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)

 

[Wilphe]

Was reading a few articles about the cryptobruhs that think they own the rights to Jorodowsky's Dune because they spent 100x the auction estimate on a copy from a very small run of books.

After shaking my head at how little they seem to understand about copyright, I find myself wondering if we'll see TSR presents Jorodowky's Dune with Ernest Gary Gygax Jr soon. Lasagna and these kids would get along swimmingly.

Need to work in Kevin(TM) Siembieda(R) somehow

 

[Sir Brennen]

This is an aside, but it did raise the concept of a "vanity press" - where someone who wants to be an author really bad pays a publisher to print their book (thus "proving" they are a published author, ie the vanity).

There are a few things going on there. One is that nuTSR is "taking over" (whatever that means) the Dungeon Crawl boardgame:


(There was also another tweet containing nuTSR's anti-woke hashtag "Play as you wish")

So, they'll now have some more actual product. With Ernie's Jr.'s name splashed across it, despite him likely not having anything to do with it. It's only going to be a limited run of ... 60? 100? 300? Seems they can't quite settle on a number.

While there's suspicion that the board game might have been created by a vanity press, that in of itself is really NBD. The actually interesting facts are that the board game's author, Don Semora, has owned not one, but at least two vanity presses in the past, with claims of fraud against the first one (unknown if he actually published anything under his other LLC's). Prior to that he also previously served time for fraudulent activities:

Time To Write blog entry
Writer Beware blog - 2 Moon Press
Writer Beware blog - Don Semora

His current web site offers some services for authors, but it doesn't look like publishing is one of them. He also creates museum quality display models which are "Nistorically Accurate". Hopefully proof-reading is not one of the services he offers as well.

Despite being a professional model builder, I'm surprised the game pieces for the Dungeon Crawl game look like something out of Candyland, and not even cheap plastic minis of the characters.

I find it especially amusing that the first sample book cover in his portfolio is titled "Gaslight". *

Frauds of a feather fleece together.

*Oh, wait. It's a tie-in book for the Gaslight boardgame for Wizard's Tower Games, yet another one of his companies. On the lid of the box it says, "Can you solve the cunumdrom". Seriously, what is it about fraudsters and bad spelling?

 

[Wilphe]

So, they'll now have some more actual product. With Ernie's Jr.'s name splashed across it, despite him likely not having anything to do with it. It's only going to be a limited run of ... 60? 100? 300? Seems they can't quite settle on a number.

I can't either but I bet it's got a 0 in it

Don't worry we are already working on second edition because the first sold out so fast

*Oh, wait. It's a tie-in book for the Gaslight boardgame for Wizard's Tower Games, yet another one of his companies. On the lid of the box it
says, "Can you solve the cunumdrom". Seriously, what is it about fraudsters and bad spelling?

I am beginning to understand why Grammerly exists

 

[TarionzCousin]

I am beginning to understand why Grammerly exists

Ahem. It's "Grammarly." No letter "e."
Write your best with Grammarly.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The more things revealed, the less it seems a dumpster fire, and the more it seems a CARTOONISH dumpster fire.

 

[MNblockhead]

One thing I've been wondering about is the appeal of a new Star Frontiers game.

If we set all else aside, Is there a big group of gamers yearning for Star Frontiers? And a new Star Frontiers at that?

Is the game a sleeping giant, is there fertile soil waiting to be exploited? My impression is that it had its fans, but that they aren't really keen on a new version with all new design and rules.

Am I missing something about the appeal of Star Frontiers?

I don't know what Star Frontiers would offer that Starfinder or other options wouldn't already fill.

I have great nolstalgia for Star Frontiers, but that is sated by having a copy of the old books. I don't think I would run the game other than perhaps a one shot or short mini campaign. There are other systems with a very similar genre that have better support and larger fanbases.

If WotC were looking to come out with a different genre of game, I would think that Gamma World would make a lot more sense.

 

[Wilphe]

Ahem. It's "Grammarly." No letter "e."
Write your best with Grammarly.

