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)

 

[vecna00]

I took a break from Baldur's Gate to get caught up, and boy was there a lot to get caught up on!

 

[Deset Gled]

Unrelated to Don's info that just came out, I have this update.

Justin Lanasa is not humble about his money. This is not news. He likes to brag about his wealth. Examples:

And for those that aren’t aware, he’s not lying about the fact that he is financially quite comfortable. In addition to NuTSR and the DHSM, he owns a tattoo parlor and vape shop that each have multiple locations, as well as his other tourist trap museum, and a respectable portfolio of investment properties. He’s done a good job of buying real estate at low prices, either by getting into developments early, or buying at opportune moments (in one case, when the previous property owner was murdered). Most of this is spread across North Carolina, with the DHSM being the outlier in Wisconsin. He also likes to brag about his collection of toys in the form of vehicles, guns, and other stuff.

But it looks like Justin’s actions may be starting to finally bite him in the wallet. Going through public records, I have found evidence that Lanasa has liquidated at least $100k in the past four months. This includes a couple of his “toy” military vehicles. But more importantly, it includes a couple of his investment properties. Justin has been building his real estate portfolio for ~20 years now, and near as I can tell this is the first time he’s been forced to sell any of it off. No doubt a huge chunk of this is to pay for his legal fees, both against Hasbro and for his bankruptcy attorneys for NuTSR.

To be sure, Lanasa isn’t broke. The properties he’s sold aren’t his most valuable ones, and he still has his other businesses. But this is a pretty substantial turn in his finances. The cracks are starting to show.

Just for the record, I’m learning all this from publicly available documents, and I will not share too many details to avoid doxing.

 

[Wincenworks]

And for those that aren’t aware, he’s not lying about the fact that he is financially quite comfortable.

One of the most entertaining aspects about this that Justin has routinely shown rich-naughty word energy by the way he treats people: insulting Duck, not chipping in to help Ernie, literally everything with Michael and Don's business arrangements etc, and ultimately it seems his downfall is that he forgot that despite his comparative wealth (to that of his employees, etc) he is a small fish.

He originally had Chris Cocks, CEO of WotC on that list of people - but presumably he got removed when people pointed out to Justin that since Chris is a Max Level Corpo, his net worth is essentially unknowable to any outside party.

But more tellingly, he tried to bully WotC by escalating things to court - clueless to the fact that his wealth is inconsequential to them, and that they cannot, as a business principle, simply allow people to publicly trademark troll them. This is not going to end well, Hasbro can afford to use litigation to nuke him into non-existence - they cannot afford to let every opportunity with a few million on hand to troll their trademarks, copyrights, etc.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Ernie was life-flighted back to the hospital in critical condition today. Has any single one of his "business partners" made any comment, or well wishes, or sympathy at all over the past couple of weeks while Ernie has been struggling?

 

[Wincenworks]

I have seen a post on Twitter and Facebook by Wonderfilled which is... about as minimal as is possible.

Basically it's a promise to "split proceeds" of the remaining signed editions of GiantLands... with Ernie and Jim.

Apparently they only have like ten of these things left and they're priced at $220 a piece. It's unclear how much of it would be "proceeds" since WFD store is on GoDaddy and hence has hefty ongoing overheads - and whatever he gets will be split with Jim (who already collects a 10% royalty) so it's not really clear how much to Ernie's advantage this is... other than basically Dinehart doesn't seem interested in helping unless it's to his benefit too.

NuTSR directly hasn't had anything to say but recycling statements made by Wonderfilled, last one was on Ernie's Birthday three weeks ago...

 

[Sacrosanct]

I have seen a post on Twitter and Facebook by Wonderfilled which is... about as minimal as is possible.

Basically it's a promise to "split proceeds" of the remaining signed editions of GiantLands... with Ernie and Jim.

View attachment 296054
Apparently they only have like ten of these things left and they're priced at $220 a piece. It's unclear how much of it would be "proceeds" since WFD store is on GoDaddy and hence has hefty ongoing overheads - and whatever he gets will be split with Jim (who already collects a 10% royalty) so it's not really clear how much to Ernie's advantage this is... other than basically Dinehart doesn't seem interested in helping unless it's to his benefit too.

