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)

 

[adamantyr]

I wrote this.

I sent it to Justin LaNasa, Ernie Gygax, and Stephen Dinehart IV on 7/5/2021. I’ve now forwarded that original email and attachment to members of the YouTube press that are covering NuTSR for verification.

I'm not surprised that Justin is still using my work, even after libeling my Son Logan and I.

I wrote this mostly for Ernie, when we were trying to get a handle on a lot of hate coming our way about his father.

I never met Gary Gygax and I have no idea what his beliefs were. Based on what I am told by those that knew Gary well, he was not the hateful things some people claim he was based on forum posts, old articles, etc... I'm NOT defending Gary or anything he wrote, what I am saying is based on what I am told by the people that knew him, is he was not any of those things.

Did Gary make mistakes, yes he was a human, and last time I checked we all make mistakes. He did the best he could with the information at hand, and I don’t read any hate in his gaming materials, inaccuracies, sure, but not hate.

When I create adventures set in any culture, even the one I grew up in, I do research to try to get things right. My goal is always to try to show off the awesome things within them. I believe this was the intent of settings like Oriental Adventures etc… to bring to light things that are cool, fun, and give players options to play them.

This is a very deep personal story for me because it touches on my dreams of being a creator. Not just creating games, but also books, films, media and entertainment to enrich and inspire people and bring joy to their lives. Help children learn important lessons, and help people connect through a mutual love.

When Jim Henson sang, life’s like a movie write your own ending, keep believing keep pretending that became my mantra. It’s what I have always wanted, making the rainbow connection with the lovers, the dreamers, and me. That’s what I always thought getting involved in making media was all about, people coming together to make magic.

If Justin LaNasa, NuTSR, The Dungeon Hobbyshop Museum or anyone affiliated with them uses my work, letters, writings etc… I will post about it.

I am NOT affiliated with nor do I support NuTSR, or The Dungeon Hobbyshop Museum in any way!

This is because they are owned by Justin LaNasa. If the Dungeon Hobbyshop Museum came under new ownership I’d love it.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Hovermale, not Joe. Anyone who wants a forward of the original document to do cyber forensics on it for validity I will provide it.

Thank you for clarifying, Mike! I should have realized that anything written so well (except the last couple sentences) couldn't be written by anyone at nuTSR at present.

 

[lingual]

Almost white guy? Is he referring to genetics, or saying he's almost albino-white (he's not), or something else?

Also, I think this is an insult to Mr. Coyote here. It's not his fault that Acme keeps sending him duds and Roadrunner has supernatural luck.

Maybe he's not "Nordic" enough?

 

[Steampunkette]

That story reminded me about the Dwarves in the Eberron setting. Keith Baker wanted the setting to be very mercantile, and the Dwarves made obvious bankers -- they're supposed to be dour and have strongholds deep underground, they're a natural fit. So in the newer books, writers have to tread very carefully about a current "corrupted Dwarf" trope, because that automatically makes them potentially an antisemitic analogue. It's why I've never used the Dwarf corruption plot thread in my Eberron games.

so...

I also had a "fallen/cursed gnome becoming goblins" in a big homebrew campaign I had too. So you aren't the only one. BUUUT they reversed the curse during the game, I'm not sure if that makes it any better.

I had no idea that this was an anti-semitic trope, and in fact I was worried about the dwarves being anti semitic (it was a pseudo-earth like setting), and took pains to portray them in a good light.

Wait, really? Is there somewhere convenient this is explained?

In my setting, there was an apocalyptic event (a god smashed a moon, and a chunk pierced the world all the way to the lower planes). The literal fallout caused many sentient races in the area to become corrupted into the typically evil races: humans became giants, elves became orcs, halflings became goblins, gnomes became kobolds. (Dwarves were actually created by a god later as a bulwark against the giants invading other lands in the world.) There are still humans, elves, halflings and gnomes in the world further away from the hell-crater, so it's not like every single gnome became a kobold.

About the time many of the threads/blog articles on orcs started appearing here and elsewhere on the internet, I asked my group for feedback on this bit of lore. I'm fortunate enough to play with a diverse and open-minded group, and their take was those races being evil due to supernatural corruption rather than "just because all orcs are evil" was acceptable. I've even played up this unnatural origin by making spells such as Protection from Good and Evil effective against them. Orcs, goblins, etc. are essentially mortal demons of the Prime Material plane. There are no natural races that are monolithically evil.

Even so, I still have my doubts whether or not someone outside my group would be uncomfortable with this setup. So, I really can't fathom the motivations of someone who would actually go out of their way to make the racist implications of some tropes as explicit as NuTSR and their SFNG draft does.

Possibly the Medieval idea that Jews were "corrupted" by the devil, plus frequently illustrating them in an inhuman way. Like how in comics printed during WWII, Japanese people were often made to look literally demonic, with fangs and pointed ears. So having gnomes get turned into (uglier, evil) goblins could be seen as being similar. Although I think that might be a bit of a stretch myself, especially in Steampunkette's case, where it doesn't look like the gnomes had any other "Jewish" traits.

It's kind of a catch-22. In pretty much every folklore from every culture, "demons" and "goblins" have distorted humanoid features, because those features are unsettling to people. And then, you've got pretty much every government in history doing the same thing to cultures they wanted to portray as less than human*.

So how do you avoid the trap of depicting a humanoid from folklore while avoiding any connotations to cultures that have had the same done to them? I don't know the answer. Are all goblins anti-Semitic because that's how Jews were portrayed by Nazis? Do you completely avoid humanoid caricatures completely, even if they are pulled from the demons/goblins in folklore?

*Seriously, this is propaganda 101. Depict your enemy as less than human, because it's easier to kill them that way.