In all fairness I only have to listen to their unskippable ads, I'm not obliged to look at them

 

[Jer]

I don't know what Star Frontiers would offer that Starfinder or other options wouldn't already fill.

I have great nolstalgia for Star Frontiers, but that is sated by having a copy of the old books. I don't think I would run the game other than perhaps a one shot or short mini campaign. There are other systems with a very similar genre that have better support and larger fanbases.

If WotC were looking to come out with a different genre of game, I would think that Gamma World would make a lot more sense.

Star Frontiers is a fairly good system for "pulp" sci-fi. It's not science fantasy like StarFinder, but it's also not hard SF. It's also believe it or not fairly "rules light" - at least for an 80s game. The skill system is one of the better versions of a percentile system I've seen (basically you level up in broad skill groups which give you bonuses to specific skills in the skill group based on that level). Give you a good mix of customization without some of the nonsense that shows up in point-buy systems where they want to finely break down skills but also don't have a good solution for the fact that some skills will be naturally tied together. I find it to be a decent system for running Star Trek/Firefly sorts of games. Things where space combat is in the background and planetary exploration/adventures are more the focus. (There are starship combat rules in the Knight Hawks boxed set but I don't think they're as elegant as the core game is).

I actually don't want Wizards to come out with a new version of Star Frontiers. I would like them to add it to what you can publish on DM's Guild. The fan publications are under the fan agreement with Wizards and so folks can't really charge for their efforts - all of the SF stuff is "pay what you want" for that reason. It would be nice to have it open for official publication.

(Likewise I'd like to see them do the same thing with Gamma World - don't come out with a new edition, just let people self-publish on DM's Guild. I doubt I'll ever need another edition of GW again because the most recent one based on the 4e engine was note perfect for our table, but I wouldn't mind seeing some new adventures to adapt to it.)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Star Frontiers is a fairly good system for "pulp" sci-fi. It's not science fantasy like StarFinder, but it's also not hard SF. It's also believe it or not fairly "rules light" - at least for an 80s game. The skill system is one of the better versions of a percentile system I've seen (basically you level up in broad skill groups which give you bonuses to specific skills in the skill group based on that level). Give you a good mix of customization without some of the nonsense that shows up in point-buy systems where they want to finely break down skills but also don't have a good solution for the fact that some skills will be naturally tied together. I find it to be a decent system for running Star Trek/Firefly sorts of games. Things where space combat is in the background and planetary exploration/adventures are more the focus. (There are starship combat rules in the Knight Hawks boxed set but I don't think they're as elegant as the core game is).

I actually don't want Wizards to come out with a new version of Star Frontiers. I would like them to add it to what you can publish on DM's Guild. The fan publications are under the fan agreement with Wizards and so folks can't really charge for their efforts - all of the SF stuff is "pay what you want" for that reason. It would be nice to have it open for official publication.

(Likewise I'd like to see them do the same thing with Gamma World - don't come out with a new edition, just let people self-publish on DM's Guild. I doubt I'll ever need another edition of GW again because the most recent one based on the 4e engine was note perfect for our table, but I wouldn't mind seeing some new adventures to adapt to it.)

Agree, except I wouldn't mind seeing them come out with a new Star Frontiers and a new Gamma World. Yes, a lot of the fan stuff is quite good, but having an official release would likely bring a whole new set of fans, and increased interest in some amazing settings- which, in turn, would lead to increase fan and 3PP output.

The downside is they could botch it, but that's always a possibility. To date, I've been reasonably impressed with their stewardship of the legacy- they haven't been hitting home runs, but they've been consistently cranking out doubles and avoiding strikeouts.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Why not? Anyone can publish on DriveThru. And the entry bar for DMsGuild is even lower. You have seen some of the quality of what is published on those sites right? There are plenty of print on demand "publishers" that anyone who takes the time to format something for the printers can get it printed and bound. Being "published" really doesn't mean anything anymore. And I say this as a "published RPG author" (on DMsG).

DriveThru and other POD shops are printers, not publishers. A vanity press is a type of publisher where the writer pays the publisher to edit, layout, create the cover, etc where a traditional publisher only pays the writer, they never require the writer to pay them to produce the book.