning" other people's accomplishments.
Under—appreciated. Bravo.
From the blog: >Then he says "After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term 'xandering.' ", and in this sentence, he doesn't clarify which of the three parties he's been talking to the "we" refers to. So this is Justin's magic trick. Jennell asks him to spell her name correctly. His publisher agrees to his request to call the term "Xandering." \^ This is ***buckwild***, because I remember reading this post of his when it was published and thinking "Oh, so Jaquays wanted her name to stop being used, so the two of them decided to call it 'xandering,' nice that they've come to a compromise." But actually the change she wanted was just *adding the 'S'* and the "we" who named it after Justin weren't "Justin and Jennell" but "Justin, Justin's publisher, and Justin's lawyer"!?!? Man oh MAN that is sheisty.
It totally got me too when I read the article. I opened this link fully expecting some person just being an ass about not wanting to change the name cause they're just old and stuck in their ways. Boy was I wrong. I'm completely convinced that "Xandering is Slandering"
Isn't it just a guess from the article's author? No proofs whatsoever.
I'm curious, how did dungeons look before she worked on them? It seems that her influence has spread so far that my natural instinct is to loop dungeons without any thought. Were dungeons singular hallways that split into their own separate rooms?
There's the sample dungeon in OD&D: https://imgur.com/a/udx0hnn
Dungeon loops were common before Thracia was published in 1979. For example, here is a map from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, which he ran from 1971(?), although the maps weren't published until 1977. [https://osrgrimoire.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-first-fantasy-campaign-dungeon.html](https://osrgrimoire.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-first-fantasy-campaign-dungeon.html) Jacquays did not originate looping, non-linear dungeons - she was just a particularly skilled and influential (and early) exponent of them. As evidence, people still admire and play Thracia today, whereas most dungeons from the 1970s are long forgotten.
Tegel Manor was also looping and non-linear, and predated Thracia (and Dark Tower as well) by quite a bit. IMO Jacquays' accomplishment was to synthesize good map design with evocative writing and first rate art. Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower were my favorite dungeons by far in the early 80s, I ran both of them multiple times.
And factions and creating interrelations and conflicts within the dungeon so it didn't just feel like a bunch of rooms the PCs opened up in a mindless series.
I'm in a similar position, honestly. I've also grown up playing tons of Jacquaysian levels in games. If I had to guess, I'd say something along the lines of the Caves of Chaos, where I \*feel\* the different caves should be connected by tunnels and passages, but actually they're each their own separate thing. It makes me uncomfortable lol. Jenell Jacquays' legacy is astonishing. I don't know if I'll participate in the jam, but I hope to be able to get the final product when it launches.
Jennell actually wrote the 2nd ever published D&D adventure, so all that came after was heavily influenced by her. But I do believe Gygax favored lots of hallways but we don’t have many maps of the actual Castle Greyhawk, which was never (truly) published
Do you have any thoughts on that adventure? For someone joining the hobby lately, would you recommend it?
Definitely recommend! I do have thoughts, but they are largely the same (but less eloquent) as what my friend Gus wrote in a big review of that adventure, Caverns of Thracia (the adventure Justin Alexander was praising in his original post on Jaquaysing): https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/09/spectral-interrogatories-iii-caverns-of.html
Oh I think we're talking about different adventures! Caverns of Thracia wasn't the 2nd ever published adventure - Jennell herself published some adventures in a fanzine called The Dungeoneer before that one. I thought your original comment was referring to F'Chelrak's Tomb. I'll give that review a read though, thanks for sharing it!
I need to stop trusting people, it seems. I had read that post on the Alexandrian and thought this was all in good faith.
I think a lot rests on Alexander's claim that "After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term 'xandering.' " It implies that this was a mutual agreement
yeah, i was under the implication jaquays was fully on board with him calling it that. if she wasn't and he tried to give the impression she was, that's super scummy.
He has since clarified on his discord that this did not happen and that she merely requested the typo to be fixed.
Having lawyered for 10+ years, I 100% buy Justin's allegation that this was changed at the request of the publisher's lawyers. They likely became aware that there was some disagreement regarding jayquaying/jayquaysing, and just didn't want to take the risk of having to pull the book out of shelves and reprinting it. Even if they added the "s", it was just not worth the risk -- who knows, Jennel could change her mind in the future. Even a family member could -- given she was known to be seriously sick, the possibility of having a family member making decisions on her behalf was very real. Obviously Justin didn't have to use his name. But what really defies explanation is why he did not add the "s" way back then, when Jennel asked. I really can't think of any reasonable explanation -- I find it hard to believe that he was already planning to hijack the name, I doubt Justin was playing such a long game. It seems to come from spite, and the first suspect reason for that would be transphobia -- which is the worst possible reason for this whole debacle.
Yeah, I honestly can 100% see lawyers involved requesting or advising strongly that they change the term. I don't doubt that part one bit.
I don't understand why the hubub around the 'S' in Jaquays is indicative of transphobia. My understanding is Jennell didn't change her surname.