Tagging a whole lotta people:

The antisemitic trope is based on the biblical character of Ham and the Curse of Ham/Canaan. For a long time it was used to create the legal fiction of Serfdom and specifically targeted Jewish people as "Canaanites" for slavery and violence for having been "Punished by God". The "Churlish sons of Ham" moved to Europe while the "Noble sons of Shem" stayed in Africa.

Later, it was turned against people who were physically black as the basis of Slavery. Suddenly the Caananites had stayed in Africa. Not that the European Jewish Folk were treated any more kindly after that point.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Racism is not necessarily knowing and willing - you can say something racist out of ignorance, or out of habit, even though you have no hate in your heart. Fetishizing the katana among swords, for example, is kind of racist. Government policies can be racist when they have unintended impacts, and so on.

See also using words or phrases with roots or major connotations in bigotry you were not aware of. That’s a major trap for the unwary because of the way language spreads and evolves.

Classic examples in English include “gypped”, “welshed”, or even “boy” (depending on context). DC Comics used an Asian slur as the nickname of an Asian sidekick for DECADES before they set things right by having the character so named correct his superheroic buddy in one issue. From that point on, the character was known by his actual name.

 

[Jedion357]

Well that is interesting, It was obvious that it was not the usual suspects doing that writing.

 

[Deset Gled]

I wrote this.

I sent it to Justin LaNasa, Ernie Gygax, and Stephen Dinehart IV on 7/5/2021. I’ve now forwarded that original email and attachment to members of the YouTube press that are covering NuTSR for verification.

Thanks for clearing this up. I can confirm that the metadata in the Word doc backs up your story. IANAL, but if Justin never paid you for your time with NuTSR, you might have a legal claim that he doesn't own copyright to anything like this (or the SFNG stuff) that you've written.

@tenkar has also just posted a video about this:

Spoiler: Hiding in-line video

 

[vecna00]

I wrote this.

I sent it to Justin LaNasa, Ernie Gygax, and Stephen Dinehart IV on 7/5/2021. I’ve now forwarded that original email and attachment to members of the YouTube press that are covering NuTSR for verification.

I'm not surprised that Justin is still using my work, even after libeling my Son Logan and I.

I wrote this mostly for Ernie, when we were trying to get a handle on a lot of hate coming our way about his father.

I never met Gary Gygax and I have no idea what his beliefs were. Based on what I am told by those that knew Gary well, he was not the hateful things some people claim he was based on forum posts, old articles, etc... I'm NOT defending Gary or anything he wrote, what I am saying is based on what I am told by the people that knew him, is he was not any of those things.

Did Gary make mistakes, yes he was a human, and last time I checked we all make mistakes. He did the best he could with the information at hand, and I don’t read any hate in his gaming materials, inaccuracies, sure, but not hate.

When I create adventures set in any culture, even the one I grew up in, I do research to try to get things right. My goal is always to try to show off the awesome things within them. I believe this was the intent of settings like Oriental Adventures etc… to bring to light things that are cool, fun, and give players options to play them.

This is a very deep personal story for me because it touches on my dreams of being a creator. Not just creating games, but also books, films, media and entertainment to enrich and inspire people and bring joy to their lives. Help children learn important lessons, and help people connect through a mutual love.

When Jim Henson sang, life’s like a movie write your own ending, keep believing keep pretending that became my mantra. It’s what I have always wanted, making the rainbow connection with the lovers, the dreamers, and me. That’s what I always thought getting involved in making media was all about, people coming together to make magic.

If Justin LaNasa, NuTSR, The Dungeon Hobbyshop Museum or anyone affiliated with them uses my work, letters, writings etc… I will post about it.

I am NOT affiliated with nor do I support NuTSR, or The Dungeon Hobbyshop Museum in any way!

This is because they are owned by Justin LaNasa. If the Dungeon Hobbyshop Museum came under new ownership I’d love it.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Hovermale, not Joe. Anyone who wants a forward of the original document to do cyber forensics on it for validity I will provide it.

On the other hand, a guy like "Michael K. Hovermale" I can put some stock in!

 

[Deset Gled]

Almost white guy? Is he referring to genetics, or saying he's almost albino-white (he's not), or something else?

I believe he's referring to his Italian heritage. Many Italian Americans don't identify as being exactly white. I have some relatives (by marriage) that are 2nd/3rd generation Italian immigrants and if I had to sum up their take on racial identity, I would just say it can be a little complex at times.

Here's an FB post LaNasa made about a year ago that seems relevant (I think it's properly censored, let me know if I missed anything):

 

[GuyBoy]

See also using words or phrases with roots or major connotations in bigotry you were not aware of. That’s a major trap for the unwary because of the way language spreads and evolves.

Classic examples in English include “gypped”, “welshed”, or even “boy” (depending on context). DC Comics used an Asian slur as the nickname of an Asian sidekick for DECADES before they set things right by having the character so named correct his superheroic buddy in one issue. From that point on, the character was known by his actual name.

@Dannyalcatraz is right to identify the use of the word “boy” as potentially having racist or bigoted connotations. The 2006 Ash v Tyson Foods ruling of SCOTUS is clear on this.
So, I probably need to explain my username: My wife is from a UK Roma background and adding the word “boy” to the name of a partner is a fairly common term of affection within that culture, hence she refers to me as GuyBoy, hence the username.
I would state, though, that if anyone does find it in any way offensive, I will happily change it.

 

[Deset Gled]

Here's an FB post LaNasa made about a year ago that seems relevant (I think it's properly censored, let me know if I missed anything):

Here's some other comments from the same FB conversation. Posting the whole thing is a ridiculous PITA with the way FB displays this stuff. Note his use of the phrase "semi whites like us Italians".