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...

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.

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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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).
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  • 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.
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(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)
 

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Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
I want to take a minute to revisit a problem with Those Pesky Goblinz and Those Pesky Orcz. Specifically, the problem that they're the same game. And I don't just mean that they're both a rip off of the same source material (because they are both a rip off AD&D). No, I mean that the game is literally the same with just a few minor changes to words and graphics.

Here's an example of some pages from both, showing the layout, side by side:

View attachment 354084

And here's some of the game text, side by side:

View attachment 354086

Almost all of the game material is like this. A few minor differences in graphics, a few places where things get slightly different names, a few minor edits to numbers. But in almost all meaningful ways, the two games are identical. Identical game mechanics text (THAC10, etc.). Identical flavor text. The only real difference is the starting adventure in the second half of the book (Goblinz has a re-print of Cult of Abaddon by Vince Florio, and Orcz has No Man's Land by the white supremacist Dave Johnson).

Why does this matter? In a lot of ways, it doesn't. The game isn't really published to be played as a game, it's just something for Lanasa to hawk to unsuspecting visitors to the DHSM during GaryCon.

But it might start to matter if you think about IP and ownership. Those Pesky Goblinz is IP of NuTSR. It's listed as part of their assets in the bankruptcy case, and there is no record of the IP changing hands. But Those Pesky Goblinz was also sold as a branded product of OSR Games. And Those Pesky Orcz is a product of Adamantite Games, which is privately owned by Justin Lanasa. And both of these games are sold exclusively at the DHSM (both on the website, and in person at the shop). The fact that these games are the same is another piece of evidence that these are all the same company.

NuTSR is OSR Games is the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum is Adamantite Games is Justin Lanasa. They are a single entity. This is one more piece of evidence proving it.
Those magics are very different! Clearly Goblinz magic uses multiple paragraphs and Orcz magic does not!
 

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We have been told the Bankruptcy will be most likely going through. Reason being monies given / used by Lanasa from his other LLC's were for the benefit of TSR, LLC. Allegations of hiding assets, although felt possibly true. Cannot be proven, and in court it is about what you can prove, and not what you know.
Sounds like Justin's lawyers he hired after his bankruptcy did their job.... which makes is statistically likely it would have been cheaper for him to just do it correctly up front.

The other important thing is once TSR LLC is dissolved, it cannot continue it's case in court... so WotC will almost certainly win by default on the trademarks issue, and Justin will be stuck dealing with the counter-suit element... ie the bit where he needs to keep spending money to avoid losing everything.
 

DLIMedia

David Flor, Darklight Interactive
First, the Bankruptcy. Myself and my attorneys have been in contact with the court and Trustee. We have been told the Bankruptcy will be most likely going through. Reason being monies given / used by Lanasa from his other LLC's were for the benefit of TSR, LLC. Allegations of hiding assets, although felt possibly true. Cannot be proven, and in court it is about what you can prove, and not what you know.
In theory, can't WotC provide evidence of those allegations at this point?

I mean, I'm not sure why they would anyway... as mentioned above, if TSR LLC gets dissolved WotC should win their case by default, but I can't help but wonder. If anything, Justin's getting the better end of a deal here because I'm not sure there's anyone besides yourself who is aggressively going after him; feels like WotC really wants to win their case, prove their point, and make sure TSR LLC is disintegrated.

If the bankruptcy "goes through", what happens to the DHSM?
 

Wizard Tower Games

Publisher of cool games
The other important thing is once TSR LLC is dissolved, it cannot continue it's case in court... so WotC will almost certainly win by default on the trademarks issue, and Justin will be stuck dealing with the counter-suit element... ie the bit where he needs to keep spending money to avoid losing everything.
The thing is, since Justin Lanasa and the DHSM are listed as co-plaintiffs in the WOTC case the case will move forward. The only thing the TSR, llc Bankruptcy does is stop anything against TSR, llc. So this is not over by a long shot I think.
 


