TSR The Full & Glorious History of NuTSR

Because the Saga of TSR3 has been ongoing for a while, with many landmarks, I thought I'd do a quick timeline for those who haven't had the time (or, frankly, inclination) to keep up with the whole palaver.

As multiple entities refer to themselves as TSR, I will use the nomenclature (1), (2) etc. to distinguish them. However, all the companies below simply use the term "TSR".

The principle people involved with this story are Ernie Gygax (one of Gary Gygax's children), Justin LaNasa (a tattooist, weapon designer, and briefly a politician who refers to himself as Sir Justin LaNasa*), Stephen Dinehart (co-creator of Giantlands with James Ward), and -- later -- Michael K. Hovermale, TSR3's PR officer.

Also linked to TSR3 is the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Much of TSR3’s commercial business appears to be conducted via the museum.

• 1974. TSR1 creates D&D.
• 1997. TSR1 is bought by WotC (WotC is bought by Hasbro in 1999).
• November 2012. Jayson Elliot registers the TSR2 name as a trademark to launch Gygax Magazine. Luke and Ernie Gygax are involved.
• November 2015. Gail Gygax sues TSR2. Luke and Ernie Gygax are forced to leave. Gygax magazine is forced to close by Gail Gygax. The company continues to sell the Top Secret RPG under the name TSR2.
• October 2020. The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum claims ownership of various TSR logos and tries to license them to OSR publishers.
• June 19th 2021. TSR3 announces itself with a press release. It claims to be the original TSR1 back again, under the leadership of Ernie Gygax, Gary's son, announcing that "the band is back together". Also involved are Justin LaNasa and Stephen Dinehart. Their flagship product is "GIANTLANDS" by James Ward and Stephen Dinehart.
• June 22nd 2021. TSR3 announces it is rebooting Star Frontiers, a game which WotC owns and is currently selling online. They registered the trademark back in April 2021.
• June 24th 2021. Ernie Gygax does a YouTube interview, and I transcribe it. The interview begins a controversy which rages online and includes digs at newer gamers, WotC, and trans people.
• June 25th 2021. It transpires that TSR2's Jayson Elliot forgot to renew the trademark registration, at which point his former partner Ernie Gygax, along with Justin LaNasa & Stephen Dinehart, swept in and grabbed it before notifying him. They offer to let him use it for a nominal fee.

• Late June 2021. TSR3 embarks on an astonishing social media campaign where they tell people who don't like Gary Gygax not to play D&D, call a trans person on Twitter 'disgusting', thank the 'woke' because sales are up, insult Luke Gygax, and more. They also block or insult those who question them on Twitter.
• Late June 2021. Various companies distance themselves from TSR3, including Gen Con, TSR2 (who rebrand themselves Solarian Games), GAMA, and various individuals such as Luke Gygax, Tim Kask, Jeff Dee, and more. TSR3 responds to being banned from Gen Con by claiming that they created the convention.

• June 30th 2021. TSR3 blames the widespread pushback it is getting on WotC, accusing it of mounting a coordinated assault on them. In the same tweets they claim that they created the TTRPG business. Ernie Gygax and Stephen Dinehart then deactivate their Twitter accounts. Months later it transpires that this is the date they received a C&D from WotC regarding their use of their IP.

• July 2nd 2021. TSR3's Twitter account claims now to be run by a new Public Relations Officer called Michael.
• July 6th 2021. TSR3's Michael has not been heard of since he announced himself prompting a widespread online search for him.
• July 7th 2021. TSR3 rebrands its website 'Wonderfiled'(sic) as Stephen Dinehart publicly blocks WotC and Hasbro on Twitter and announces he is "breaking up with them" because of politics.

• July 9th 2021. Yet another TSR website appears! This one we call TSR 3.5. TSR3 has split into two -- Wonderfiled (later Wonderfilled), and TSR Hobbies. Stephen Dinehart runs the former, which features the GIANTLANDS project, while Ernie Gygax and Justin LaNasa run the latter.
• July 9th 2021. With the new TSR3.5, the company claims that an unnamed individual was running the Twitter accounts of the company, it's affiliate companies, and the individuals involved with the company, and that all posts on any of those social media accounts should now be considered "invalid".
• July 26th 2021. TSR3.5 announces TSR CON to be held on the July 4th weekend in the Horticultural Hall at Lake Geneva, WI, the name location as Gen Con launched in 1968. TSR announces that "TSR CON will always be here" (it never takes places there).

