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)

 

[Gradine]

It might be worth starting a thread over in Meta to discuss the details of what to put in s-blocks. I have to admit I'm not 100% certain which images are problematic for you from the last couple pages. There's definitely some racist content that is being used for discussion, but I didn't catch any overt slurs. There's a lot of things in the history of the thread that are clearly in a grey area. I'm happy to modify my posting behavior as needed, but I would benefit from a little bit more guidance.

It would be counter-productive to create some kind of hard-and-fast rule, were I to even have the power to create one (which I do not). My advice would be to err on the side of caution; while there were the obvious slurs a little bit up-thread, some of the more recent examples involve directly targeted language that are nonetheless just as offensive and upsetting.

Spoiler: CW: offensive terminology

For instance, the use of "jive" to instantly summon a racist caricature, or the use of outdated language like "hermanphroditic" which was what was particularly triggering to me this morning

 

[Faolyn]

I found a new "source" - someone named Kim Wincent on twitter. As I don't think it's someone here, I feel no "guilt" for "stealing their thunder, so to speak, but still, thanks to them!

Spoiler

(edit: spoilers added, including the link)

It disturbs me to no end he keeps saying "no trans races." He's outright saying that he thinks trans people are a different "race" altogether--that they're not human. I really, really fear that he's going to do something truly terrible and possibly violent because of that belief, if he hasn't already.

 

[DLIMedia]

The !science, it burns

I mean, if is interplanetary SF, so you gotta ignore science, but trans-uranium elements are never stable, are wholly artificial, and take scads of energy to make exist for microseconds. In no way do they store energy. Not to mention, unlimited power does not explain how you break the light speed barrier.

It's simple people, if you have to use handwavium, don't try and sound grounded by putting well trod science into it. Go full handwavium! It right there. Make up all the stuff!

Also Lead can not be "safely disposed of". Maybe that's what their parents thought when placing lead in their crib, but it is not true.

I know that this is far down on the list of concerns, but seems like others have those bases well covered.

I've tried creating sci-fi stuff before... I've found that the best way to describe things is to NOT describe things. It's worse being flat out wrong; leave it to the creative mind of the reader and let them decide how things work in their own reality.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm gonna be honest. And I totally could be wrong. But I don't think SFNG is ever going to be a thing. I don't think it was ever going to be a thing. I think LaNasa knows (was advised by his attorneys) that he was going to lose his suit, and wouldn't be able to create the game regardless, so in retaliation that any toddler would be proud of, he decided to make something intentionally deplorable to get a rise out of people, and to keep people talking about him. I think his ego is so fragile, that people talking about him is the most important thing, even if it's bad things they are saying. He knows he has his cult following and never will get anyone else no matter what he does at this point, so why not double down and milk them for everything he can get?

 

[Faolyn]

Okay... I...

Someone help me understand this page, please. Not the racial purity stuff, that Nazi BS is very clear. I mean the attributes.

Physical Stats are 8-10. With Str at 10 max, Dex at 11 max, and Con at 10 max and a minimum of 7. By definition, this is not an 8-10 range, it is a 7-11 range.

But to determine your physical stats you roll:

Str: 2d6+15 (Minimum 8, Max 10)
Dex: 2d4+14 (Minimum 9, Max 11)
Con: 2d4+18 (Minimum 8, Max 10)

... The minimum you can get, here, is 17, 16, 20, but you're capped at 10, 11, 10. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

Meanwhile the "Mental Attributes" have a similar problem.

Int must be a 13 or higher and the lowest you can roll on 2d8+10 is 12.
Wis must be 13 or higher but at least the lowest you can roll is 14 because 2d6+12.
Cha must be 13 or higher but the lowest roll is 7.

This is nonsensical. Maybe I could grasp it if I looked at it from Johnson's perspective, but I can't get my head up my own backside far enough. I'm just not that flexible.

And then it gets even more insensate on the next page...

Your Str and Con are -beyond- capped out by your base dice rolls, but then being a "Male" Nordic adds +1 to Str and Con.

HOW.

Easy: Johnson is a terrible writer who never so much as bothered to re-read his work, let along playtest it.

 

[Nikosandros]

So if you are dead, then you are unconscious. And you will die unless you are healed.

Until that time, you are mostly dead. If you make your save, turns out you were just pining for the fjords.

 

[Nikosandros]

but he has to go the extra mile to look like an idiot.

What do you mean look like?

 

[Emrico]

I've tried creating sci-fi stuff before... I've found that the best way to describe things is to NOT describe things. It's worse being flat out wrong; leave it to the creative mind of the reader and let them decide how things work in their own reality.

No doubt! Just say (for example) "FTL travel exists in the form of special FTL Drives or Jump Drives or Jump Gates" or whatever the hell else you decide to call it and leave the pseudo-science/made up science explanations out of it completely. It's not like the tech really exists so there's no need to explain any further than "this exists and works in-universe". If you absolutely have to have a fuel-source for story purposes then think up your own stand-in for Dilithium Crystals, Coaxium, or Handwavium and call it good.

They soooooo overthink the unnecessary minutiae and completely underthink the actual game mechanics and apparently don't think at all about the racist crap they shovel in there.

 

[Parmandur]

... does this imply that the "Nordics" ... don't have sex? How peculiar

Makes more sense if you know the history of the crap he's copying from Wimipedia.

 

[CleverNickName]

At the very least, I think it's safe to say that someone has confused Charisma (the strength of someone's personality and charm) with Comeliness (the quality of being attractive).