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)

 

[darjr]

Was a tweet showing a review that in my opinion was horribly bigoted. The twitter chose to delete it so hence my edit.

 

[Yaarel]

OMG, I don't want to distract from the legal discussion, but Tenkar just posted a video showing a PDF of the SFNG beta that was made for TSR Con. Two of the subraces of "Humanoids" are literally "N-words*" (with an intelligence cap and high strength) and "Nordic" (blond haired, blue eyed, and bonuses to all attributes).

I can't even.



*Not that N-word, but another common derivative of it. Not sure if it's safe to post or not.

Despite NuTSR denials, this N*zi garbage in the Star Frontiers document tracks with what NuTSR says and does.

LaNasa and others in NuTSR have always been strange, aggressive, and hate-mongering.

It seems like NuTSR has been all along trying to hijack the D&D brand and its increasing fame, as a public medium to push their self-delusional N*ziism into a wider mainstream discourse.

They seem to intend for there to be scandals, to reach a wider public, in order to pull vulnerable people into their hate group.

(Also, the inconsistent errors in spelling and grammar in the racist Star Frontiers document, is somewhat a telltale fingerprint, that LaNasa and others in NuTSR wrote.)

I suspect, NuTSR did not intend to publish the racist terms, but that they served as in-house placeholders for the racist tropes that they would lampshade in a future public document.

 

[Yaarel]

To be clear, Scandinavians deeply reject the misuse of the term "Nordic" for such evil racism. In the previous century, German N*zis culturally appropriated and misrepresented various aspects of Nordic cultural heritage. Most of the individuals who culturally appropriated the term Nordic for their racist discourse were and are Non-Nordic themselves. Since then, archeologists, historians, ethnologists, and geneticists have definitively disproved the existence of an "Aryan race". The geography of Germany has always been a melting pot of different ethnicities from different origins, who eventually united together by adopting a common language.

 

[Deset Gled]

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.

I agree with you in principle, but I think things have gone on a bit too long to use that as a defense.

To start, the idea that Jeff would be homeless without Justin is questionable. Surely it would be difficult for him, but that seems like hyperbole; he wasn't homeless before he met Lanasa. We know that he lives at the museum as curator, and he's been doing so for about a year now AFAICT. Which means he's had plenty of time to figure out how bad Lanasa is and plan an exit. If he was fired, there are laws protecting tenants that would give him time to move out (or go through an eviction process, etc). People have also speculated that being paid with housing is actually a way to work while receiving disability (so that his income stays low).

And, as you say, we have to consider what Jeff has done himself. He doesn't just work at the DHSM, he has tied himself into the brand. Jeff uses his name and personal history to bring legitimacy to NuTSR. He hosts games at the museum on a regular basis, using his name to draw people in. He was a big part of TSR Con. More recently, we have evidence of him actively backing up Lanasa's claims of victimhood (watch the video from this post: TSR - The Full & Glorious History of NuTSR). Regardless of his employment, I think he should be held personally accountable for that.

If Jeff Leason did end up leaving NuTSR and suffered financial hardship, I would have a ton of sympathy for him. Until then, he's just another enabler who has no problem with racists being racist.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Ernie has been riding on the coattails of his last name for a long time. I will say that having attended some virtual seminars (before all this came to light) he hosted, he has an infectious enthusiasm for the game, and shares interesting stories and anecdotes about the history of D&D and his family. None of which changes the fact that he's never really done anything himself and has allied himself with unrepentant bigots and grifters.

One lesson Ernie has learned is that engaging as himself is a losing proposition, so he has adopted a ostrich strategy, i.e. burying his head in the sand until the danger passes. Sadly, he doesn't seem to realize that we can still see him.

Ernie has had decades, if not a lifetime, of people coming up to him telling him how awesome he is, and it seems like he's really bought into it, despite never having produced anything of substance himself. I really don't understand why he's as popular as he is in certain circles; I suppose people think praising him is the next best thing to praising Gary?

Looking at the text, I'm pretty sure a professional editor has never been anywhere near it...

...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.

 

[darjr]

I’m actually OK if a son lives some what on the glory of their father. To a degree. It’s best if they go on to do things too. But not all of us can do. But giving, or clownishly trying to give, that clout to those that hurt others is terrible. And a huge shame.

 

[tenkar]

For those asking:

 

[Sacrosanct]

I’m actually OK if a son lives some what on the glory of their father. To a degree. It’s best if they go on to do things too. But not all of us can do. But giving, or clownishly trying to give, that clout to those that hurt others is terrible. And a huge shame.

I know my opinion doesn't really matter (nor should it), but Luke did it about as good as you could do it. He is his own man, with his own career and accomplishments. And ALSO is a good and active steward and creative personality in the hobby.

 

[darjr]

I know my opinion doesn't really matter (nor should it), but Luke did it about as good as you could do it. He is his own man, with his own career and accomplishments. And ALSO is a good and active steward and creative personality in the hobby.

Yes he is.

 

[Deset Gled]

For those asking:

For anyone who doesn't know, that's Dave Johnson again. His legal name is George David Johnson Jr. Looks like this was a simple "Print to PDF" job from his computer.