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)

 

[LordEntrails]

So what does a Pool of Magic do precisely? Besides smell, presumably.

It's soley up to the GM. That's what the spell says, twice.

 

[codo]

Not really, while it is well known that Gary was loudly not a Tolkien-guy, the inclusion of Ents & Hobbits was incredibly minor in the scope of D&D and given the scope of fantasy writing at the time, some amount of clear overlap was inevitable. Legend has it Gary added Hobbits because of one his exceptionally tall friends wanted to play one, and he didn't want to disappoint him. Many people today play entire campaigns without a halfling showing up.

Without the Pathfinder elements, all you're left with in Goblinz: Those Pesky Goblinz. A Role-Playing Game by Justin LaNasa is:

• Goblin Wizards who can make permanent enchanted items with 5th level spells, don't need spellbooks, and can multi-class naturally if you're an AryanPure White Goblin.
• "Magic Pools" which are formed by some sort of weird communal piss play event
• A mysterious goblin king who may or may actually just be Jareth from Labyrinth (1986)

Meanwhile you basically need all the books mentioned as sources in order to actually translate it, and the one that Justin seems to be too cheap to buy... because even the naughty word that usually nerds spend all their time scribbling into notepads isn't there. No specifics on tribes, gods, goblin history, etc. It's just assumed you got that stuff somewhere else.

Gary claimed he wasn't a Tolkien-guy after he was threatened with a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate for heavily stealing ideas from LotR. I don't really think Gygax's statements should be taken at face value. He was just trying to cover his ass.

Just look at the original races in D&D. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Half-elf, Half-orc. Gee, I wonder where Gary came up with the idea for those?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Just look at the original races in D&D. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Half-elf, Half-orc. Gee, I wonder where Gary came up with the idea for those?

The easy answer is he didn't. Jeff Perren originally came up with Chainmail, and those races were used in fantasy wargaming before D&D. So while yes, they had a lot of influence by Tolkien, it wasn't necessarily Gygax that decided that's how races would be depicted in D&D. He just copied over what Jeff had already done. (Also, half-races weren't a thing in Chainmail or OD&D).

 

[Faolyn]

A shaman spell from the book:

-----

Create Pool of Magic
Level: 5
Range: 1"
Duration: permanent [sic capitalization]
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: Special
Saving Throw: None

Description: This very powerful spell is how magic pools are born by the shaman. You man only cast this spell on a full moon with the help of many goblins, depending on the size of the magic pool you want to fill. This magic pool may have many different effects and types depending on the GM's choices. Here is one idea, but all effects are solely up to the GM. Roll 1D6 1-3 neg effect, 4-6 positive effect, roll 1D6 to effect ability score plus or minus 1D6 depending on effects. However, many goblins need to fill the area wanting to use it with urine. That's right! All you humans have been drinking goblin urine for 50 years! The material component of this spell is goblin urine.

Do we dare enter LaNasa's magical realm?

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Do we dare enter LaNasa's magical realm?

Not without personal protective equipment.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Do we dare enter LaNasa's magical realm?

 

[Dioltach]

It's soley up to the GM. That's what the spell says, twice.

Duh! Let's just say it was the lack of coffee in my system.

 

[Mannahnin]

Obviously ripping off pools of radiance from Faerun. But with rules that are completely nonsensical. I have no idea how this means humans drink goblin urine, where the 50 years comes from, or why the range is 1". Best not to think about it.

Some of the first magic pools ever seen in adventures randomly increased or decreased ability scores. The famous room of pools in B1, In Search of the Unknown, for example. Which wasn't 50 years ago, it was 45, but I suspect they're rounding. I think the intended "joke" is "Hey, all these magic pools which have been in old school adventures and dungeons going back to the beginning of the game? Yeah, Goblins made them. Like this."

Gary claimed he wasn't a Tolkien-guy after he was threatened with a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate for heavily stealing ideas from LotR. I don't really think Gygax's statements should be taken at face value. He was just trying to cover his ass.

Just look at the original races in D&D. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, Half-elf, Half-orc. Gee, I wonder where Gary came up with the idea for those?

No half-orc in OD&D (they first get mentioned in the Monster Manual in 1977); they showed up as a PC option in the AD&D PH in '78. But yes. While I'm sure Gary found Leiber, Howard, Burroughs, and so forth more influential and to his taste than Tolkien, all the original PC races come from Tolkien, and the biggest chunks of the bestiary are from Tolkien or from Greek mythology.

The easy answer is he didn't. Jeff Perren originally came up with Chainmail, and those races were used in fantasy wargaming before D&D. So while yes, they had a lot of influence by Tolkien, it wasn't necessarily Gygax that decided that's how races would be depicted in D&D. He just copied over what Jeff had already done. (Also, half-races weren't a thing in Chainmail or OD&D).

Chainmail didn't get the Fantasy Supplement added to it until 1971, after Gygax had been working on those rules for a couple of years. The FS obviously includes virtually every creature from LotR and The Hobbit specifically so you can wargame the battles from the books, or inspired thereby.

OD&D takes a huge chunk of its monsters, and all the PC races (though Elves are certainly altered a bit, I'm guessing at least partly influenced by Poul Anderson), from Tolkien, Gary's later protestations notwithstanding. Half elves showed up in the first supplement, Greyhawk, for the record. Half Orcs don't get mentioned until the '77 Monster Manual, but 1E is even more blatant in how the half orcs, dwarves and especially halflings are DEFINITELY based directly on Tolkien's work. Elves are a little more of a mixed bag; you can see concepts which are directly from Tolkien but there's other stuff seeping in there.

 

[codo]

The easy answer is he didn't. Jeff Perren originally came up with Chainmail, and those races were used in fantasy wargaming before D&D. So while yes, they had a lot of influence by Tolkien, it wasn't necessarily Gygax that decided that's how races would be depicted in D&D. He just copied over what Jeff had already done. (Also, half-races weren't a thing in Chainmail or OD&D).

It's not like Gygax had to use Chainmail. There were lots of other wargames he could have based D&D on. He also didn't need to keep using those races in his game. Gary included the fantasy races because that was what he wanted people to play. Also, Gygax didn't steal ideas from Tolkien, he stole them from Jeff Perren, who stole them from Tolkein, isn't exactly a good defense.

 

[Mannahnin]

It's not like Gygax had to use Chainmail. There were lots of other wargames he could have based D&D on. He also didn't need to keep using those races in his game. Gary included the fantasy races because that was what he wanted people to play. Also, Gygax didn't steal ideas from Tolkien, he stole them from Jeff Perren, who stole them from Tolkein, isn't exactly a good defense.

Well, I don't know exactly who wrote the Fantasy Supplement or whether they collaborated on it, but that didn't get added to Chainmail until after Gygax was already involved in working on it. You're missing a step too- Dave Arneson using Chainmail as part of his framework for his fantasy campaign, Blackmoor. Then Gary adapted Dave's game into D&D. But the list of races still comes from Gary and Perren's work, borrowed from Tolkien so... It's all the same in the end.