• September 27th 2021. TSR3's Michael K. Hovermale shows up here on EN World.
• October 14th 2021. Michael Hovermale announces that their Star Frontiers game became available and then sold out before they could announce it. Nobody can find anybody who bought this product.
• October 15th 2021. LaNasa calls EN World a 'very big company' and publicly accuses me of making all this up. I publicly ask TSR's representative, Michael K. Hovermale, three times what I've allegedly made up, but get no reply.
• October 20th 2021. TSR Con is moved from the July 4th weekend to March 24-27, the exact same dates as Gary Con. The venue is moved from the Horticultural Hall to the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. A graphic on its website promises that they will not be checking vaccinations or asking people to wear face masks.

• December 6th 2021. A record is found showing that WotC is taking action against TSR3.5 - an administrative procedure to cancel its registration of the trademarks it is using, citing - among other things - fraud.
• December 7th 2021. After a long quiet period, TSR3.5 launches an IndieGogo campaign to "stop Wizards of the Coast". It files for a court declaration of its ownership of the TSR trademarks. The crowdfunding campaign will go to fight the legal battle, with any left over being donated to the Gygax Memorial Fund.
• December 9th 2021. TSR3.5 voluntarily dismisses the suit it filed two days before. The IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign is still running.

• December 11th 2021. The president of the Gygax Memorial fund publicly declares that they were never consulted, and would refuse any donation from TSR3's crowdfunding campaign. TSR3 quietly removes the references to the GMF from the IndieGoGo page.
• December 29th 2021. TSR3.5 refiles its lawsuit, this time in the correct jurisdiction. LaNasa and TSR ask for a trial by Jury.

• January 8th 2020. Wonderfiled[sic]'s Stephen Dinehart threatens to sue Twitter user David Flor for his negative review of Giantlands on the platform.
• January 10th 2022. TSR3's Justin LaNasa sends TSR alumn Tim Kask a profane message, telling him to "Go suck Lukes/wotc/balls you f*****g coward" and accusing him of having been fired from TSR for stealing.
• January 11th 2022. Michael K Hovermale claims that the first edition of TSR3's Star Frontiers: New Genesis game was released and has sold out. He says “It was a very small limited run released and sold on the DHSM [Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum] website. It is no longer available, and probably won’t be reprinted.” As yet, nobody has publicly revealed that they bought a copy.
• January 14th 2022. Michael K. Hovermale resigns as TSR3's Chief Creative Officer and Public Relations Officer after 6 months in the position.
• March 4th 2022. WotC strikes back with a lawsuit naming TSR, Justin LaNasa personally, and the Dungeon Hobby Shop museum. WotC seeks a judgement that TSR hand over all domains, take down all websites, pay treble damages and costs, hand over all stock and proceeds related to the trademarks, and more. TSR has 21 days to respond.

• March 22nd 2022. TSR gets an extension on that WoTC suit. Two waivers of service of summons granted to both Justin LaNasa and the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. He now has 60 days from March 4th to serve an answer or motion, or suffer default judgment.
• March 26th 2022. TSR CON takes place at the same time as Gary Con. TSR claims " lol, actually we asked just about every one of the 800 people stopping by, TSR CON, and about 60% had no idea Gary con was going on, and we tried pushing them to go over and attend."
• March 28th 2022. TSR3 posts images of 'rebound' copies of AD&D 1E books it is selling for $650 each.
• May 17th 2022. Evidence emerges of Nazi connections via TSR3's Dave Johnson. Public Twitter posts include concentrated hateful imagery and messages over a long period of time.
• May 17th 2022. DriveThruRPG removes all Dave Johnson Games titles from the platform.
• May 17th 2022. A jury trial date is set for the TSR/WotC lawsuit for October 2023 (few suits like this actually make it to trial in the end).

