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)

 

[Emrico]

You know, that's a good point. Even us casual posters/bloggers, who do make typos, sometimes doozies, are paragon of editorial excellence and clarity compared to NuTSR...

And that's really what I was trying to get across. I hate myself when I make typos on something that I can't go back in and edit. And you seem very much like that too. But NuTSR makes soooooo many and even on sites where they could go back and fix them, they just don't care enough to even bother. It just reinforces the view that they're just a bunch of lazy grifters.

 

[Emrico]

But that's got nothing to do with having professional media handlers and everything to do with them giving a damn and not being complete jerks. But I can also point you at other one-man-band style operations who will still make typos.



I'm not defending their overall behavior in any way. I'm just saying that accidentally substituting one letter for a letter right next to it on a keyboard is something anyone can do if they're in a hurry, professional account or not.

The reason I brought up company run social media is just that NuTSR has announced at least twice that I can think of that "This is Person X and they are in charge of our social media". If they are going to talk the talk of having an actual Social Media Person then they need to back it up with some competence. And they don't. They don't even come close. Their social media is just textbook level incompetence on all fronts.

 

[arakasi]

Maybe they misspelled it on purpose cuz it's not leather

I would be surprised if those rebound books weren't filled with blank pages or pdfs.

I just did a quick google search and found Grimm Book Bindery in Madison, WI.that will rebind books in imitation leather, starting at ~$50.

My money is on LaNasa & Co printing out a PDF and bringing it to these guys to bind it in fake leather. This way, they don't have to try and fake a cover.

Total cost ~$65 & sell it for $650

 

[Faolyn]

I just did a quick google search and found Grimm Book Bindery in Madison, WI.that will rebind books in imitation leather, starting at ~$50.

My money is on LaNasa & Co printing out a PDF and bringing it to these guys to bind it in fake leather. This way, they don't have to try and fake a cover.

Total cost ~$65 & sell it for $650

Well, plus printing costs. But that assumes that they even paid for the pdf. It's not hard to find a pirated copy. If I felt they had the patience for it, they could even scan in their own books.

But anyway, if this is what they did (I'm still voting for blank sketchpad, since they always refused to show the insides of the book), then they only paid for that pdf once, and you know they'd print out multiple copies from a single pdf.

 

[Mort]

If I were one of WoTCs attorneys, I'd send someone to try and buy this book!

There is a HIGH probability it's either non-existent, pirated (bound scanned illegal PDF) or involves some other stupid shenanigans WoTC can use against them.

 

[DLIMedia]

If I were one of WoTCs attorneys, I'd send someone to try and buy this book!

There is a HIGH probability it's either non-existent, pirated (bound scanned illegal PDF) or involves some other stupid shenanigans WoTC can use against them.

The book "exists" in the literal sense; it's been seen in many photos of the DHSM.

Now, if the book is what they say it is... that's another story. At least to me, it seems like a particularly stupid idea to take a rare book - one that's already rare and worth a lot of money - tear off the cover and give it a new one. They're using the excuse that the old one had a damaged cover, but that would suggest that it belonged to someone which makes the eagerness to sell it at a ludicrous price odd.

Of course, if he sells that for $650 he'll be able to pay for almost two whole man hours of legal fees, so who knows.

 

[Faolyn]

The book "exists" in the literal sense; it's been seen in many photos of the DHSM.

Now, if the book is what they say it is... that's another story. At least to me, it seems like a particularly stupid idea to take a rare book - one that's already rare and worth a lot of money - tear off the cover and give it a new one. They're using the excuse that the old one had a damaged cover, but that would suggest that it belonged to someone which makes the eagerness to sell it at a ludicrous price odd.

Of course, if he sells that for $650 he'll be able to pay for almost two whole man hours of legal fees, so who knows.

I think that these books were the store copies that they used for their own game (if they actually have books inside of them). They probably used them to death and rebound them when the covers fell off. They probably still use them, but for some reason they think having these books "for sale" gives them prestige or something, but as you can see they're being really insulting and charging a ludicrous amount of money so they are never going to sell it.

