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)

 

[Nikosandros]

I think we can agree to disagree about the severity of the Kim Mohan posts from NuTSR. But as someone who has been reporting on NuTSR BS for a surprisingly long time now, I am also completely in agreement with you that there is a line about what to report about NuTSR and what should be ignored. FWIW, there is a surprisingly long list of posts and info I have come across about NuTSR (largely Lanasa, specifically) that I don't post here for multiple reasons. Unfortunately, the line of what is worth re-posting is not always clear.

Here's an very recent example where I ask myself "is this worth reporting on?":

View attachment 270039

From one POV, this is just pure cringe. Reporting it serves no real purpose but to laugh at Lanasa, and reposting it may actually result in just giving him more attention (apparently, someone at Lanasa's tattoo shopped actually did some work on this actor). So maybe it should just be ignored.

OTOH, reporting this with additional info reveals more about NuTSR. A little digging shows that this picture is actually from some time around September 2007. Also, it's worth noting that NuTSR misspelled the actor's name: Chad Michael Murray. Knowing those things, it shows how desperate Lanasa is to make any celebrity connection he can, to the point where he's digging through decades old promo material from his tattoo shop to find it. And misspelling the name highlights how little Lanasa actually cares about the actor or his gaming audience. Also, this combined with posts like the last one about his TKD belt shows how much NuTSR's social media is about stroking Lanasa's ego rather than gaming. From that POV, it's notable.

And the final consideration I always think about is: Is it important to document this? So much stuff from NuTSRs social media disappears. They are obsessed with controlling the narrative, and delete things on a whim (while oddly letting some really questionable things stay forever). Is there any chance I'll want to reference this later?

FWIW, I don't really know the answer. I'm not a professional reporter; I'm just a slacktivist. The issue of how much spare time (alternatively: insomnia) I have when I see something pop up from NuTSR is another notable factor in what gets reported, even if it shouldn't be. Even right now, I'm using this post as an example rather than making a real choice.

I'll also note that doxxing and making fun of mental illness are never appropriate.

And on a final note, there is a bit of what may be actual news from NuTSR about gaming:

View attachment 270044

I don't really know what this means. "Those Pesky Goblinz" is actually something that Lanasa made a while ago. There was a video of it in play from the NuTSR Youtube last year, but it's since been taken down (if anyone has a copy, please let me know). It has a ISBN that was assigned almost a year ago that shows it was "published" in June 2022 (FWIW, ISBN also shows that SFNG was "published" in June). Someone named "Kylie Jones" gets an art credit.

ISBN info: Goblinz

My first take is that this is just an adventure that Lanasa cooked up as a DM that he's trying to put on paper. I doubt it will be anything approaching a full "RPG".

Following the link, there is a brief description and it sounds like it would contain rules for playing goblin characters.

 

[Nylanfs]

"Our unique curriculum has been proven to help youth and adults with behavior and mental disorders, weight loss, as well as overall health and well-being."

I... I just...

Clearly, they're not helping him much at all.

Had a thought, what if they ARE helping with him, and it could be much worse than it currently is..

 

[JackMann]

Eh, no point in speculating, really. There's no real reason to think LaNasa is part of their program. Most likely, like a lot of racists and awful people, he presents much more favorably to people he meets in person. Most people like this know how to mask up, keep their worst opinions to themselves, and wait until they have the relative anonymity of the internet to really let loose. The school probably has no idea that he's such a terrible person, and just know him as "Justin, that guy who comes in here once a week, practices his highkicks, and sometimes talks about that D&D game." They know he has money to throw at them, so as long as he's not causing problems in person, they don't have any reason to look deeper.

The reality is that most of LaNasa's life is probably very mundane. If the lawsuit goes poorly enough, then it may start to intrude on his homelife, but until that time, LaNasa will be able to pretend everything is still going as it should to those he meets in person.

 

[Umbran]

A red belt is far enough up the ladder to be too late for those sorts of lessons.

That ladder is not universal. Each form has it's own - in some red is the highest rank, in others it is the lowest. If it is traditional Taekwando, red is significant, while in Karate forms it often isn't.

Also, there are schools without honor, where if you are paying your money, you get your belt. Unless we know the form and the school, statement of his belt means very little.

 

[Umbran]

He should've learned a very comprehensive fighting style and regimen during HIS TIME IN THE MILITARY.

Modern militaries are not focused on hand-to-hand combat.

 

[WarDriveWorley]

Oh... then stuff changed since I was a kid. My Dad was a Drill Sergeant at Ft. Benning in the 80s. And he taught us kids the same stuff he taught his recruits.

It's a bit more complicated. I completed basic in the 90's for the army and we were given a good introduction to hand to hand (HTH) combat in case it was needed. Once I went to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) I got 0 training/practice with HTH combat because I was an operating room technician so it's not needed. Once I graduated AIT I got a perfunctory refresher on occasion as part of my regular PT, but not enough to constitute good training. That said I know there are certain specialties (MOS) that likely get more initial training and practice more, but overall it's not a huge training point for soldiers outside those circumstances. Granted I'm only speaking from an anecdotal experience of the US army from the 90's so it's possible that has changed.

 

[Velderan]

Modern militaries are not focused on hand-to-hand combat.

That's not entirely true. The US Army has a hand-to-hand combat program they're teaching soldiers that is a requirement handed down from Headquarters Department of the Army as a basic soldiering task. The level of training you can expect to complete is largely dependent on your unit's mission but it was an area of emphasis as recently as 5 years ago when I was in a unit that wasn't combat focused and we were required to complete the basic level of instruction.

It's a bit more complicated. I completed basic in the 90's for the army and we were given a good introduction to hand to hand (HTH) combat in case it was needed. Once I went to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) I got 0 training/practice with HTH combat because I was an operating room technician so it's not needed. Once I graduated AIT I got a perfunctory refresher on occasion as part of my regular PT, but not enough to constitute good training. That said I know there are certain specialties (MOS) that likely get more initial training and practice more, but overall it's not a huge training point for soldiers outside those circumstances. Granted I'm only speaking from an anecdotal experience of the US army from the 90's so it's possible that has changed.

When I first went through Basic Training in 2002, my experience wasn't much different from what you describe but it was probably 2009 or so that things changed and it became an area of focus to ensure everyone had a basic level of competency. I'm not sure what's currently being emphasized for training but given the shift in the physical fitness testing requirements I can't imagine combatives went away.

 

[Umbran]

That's not entirely true.

It was a generalization. There will be exceptions. But it still remains that modern militaries are generally focused on guns and explosives, rather than mass melee.

... it was an area of emphasis as recently as 5 years ago when I was in a unit that wasn't combat focused and we were required to complete the basic level of instruction.

I was responding to the posit that he should have learned, " a very comprehensive fighting style and regimen". While I cannot speak to your experience, the connotations of "basic level" and "very comprehensive" really don't line up.

Ultimately, this is neither here nor there, though, in terms of the nominal topic of this thread.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Also, even if basic training spent 25% of the time on hand to hand combat, that still isn't very long. Consider when I did Tae Kwon Do years ago, it took years of training to be really good at it. Military hand to hand combat training isn't all that robust.

 

[Velderan]

Ultimately, this is neither here nor there, though, in terms of the nominal topic of this thread.

Fair enough, but bringing this back on topic there's also the part where in the military you're generally expected to learn some form of self-discipline and LaNasa clearly skipped that part of the training too.