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)

 

[Faolyn]

Dick Nixon was famous for having an enemies list - but in his case, he and his chief of staff had an administration to manage and they had to circulate a list to let the rest of his people know who to shun.
The main reason having a written list might make sense is if he's sharing it with someone else.

Who else does he know who isn't on that list?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm not sure exactly what NuTSR thinks they are going to sue for? Maybe they could sue the person who leaked the pdf for breaching an NDA but pretty sure there's not a thing they can do to the various people showing the racist trash in the pdf since they don't actually own the copyright to Star Frontiers and no one is trying to sell it.

I will be totally surprised if NuTSR actually has an NDA at all and if they do then I will bet $ that they wrote it themselves and did it so badly that it's unenforceable.

Can Justin and Dave even spell "NDA"?

Separate legal question- one I don’t know the answer for- is whether you can enforce an NDA involving something you don’t fully own.

 

[Emrico]

You don't actually have to sue to threaten to sue. And I assume the threat is that they'd be suing for defamation. But "I'm going to sue you" is usually an empty threat.

If they did sue someone discovery would be a trip though, so you'd think that that would be enough to keep him from filing a lawsuit at all. Because if you sue for defamation and it turns out you actually did what people said you did you only end up paying legal fees.

Right. I didn't mention defamation as I am assuming NuTSR wouldn't want to actually sue for something they'd lose during discovery (I have every belief that they've said/done/written everything that's being reported) so that would be an empty threat. I was just wondering if there is anything they think they could sue over and actually win and the only thing I could come up with was someone breaching an NDA.

 

[LordEntrails]

The thing is, that there's an actual old-school SF community, including folks doing regular fan magazines, Star Frontiersman and Frontier Explorer, which WotC gave permission/authorization to, I understand. But that community is focused on the original game, and SF:NG is a complete reboot. No doubt some of that community had interest, with the usual spark from Ernie's name being attached for nostalgia value, but as you say, this beta doc is repellant.

I consider myself one of those original Star Frontiers fans / part of the SF community. Of course "we" were initially excited that SF might have new life breathed into it. But "we" are not idiots and immediately started asking reasonable questions. Which we all know NuTSR do not respond well to. @Jedion357 from Tabletop Taproom is one such member of the SF community. And I think he would say the same thing, that he was initially excited, until he started asking questions and getting "LaNasa'd" for his daring.

The only thing that would make this whole story more like a crazy fever dream would be if it turned out to be xxx.

Please, let's not give Justin (or anyone else) any potential targets to be the focus of his attentions. There are so many things that we can speculate on, and potential behavior we can envision that people like those of NuTSR could do to another person. Please, let's not give put anyone who is not willing into such a position.

 

[Steampunkette]

Separate legal question- one I don’t know the answer for- is whether you can enforce an NDA involving something you don’t fully own.

Yes.

The NDA is a contract to limit speech. Doesn't matter who owns the thing you're signing the NDA about, you're still agreeing to limit your speech about that thing. Breaking the NDA remains a breach of contract with specific penalties outlined in a given contract.

 

[Emrico]

Yes.

The NDA is a contract to limit speech. Doesn't matter who owns the thing you're signing the NDA about, you're still agreeing to limit your speech about that thing. Breaking the NDA remains a breach of contract with specific penalties outlined in a given contract.

I still have full confidence that these guys could absolutely have not paid a lawyer to do a proper NDA, wrote one themselves instead and screwed it up to the point where it is easily broken or unenforcable. Can you even imagine the typos and grammatical errors they would make trying to write that themselves?

Also possible that the leaker did not sign any NDA.

I still maintain that none of them can spell NDA.

 

[Steampunkette]

I still have full confidence that these guys could absolutely have not paid a lawyer to do a proper NDA, wrote one themselves instead and screwed it up to the point where it is easily broken or unenforcable. Can you even imagine the typos and grammatical errors they would make trying to write that themselves?

Also possible that the leaker did not sign any NDA.

I still maintain that none of them can spell NDA.

Oh, absolutely.

I do not for a moment believe that Lanasa -thought- to make an NDA for this stuff. He just threw everything together and kept throwing things to try and make it stick.

And now that nothing does, and everything awful is coming to light, he's just trying to get out of it all by deflection and denial.

It won't work.

 

[DLIMedia]

You don't actually have to sue to threaten to sue. And I assume the threat is that they'd be suing for defamation. But "I'm going to sue you" is usually an empty threat.

Threatening to sue someone is a tactic that works surprisingly often, because the mere threat of taking on that risk and expense is enough of a deterrent to most.

Me? My sister is an attorney for the Walt Disney Corporation. Not only does she work for me for free, but she would love to see them try anything so she can spectacularly tear them a new one.

 

[DLIMedia]

(Sorry for the double post)

Also possible that the leaker did not sign any NDA.

I'm willing to bet, if anything, they were made to sign something LaNasa copied off the internet thinking it was sufficient of an NDA to protect him, but it's likely about as weak as the paper it's written on. Any attorney with half a brain could shred it with a five minute defense.

NDAs are notoriously hard to enforce. I should know... I have a literal drawer full of NDAs going back thirty years.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yes.

The NDA is a contract to limit speech. Doesn't matter who owns the thing you're signing the NDA about, you're still agreeing to limit your speech about that thing. Breaking the NDA remains a breach of contract with specific penalties outlined in a given contract.

I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. There’s lots of things that can void an NDA (and as stated, I don’t know them all). Three spring to mind in this case:

1) the NDA is drafted to cover information that is already known by parties not subject to the NDA

Since nuTSR is trying to have an NDA cover IP they do not own that is already owned by another company, the subject matter of the NDA is arguably “known” by parties outside the NDA.

2) the NDA is drafted too broadly to be enforceable.

While nuTSR may have produced material coverable by an NDA, using it to ALSO cover information about IP that isn’t theirs may not work.

3) the NDA is drafted so that it doesn’t cover the necessary parties.

This is the potentially hilarious one: sometimes people and business entities do business under a variety of legal identities. If an NDA is written purporting to bind legal entities not actually relevant to the agreement, it’s void. That can include being drafted so that it covers a “trade name” or other name that isn’t the entity’s legal name for the purposes of contractual agreements*, or even the wrong subsidiary. Even a misspelling or leaving off something like “Ltd.” can trigger this. How many legal entities besides himself does Justin Lanasa have involved in this?





* Like if they had used “FedEx” before they had legally changed the company’s name from “Federal Express”.