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)

 

[Vaalingrade]

All of creative history is a series of 'thefts'. It really doesn't matter who got inspiration from who.

That's not what's going on here at all anyway.

 

[Sacrosanct]

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, Tolkien stole all his ideas from existing folklore and mythology, almost word for word, so....what? Who really cares. Why does any of this even need a defense, let alone a good one?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

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.

Not sure why this debate is still occurring. To the extent people actually want answers, this is all covered fairly well in, inter alia, Game Wizards.

As for why we still debate the Tolkien influence on D&D, that's obvious. It's both a lot more present than Gygax would later claim, but also a lot less present than Tolkien fans want to say. Chainmail's fantasy supplement closely resembles Tolkien because it, um, "resembled" the earlier Battle of the Pelennor Fields by Len Patt.

Tolkien was massively popular in the 60s and 70s in the United States. But D&D, despite a lot of Tolkienisms, and even despite additions (such as the Ranger class) created by Tolkien, was still shepherded by Gygax, and Gygax was not a Tolkien fan. He was much more influenced by sword & sorcery and westerns than he was Tolkien. Which is why D&D was such a weird amalgamation- containing that Tolkien zeitgeist as well as a lot of other influences. Overall, while there are some Tolkien strands that are strong (such as the parts from the Chainmail fantasy supplement that continued on, esp. the races), the actual Tolkien influence is not that strong in OD&D and AD&D.

 

[Mannahnin]

Well, Tolkien stole all his ideas from existing folklore and mythology, almost word for word, so....what? Who really cares. Why does any of this even need a defense, let alone a good one?

I think there's value in understanding where ideas come from, and giving credit where credit is due.

Obviously Tolkien was inspired by mythology and history, but he made a whole heck of a lot of stuff up.

Obviously Gary and the other early D&D creators stole a ton from various sources, including mythology and fiction. But they made a whole lot up, too.

Someone was trying to argue in another group that Paizo don't need to worry about WotC claiming Drow as IP, since Drow are just the same thing as Norse dark elves, Dökkálfar. I had to point out that all Gylfaginning, in the Prose Edda, gives us for description of them is that they're blacker than pitch and they live underground. Literally every other descriptive detail originates in D&D.

I think it's illustrative to contrast these "thefts" and inspirations against the apparently-cobbled-together-from-previously-published-games Goblinz.

Not sure why this debate is still occurring. To the extent people actually want answers, this is all covered fairly well in, inter alia, Game Wizards.

As for why we still debate the Tolkien influence on D&D, that's obvious. It's both a lot more present than Gygax would later claim, but also a lot less present than Tolkien fans want to say. Chainmail's fantasy supplement closely resembles Tolkien because it, um, "resembled" the earlier Battle of the Pelennor Fields by Len Patt.

Tolkien was massively popular in the 60s and 70s in the United States. But D&D, despite a lot of Tolkienisms, and even despite additions (such as the Ranger class) created by Tolkien, was still shepherded by Gygax, and Gygax was not a Tolkien fan. He was much more influenced by sword & sorcery and westerns than he was Tolkien. Which is why D&D was such a weird amalgamation- containing that Tolkien zeitgeist as well as a lot of other influences. Overall, while there are some Tolkien strands that are strong (such as the parts from the Chainmail fantasy supplement that continued on, esp. the races), the actual Tolkien influence is not that strong in OD&D and AD&D.

Well, some folks evidently aren't familiar with the history. They haven't read it obsessively for years like us.

As for what constitutes "influence" on OD&D, providing the whole list of PC races, a big percentage of the monsters, a few spells and the occasional other magical detail isn't chopped liver. Even if I agree that Gary was being honest that Tolkien wasn't his favorite, and the game itself is definitely not a particularly good Tolkien emulator.

 

[codo]

Well, Tolkien stole all his ideas from existing folklore and mythology, almost word for word, so....what? Who really cares. Why does any of this even need a defense, let alone a good one?

I don't really care, I was just pointing out that Gary Gygax wasn't above making disingenuous self-serving statements when he wanted to. Maybe take his statement that Tolkien had very little influence on D&D, with a grain of salt, particularly when he said that after be threatened with a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate for using Hobbit™.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Well, some folks evidently aren't familiar with the history. They haven't read it obsessively for years like us.

As for what constitutes "influence" on OD&D, providing the whole list of PC races, a big percentage of the monsters, a few spells and the occasional other magical detail isn't chopped liver. Even if I agree that Gary was being honest that Tolkien wasn't his favorite, and the game itself is definitely not a particularly good Tolkien emulator.

After reading it all, I tend to think it's a lot more nuanced. Because it's easy to look back and say, "A ha! Tol-KEEN!"