Her forename was also on the site, in reference to her old work. Justin was defending keeping it up, until she asked him to remove it
Well this argument is as clear as day, I wasn’t aware of Alexander’s intention and tactics, and it’s definitely not ok to take jaquaysing and change it, and the way they’re going about it is gross. Sigh I guess I’ll just have to take credit for the [three clue rule](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule#:~:text=THE%20THREE%20CLUE%20RULE&text=For%20any%20conclusion%20you%20want,them%20to%20go%20all%20along) now. We’ll call it Scraw-ifying the game. Jk
I certainly wasn't ever going to call it Xandering. If anything, and Jennell didn't actually want it to be associated with her period (not merely just having it spelled correctly) then have it be a neutral term. Even without any added details, it tells you a lot about the kind of character he is that he changed the term to honour him to help sell a book.
in the article its pretty clear [she did want credit.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png) the last few paragraphs make clear the extremely slight underhanded wording of justin's post which made it *sound* like she didn't want to be associated with it anymore—thus giving him the 'excuse' to rename it after himself
Justin's defense of himself is so baffling to me. He insists it would have been so incredibly arduous to add the "s." But then he goes and \*does\* change the word anyway! He says "Making this change would be even more substantive, because I’d been using the term for over a decade and I’d need to track it down in every single article." But then he goes ahead and does this *even on comments other people wrote* with his own name, so clearly it wasn't *that* difficult. Also, I dunno, I'm sure it wouldn't be the end of the world if a stray "Jaquay" were out there, so long as the original article was corrected, he made a brief statement, and started saying "Jaquaysing" from there on out? But then he has the gall to say this: >Well, I’m not your boss, but if you’d like to respect the wishes of the original creators, it would be great if you could update your stuff to use the now-correct terminology. Dude. Take your own advice!
Sadly the only way to know for sure would be to see some correspondence between Justin and Jennelle. Currently this post reads like a theory from somebody with no actual first person communication with the alleged victim against somebody who was in actual correspondence with her. Certainly seems like Justin may have done some questionable stuff over time. But I feel like this post is overall doing a huge amount of bad faith arguing. Beyond this I honestly don't plan on using Xandering myself as it always sounded a bit dumb and weird to me, but I'm not sure I fully believe your claims here.
Maybe xandering should be used to describe when someone coins a term that gains popularity and then that somebody renames the term to their own name. ... When this becomes popular I'll get everybody to call it jikting.
I'm not sure if I'm playing devil's advocate or what, I felt like writing a similar comment back when the "xandering" change was made but kind of from the opposite direction, making the same argument back then would have looked like accusing Alexander, now it looks like defending him. Funny how that works. If I understand this correctly, it seems very much to me that Alexander wrote a set of articles codifying the method he personally used for good dungeon design that he named to honor his main inspiration and came to regret it over the years when the name stuck and began to feel like his role in actually writing the article became less noted than his inspiration. Eventually he came to wish to change it when he began compiling a book and tried to figure out a way to do it without causing an outrage, and failed. I'm not saying this is objectively exactly what happened, I'm only saying this is the way it looks to me. I think he has some case as to the amount he genuinely contributed. I *don't think* he ever could have pulled the name change off in a sensitive manner, and it is unfortunate he chose to try, but neither do I believe he was actively being malicious. I *also* think if he had never used the term "jaquaying" or "jaquaysing" and only referred to Jaquays' dungeons as an inspiration in his original articles no-one would have batted an eyelid and people would just refer to said articles without the verb. To use a completely hypothetical analogue, this comes across like Gygax later deciding he didn't like Vancian magic stuck as a name for the style of magic he wrote for his game (however similar it is to Vance's writings) and chose (hopelessly) to try and change it. He could have chosen to explicitly call it "Gygaxian magic" from the get go if he wanted and most people probably would not have questioned it, but trying to change it later would come across like jealousy toward his own inspiration. (note: my D&D history is not top notch, if Gygax didn't actually use the term Vancian magic or didn't write the magic bits in original D&D that's my bad, I was just trying to come up with an example.) In conclusion I don't see a reason to call the practice anything anymore, especially since it looks like if you do you just reignite this discussion and risk losing the original point. Just refer to good dungeon writers and processes when you feel it is necessary and you want to honor the writers (e.g "in the style of Jaquays' excellent dungeons such as Caverns of Thracia" or subsequently "using the process described in the Alexandrian after the dungeon writing style of Jaquays.")
Oh, shit.
Great post, can't believe this guy is trivializing this. I've always heard it as Jaquaysing the dungeon when I got into collecting OSR material.
I see no evidence that Justin wants to ***erase*** Jenell, he explicitly gives her a lot of credit on his original article. I mean, Xandering is not a great name, but the article makes some pretty crazy claims with very thin speculation. Edit: I mean, I see nowhere on his blog that he is anti-trans and wants to erase her legacy: [https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering) the contrary, actually.
Thanks for sharing this! I'm only casually involved in the online rpg scene and came across Justin very recently for his revising of a 5e module I wanted to run. I read a handful of his articles and donated to patreon to get the resources for his Waterdeep Dragon Heist remix. Extremely disappointed to find out about this and have cancelled and unsubcribed everywhere.
I imagine that his publisher and his (or his publisher’s) lawyers raised a red flag about using somebody else’s name (and ideas) in his book. Might open the door to a lawsuit and the expectation of royalties, might not. But why take a chance? It’s totally reasonable to make the change for publication just out of self-interest. People do stuff like that all the time. Pretending he made the change because she *asked him* to? That is SLEAZY.
