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)

 

[Vaalingrade]

Huh. I always thought it was from the notion that soy contained estrogen (actually isoflavones), and thus would make men who consumed too much of it to be feminized somehow. I guess I don't know my internet trash memes.

It's all just backfill to feel superior to people who get their milk sugars from means other than fondling cows.

I say this as an unapologetic cow fondler. I just do it because I like milk (and cows >_>) and not because I was raised wrong or radicalized by people who were raised wrong.

 

[DLIMedia]

Any bets on how long it takes for them to delete the comment and block me?

I can't see that comment, so no time at all I guess.

ETA: Never mind, it's still there as of 10am Eastern.

 

[DLIMedia]

...and the forensic expert has logged on...

FYI:

1) Michael Yach is the moderator of NuTSR's Discord channel
2) That avatar is Jefferson Davis... President of the Confederate States. Yes, really.

 

[Sacrosanct]

N Jeff Leason remains silent as always. Sad to note that Leason's FB had a number of posts about "Teach Juneteenth". I guess he's willing to preach to the masses but not in his own back yard.

I think things are tougher for Jeff, because he becomes homeless without Justin. I think it might be plausible for Jeff to not necessarily agree with this bigotry but if he says anything, he's on the street. And Justin is certainly the type of person to attack anyone who says anything non-complimentary towards him. That's a pretty good motivator to keep quiet. Not everyone has the luxury of being anti-racist. Maslow's HoN and all that.

I'm taking the position of judging Jeff by what he's said and done himself.

 

[neobolts]

I know I have said this before, but what kind of person thinks that people you are attracted to have a nigh supernatural power to control you. The deep insecurity and subsequent projection on display is full of pathos and irony. Get some self respect people, maybe you won't feel compelled to do whatever a person you think is cute tells you to do. And then assign it to some preternatural superpower of an entire gender / class / ethnicity / whatevs.

I do think some people are far more suggestable/seducable than others. I also think something like this could work as a game mechanic in a TTRPG, say a selectable flaw of "easily seduced" written in a orientation-neutral way that was tonally appropriate to the game setting and subject matter. But it would take a lot of nuance and caveats that whoever wrote this isn't capable of, which is why it's written as a projected "hot chick" superpower -- like something out of an old Tex Avery cartoon.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Wait, is this a whole new different guy using that avatar now?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I do think some people are far more suggestable/seducable than others. I also think something like this could work as a game mechanic in a TTRPG, say a selectable flaw of "easily seduced" written in a orientation-neutral way that was tonally appropriate to the game setting and subject matter. But it would take a lot of nuance and caveats that whoever wrote this isn't capable of, which is why it's written as a projected "hot chick" superpower -- like something out of an old Tex Avery cartoon.

HERO can do this very easily. You are vulnerable to presence attacks from certain people or concerning certain subjects.

 

[DLIMedia]

Wait, is this a whole new different guy using that avatar now?

Not sure who else you're referring to, but Michael "Confederacy is Awesome!" Yach has had that avatar for some time now.

His Facebook banner is a Confederate flag so... yeah...

 

[neobolts]

...and the forensic expert has logged on...

View attachment 254560

FYI:

1) Michael Yach is the moderator of NuTSR's Discord channel
2) That avatar is Jefferson Davis... President of the Confederate States. Yes, really.

The entire NuTSR operation feels like 4-5 actual people and a bunch of sockpuppet accounts.

 

[GraphPaper Architect]

Burried in that twitter thread is this conversation with Micheal Hovermale from the Youtube comments on Tenkar's video. I'm reposting it because I think it deserves more attention. @Graph Paper Architect , please let us know if there's anything else you'd like to add (or if I need to edit anything).

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Graph Paper Architect - 17 hours ago (edited)
I am stating now, neither myself or my Son, are affiliated with, nor were a part of the creation of this in any way. I will happily come on your show and state the same.

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waibelr - 16 hours ago
That's nice, and I don't mean that flippantly. But it does beg the question. Justin didn't suddenly become this giant racist turd. People like that are like that for a long time. And you worked with and defended him for months. I don't mean this as a gotcha, but rather as a legit question to hear your side. How/why did you stay with him for so long knowing what kind of person he is?

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Graph Paper Architect - 12 hours ago
@waibelr The simple answer is I did not know. I was working with him/them remotely and he was very careful not reveal to me his nature until January, then I left.

When I began working with NuTSR(NOTSR) LaNasa part of my initial questions of them were:

1. Who is in charge of the social media - they, Justin, Jeff, and Ernie, assured me they were not, and in fact told me it was Stephen Dinehart IV. That did turn out to be true, and while it was Stephen that was the IT and PR manager that tweeted to Meg the Sorceress and also hijacked NuTSR's URL's attempting to sell them on Twitter, it was in fact a coordinated effort between Justin, Stephen & Ernie to manage the PR.

The PR and IT was turned over to me initially but then quickly reverted back to Justin making posts and me behind him with the fire extinguisher. They were inflammatory and needed much correction, but he did not make any overtly prejudice etc posts or comments, that I was aware of, while I was with them. I still don't know everything he posted.

2. I specifically asked if any of the allegations of bigotry, prejudice, and other heinous ideals were true, and I was assured they were not. I was assured that they were in fact inclusive and that "anyone/everyone is welcome at their tables". In conversations with Justin we did not discuss the issues after this initial assurance I received from Justin, Ernie and Jeff. Justin also did not attempt to push the agendas he is now, instead he sold me on the idea that we would be bringing back TSR alumni, which proved to be another fabrication.

When I was brought to Lake Geneva by Justin, there was no discussion about it, we only talked about business or gaming. No discussion about any personal topics were had.

Ernie, Donna & Jeff were wonderful and gracious hosts to me, and I had a fantastic time at Victoria Con meeting Mike Carr and much more. There was nothing to indicate any problems, and all discussions were about business and gaming with them.

Slowly that changed after I came home, Justin's comments in person and posts became more and more erratic. He and I had many discussions and arguments regarding the things he was posting and their meaning until finally in January he made himself clear to me, and I resigned.

It is not in my nature to go in public and make statements, and you are the first to ask me with genuine sincerity so thank you for giving me this opportunity to make things quite clear as Don already has in his video, which I will be responding to in kind.

It is unpleasant to have to do things like this, but I look at this as a much needed opportunity to clear out bad apples, just like the reporting on Satine and Jamison's behavior so we can rid our community of people that are causing harm. Thank You for asking Waibeir.

Thank you for posting this Deset.