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)

 

[Baron Opal II]

OK, I skimmed through the video now. It's by a Black person who does a lot of RPG videos. His reasons are:

Although he doesn't list it as one of the reasons, he also clearly feels lack of representation is the issue--he talks about how Critical Role didn't have any Black people when it started.

Isn't Orion black?

(Not the best representation, however. Yet my inner pedant cries out.)

 

[GraphPaper Architect]

how do you feel about pineaple in pizza?

Pizza is like DnD, to each their own toppings. I will toss in $20 and have a piece.

 

[Willie the Duck]

OK, I skimmed through the video now. It's by a Black person who does a lot of RPG videos. His reasons are:

Spoiler: spoilered for size

1. People (of all sorts) don't know about RPGs, and it's hard to explain RPGs to non-gamers at time. He gives an example of his mostly-Black pastor group having never heard of them.

2. People who have heard about the games are often not all that interested in playing games.

3. He feels that a lot Black Americans don't want to play a white person's game, although he considers that a prejudiced attitudes.

4. He thinks there's a lot of religious stigma against RPGs, via leftover Satanic Panic.

Although he doesn't list it as one of the reasons, he also clearly feels lack of representation is the issue--he talks about how Critical Role didn't have any Black people when it started.

He also appears to hate (A)D&D. He says he'll never mention its name on his channel. Kind of ironic that DHSM linked to it.

I think posting that link is ironic, but not inherently offensive. It's likely NuTSR is posting it just to rile people up. In any case, my main note is that the YouTube video simply isn't very good. Not that I really agree or disagree with it, it's just a bad video. To list some problems:

• Spoiler: spoilered for size

  It's 10 minutes of content spread over a 23 minute video. He doesn't even state point 1 until the 5 minute mark. Get to the point already.
  [*]He offers no statistics or demographics information. "Black people don't play RPGs". "Black people are more religious." Okay, I'll give you that they're a minority of the players. But it's nonsensical to think that there are literally zero black players out there. What are the actual numbers like? How does it compare to other racial demographics? Does it vary by region? There are so many good question to ask, but he doesn't acknowledge any of them.
  [*]Reasons 1 and 2 are circular logic. In essence, he's just saying black people don't play RPGs because black people don't play RPGs. Reasons 3 and 4 are actual reasons, but I don't think they're expressed very well.
  [*]About a quarter of the video (a bit that the beginning about Critical Role, and the last 5 minutes) are really a rant about "token" black RPG players being a bad thing. Which is an interesting topic, but essentially very different from the main title and thesis of the video.

Fundamentally, these types of videos (and there are plenty of 'why more <blacks, or sometimes non-white-men> aren't in ______'-type videos for hobbies as varied as ultimate disc leagues to recreational hunting/camping/fishing to collegiate solar car teams to Lego mechanics) are interesting and the overall interplay of initial historical pastime demographics, current representation, critical mass, and so on are a crazy tough knot to untangle. However, whenever someone of the DHSM ilk post something like this, I always want to respond with, "What, exactly, do you think you have shown?" or "What point do you think you are making?" I say so because, true to this time, they are often just dropped into the social media space without preface as though the very existence of the video proves some larger overarching point (which point exactly not being made clear).

 

[Steampunkette]

how do you feel about pineaple in pizza?

I absolutely hate it. On my pizza.

You can do what you want to your pizza, of course.

The problems are that I find the sweetness to be too strong and the acidity of the tomato and the pineapple is just too much for me and I get bad heartburn. My food should not digest -me-.

Fundamentally, these types of videos (and there are plenty of 'why more <blacks, or sometimes non-white-men> aren't in ______'-type videos for hobbies as varied as ultimate disc leagues to recreational hunting/camping/fishing to collegiate solar car teams to Lego mechanics) are interesting and the overall interplay of initial historical pastime demographics, current representation, critical mass, and so on are a crazy tough knot to untangle. However, whenever someone of the DHSM ilk post something like this, I always want to respond with, "What, exactly, do you think you have shown?" or "What point do you think you are making?" I say so because, true to this time, they are often just dropped into the social media space without preface as though the very existence of the video proves some larger overarching point (which point exactly not being made clear).

They also fundamentally ignore two incredibly salient points:

Most people don't play D&D, regardless of race.
There are way more white people than members of any minority group.

Assuming 75% of all D&D players (50,000,000) live in the US we'd get 37.5 million D&D players in the US. Applying US racial demographics, you get around 5.25 million black players. About 1 in every 7 players. Not even getting into population differences, assuming every table has 5 players (DM + 4 Player Party) and all other things being equal you'd expect to see one black player on every other table.