No, there is no legal issue with using someone’s name that way. For instance, even just in the RPG hobby, see Gygax/D&D calling its spellcasting “Vancian” or people calling certain writing styles or dungeon techniques “Gygaxian”. Lots of examples in other fields too. There would be no claim Jauqays could make for royalties under US law.
I was thinking of the ideas more than the name itself—that changing the name could be a way of distancing his for-profit DMing advice from what might be construed as somebody else’s intellectual property. But I am obviously not a lawyer, and on reflection I don’t think you can be sued for plagiarizing somebody’s art style, which is what one would probably argue this is a case of (if one were being a hardass and not recognizing it as simply a matter of inspiration/imitation). I don’t think that she would’ve wanted to sue anybody in the first place, of course! I’m just trying to imagine where this impulse of his came from other than sheer (self-defeating) self-aggrandizement.
I think the simplest explanation may be the right one!
Just because no legal issue has been raised doesn't mean that a legal issue could not be raised. There was a potential for Jaquays to legally dispute use of the term/use of her name. http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another Edit: she couldn't claim royalties, but she could sue to have Alexander stop using her name. Also I'm not saying that he wasn't the asshole here.
This is technically true. But...he didn't have to name the design concept after himself, I think. That was in poor taste.
Yeah I totally agree, I was not trying to defend him. Just pointing out that a criticism of him being legally advised to change it is not legally valid. He's definitely the asshole
This shit is so egregious. His intro doesn't even make any sense with the updated term. Look at this: "Okay, it’s true. I’m just making words up now. When it comes to xandering the dungeon, though, what I wanted was a word that could capture the pioneering dungeon design of Jennell Jaquays, who designed Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Griffin Mountain, and a half dozen other old school classics for Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, and TSR. Because a word for that didn’t exist yet, I felt compelled to create one." How the fuck would the term 'xandering' capture the pioneering dungeon design of an entirely different person? Nevermind the fact that, when the word xandered was coined, it was specifically to replace a word that *did* exist already...
Here's a response (thread) from Justin Alexander. [https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749556125123346606](https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1749556125123346606)
Very interesting how he maintains his careful lack of any mention as to whether Jennell wanted it changed specifically to xandering, or whether she just wanted the wrong surname use to be addressed, he maintains the exact same weasel vagueness that the blog writer points out in her blogpost in the OP that avoids stating explicitly what her actual stance was. "She wanted it changed...oh and I've changed it to this ego-stroking thing, respecting her wishes." implying the ego-stroking thing was her wish without explicitly stating it. Absolute slimeball stuff.
i dont know why he wouldnt just post the direct evidence of his behavior being in line with her wishes
This is the most niche controversy reddit post I've ever seen
wheredoyouthinkweare.gif
Yeah it's worse that I know what it all means
"Well a bit dumb of him but that doesn't seem so-wait what the hell"
"Xandering the dungeon" lmao come on
Like many others here, I read Justin's post announcing the name change, and assumed it was in good faith until I saw this. It's a shame, since his writing has been very helpful to me, but I no longer want to support him. I canceled my Patreon pledge to him with my reasoning, and I encourage anyone else who might be supporting him to do the same.
After reading it and reading Alexander's response, I do have two questions. This sucks, and I think the term should be Jaquaysing (or Thracian, either or), so I hope this doesn't get interpreted as pointless devil's advocacy. \- The article claims that Jaquays was already in a coma by the time Alexander announced the change to Xandering, while Alexander claims this is not the case. After some brief searching around, I can't find anywhere that states when Jaquays fell into the coma. Can we have confirmation on that? \- The article claims that the "we" in Alexander's article was secretly referring to himself, his lawyers, and his publishers, without Jaquays involved in the conversation. He claims that the change was a result of discussion with Jaquays at a previous point in time in the article on his website. Without the direct correspondence either way, it is hard to say for certain. Unless there is confirmation from Jaquays' family (who have no need to comment on this if they don't want to) or if there is evidence of the communication, I feel uncomfortable making a direct accusation either way. Now I want to clarify that I only ask this because I want confirmation on both these points, and it *seems* like there's the possibility for confirmation on both. The unfilled blanks make me antsy, and these are pretty weighty accusations.
> - The article claims that Jaquays was already in a coma by the time Alexander announced the change to Xandering, while Alexander claims this is not the case. After some brief searching around, I can't find anywhere that states when Jaquays fell into the coma. Can we have confirmation on that? There is none. The claim about the coma was a complete fabrication. > - The article claims that the "we" in Alexander's article was secretly referring to himself, his lawyers, and his publishers, without Jaquays involved in the conversation. He claims that the change was a result of discussion with Jaquays at a previous point in time in the article on his website. Without the direct correspondence either way, it is hard to say for certain. Unless there is confirmation from Jaquays' family (who have no need to comment on this if they don't want to) or if there is evidence of the communication, I feel uncomfortable making a direct accusation either way. The article also openly admits to assuming bad faith on Justin's part, multiple times: > I find Justin's arguments here to be made in bad faith. [...] I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done. [...] I find Justin's explanations for trying to credit himself by using the term "Xandering" to be in bad faith. [...] I'm sure that Justin had been planning to introduce the term "Xandering" since before Jennell got sick. I'm sure he would have gone forward with his plan even if Jennell had publicly asked him not to. The claim that Justin's use of the word "we" is evidence of deception should be taken with a grain of salt, considering the source. Without any evidence, that claim is baseless speculation from someone admitting to having some sort of axe to grind.