But it's not that simple. Gyax and Arneson were a lot more interested in things that weren't Tolkien. Sure, you have the base Fantasy Supplement and the undeniable influence on the races and some of the monsters (orcs, BALROG, ahem). But looking at the classes, the only Tolkien class is the (somewhat later) Ranger. And that was because a fan want to play Aragorn.

I think what happens is that people tend to conflate that actual design of the game back then - which was much more influenced by sources outside of Tolkien - with the zeitgeist - which led a lot of people to play it in a "Tolkien-esque" manner. It's a feedback loop of a certain sort. I know, Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits Halflings, oh my! But I think Gygax was more influenced by REH and Leiber when making the game than he was by Tolkien.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think there's value in understanding where ideas come from, and giving credit where credit is due.

Obviously Tolkien was inspired by mythology and history, but he made a whole heck of a lot of stuff up.

Language and terminology, sure. But he pretty much took the whole plot and major characters of The Hobbit from Richard Wagner's The Ring.

I admit my bias, because Terry Brooks is one of my favorite authors, and people always bust on him for copying Tolkien. Well, he didn't copy Tolkien any more than Tolkien copied Wagner but no one criticizes Tolkien for that.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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?

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).

I always heard that Gary preferred sword & sorcery works like Dying Earth, Conan, and Fafhrd & Grey Mouser, but knew he needed to include what everyone else loved to sell the thing. Fundamentally, I don't know that it matters what the true story is. He put in a bunch of Tolkien in the work, or at least where two paths diverged often sided with the Tolkien interpretation. Elves are Tolkien-esque (a bit shorter than humans instead of a bit taller, but still magic, arrows, keen-eyed, and stealthy (later books adding the retreat to misty isles, and so on). Orcs are straight Tolkien (until they diverted into pig-men for a while). Dwarves are unmagical (compared to, say, Doli from Chronicles of Prydain who has innate magic; or the all the magic of norse myth dwarfs). Halflings are, well, Hobbits (folklore has all sorts of little folk, but A/D&D kept hewing to the Tolkien-specific ones, splitting off gnomes and brownies and whatnot into other MM/PHB/Gazetteer entries). He held his ground on the things he considered important like Dying Earth(-ish) magic and Three Hearts and Three Lions-like trolls.

I think what happens is that people tend to conflate that actual design of the game back then - which was much more influenced by sources outside of Tolkien - with the zeitgeist - which led a lot of people to play it in a "Tolkien-esque" manner. It's a feedback loop of a certain sort. I know, Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits Halflings, oh my! But I think Gygax was more influenced by REH and Leiber when making the game than he was by Tolkien.

I think another thing to note is that Gygax was also influenced significantly by Napoleonic wargames, Western pulps, and the instance of people abandoning their actual wargame to run around the dungeons underneath the battle collecting loot. Fantasy literature (and favorites and disfavorites within it) may not really have been that important to him. Tolkien vs. Howard or Leiber might well have been 'sure, let's have them all, I don't care'-ish to him -- just a thin veneer to pull over the fun little treasure-hunter game he'd discovered captured everyone's imagination. At least that's my takeaway of him giving equal billing to monsters he created out of whole cloth based on some discount plastic Kaiju monster toys to monsters based on all the different fantasy novels in the common consciousness at the time. Honestly I don't even know if the fantasy genre was important or not. Early TSR certainly tried to do a bunch of wargames and TTRPGs from other genres. If some of the rest of them had taken off, we may have heard just how important he considered no double-action revolvers in 1860s westerns instead.

I don't really care, I was just pointing out that Gary Gygax wasn't above making disingenuous self-serving statements when he wanted to. Maybe take his statement that Tolkien had very little influence on D&D, with a grain of salt, particularly when he said that after be threatened with a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate for using Hobbit™.

I think everyone can agree that EGG was very capable of making statements that suited his needs more than fastidiously represented the truth. This is a well-covered area on this board.

It's still a far-cry from what LaNasa and co. are accomplishing with Goblinz (that is how we got on this tangent, right?).

 

[Deset Gled]

It's still a far-cry from what LaNasa and co. are accomplishing with Goblinz (that is how we got on this tangent, right?).

Seriously. Those Pesky Goblins was plagarized, poorly edited crap. Trying to use that fact to argue about who/what/how influenced early D&D is like arguing you need to stop driving a Tesla to prevent Edison from electrocuting any more elephants.

 

[codo]

I think everyone can agree that EGG was very capable of making statements that suited his needs more than fastidiously represented the truth. This is a well-covered area on this board.

It's still a far-cry from what LaNasa and co. are accomplishing with Goblinz (that is how we got on this tangent, right?).

Absolutely, I never meant to imply they were at all similar. At worst Gygax was a bit of a selfish dick, but LaNasa is nothing more than an incompetent, lying, conman.