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!

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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)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

It's still a far-cry from what LaNasa and co. are accomplishing with Goblinz (that is how we got on this tangent, right?).

Yeah, there's a world of difference between the syncretic creation of D&D and the outright plagiarism of Goblinz.

 

[Dire Bare]

I think there's value in understanding where ideas come from, and giving credit where credit is due.

Obviously Tolkien was inspired by mythology and history, but he made a whole heck of a lot of stuff up.

Obviously Gary and the other early D&D creators stole a ton from various sources, including mythology and fiction. But they made a whole lot up, too.

Someone was trying to argue in another group that Paizo don't need to worry about WotC claiming Drow as IP, since Drow are just the same thing as Norse dark elves, Dökkálfar. I had to point out that all Gylfaginning, in the Prose Edda, gives us for description of them is that they're blacker than pitch and they live underground. Literally every other descriptive detail originates in D&D.

I think it's illustrative to contrast these "thefts" and inspirations against the apparently-cobbled-together-from-previously-published-games Goblinz.


Well, some folks evidently aren't familiar with the history. They haven't read it obsessively for years like us.

As for what constitutes "influence" on OD&D, providing the whole list of PC races, a big percentage of the monsters, a few spells and the occasional other magical detail isn't chopped liver. Even if I agree that Gary was being honest that Tolkien wasn't his favorite, and the game itself is definitely not a particularly good Tolkien emulator.

To add . . . Gygax was trying to create a game that emulated the fantasy genre, which even at the time, was dominated by Tolkien. It made sense to pull in Tolkeinesque elements his players wanted.

He just didn't do a great job, at first, of filing off the serial numbers.

There is a difference between plagiarism, inspiration, and homage . . . even if the line between them all is pretty subjective.

 

[Faolyn]

Yeah, there's a world of difference between the syncretic creation of D&D and the outright plagiarism of Goblinz.

And boring plagiarism, most likely. I'm obviously not going to be buying this thing, but @Deset Gled, or anyone else who has read this thing--is there anything on goblin(z) culture or society at all that makes them even remotely interesting?

 

[codo]

To add . . . Gygax was trying to create a game that emulated the fantasy genre, which even at the time, was dominated by Tolkien. It made sense to pull in Tolkeinesque elements his players wanted.

He just didn't do a great job, at first, of filing off the serial numbers.

There is a difference between plagiarism, inspiration, and homage . . . even if the line between them all is pretty subjective.

And he crossed the line with Hobbit™. There was no way the Tolkien estate would let him get away with that. Even in the wild-west days of early RPG's that was a step to far. Not just taking inspiration from Tolkien, but actually using the trademarked and copywritten term Hobbit.

 

[Dire Bare]

And he crossed the line with Hobbit™. There was no way the Tolkien estate would let him get away with that. Even in the wild-west days of early RPG's that was a step to far. Not just taking inspiration from Tolkien, but actually using the trademarked and copywritten term Hobbit.

Yes . . . .

Gygax was not an experienced, professional writer, designer, or publisher when he and Arneson created D&D. Nobody involved at the time was. It's a reasonable error to think you can use elves, dwarves, orcs . . . AND hobbits.

Still not a "theft" (ethically, IMO) . . . but yes, something the Tolkein estate wasn't going to let fly. And of course didn't let fly.

Really, the only change TSR made was the name from "hobbit" to "halfling". The concept or archetype of the species has remained the same since the white box. Ents became Treants, Balrogs became Balor . . . . they just did what they should have done initially, and file off the serial numbers, as I said.

 

[Wincenworks]

is there anything on goblin(z) culture or society at all that makes them even remotely interesting?

Well, not really in the good faith sense. I mean there's a lot that I find interesting, like how on page 7 he says what goblins fear most is horse blood, and on page 9 there's a background "Nomad" where you start with a horse.

But if you take as an independent work and look for lore, it's basically a handful of prompts for the GM to work with.

