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)

 

[Mannahnin]

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.

Obligatory note that it was not the Tolkien Estate (his family, controllers of the books), but the Saul Zaentz company AKA Tolkien Enterprises, which held licensing rights for derivative works.

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.

Yes. It's important to remember that virtually none of them were professionals. They were hobbyists, and when you're making, say, a Diplomacy variant set on Middle Earth to distribute via fanzine and play with a few friends across the country, it's not an issue to just rip stuff directly from Tolkien. Any more than it is when and if we do it for our home D&D campaigns. Gary and co didn't initially expect D&D to be big enough to attract any notice from the copyright holder or licensing rights holder for LotR, or Burroughs' Martian stories. Although they still should have known better, since they were selling the books, not distributing them to friends for free.

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.

There's certainly some truth to this, but Dragonlance and most other Heroes' Journey template fantasy don't contain QUITE so many direct character analogues and borrowed plot points from LotR....


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara

Similarities with The Lord of the Rings[edit]​

The Sword of Shannara has drawn extensive criticism from critics who believe that Brooks derived too much of his novel from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In 1978, American fantasy editor Lin Carter denounced The Sword of Shannara as "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read".[31] He further wrote that "Terry Brooks wasn't trying to imitate Tolkien's prose, just steal his story line and complete cast of characters, and he did it with such clumsiness and so heavy-handedly, that he virtually rubbed your nose in it."[31] Roger C. Schlobin was kinder in his assessment, though he still thought that The Sword of Shannara was a disappointment because of its similarities to The Lord of the Rings.[32] Brian Attebery accused The Sword of Shannara of being "undigested Tolkien" which was "especially blatant in its point-for-point correspondence" with The Lord of the Rings.[33] In an educational article on writing, author Orson Scott Card cited The Sword of Shannara as a cautionary example of overly derivative writing, finding the work "artistically displeasing" for this reason.[34]

Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that the novel is distinctive for "the dogged way in which it follows Tolkien point for point".[35] Shippey located analogues for Tolkien characters within Brooks' novel, such as Sauron (Brona), Gandalf (Allanon), the Hobbits (Shea and Flick), Aragorn (Menion), Boromir (Balinor), Gimli (Hendel), Legolas (Durin and Dayel), Gollum (Orl Fane), the Barrow-wight (Mist Wraith), the Nazgûl (Skull Bearers), and Tom Bombadil (King of the Silver River), among others.[35] He also found plot similarities to events in The Lord of the Rings, such as the Fellowship of the Ring's formation and adventures, the journeys to Rivendell (Culhaven) and Lothlórien (Storlock), Gandalf's (Allanon) fall in Moria (Paranor) and subsequent reappearance, and the Rohirrim's arrival at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (Battle of Tyrsis), among others.[35] Shippey attributes the book's success to the post-Tolkien advent of the fantasy genre: "What The Sword of Shannara seems to show is that many readers had developed the taste ... for heroic fantasy so strongly that if they could not get the real thing they would take any substitute, no matter how diluted."[35]

 

[Sacrosanct]

On a side note, apparently people on your ignore list can still see your posts and quote them. Huh.

 

[Sacrosanct]

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.

And more to my point, folks complaining about Brooks ripping off Tolkien don't ever mention how Tolkien ripped off others (like Wagner). And when you look at how much each ripped off the other, Tolkien actually ripped off more than Brooks did of Tolkien. Cursed ring of power where one brother killed the other in order to get it, and a massive dragon on top of a huge hoard of gold? Old man with long grey beard who is actually a divine creature and who steps in randomly to save the "heroes" and drive the plot? Brooks may have copied Tolkien's races as they appeared, but Tolkien copied the plot and characters of his books from others, just creating a bunch weird names and terminology. He was a linguist after all. Everyone says Allanon was a copy of Gandalf, but there are more differences between Allanon and Gandalf than there are between Gandalf and Odin. In "The Wanderer", Odin is depicted as being an old man with a long white beard, wide-brimmed hat, and staff.

I mean, come on, if you're (general you, not you specifically) going to bust on Brooks, at least be equitable and fair about it.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Hey all, there's some great discussion of Appendix N going on here. I spun up a new thread for it here if people would be interested:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/appendix-n-discussion.698065/

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.

Yeah, it is ridiculously blatant. The Shannara Chronicles had its missteps, but starting with the second book was not one of them.

 

[Faolyn]

Cursed ring of power where one brother killed the other in order to get it, and a massive dragon on top of a huge hoard of gold? Old man with long grey beard who is actually a divine creature and who steps in randomly to save the "heroes" and drive the plot?