But all things aren't equal. Population differences based on area means a lot of tables in rural states are gonna be mostly or entirely white. And it means there's gonna be tables in densely populated cosmopolitan areas with all black folks, or one or two white people and then each other seat taken by a member of a minority.

And then you take into account actual real-world friend-groups and you'll find a lot of tables where there are no white people at all for obvious reasons.

Of course that sort of goes out the window a -bit- as lots of people play at multiple tables.

But just based on the demographics of the US it's a hell of a lot harder to find black D&D players because there's just not many of them before any social or economic factors.

Do you have any idea how hard it would be for me to find an entire table of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the area that I live in? Sure, there's LGBTQIA+ people who play D&D, and there's LGBTQIA+ people in my area, but the overlap of those two demographics isn't nearly 100%.

When you're looking for a minority of a minority you're not gonna find many. Especially since they're going to be scattered across the entire populace, not all in one spot. Though I suspect I'd have an easier time getting an LGBTQIA+ table together in New York City or Los Angeles than some small town in Wisconsin just because of population density.

How many factors play a part in keeping black players from playing D&D? Several. But these two facts are way overlooked and go a long way to explain why there aren't many members of any given minority bellying up to the table.

 

[DLIMedia]

I admit I hadn't seen the video, and purposely wasn't critical of its contents without knowing, but that seemed particularly awkward being posted by the DHSM.

 

[Bolares]

I admit I hadn't seen the video, and purposely wasn't critical of its contents without knowing, but that seemed particularly awkward being posted by the DHSM.

I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't watched it too

 

[Steampunkette]

But let's also be honest with ourselves... this wasn't posted by the DHSM. This was posted by Justin Lanasa.

S'why the "Unlike other Youtubers" comment exists.

It's his rebuttal against statements that he's a racist. "I'm not racist, black people just don't play these games!" which has nothing to do with his racism except to highlight it.

 

[Umbran]

Is there a thread everyone hangs out on to chat, without it being NuTSR centered?

We have an entire forum that isn't about gaming:

*Geek Talk & Media

Movies, books, television, video games, software, art, music, and more! If it's not tabletop gaming, it belongs in here. Also personal stuff, general chit-chat, home decorating tips, recipes, auto-maintenance, and anything else you can think of. No politics, please.

www.enworld.org

 

[Willie the Duck]

They also fundamentally ignore two incredibly salient points:

Spoiler: spoilered for size

Most people don't play D&D, regardless of race.
There are way more white people than members of any minority group.

Assuming 75% of all D&D players (50,000,000) live in the US we'd get 37.5 million D&D players in the US. Applying US racial demographics, you get around 5.25 million black players. About 1 in every 7 players. Not even getting into population differences, assuming every table has 5 players (DM + 4 Player Party) and all other things being equal you'd expect to see one black player on every other table.

But all things aren't equal. Population differences based on area means a lot of tables in rural states are gonna be mostly or entirely white. And it means there's gonna be tables in densely populated cosmopolitan areas with all black folks, or one or two white people and then each other seat taken by a member of a minority.

And then you take into account actual real-world friend-groups and you'll find a lot of tables where there are no white people at all for obvious reasons.

Of course that sort of goes out the window a -bit- as lots of people play at multiple tables.

But just based on the demographics of the US it's a hell of a lot harder to find black D&D players because there's just not many of them before any social or economic factors.

Do you have any idea how hard it would be for me to find an entire table of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the area that I live in? Sure, there's LGBTQIA+ people who play D&D, and there's LGBTQIA+ people in my area, but the overlap of those two demographics isn't nearly 100%.

When you're looking for a minority of a minority you're not gonna find many. Especially since they're going to be scattered across the entire populace, not all in one spot. Though I suspect I'd have an easier time getting an LGBTQIA+ table together in New York City or Los Angeles than some small town in Wisconsin just because of population density.

How many factors play a part in keeping black players from playing D&D? Several. But these two facts are way overlooked and go a long way to explain why there aren't many members of any given minority bellying up to the table.

Absolutely true. However, that kind leads back to my initial point (about points) -- what does that prove? What does it show? What implications are you (the general you, but specifically anyone dropping said video into their social media feed) suggesting that this point makes about, well, anything? You, I, and that Youtuber can talk up one side of the question of US minority participation rates in TTRPGs and down the other, and I still need some framing from DHSM as to what they think it is pertinent.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Pineapple doesn't trigger my acid reflux, surprisingly, since just about everything else does. I'm so-so on it on pizza, but pineapple fried rice is delicious.

The problems are that I find the sweetness to be too strong and the acidity of the tomato and the pineapple is just too much for me and I get bad heartburn. My food should not digest -me-.

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Coming from them, I am suspicious; trust Not-TSR to have the worst take on any given topic.

I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't watched it too