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)

 

[jdrakeh]

According to the Aceum, a mint D&D w/ Cthulhu goes for about $180.

That's a bit dated. They've recently been pulling $250-$300 on eBay, dependent upon condition.

 

[jdrakeh]

and that they have approval from WotC in writing.

That is almost certainly another of their lies.

 

[jdrakeh]

...and it's such a weird thing to lie about.

I mean, I think they've lied about plenty of other stuff. Why stop now?

 

[adamantyr]

I know back when WotC bought TSR there was a warehouse full of old books (mostly 1E, I believe).

You don’t suppose that these may be rebound editions from that stock?

…Not that I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt as I suspect that stock was destroyed, but if they ARE rebindings, it may have been someone saved/scavenged it from that stock, and it was left at the Dungeon Hobby shop years ago.

I haven't heard that specific rumor before, do you have a source?

It MAKES sense, though. AD&D 1E books were piling up in the mid 80's; 2nd edition made most of them obsolete, in the view of TSR management at the time. I remember seeing long shelves of 1E DMG's 2nd cover prints in bookstores untouched. Most of that unsold stock would be returned to TSR, and no business would pulp/destroy product without very good cause.

 

[jdrakeh]

I haven't heard that specific rumor before, do you have a source?

Ryan Dancey talked about it in an interview when WotC bought TSR. That inventory was, however, pulped (by WotC) according to Dancey.

 

[Jer]

I haven't heard that specific rumor before, do you have a source?

It wasn't a rumor - it was Ryan Dancey talking about the TSR purchase by WotC back in the late 90s:

I toured a warehouse packed from floor to 50 foot ceiling with products valued as though they would soon be sold to a distributor with production stamps stretching back to the late 1980s. I was 10 pages in to a thick green bar report of inventory, calculating the true value of the material in that warehouse when I realized that my last 100 entries had all been "$0"'s.

Why had a moderate success in collectable dice triggered a million unit order? Why did I still have stacks and stacks of 1st edition rulebooks in the warehouse?

(Here's an archive of the post but I remember the original article and IIRC Dancey also did some follow up about it - Ryan Dancey on the Acquisition of TSR)

TSR apparently had no real roll out strategy for 2e. They didn't ramp down production of 1e books before releasing 2e and killed the market for their own books in the process. But instead of pulping them they just kept them in the warehouse because who knows why?

 

[Stormonu]

I haven't heard that specific rumor before, do you have a source?

It MAKES sense, though. AD&D 1E books were piling up in the mid 80's; 2nd edition made most of them obsolete, in the view of TSR management at the time. I remember seeing long shelves of 1E DMG's 2nd cover prints in bookstores untouched. Most of that unsold stock would be returned to TSR, and no business would pulp/destroy product without very good cause.

Well the warehouse wasn’t a rumor, it was discussed in a rather famous article by Peter Atkinson as part of the lamentation of TSRs woes when WotC bought the company - discussing a warehouse full of 1E product on wrapped pallets “as if ready to be shipped out to stores at a moment’s notice”. Unfortunately, I can’t find reference to the article as I remember reading it on the old Gleemax forum. Hopefully someone else here can point to it.

<Edit: ah, it was Dancey and others have already pointed to it!>

 

[adamantyr]

It wasn't a rumor - it was Ryan Dancey talking about the TSR purchase by WotC back in the late 90s:




(Here's an archive of the post but I remember the original article and IIRC Dancey also did some follow up about it - Ryan Dancey on the Acquisition of TSR)

TSR apparently had no real roll out strategy for 2e. They didn't ramp down production of 1e books before releasing 2e and killed the market for their own books in the process. But instead of pulping them they just kept them in the warehouse because who knows why?

Oh excellent article, thank you for sharing! And honestly a good one to have on this thread; a reminder of what old TSR did wrong. So much wrong.

 

[Sacrosanct]

TSR apparently had no real roll out strategy for 2e. They didn't ramp down production of 1e books before releasing 2e and killed the market for their own books in the process. But instead of pulping them they just kept them in the warehouse because who knows why?

It was the deal with Random House* that did this. Lorraine use that deal to "borrow" money to pay the bills. It was a downward spiral of hemorrhaging money.

*TSR had a deal where Random House would pay them for all products shipped to Random House whether they sold or not, which was unusual because normally the publisher gets money based on units sold. So when Lorraine saw, "Hey we need another million dollars to pay for bills", she ordered a book or dice or whatever and order a million dollars worth of product and shipped that to Random House.

Inevitably, the product didn't sell, and Random House sent all the stuff back and came to collect on the debt. Thus the downfall. At one point, TSR owed $10 million to debtors and even during their best year only had $40 million in sales. So even during the best year, after costs (eating into most of that $40 mil), they couldn't pay their debts back. It was even worse since their best year was long behind them at that point.

Then when you factor in how TSR drafted all of their products (and thus took all the money for products) at the start of the year, they couldn't react to market changes for an entire year. My beloved CD Core rules CD rom is an example of this. They made a deal with babbages to sell it. Created the CD ROM and took the money for all of those sets at the beginning of the deal. Then Babbages went bankrupt. TSR took money based on the MSRP of that product at the beginning, but they all were immediately liquidated with Babbages stuff as soon as they were released, so no one was buying them anywhere else. TSR had to eat that cost difference. It was a complete disaster.

 

[Jer]

Oh excellent article, thank you for sharing! And honestly a good one to have on this thread; a reminder of what old TSR did wrong. So much wrong.

TSR was a company who had a good and revolutionary product and rode that to success despite their business model/skills for two decades.

When you have something people want to buy you can be a terrible businessperson and still make money. TSR is a really good example of that reality.