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)

 

[LordEntrails]

I think some of you took my earlier post to indicate I do not think that writing well requires talent, skill, and practice. Far from my intent. I do believe that good writing does not require specific education.

Of course a good education can help learn and improve any skillset, including the writing ones.

My point was that the writing we have seen so far from NuTSR has not shown the competence to 'graduate' grade school. At least not with my teachers at the school I went to. If only they wrote with the competence that was expected from me in grade school, we would not be so disillusioned with their writing competency.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The idea of Star Frontiers to appeal to reactionary grognards, definitely. So far, though, it seems that they don't even care if LaNasa even delivers, let alone the quality of the product.

I have a feeling SF:NG is being written for an audience of "the four reactionary grognards currently sitting at my table" who really don't care how it's written, as long as the author keeps telling them how it will totally "own the modern players and WotC".

Reading something out loud is a great habit for writing. R.E. Howard apparently did it, and you can tell when you read his yarns out lout.

He pretty much said the key to writing isn't to know all of the rules and jargon of writing, but to read it out loud and see if it just sounds right, because most people reading won't know where the adverb is, but they do know what sounds off. Of course, in order for that to work, you would need to know appropriate grammar for speech lol.

But to that point, clearly LaNasa never reads what he writes out loud, because even he has to know it doesn't sound right at all. Not even close.

 

[Sir Brennen]

The idea of Star Frontiers to appeal to reactionary grognards, definitely. So far, though, it seems that they don't even care if LaNasa even delivers, let alone the quality of the product.

Oh, yeah, I have a metric ton of doubt whether is an actual product even being written, and that Star Law snippet is just something scribbled down to show "what it will be like."

"Slavery! Death Penalties! States Planets' Rights! We're going to have it all!"

Or more likely, to just imply there is something in the works when there's not, to get that ConCon registration money.

 

[Shakeshift]

If Justin LaNasa HAD a product, he would be showing charts and tables and graphs and he'd have specific combat rules to brag endlessly about. The fact that he is showing nothing but a collection of random parts that have no internal consistency with one another (to me) is proof that he's just throwing everything at a wall and seeing what gets the best reactions.

You wait and see. The night before the game's release in March, the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum will make a last-second announcement that....

1. There was a burglary, ALL hard copies of the Star Frontiers: New Genesis game were stolen, and new copies will have to wait to be printed until late 2023. Sorry fans! These things sometimes happen! (Womp womp.)

2. There was a vicious attack by the (insert random name of alt-left group) and they broke in and BURNED all copies of Star Frontiers: New Genesis because they hate Justin, Ernie, and the rest of the OSR and they hate everything that is cutting edge, bleeding-cool, and mindblowing to TTRPG gaming. New copies of the game will have to wait to be printed until late 2023. Sorry about this fans. It was totally unavoidable (Womp womp.)

3. The Star Frontiers: New Genesis game sold out all physical copies in the first 5 seconds of it's release! The Dungeon Hobby Shop is now proudly working on Star Frontiers 2nd Edition to be released in late 2023, which is now available for pre-order from TSR Hobbies! It's available for $140 (with shipping) if you use the coupon code attached below, and comes with a tube set of TSR's super-authentic "Gygaxian Dice."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Reading levels are based largely on comprehension and vocabulary, which are necessary, but not sufficient, to write well - it takes much less skill and understanding to consume than to create.

Bingo.

The best concrete example of this I ever got was while I was part of a team project in a MBA program. I was the only native speaker of English in the group. When we were assigning roles to work on the final project, I had a flash of insight and volunteered to do final assembly and editing of the written report.

And it was a good thing I did. Even though all of my teammates understood their assignments quite well, the documents they delivered to me required substantial editing. Beyond just getting all of the info into one consistent voice, there were word choices (especially homonyms), spelling issues, phrasing issues, verb/subject agreement and other things that popped up to some degree in each of the parts.

None of this was due to lack of education, just less familiarity with WRITING in English than SPEAKING it.


* FWIW, the others on my team were Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese.

 

[Emrico]

If Justin LaNasa HAD a product, he would be showing charts and tables and graphs and he'd have specific combat rules to brag endlessly about. The fact that he is showing nothing but a collection of random parts that have no internal consistency with one another (to me) is proof that he's just throwing everything at a wall and seeing what gets the best reactions.

You wait and see. The night before the game's release in March, the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum will make a last-second announcement that...

2. There was a vicious attack by the (insert random name of alt-left group) and they broke in and BURNED all copies of Star Frontiers: New Genesis because they hate Justin, Ernie, and the rest of the OSR and they hate everything that is cutting edge, bleeding-cool, and mindblowing to TTRPG gaming. New copies of the game will have to wait to be printed until late 2023. Sorry about this fans. It was totally unavoidable (Womp womp.)

Put me in the pool for $20 on #2. No way wIll they pass up an opprtunity to claim they've been attacked by "The Woke" working for WotC to cripple NuTSR.

 

[Deset Gled]

Another minor update. Vince Florio has finally posted a little bit about the Cult of Abaddon on Twitter. According to Vince, he donated the adventure to NuTSR, is making no money from it, and has no other business involvement (he also has no info about sales numbers or when it will ship). He wrote almost all of it, and Ernie made a few minor changes so that he could get an author byline. I'm guessing the town name was at least one of those changes.

My personal take is that Vince is trying to distance himself from NuTSR without burning any bridges.

 

[darjr]

He said several times, stressing it quite stringently that he made no money on it. It was very odd.

 

[LordEntrails]

The idea of Star Frontiers to appeal to reactionary grognards, definitely. So far, though, it seems that they don't even care if LaNasa even delivers, let alone the quality of the product.

SF appeals to a pretty large group for RPGs that have been out of official support (?) for so many decades. The FB group has over 4.5k members. Of which I'm one. It has at least 1 active fanzine in publication, has recently seen new modules released, and otherwise is still "alive" (whatever that means).

There is interest in a new version. But just because we are SF fans doesn't mean we believe that anything with a SF name is actually going to be good. "We" are just as skeptical of NuTSR as this community is, hence while their is general hope for it, their is no faith and little goodwill for SFNG.

 

[pantsorama]

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.

That seems actionable.

BTW - The crowdfunding campaign lists the WotC lawsuit as dropped on 1/27/2022.