• There is a goblin king, he is rumoured to be a rogue/wizard (meaning he is a pure black, or pure white goblin) and have a sceptre... and is different from a tribal chief, but that's about it
• There are goblin gods who demand their shamans make blood sacrifices (creatures with souls) and are capricious when contacted, but no names, guidelines, etc, just like that's all there is
• There are character names dropped with micro stories, but no context or continuations
• The shaman has the ability to "befriend" undead, but this is never elaborated on to any degree

Basically it's like when you get that DM who tells you he's got a fantastic bespoke world prepared, and then when you show up he just hands you a couple of tables of god names + portfolios, nation names + ruler names and tells you that it's going to be a world you all craft together before asking you to invent the details of your character's chosen religion.

Like, you could have a lot of fun - but it'd be the same kind of fun you'd have inventing it all for yourself with just a handful of prompts, and certainly none of the work you'd expect to be present in a product that you pay for, and certainly nothing so unique or interesting you can't get the same prompts off any random role-player.

 

[Hussar]

Language and terminology, sure. But he pretty much took the whole plot and major characters of The Hobbit from Richard Wagner's The Ring.

I admit my bias, because Terry Brooks is one of my favorite authors, and people always bust on him for copying Tolkien. Well, he didn't copy Tolkien any more than Tolkien copied Wagner but no one criticizes Tolkien for that.

It’s a bit more than that. Sword of Shanara is a very blatant, almost word for word, rip off of Tolkien. It’s not even subtle.

 

[Dioltach]

It’s a bit more than that. Sword of Shanara is a very blatant, almost word for word, rip off of Tolkien. It’s not even subtle.

That was a deliberate choice by Lester Delrey, who'd been hired by Random House to establish "fantasy" as a genre. By copying specific elements from LotR, he helped to define what modern the elements of "epic fantasy" were. A few years later Weiss & Hickman took many of those same elements to write Dragonlance Chronicles, and that was that.

Seriously, all those people complaining about how Terry Brooks rips off Tolkien should realise that what we understand as "fantasy" now wouldn't exist without The Sword of Shannara. And then they should read the other books he's written, and explain to me how shapeshifting demons, airships and death-machines are ripped off from Tolkien.

 

[Hussar]

That was a deliberate choice by Lester Delrey, who'd been hired by Random House to establish "fantasy" as a genre. By copying specific elements from LotR, he helped to define what modern the elements of "epic fantasy" were. A few years later Weiss & Hickman took many of those same elements to write Dragonlance Chronicles, and that was that.

Seriously, all those people complaining about how Terry Brooks rips off Tolkien should realise that what we understand as "fantasy" now wouldn't exist without The Sword of Shannara. And then they should read the other books he's written, and explain to me how shapeshifting demons, airships and death-machines are ripped off from Tolkien.

Oh, true. His later books definitely moved away from Tolkien. Of course, the fact that it was Sword of Shannara that made him a name in the genre didn't hurt at all.

I mean, Dragonlance as a ripoff of Tolkien? Really? Sure, it contained some of the same DNA because it was baselined in D&D. But, other than a few bits and bobs here, it would be pretty hard to draw any real correlations between LotR and Dragonlance. OTOH, Sword of Shannara is virtually word for word a copy of Tolkien. And it's not like this was subtle at all.

Funny thing is, I really like Terry Brooks. His Magic Kingdom series was a blast. He definitely has the chops.

 

[Dioltach]

I mean, Dragonlance as a ripoff of Tolkien? Really? Sure, it contained some of the same DNA because it was baselined in D&D. But, other than a few bits and bobs here, it would be pretty hard to draw any real correlations between LotR and Dragonlance. OTOH, Sword of Shannara is virtually word for word a copy of Tolkien. And it's not like this was subtle at all.

The struggles of a recognisable everyman character facing overwhelming evil. Beginning in a rural area that's largely been sheltered from the effects of the world's evils. A party combining different races and different skills. A quest to destroy the evil facing the world. A split in the party where one part continues to on the quest while the other part becomes embroiled in the war.

The pattern carries through clearly from LotR, via Shannara (chiefly Sword and Elfstones) to Chronicles. Sure, the lines blur along the way, sure some of the tropes are subverted, but these three defined how people understood fantasy from 1977 until the era of more modern writers such as Martin.

It's even apparent from the default to trilogies in fantasy. I can't have been the only one who was surprised that The Wheel of Time didn't end with The Dragon Reborn. In fact, Jordan had to argue with his publishers that he needed five(!) volumes to tell the story, instead of the traditional three.