Well I succeeded in installing 3D accelerated OpenGl onto a Debian base. Unfortunately as this was by nature trial and error I did not document the steps. I can however give some hints to others who may wish to follow suit.
a) Set up a minimal debian gnome (don't bother trying to install vmware tools - you cannot do so as the header files are missing from the debian repository!)
b) Set up an unstable edition by adding repositories to apt and #-out the stable ones. I also added experimental and multimedia. do a full upgrade
c) Find out how to add a new kernel using Liquorix - I added 3.8 but you can add 3.9 if you feel adventurous. Add the appropriate header files then install vmware tools.
d) Next follow the steps in this link http://evansosenko.com/personal/vmware-opengl-3d-acceleration-with-vmwgfx-in-kubuntu-linux but omit the ubuntu kernel steps (they don't work anyway). You will need to carefully read any make error messages as three or four depends have been missed out. Some Google searches will then be required to get the appropriate files some of which need to be installed from experimental.
e) shutdown having installed the vmwgfx driver, and enable graphics acceleration.
f) Startup and you should get the full Gnome3 screen rather than the fall-back