NuTSR directly hasn't had anything to say but recycling statements made by Wonderfilled, last one was on Ernie's Birthday three weeks ago...
View attachment 296055

So if one were to guess, one could possibly think that Ernie was only ever viewed by LaNasa as an asset. A name to help sell his stuff, and when that asset has lost its value and isn't going to be around, he just washed his hands of him? That would be equally morbid and sociopathic.

I'm not saying Justin is that kind of person. I think everyone in this thread can make their own guesses. I think everyone in this thread can go back to the beginning somewhere where several people make predictions this would happen...

 

[Wizard Tower Games]

Yesterday all over the Gygax social media it was announced that Ernie Gygax was life flighted back to the hospital and in critical condition. I see so many people offering well wishes, and thoughts and prayers. Even those who before admittedly were people who did not think highly of Ernie, they still stepped up to wish him well.

However nothing from TSR, Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum, Lanasa himself, or Wonderfilled or Dinehart himself.

Ernie was never a friend to those people, he was never someone they valued other than needing the last name. Their behavior since his health issues showed it, proved it and amplified it. Those named above have no empathy, they have no heart, and this half assed post by Dinehart saying he is selling 10 Giant Lands for Ernie and Ward to help them... Wait? What?

I will only mention was it not a few months ago Dinehart said sold pout of all games? Their actions or lack of speak loudly. None of them care about Ernie, they needed a name, they needed something to legitimize their half assed attempts to make a game business.

 

[Gradine]

It turns out that when you hitch your personal and professional wagons to a group based entirely around your shared hatred and bigotries they'll turn their back on you the moment you're no longer of any use to them.

Who could have possibly foreseen this tragic and traumatic turn of events

 

[Wincenworks]

So if one were to guess, one could possibly think that Ernie was only ever viewed by LaNasa as an asset. A name to help sell his stuff, and when that asset has lost its value and isn't going to be around, he just washed his hands of him? That would be equally morbid and sociopathic.

To make matters worse I notice there's been a trend of Wonderfilled and nuTSR trying to ingratiate themselves with Griff Morgan, aka The Secrets of Blackmoor guy, and suddenly being very interested in Dave Arnesson.

So it um, sure looks to me like now they know that Ernie is no longer going to be able to help them, and that the rest of the Gygax family would rather gnaw their own arm off than help them, and pretty much all the surviving old timers want nothing to do with Justin, and they've never had a foothold with the Blume family (even before they referred to Brian Blume as the 3rd employee... and then went on to credit his work to Gary) they're going to try to latch onto the Arnesson family for credibility.

I'm hoping for the family's sake Justin doesn't go complete batshit and do something like try to claim that Arnesson's historic 2% that WotC bought out means the trademarks belonged to his estate.

 

[Deset Gled]

Well, in this time when Ernie is in extremely bad medical condition, having been helicoptered back to UW-Madison after spending just a few days out of the hospital, the DHSM finally decided to post about the Gygax family:

Lanasa has chosen this time to harass and attack GaryCon, and specifically Luke Gygax. No well wishes to Ernie, or acknowledgement that he's in trouble. Just kicking up crap.

That is seriously messed up. And just to put a cherry on top: this isn't a new article. It's from January 14, 2022. Lanasa went to the trouble of digging up an article that's over a year old. You don't have to like anything about Ernie to realize that this is simply uncalled for.

Just to clarify, the article is about a lawsuit against Ken Trbovich, CEO of Servotronics. Ken/Servotronics was a business-level supporter of GaryCon (and friend of Luke Gygax) who enabled a few charity things at GaryCon through company donations. Lanasa loves to bring this relationship up, and insinuate fraud or other problems because of it. However, AFAIK, Trbovich has never been an owner or executive of GaryCon, no claims of fraud involving the con have ever surfaced, and to the best of my knowledge he wasn't involved for the past ~2 years.