To be fair, these plot points have been around forever. Cain and Abel, vying for divine favor, the dragon of Beowulf, the supernatural Merlin...

 

[Sacrosanct]

To be fair, these plot points have been around forever. Cain and Abel, vying for divine favor, the dragon of Beowulf, the supernatural Merlin...

Sure, but Wagner's The Ring Cycle has them all together almost exactly like the plot to Hobbit. A non-human unstable figure kills his brother for a cursed ring of power? Might as well call him Hagen instead of Gollum...

Anyway, for someone to say Brooks copied Tolkien while ignoring how the Hobbit is closer to The Ring seems a bit odd to me. It's like people want to hate on Brooks for some weird reason while ignoring how not only did Tolkien do it as well, he did it more blatantly than Brooks did.

Now, I'm not blaming Tolkien. I mean, he was right up front how he wanted to create a fantasy epic for white people because he loved how other cultures had great stories, so he admitted he pulled everything from European folklore and mythology. I just think it's disingenuous to knock Brooks down and say Brooks just copied Tolkien when a) Tolkien did the same, and b) Brooks was told to do that by his publisher.

 

[codo]

To be fair, these plot points have been around forever. Cain and Abel, vying for divine favor, the dragon of Beowulf, the supernatural Merlin...

There is a difference between stealing (or "inspired" if you preferer) difference parts from lots of difference sources, and combine them into something new, and stealing lots of different parts from a single source and putting them into a similar story. If nothing else it stops your work from being to predictable.

All I know is when 13 year old me first read the original Dragonlance trilogy I actually noticed it was basically just a copy of Tolkien. You know the copying was blatant, because I was not a discerning reader at that age. Every time I saw another similarities between the 2, it really took me out of the book. Particularly when Fizban "sacrifices" himself to save the party in the abandoned dwarven city.

There is nothing wrong with being inspired by or even using parts of another work, but you need to combine them in new ways, not just use them to retell the same story.

Look at Quinten Tarantino and his films. He often uses shots, or even entire scenes from other movies, but nobody criticizes him, because he combines them in new and interesting ways.

 

[Vaalingrade]

On a side note, apparently people on your ignore list can still see your posts and quote them. Huh.

There's an option to make yourself invisible to them.

 

[codo]

Sure, but Wagner's The Ring Cycle has them all together almost exactly like the plot to Hobbit. A non-human unstable figure kills his brother for a cursed ring of power? Might as well call him Hagen instead of Gollum...

Anyway, for someone to say Brooks copied Tolkien while ignoring how the Hobbit is closer to The Ring seems a bit odd to me. It's like people want to hate on Brooks for some weird reason while ignoring how not only did Tolkien do it as well, he did it more blatantly than Brooks did.

Now, I'm not blaming Tolkien. I mean, he was right up front how he wanted to create a fantasy epic for white people because he loved how other cultures had great stories, so he admitted he pulled everything from European folklore and mythology. I just think it's disingenuous to knock Brooks down and say Brooks just copied Tolkien when a) Tolkien did the same, and b) Brooks was told to do that by his publisher.

There are some pretty big difference though. It's not like Wagner's Ring Cycle is exactly an original idea, it was based of of Germanic Myths and traditions. The same sources that Tolkien used to inspire his own work. I know there is debate on where Tolkien was actually inspired by The Ring cycle directly, or if the were just both inspired by the same Germanic myths and folklore.

Tolkien also wrote a Fantasy novel partly inspired by a relatively obscure German Opera. (At the time he started writing, Wagner did later get a big boost from the Nazis later) Terry Brooks and Weiss & Hickman wrote fantasy novels based on the most popular fantasy novels ever written.

 

[Sacrosanct]

There are some pretty big difference though. It's not like Wagner's Ring Cycle is exactly an original idea, it was based of of Germanic Myths and traditions.

Oh sure. I thought I put that in my response as well but I guess not everything in my head I put to text lol. But that just kinda reinforces my point. Wagner pulled from the Prose Edda and other sources. But he changed some things to fit his own saga. Tolkien also pulled from the Prose Edda (and others), but he also clearly pulled from Wagner, as many of the same plots and characters were from The Ring Cycle and not appearing in the Eddas.

If you say Brooks copied from the current popular writer (Tolkien), but hold the same criticism against Tolkien (who pulled from a current popular writer Wagner--even though all could be traced back to old mythology), then that seems a bit of a double standard to me. They all copied from the one preceding them, and changed some things to fit their particular story.

I suspect the double standard is because a lot of people are familiar with Tolkien and thus can see the similarities with SoS, but a whole lot fewer people are familiar with The Ring Cycle or the Eddas to know that Tolkien did basically the same thing Brooks did.