The thing is, since Justin Lanasa and the DHSM are listed as co-plaintiffs in the WOTC case the case will move forward. The only thing the TSR, llc Bankruptcy does is stop anything against TSR, llc. So this is not over by a long shot I think.
They're added as co-defendants in the counter-suit - which is the bit with the risk for Justin.

The original action was entirely by TSR LLC - presumably with the assumption that if it would protect him from blowback - but also TSR LLC is the sole owner of the disputed trade marks.

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If Justin wants to continue protecting the trade marks, he'll need to argue that a new party needs to be added as plaintiff, late in the proceedings... and explain why he didn't add them at the start.
 

I really have to wonder how much of these recent changes is due to Jim not longer being here to share his thoughts with Dinehart.
Update on this by the way... it appears Dinehart is outsourcing all the work that would be done to warrant adding his name to cover credits to Penny Williams... as yes, in this tweet he misspells Duck's name.
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So um... yeah... the choice to put his own name on the cover sure is something.
 

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Based on when Williams got her undergrad degree ('94) she's about the same age as me. My sister-in-law who is younger than I am couldn't join any D&D groups when she was 12-13 because none of the guys her age who had groups were willing to let a girl join. And her own friends weren't interested. Even her slightly older brother wouldn't run games for her. She didn't get to play until she went to college and found out she really liked it. The idea that school-age guys in the 80s were all clamoring to get girls to play at their tables is just weirdly revisionist.
Sure, but like so much when discussing the "old days" of the hobby, experiences vary widely based on location and culture and attitudes of local groups of players. I wonder if the existence of a gender divide depended the type of geek cliques one's game scene drew from. We always had girl players. Not 50%, but at least 25%. Twin Cities suburb. Minnesota. Mid to late 80s. But at least half, if not more, of the players were theater kids.
 

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
This one is particularly slow likely because the judge has received a credible to request to dismiss with prejudice, and award costs. It's a complicated thing with some stakes, and the judge doesn't want to have it kicked back to them on appeal.

Judges have to be pretty certain on making decisions like that, and as long as it is on hold...
(1)
nobody is running up legal bills etc
(2)
so they tend to take their time to do all the research, check for anything pending decision that might mess with their decision, etc.
#2 tends to contradict #1.
 

(1)

(2)

#2 tends to contradict #1.
Courts do not charge legal fees for the research that the judge and their staff do, that's just part of the general costs and also part of where the tax money involved goes. Whether a judge spends an hour, or a hundred hours, working on a judgment the fee is the same - to do otherwise is considered to be an accessibility to justice issue.

Sometimes decisions also take longer because the judges have other things going on, in my Ethics class we had a barrister who told us the story of how he had to wait eight months on a judgment that was not particularly complicated, but presumably coincided with some very complicated cases arriving on the judge's docket.

To clarify: Judges in the Common Law systems do their research to confirm that everything they're about to say is in line with everything that judges of equal or greater standing have said before... or can be justified as being substantially different to the situations those judges dealt with... sometimes including that times simply have changed.

Judgments can range anywhere from two to hundreds of pages... depending on the history of facts, the history of the evidence and the history of the law involved. Judges can end up citing anything from just a single statute, to dozens of cases, statutes and textbooks.... sometimes to essentially explain a yes/no answer.

I myself recently had to read a more than 100 page judgment from an office (rather than a court) which answered the question.... can you trade mark the term "Manuka Honey" in New Zealand? To get that far cost both sides a fortune, not because someone had to write the 100+ pages but because they factored in expert opinions, reports, write ups, citations of case histories, etc, etc.

Basically the court can spend a lot of money, but while the action is pending dismissal and sitting in the period between discovery and trial - there is no reason for the counsel on either side to prepare anything for the court (though they can still negotiate with each other... but like... lawyers can do that at any time before, during and after the proceedings).

As a side note, just in time to avoid having to worry about anything in the module (assuming comes out 🤣) - I present a needlessly well researched and cited review of GiantLands (2021).
 
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