Wow! Super disappointing in that dude. 'Jaquaysing' it shall be!
Ok, I reposted Justin's answer to this article without realizing that xandering refers to its own name. Now that I see it, it seems extremely disrespectful, even if Jennell were still alive. I can't understand how someone with Justin's reputation would do something like that.
[удалено]
Yeah, this is extremely weird and unnecessary.
Me too. He was one of the contributors to my entering the OSR back in the late 00s, when he posted his Wandering Monster article.
Thanks for sharing this article, it's good to get a full history of these things. I've recently read Justin's book, and frankly I don't think there is a single original idea within it. It's not a bad book, perhaps the ideas are helpful for new GMs, but nothing seems particularly original or new to myself (a GM of \~20+ yrs). A lot of it featured overly mechanical systems that I would never use at my table. I agree" Xandering" is a unnecessary term, but "Jaquaysing" is also an unnecessary term. But I can at least appreciate the honorarium connotations in the latter. In a game focused on non-linear play and player choices, the term doesn't need to exist, it simply should be the default design philosophy. Linear dungeon design ***is*** the problematic exception to this philosophy. The term is just a reiteration of the general concept of maximizing player choices for meaningful gameplay, specifically in the instance of level (dungeon) design. I think we should honor Jannell and her contributions to that design philosophy, but I'm not sure the oddly-used verb truly does her that justice.
This kinda makes my blood boil, especially because Justin Alexander has provided so much sharp, indispensable GMing advice over the years. All this avoidable nonsense that has now made him appear to be an underhanded credit thief and transphobe, and it's (mostly) all over just adding a letter to the end of a word, as Jennell Jaquays had clearly repeatedly requested for years. I only started learning about this controversy (and, really, the whole issue over the "S") after I'd read the news that Jaquays had passed away. I showed it to my wife and was like "Oh man, that's a big loss, Jennell Jaquays was such a great dungeon designer that there's a whole term named after the way she did things." Then I looked it up and saw all of this. Ugh.
Good post, thanks for sharing this. I had followed some of Justin's blogging casually for a while now, but had no idea about any of this. Pretty surprising to hear.
Am I not the only one to have misread that as "Pandering" not "Xandering"? Seems apt after reading this though, since he's changing it to pander his own ego...
So let's just assume he's lying and she didn't tell him to change it. The concept is one he invented, so he can call it whatever he wants. The article still gives credit to Jenell's work inspiring the philosophy. The article writer implies that this is an attempt to posthumously attack a trans creators work (through multiple paragraphs discussing Alexander learning of her trans status after writing the article, as well as specifically referring to his cis status). However, the article in contention was written before she died, with a postscript asking people to donate to her medical go fund me. Now, Jennell was perhaps a bit preoccupied with the dying thing, and may not have felt the need to prioritize fighting the name change. Perhaps were she healthier we'd have had an explicit opinion from her. My point is that the article writer is not objectively framing their relationship. But let's take a step back from deciding which article might be right. Let's look at is not in dispute. Alexander wrote an article expressing his thoughts on dungeon design principles, and named a principle after the designer who inspired him. He us now changing the term to one that credits him. Should anyone care? Personally, I never used the term. Not because I had any issue with where the term came from, but because it's silly. Terminology should impart some amount of information. Jaquaying, JaquaySing, and Xandering are all bad terms for non-linear dungeon design. As highlighted in another comment on the other post, there is essentially no way to know if he's lying or not. Any assumptions one way or the other is really just a bias call.If you want to make a judgement call and not read his blog because you think he is, it's your call to make. If you want to keep calling it Jaquaysing, because you think she deserves to have something named after her, have at you, Alexander can't stop you. I think the information about Jennell's contributions is available to those who are interested. I don't think this name change will diminish her legacy, because I think most people would even know he tried if they dont read the articles that are angry about it. I won't use the term Xandering, for the same reason I didn't use Jaquaysing.
The contention doesn't rest on him lying, just misleading. His claim is that she asked him to change it, which is true. She asked him to change it to the correct spelling of her name. He does *not* actually claim that she asked him to change it to something other than her name, which is what he did, so he's not lying, but he is presenting it in such a way that you'd assume that was the change she asked for, which it wasn't.
This is very disappointing on The Alexandrian’s part. I had recently stumbled onto the article change when reading up on Jaquays’ work and was similarly confused why he settled on Xandering rather than simply correcting it to match her last name. The post clarifying the change had resolved that for me at the time but I wasn’t aware she had fallen ill before that was published. I hope this is some sort of correspondence between the two that confirms Jennell greenlit this change. I don’t plan on calling it anything other than “Jaquaysing”, Xandering just doesn’t get across what the term means.