• July 19th 2022. A leaked version of a beta version of TSR's 'Star Frontiers: New Genesis' game emerges on the internet. The content includes racist and white-supremacist propaganda, including character races with ability caps based on ethnicity, and various homophobic and transphobic references. Justin LaNasa immediately threatened to sue blogger Eric Tenkar, who shared the information publicly ('Mario Real' is one of LaNasa's online pseudonyms). Various evidence points towards the document's genuine nature, including an accidentally revealed Google drive belonging to NuTSR.
• July 22nd 2022. A video shows a Google Drive that appears to be owned by nuTSR, which contains a list of enemies of the company, usually with the word "WOKE" in caps being used as a pejorative.

(screenshot courtesy of the @nohateingaming Twitter account)​

• August 30th 2022. Wizard Tower Games announces that they have received a subpeona from WotC regarding TSR and Justin LaNasa. Former NuTSR employee Michaal K Hovermale confirms that he has also received a subpeona.
• September 5th 2022. Justin LaNasa sends out customer data, including addresses and credit card numbers. LaNasa responds by publicly claiming the evidence is photoshopped and slandering those who revealed it as liars.
• September 8th 2022. WoTC files an injunction to prevent LaNasa or his companies from “publishing, distributing, or otherwise making available Star Frontiers New Genesis or any iteration of the game using the Marks”.
• June 8th 2023. NuTSR files for bankruptcy. The case between WotC and NuTSR is postponed until March 2024.

Have I missed anything important? I'll continue updating this as I remember things, or as people remind me of things!

To the best of my knowledge, TSR3 is not actually selling any type of gaming product.

*if anybody has any link to LaNasa's knighthood, please let me know!

---

Websites
Various websites have come and gone. I'll try to make some sense of it here so you know what site you're actually visiting!

• TSR.com is the original TSR website. For a long time it redirected to WotC. The URL is no longer in use. (WotC)
• TSRgames.com was TSR2 until summer 2021. The site is still running, although TSR2 is now called Solarian Games. (Jayson Elliot)
• TSR.games was TSR3 until summer 2021. It now goes to Wonderfiled(sic)'s website. (Stephen Dinehart)
• TSR-hobbies.com is TSR 3.5, launched summer 2021 by Justin LaNasa and Ernie Gygax. (Justin LaNasa)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Could you imagine Disney doing any such thing?

 

[darjr]

Where is Alternity Star*Drive sold on drivethrurpg?

I didn’t say everything. You hate them for just Alternity star*drive?

 

[Morrus]

And they can also tell all those people who took down their d20 PDFs due to fear of being sued that they can put their PDFs back up again.

Who are these people? The only thing rescinded was the d20 STL, and all that did was give you permission to use a logo. Remove the d20 logo and reupload it. The OGL covers everything except the logo. This feels like an invented problem.

 

[the Jester]

There are some things I don't want the Mouse to reissue. (Glares at Song of the South)

I mean... I think it's worth having these things around as examples of historical awfulness, although I see no reason to have them widely available for sale. But I think erasing these old cartoons and the like does a disservice to the people that they've harmed. People often can't fathom or believe how terrible some of the old racist material was until they see it for themselves.

 

[darjr]

@BoxCrayonTales did you know about the Alternity digital tool set? I bet WotC does. Or about AlternityRPG.net?

Both have activity as of this year. Both use art and trade dress from Alternity, legally I bet WotC could close them down, but I bet they won’t.

 

[Steampunkette]

Not gonna lie, I got some BIG Community energy from that previous post and the forum response, which I appreciate!

That said, hate WotC all you like for their actions. But probably don't try to bring up that hatred and those actions when they're the ones stomping on fascist jerkweasels in a clear cut case of right and wrong. It comes across as supporting nuTSR, even though that isn't your intention.

 

[Faolyn]

I know the difference. Copyright lasts for a fixed period after the creation/publication of a work and/or the death of the author. Trademark has to be actively used or it will lapse. They no longer work as intended because of Disney lobbying the government to extend copyright terms to the point where they're actively detrimental to preservation efforts.