I dunno, maybe he can deduct it from his taxes or something.

 

[Mort]

The book "exists" in the literal sense; it's been seen in many photos of the DHSM.

Now, if the book is what they say it is... that's another story. At least to me, it seems like a particularly stupid idea to take a rare book - one that's already rare and worth a lot of money - tear off the cover and give it a new one. They're using the excuse that the old one had a damaged cover, but that would suggest that it belonged to someone which makes the eagerness to sell it at a ludicrous price odd.

Of course, if he sells that for $650 he'll be able to pay for almost two whole man hours of legal fees, so who knows.

I just can't see anyone buying this for $650.

The MOST you'd have to spend on EBAY is $500 and you can get it for A LOT less than that if you're patient.

And, IMO, the binding hugely detracts from the book not adds to it. Personally, I'd pay less for this than a regular version.

 

[jdrakeh]

I just can't see anyone buying this for $650.

The MOST you'd have to spend on EBAY is $500 and you can get it for A LOT less than that if you're patient.

And, IMO, the binding hugely detracts from the book not adds to it. Personally, I'd pay less for this than a regular version.

You can pick up a decent condition copy of the original Deities & Demigods (with Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythos) for less than $300 on the second-hand market right now, if you're patient. You can pick up one with condition issues for less than $200. Their ask on this is absolutely ridiculous. What you're getting at best is a book that will be collectible in the future as a reminder of that time a group of total asswipes tried to sue WotC and lost. IMO, it has no collectible value outside of that, as removing the original covers and replacing them with cheap-o aftermarket covers only devalues the original book.

 

[Deset Gled]

Just more proof that they have zero clue about anything "real gamers" would do or want. I have a beat up copy of the 144pg D&DG and if I ever want to upgrade to a nicer one it sure as he'll won't be paying $650 for one they ripped the covers off and made worthless. Near mint copies can be found for quite a bit less if you really want one as a collectible and are patient. Yes, it would still be fairly expensive but at least you wouldn't feel cheated.

They probably still use them, but for some reason they think having these books "for sale" gives them prestige or something, but as you can see they're being really insulting and charging a ludicrous amount of money so they are never going to sell it.

The purpose of the leatherbound editions is entirely marketing, but it has nothing to do with gaming. It's part of the sideshow hustle used to prop up the DHSM as an actual "museum" to tourists.

This is what the DSHM looks like (from their own photos):

They have very little in terms of actual "artifacts" from the history of D&D. As you can see, it's mostly glass cases full of old game books.

Now, anyone who actually collects RPGs will know that most of those books aren't terribly expensive. A copy of the AD&D 1e PHB can be bought on ebay for $20~50 depending on condition. And most of the books aren't especially rare or desirable. From close-ups, some of them aren't even that old; one pic showed that the center display had Stranger Things items in it. Which means those shelves of books really aren't that impressive. They probably have less net value that the average bookshelf at a public library.

But, if a tourist sees a special, leatherbound copy of a book for $650, it gives the impression that every item in that case is really valuable. After all, the ones behind glass are the super rare ones they won't sell for any price, so they must be worth more than $650, right? Now that case of books feels like it's worth a fortune! And, lets be honest, leather bound books look cool and old-timey, just like you expect in a fantasy library. Almost anyone who isn't a collector of old books will be more visually impressed by a nice looking leather edition than an old book with tatters and tears.

At the end of the day, it's all about image. It's about selling the idea that the The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum has important, expensive history in it. It's no more dishonest than any sideshow amusement or curio shop that you'll find on any boardwalk or small town main street. And there's (normally) no shame in enjoying that kind of experience, either.

But the illusion falls apart when NuTSR tries to pretend it's more than it is. The DHSM isn't a mecca of gaming, it's a tourist trap. A little bit of honesty or self-awareness would go a long way, but unfortunately is seems like that's not an option on the table right now.