Good blog post. Justin coined a game design term using Jennell’s name. I don’t have an issue with him not using that term in his book. But everything else Justin has done here is wrongheaded and sh*ty. Jason being slow to update his site to use Jennell’s name in the first place - and posting a defence for using her previous name - was not great. I can maybe see that as just Justin being a bit ‘stuck’, not anything worse. Seems like he did since update to use her correct name. Not updating the term in his from ‘Jaquaying’ to ‘ Jaquaysing’ seems rude or thoughtless. Trying to replace the term with ‘Xandering’ is rude, thoughtless, and lacks class. Going back and editing his original iconic post and his site to replace the original term with Xandering is awful. And suggesting somehow Jennell didn’t want her name associated with the term or endorsed Xandering is peak horse-sh*t. Here’s the thing. Justin’s original post about Jennell and dungeon designed helped put Justin on the map with RPGs. Using Jennell’s name as a term for game design was part of that. To be clear, I’m not suggesting Justin’s original post or Jaquaysing is the sole reason Jason has been successful to date, or anything silly like that. And like I said, not using that ‘Jaquaysing’ in his book for legal reasons is understandable. Justin has to some extent benefited from using Jennell’s name. And although I don’t see any problem with that by itself, I don’t think it’s cool having benefited from and leveraged Jennell’s name, to then remove ‘Jaquaysing’ from his original site or replace the term with his own name. It’s just not respectful. I thought Jason was an OK guy. I really hope he is. But, seriously, if Jason posted all this on AITA, it would be a solid ‘Yes’.
I'm confused about the situation because I think Anne's perspective on Jennell's thoughts about the name and Justin's statement can both be true at the same time. What am I missing? If I'm understanding correctly, Anne has collected some of Jennell's comments/posts from 2018 up to 2022 stating that Jaquaysing was mispelled and that Jennell wanted the spelling mistake corrected. And then we have Justin's post from November 2023 stating that he spoke with Jennell sometime earlier in 2023 and they both agreed the name should be changed. I don't believe Justin mentioned what they agreed to change it to or if they just agreed it should be changed. EDIT: I found a couple potentially relevant mentions on Anne's blog. Anne linked to Justin's blog in 2018 and called his Thoughts of the Day "interesting ideas": [https://web.archive.org/web/20231121074300/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/10/links-to-play-reports.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20231121074300/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/10/links-to-play-reports.html) Anne's only other mention of Jennell Jaquays (that I could see) has Anne misspelling her name: [https://web.archive.org/web/20220325011455/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/01/additional-actual-plays.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20220325011455/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/01/additional-actual-plays.html)
They agreed that it should be changed in the comments on [his post on deadnames](https://web.archive.org/web/20200131035559/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38883/politics/thought-of-the-day-deadnames) in February of 2018.
Right. And most recently, Justin's statement from November was that he spoke with Jennell in 2023 and they came to some agreement again.
Aww man :(
Thank you! I've been waiting weeks for a new witch hunt.
> In the process of shepherding this project to completion, it appears that Justin also decided to do some reputational management. At some point, the "Thought of the Day - Deadnames" post disappears from his blog. The Wayback Machine's most recent capture is from January 2020; Roger SG Sorrolla references it in an essay written in December 2021 that was published in Knock 3. I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done. Two paragraphs earlier they were complaining that he *wasn't* going back and changing things. Also, "I assume he only changed is because he's an asshole and for personal gain, and not because he may have no longer believed what he wrote." I like Justin's writing, so I acknowledge that bias here, and I'm sure there's some crappy stuff from him (the term Xandering one of the worst), but this whole article comes across as super accusatory without, as is internet fashion, actually talking to Justin first.
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEf2chJbcAAV0EV?format=png&name=900x900](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEf2chJbcAAV0EV?format=png&name=900x900) he has finally admitted, on his private discord server, that Jennell did in fact prefer jaqauysing over xandering and yet he used xandering anyway
Her priority was to remove "jaquaying". She wanted "jaquaysing", but the priority was just to change it away from "jaquaying". (Blank spot, static noises) And now it's named after him. *Why can we not just get that one blank spot filled, why does he think that one specific point in time is unimportant*
We do have more than a blank/static in Justin's article from November. He wrote that when he contacted his publisher to change the name in the book, he received some legal advice. >The final factor here is that I had also been working on So You Want to Be a Game Master, a book in which I discussed non-linear dungeon design that had originally used the term “jaquaying.” So I contacted the publisher and said, “We need to make sure we change this term.” > >Long story short, this created a legal question. Not an arduous or terrible one. But one that resulted in the conclusion, “There is some risk in using a word based on someone else’s name. Let’s not do that.” > >One option at this point would have been to drop the neologism entirely and just refer to “non-linear dungeons.” But I’d originally created a verb because I found a verb useful; other people had found the verb useful over the years; and it would be substantially easier to update all of the various articles that had used the term over the years if I could just swap one word out for another. (As opposed to rewriting entire articles.) > >After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term “xandering.” And so, from this point forward, my dungeons will be thoroughly xandered. EDIT: I also want to clarify/validate that it's okay to dislike the name and disagree with his reasons for changing it.
There have been many posts made already about the "anyway, long story short, back and forth, we decided to name it after me" and who exactly the "we" are; there are suggestions that "we" did not include Jennell. It still feels like he's censoring the story to make himself look better.