TSR stopped selling Star Frontiers in 1985. WotC only started selling PDFs in 2017. That's a large enough gap for the trademark to lapse, because trademarks have to be actively used or they will lapse. If WotC didn't register the trademark before NuTSR did, then they don't have a claim to the trademark anymore.

Using PDF sales of old books to maintain trademark (not copyright) when you're not actually making any new products with it feels like it's exploiting a loophole. Trademark law was created before the advent of electronic storage, so it doesn't take into account situations where someone might try to game the system by trying to maintain a trademark without actually doing any effort by simply selling a book on kindle unlimited and then forget it exists.

The Burroughs Estate is doing more than just keeping Tarzan in print. They're actively engaged in making new works too. If keeping a book in print was enough to maintain a trademark, then the Stoker Estate would still have the trademark to Dracula.

What nuTSR is doing is clearly wrong, I don't dispute that, but that doesn't let WotC off the hook.

But here's the other thing--even if you are ignoring the bigotry (which you shouldn't) and the legalities of the issue, NuTSR isn't using anything but the name. Everything else in SF:NG is completely different. They're not actually rebooting or continuing Star Frontiers lore and history. The old races (dralasites, yazirians, etc.) are nowhere to be found. There's no evidence that any of the original games sites or people of interest are in SF:NG. NuTSR isn't keeping Star Frontiers in print. This isn't like someone trying to reproduce Alternity for a modern audience without permission. They are trying (or pretending to try) to sell product A using product B's name while claiming that they are the real and original company who sold product B. It would be like if you wrote a story about dog-loving journalist who solved groovy supernatural mysteries in the big city, called it Tarzan, and then claimed that you were the proper owners of the Tarzan IP and the Burroughs estate were liars.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I didn’t say everything. You hate them for just Alternity star*drive?

I despise them for all the products that they took down during their hissy fit over piracy and all the products they threatened publishers to take down after the d20 license expired and the GSL took effect.

Have you never gotten annoyed with corpos abandoning things you enjoy?

Who are these people? The only thing rescinded was the d20 STL, and all that did was give you permission to use a logo. Remove the d20 logo and reupload it. The OGL covers everything except the logo. This feels like an invented problem.

A lot of publishers just took down their products entirely. For example, Bad Axe Games took down their entire Grim Tales line. Including web enhancements that were only ever available in PDF.

Have you never run into the problem where you can no longer get or share copies of books you like legally?

I literally do not have room in my house to buy physical books on Ebay. I just want to buy PDFs that I can read to my hearts content whenever I want and share with other people without worrying about being sued for copyright infringement. These stupid corpos make that so difficult that it sometimes makes me reconsider my antipiracy stance.

It comes across as supporting nuTSR, even though that isn't your intention.

Since you keep bringing it up, I am really tempted to break the forum rules by saying something really nasty about them.

But here's the other thing--even if you are ignoring the bigotry (which you shouldn't) and the legalities of the issue, NuTSR isn't using anything but the name. Everything else in SF:NG is completely different. They're not actually rebooting or continuing Star Frontiers lore and history. The old races (dralasites, yazirians, etc.) are nowhere to be found. There's no evidence that any of the original games sites or people of interest are in SF:NG. NuTSR isn't keeping Star Frontiers in print. This isn't like someone trying to reproduce Alternity for a modern audience without permission. They are trying (or pretending to try) to sell product A using product B's name while claiming that they are the real and original company who sold product B. It would be like if you wrote a story about dog-loving journalist who solved groovy supernatural mysteries in the big city, called it Tarzan, and then claimed that you were the proper owners of the Tarzan IP and the Burroughs estate were liars.

Can you people stop harassing me now?

 

[Morrus]

A lot of publishers just took down their products entirely. For example, Bad Axe Games took down their entire Grim Tales line. Including web enhancements that were only ever available in PDF.

That was not necessary. They just needed to remove the d20 System Trademark Logo. With respect, that's not on WotC. Your anger that Bad Axe Games made that decision should be directed at Bad Axe Games.

(Well, anger at anybody involved is far too extreme an emotion, but it's the one you cited).

 

[darjr]

@BoxCrayonTales
I get annoyed at all kinds of things. Hate I reserve for folks like LaNasa.