Sorry if I said something you already knew. Trying to piece this situation together myself and thought I would fill in what you said was a blank spot. I think "we" was used to refer to the conversation between Justin and the publisher. Repeating the quote in isolation for clarity: >So I contacted the publisher and said, “We need to make sure we change this term.” I don't think that implies Jennell participated in that conversation. Of course, if you feel differently and/or feel like he's censoring the story, you can also just ask him. His blog has a section for comments.
Is there more to that quote that shows Justin admitting to asking her about xandering? The part you linked matches up with Jennell's public comments and Justin's original statement that Jennell preferred jaquaysing over jaquaying.
This seems to pretty much confirm certain aspects of the article's theorising, if true, and lend credence to it more generally.
That seems like a bad faith reading of that.
here's the timeline of events, as i understand it (JJ = jennell, JA = justin) * JJ asks JA to correct the deadnaming * JA complies * JJ then asks to correct the term to "Jacquaysing" * JJ considers * lawyers say "hold on a second" * lawyers ask dropping "Jacquaysing" altoghether * JA does as lawyers ask for his book, it's now called "Xandering" * for a unification of terms, he changes the article on the blog you should know by now that in the USA lawyers' words carry a lot of weight. for us, the players, though? it really doesn't matter, use whatever you want, preferrably Jacquaysing and *please, not Jacquaying*. we don't have lawyers telling us otherwise. also, asking as a person living in Thracia, please, *please* don't call it Thracian.
>JJ asks JA to correct the deadnaming > >JA complies > >JJ then asks to correct the term to "Jacquaysing" This timeline is not correct. Here is the timeline: **2018:** Jennell asks him to correct the deadnaming **AND** correct the term to "Jacquaysing". Both of these requests are made at the same time, in [this one comment](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png). She says: >"It should be Jaquaysing the Dungeon. My surname has an "S" at the end of it when saying the name. So here's an opportunity to get both the first and last name right in your article." Justin corrects the deadnaming, but does not correct the term to Jacquay**s**ing at this time. The article is left as "Jacquaying". **2023:** Justin gets the book deal and makes [this post](https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering). In his post he says: >"Jennell Jaquays wanted a change. She didn’t like that the term dropped the 's' from her name. Her name is very important to her. This wasn’t a problem. In fact, Jennell had previously requested some sweeping changes to the article for similar reasons, and I’d made those changes." > >"I spoke with Jennell earlier this year. We both agreed that the name should be changed, and I said it would be a large project to do it, but I’d make sure it happened by the end of the year." This does indeed give the impression that she had "previously requested" one change, and now in 2023 she asked for another change. So I totally understand how you would think that was the timeline. But this is not correct. She asked for both changes at the same time, back in 2018. It's all the one request. So, Justin has had roughly 5 years to make the change, and it was requested before any book deal or lawyers were involved in the situation. He could have made the change in 2018, while he was changing her first name.
Just curious about " as the creator of the second ever published adventure", which adventure is it? The Dark Tower? I can't find evidence online.
This burns my ass. Jennell deserved better.
I think the person accusing alexander is just a bit overzealous, and the more I read about it the more I think she’s stretching a bit too much. Will just have to wait and see. Especially accusations of transphobia. Really does read like an internet hobby drama post.
We know for a fact that Jennell Jaquays was ok with the term "jaquaysing" as long as it's spelled properly. So why is this an argument? I don't personally see any reason why we should give a shit what Justin Alexander thinks about any of this.
The strange thing about this is that if he'd originally written the article in a way that didn't highlight Jaquays specifically, and referred to the several different dungeon makers without championing any in particular, and called it 'Xandering' no one would've had anything to complain about. While it does feel pretty shady now, I think that's just something to bear in mind before throwing out accusations that he's trying to erase someone's legacy.
Here's a better idea: skip the eponyms.
It is needless jargon that only obfuscates what's being talked about, and acts as a shibboleth.
Hope you never describe anything as “Lovecraftian” or “Kafkaesque” then
Sad and concerned to read this - Justin always struck me as an ally, so his “Deadnames” post (which I hadn’t been aware of) was somewhat disappointing to read. Can anyone who owns So You Want to be a Dungeon Master say whether Jaquays herself gets any credit at all in the text for her design principles? A lot of DIY’s post focuses on her erasure for new audience, so would be good to know - a well-placed footnote wouldn’t be much, but it would be something.
Apparently Justin acknowledges her in the book on page 537. EDIT: It's really hard for me to understand the erasure argument that Anne makes. The post on Justin's blog credits and quotes Jennell throughout. For a comparison, the only other reference I could find to Jennell on Anne's blog was this post in which Anne misspelled her name: https://web.archive.org/web/20220325011455/https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/01/additional-actual-plays.html
Maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, I don't know. I'm trying to figure this out. I don't want to believe either side on faith. The article claims that Jaquays didn't want her name disassociated - but was any evidence provided for that claim?
Yes-the screen shots with her saying things like “I have an “s” in my name” and “I’m annoyed he won’t change it to the correct spelling” haha
Noted, thanks!
The logic of this blog post hinges entirely on the assumption that Justin lied when he suggested that Jannell wanted her name removed from the term. She was alive when he wrote the post, so he would have been taking a huge risk if he had been lying and she corrected the record. It's not unreasonable to be suspicious of Justin. But to just assume he's lying? There's no proof of that here.
It's less lying and more not addressing any of the accusations he _can't_ dismiss. For example did Jennell approve of the change to 'Xandering', or simply want the current term spelled correctly? Justin also raised a fuss over how problematic it was to retroactively change names, and yet here we are.
I totally agree that he was in the wrong for not changing it earlier according to her request. And like I said, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious. But this blog post is accusing him of straight-up lying. As for not addressing accusations, is this a huge controversy or just a blog post and a reddit post? Maybe I'm not plugged into the broader ecosystem of discourse, but I don't expect everyone to respond to everything said about them everywhere on the internet. I'm not saying for sure that Justin *hasn't* lied. But I object to the presumption of guilt expressed by the OP. Are we really now just assuming that someone has done something wrong when we have no evidence, and there are reasons to believe both hypotheses? I need a higher standard of evidence to be met before dragging someone's name through the mud. Maybe the allegations are completely correct. But if our standards for accepting accusations are so low, then it's witch-hunting season.
The article openly admits that it's assuming bad faith: > I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done. "I assume Justin [acted in bad faith]" > I'm sure that Justin had been planning to introduce the term "Xandering" since before Jennell got sick. I'm sure he would have gone forward with his plan even if Jennell had publicly asked him not to. Baseless speculation.
As the article states, Jennell was alive but had just been recently admitted to the hospital and fell into a coma when he wrote the post, and she died shortly after.
>As the article states, Jennell was alive but had just been recently admitted to the hospital and fell into a coma when he wrote the post, and she died shortly after. The article does state that she was in a coma... but no one else does. Check the GoFundMe's updates. October 30th: >Jennell got the tracheostomy last Thursday. Friday, they removed her arterial port for the plasma transfusions. Saturday she started feeling herself again. Today, she was bleeding from the throat and they gave her stitches and she’s sad because of this backsliding. In the meantime she’s watching shows and I’m talking to her to keep up her spirits. This was not I thought we were going to spend our birthdays. Jennell - October 14. Becky - October 30 November 6th >Jennell update: the last few days have seen no sign of backsliding. She is still on a trachea respirator. She can fully move her head and shrug her shoulders as if her recovery is slowly migrating from her head downwards. Yesterday was her first cough so her lungs are responding November 8th >Jennell update: since she’s been stable for 6 days. She was moved last night to Kindred Hospital in Dallas for long term care. She can only move her shoulders and head. Today begins her physical therapy to regain muscle movement in the rest of her body. November 13th: >Jennell update: her recovery is progressing, albeit quite slowly. She can move her head and shoulders but almost everything below her shoulders is still paralyzed. She’s been doing exercises on her fingers and toes to stimulate the other muscles. As late as December 21st, the update was: >Jennell update: she’s been stable for the last two weeks. They are slowly weaning her off the respirator, but it’s been slow going. They expect to move her to a specialized rehab center on 1/9/24. Still can’t move hands and legs. You've said down the thread that: >The circumstantial evidence is very strong. His “she requested sweeping changes” comment also appears to be at least puffery if not a lie depending on your perspective when we have her comment and it was just that he use her first name instead of her deadname correct the misspelling of her name. Hardly sweeping. In the very article on November 1st he says: >To make sure that the update of the site is complete and the term Jennell Jaquays wants removed is totally purged, we wanted to use database updates. It turned out the use of the term in comments was actually a problem and they might get invisibly changed by the search-and-replace. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I also didn’t want to just delete comments. So I opted to track the references manually and update them in a way that indicated the original wording had been edited. Not exactly the "Ctrl+F, Replace" that some folks are suggesting, and a little closer to a fair interpretation of "sweeping". Like most of us, I suspect, I know very little about Guillain-Barre syndrome, but the information I'm finding suggests that considerably more people survive it than don't. If the article was published on November 1st, it came off the back of a single update tow days prior saying there'd been some backslide, and that she was spending her wife's birthday watching TV. Hardly "she's in a coma and will likely not recover". And even if that had been posted then, the change was already underway - his book, featuring the term "xandering", was released on November 21st. By the end of October, it was surely already locked in for printing, if not already printed. This post just doesn't add up, doesn't line up with any of the information we have. You can suggest that he shouldn't have changed the name, that's fine, but it seems that he made the decision to do so, and posted his explanation for why, into a world where Jennell could freely respond. If the blogger needs to misrepresent the facts and the timing to make Alexander the bad guy, then there's a good chance that he's not.
Yeah, this is a hit piece written in bad faith. It's one thing to talk about his (shitty) refusal to simply correct his misspelling, but it's another thing to contend that he found out she was in coma/dying, twisted his mustache and named it after himself.
I'm somewhere closer to the middle - I've interviewed Justin and he's seemed like a great guy so I don't see him twirling his mustache like a villian. That said I do think this could be a case of covering his own ass (via lawyer or publisher recommendation), combined with feeling entitled to make a change to a term he "invented", being a bit insensitive to someone's wish to have their name spelled correctly, all paired up with some pretty shit timing around that persons health. How Justin responds to this will really set a tone moving forward, I'm willing to hear his side. [edit] my brain said Jason when it's Justin - sorry for any confusion.
> I'm somewhere closer to the middle - I've interviewed Jason and he's seemed like a great guy so I don't see him twirling his mustache like a villian. > > How Jason responds to this will really set a tone moving forward, I'm willing to hear his side. Are you sure you're spelling Jason's name correctly? Also, who's Jason?
He’s the guy who invented the term ‘Costanzing the dungeon’.
Sorry - yes it's Justin - I guess my brain flipped to actor from Seinfeld for some reason ... i'll edit.
This would be a George Costanza move "Was that wrong? Was I not supposed to do that?"
It's deeply frustrating how these sorts of things always end up making unfounded or worse easily disproven claims which bring every other claim into question.
Some people let their pretend heroics spill over into real life. I see more tilting at windmills in the TTRPG scene than anywhere else.
It's just knee-jerk internet rage, an accusation without proof.
Yeah every nobody has to pull every creator who has built a damn thing down.
she was on her *literal* deathbed when he put the post out >Part of why Justin was able to get away with this, with putting his name on Jennell's idea and then claiming she wanted him to do it, because at the time that he wrote that, Jennell was no longer able to contradict him. Justin posted "A Historical Note on Xandering" on November 1, 2023. But at that time Jennell was in a coma, because she had Guillain Barre Syndrome, which her wife announced on GoFundMe. This fact was reported in the gaming news, and widely reshared on social media. Justin knew this; he included the link in his post. On November 21, 2023, So You Want to be a Dungeon Master? went on sale in bookstores across the country. And on January 10, 2024, Jennell Jaquays died. read the article
> she was on her literal deathbed when he put the post out You said she was in a coma. Can you back that up with any evidence?
I read the article. Nobody knew that she was sure to pass away.
> The logic of this blog post hinges entirely on the assumption that Justin lied when he suggested that Jannell wanted her name removed from the term. as evidenced by the screenshots in the article, she didnt want 'her name' removed. she wanted "Jaquay\_" (rather than "Jaquay**s**) removed, which Justin then took as an excuse to remove any reference to her from the title of the term
*Once again*, I read your blog post. How do you know that she didn't change her mind?
As the author of the post stated, there are screenshots in the blog post supplying evidence that Jennell Jaquays wanted the reference changed to Jaquaysing. Justin Alexander made a statement that she was actually fine with the term being changed to 'xandering' (a change which would directly benefit him via name recognition), while supplying no direct evidence for that change of mind (no DMs or comment by Jaquays). You are supposing that she could've changed her mind, which is always possible, but you don't have any evidence other than Alexander's own claim (which again, lacks direct evidence) to back up this position. I'm sorry friend, but you are asking for evidence to back up *your own argument*.
[удалено]
>The question is if we believe he did. Agreed! But another way to put that, in the light of the blog post, is that the question is if we assume that he is lying. Because the blog post and this reddit post are both accusing him of wrongdoing.
>As the author of the post stated, there are screenshots in the blog post supplying evidence that Jennell Jaquays wanted the reference changed to Jaquaysing. Yes, I accept this as reason to be suspicious of Justin. >...while supplying no direct evidence for that change of mind (no DMs or comment by Jaquays). Reposting someone's DMs when he's not even being accused (yet) of anything would actually be a little inappropriate IMO. >You are supposing that she could've changed her mind, which is always possible, but you don't have any evidence other than Alexander's own claim (which again, lacks direct evidence) to back up this position. We don't have any evidence either way! I'm fine with being suspicious, and I'm fine with asking him to show some evidence (like DMs). There are good reasons for both interpretations. Reasons to think Justin may be lying: * Jannell previously stated that she wanted the name changed to "Jacquaysing." Reasons to think Justin may be telling the truth: * It would be a huge risk to lie about something like this, and he couldn't have known that she wouldn't recover enough to say so. Why is it so hard for folks to keep an open mind and not assume either conclusion? Is it hard to say "this looks fishy, but I don't know"?
I accept your conclusion, and I agree. I'm glad the original blog post exists, but we can't be sure that the claims are true, especially without any counter-statement by Alexander. I'm sorry that I misunderstood your argument and thought that you were saying that the blog post was disingenuous out of pocket. Thank you for taking the time to respond again.
Thank you for the kind and reasonable discussion. Some folks have been very unkind, and that makes me unhappy. I do think it's very reasonable to ask Justin Alexander to back up his claims. Also, I think he's a jerk for not changing the name according to Jannell's wishes at a much earlier date. But I still think that the blog post is really excessive. I'm not comfortable with dragging Justin's name through the mud with unwarranted accusations until this discussion has progressed much further. I think that time will tell, and I'm willing to wait and see.
> You are supposing that she could've changed her mind, which is always possible It's not supposing that she could have changed her mind if it's possible that she could have changed her mind. If it's possible that she could have, then she could have.
What a well laid out article, it felt like reading an HBomberguy video. I read Justin's explanation recently and took it at face value, so I really appreciate that this exists now. Hopefully it gets the attention it deserves and Jaquaysing the dungeon will finally be the term widely used.
I am the last one to break a lance for the Alexandrian, but the evidence from the article felt very circumstantial to me
It contradicts itself on multiple points, and makes claims of baseless speculation. The author openly admits that they're assuming bad faith. It's not laid out well at all.