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)

 

[Deset Gled]

So, I would expect LaNasa uses a model in which he sells copies to a retailer, and from there it is the retailer's problem. So long as LaNasa hasn't sold more copies to McArt, with the original branding, they'd be fine.

Mind you, if McArt still has old-branding copies to sell, that suggests they don't move well....

That makes sense. But this is NuTSR.

If McArt owns them, why did he suddenly stop advertising them when the bankruptcy was announced? Especially noting that NuTSR has not allowed any mention of the bankruptcy on their social media; they seem to want to keep it quiet for now.

 

[Umbran]

If McArt owns them, why did he suddenly stop advertising them when the bankruptcy was announced?

We can only speculate. But "LaNasa treats people near him like dirt," and "reminding people you and this game are associated with a bankrupt business doesn't aid sales" and, "I'm not some marketing genius getting big money to do this, I just forgot or stopped after a while," might be high on the list of possibilities.

But that's really not how proof works. While we like to have alternate narratives, what we really should do is start from, "correlation doesn't imply causation" and realize we have to build a positive case, rather than assume a narrative we like, and weigh lack of an opposing narrative as meaningful.

First and foremost - "Dungeon crawl is visible if you zoom in close does not stand as an advertisement on McArt's part. I do not believe those are intentional inclusions ("Make sure my product is in the shot, but only if you super-zoom in on the image" - said by no marketing manager, ever.) Therefore the exclusion shouldn't be taken as intentional, either. The guy takes pics of his booth and posts them online. Whether the game is in the background or not is not meaningful.

We have "dozens" of ads between two accounts. That's going to be double (and possibly triple+) counting events. The ads between the two accounts wouldn't be independent - they'll tend to show up in both for one event. In addition, for venues like Twitter, there's a typically pattern to tweet a given item more than once a day, as by evening, an early tweet may be buried by the algorithms.

So, after eliminating repeats and not-actual-ads, we might only be left with a handful of real attempts to boost the game, over a couple/several months, at which point we'd be hard pressed to claim this was ever a major priority for McArt, or the timing as clearly meaningful.

Especially noting that NuTSR has not allowed any mention of the bankruptcy on their social media; they seem to want to keep it quiet for now.

McArt is a small businessman, right? So, NuTSR's policies within their own spaces aren't relevant to how McArt boosts his own business in his own social media. If McArt noticed a lot of negative feedback on his posts boosting the game, he'd likely stop. The bankruptcy then may be a confounding bias - the bankruptcy raises the number of folks who respond negatively to NuTSR, making McArt's stream full of negativity that will hurt future sales, so he stops.

This is the problem with narratives - we can make them up. I just made up several.

 

[Staffan]

Especially noting that NuTSR has not allowed any mention of the bankruptcy on their social media; they seem to want to keep it quiet for now.

Is that kind of thing allowed? I figured that bankruptcy proceedings had to be announced publicly in order to let potential business partners (including customers/suppliers) know that the company's credit is bad, and you should not do anything that amounts to loaning them money (such as pre-ordering things from them).

 

[Deset Gled]

Is that kind of thing allowed? I figured that bankruptcy proceedings had to be announced publicly in order to let potential business partners (including customers/suppliers) know that the company's credit is bad, and you should not do anything that amounts to loaning them money (such as pre-ordering things from them).

Yeah, it is. They can't stop other people from talking about it elsewhere and they can't lie about it for monetary gain, but they also don't have to let people discuss in on their social media (private forums, and all that).

 

[Wincenworks]

All things aside, let’s be honest here. He’s as likely to spontaneously combust as do jail time here. It’s just not going to happen.

More accurately the probability is impossible to calculate - we don't have all the facts, we don't know all the players involved and we can't see the future. It's possible Justin could get off purely because all the authorities at the time have bigger fish to fry, it's possible he could get charged purely because someone decides he's going to make an example out of that naughty word whole nearly rear ended him with a fake tank.

The main thing that is observable is that Justin continues to escalate his risk (the likelihood of something happening) and his exposure (the possible consequences when something does happen), this is a pretty standard pattern with people who think they're untouchable and is often a major cause of their downfall.

I myself once worked for a guy who got arrested specifically because he went to a conference where he knew all the people he'd stiffed for millions would be and where law enforcement would definitely be watch, and then all those guys he stiffed got arrested because he turned snitch on them over their shared wrong doings after they'd kept carrying on like nothing had happened.

Hubris is truly an amazing thing to watch in slow motion.

Is that kind of thing allowed? I figured that bankruptcy proceedings had to be announced publicly in order to let potential business partners (including customers/suppliers) know that the company's credit is bad, and you should not do anything that amounts to loaning them money (such as pre-ordering things from them).

Kind of. There's a meeting coming up on 24 July 2023 where Justin, as officer for TSR LLC, must answer to all his creditors in bankruptcy court and in that they're entitled to ask him questions like:

• Are the copies of Dungeon Crawl being sold owned by Mick or by one of your companies?
• When did they change hands?
• What kind of agreement was made? How did you negotiate to get the best outcome for creditors?

The judge will weigh Justin's answers and decide if he's satisfied that everything is above board.

To be honest, this is likely to going to be a drop in the bucket compared to Wizards of the Coast asking questions like:

• When you began the lawsuit against us, what factors made you reasonably believe the company would be able to remain solvent while doing so?
• Do you consider it responsible to run up all these costs for our company, then to declare yourself the sole major creditor?
• Why does Star Frontiers: New Genesis not appear on the list of assets you own?
• What other products do not appear?
• Why did the web site used to declare the entire hobby shop inventory to be owned by TSR LCC?

Again, it will be up to the judge to determine the validity of Justin's answers.

 

[Faolyn]

The main thing that is observable is that Justin continues to escalate his risk (the likelihood of something happening) and his exposure (the possible consequences when something does happen), this is a pretty standard pattern with people who think they're untouchable and is often a major cause of their downfall.

Remember, this is the guy who, in either a tweet or fb post (it's somewhere upthread), literally posted "last word" to someone. Because he literally cannot let it go. He has to prove he's right.

Hubris indeed is fun to watch in its downfall.

 

[Mort]

Again, it will be up to the judge to determine the validity of Justin's answers.

Before this ever sees a Bankruptcy judge, it will be up to the Trustee to see if it's worth his time to pursue and, possibly, up to the US Trustee to see if they want to investigate further for possible fraud etc.

I would not be surprised if, considering the print this is getting, and WoTC involvement, a US Trustee's representative pops into the 341 meeting of creditors and asks some very probing questions. They are not financially motivated and could be a significant land mine for LaNassa.

 

[Deset Gled]

It looks like the new phase of NuTSR, "OSR Games", has teamed up with Dave "The Literal Nazi" Johnson to publish something.

From the Amazon preview:

This is Dave's newest book. It's self published on Amazon (I will not be posting the link to avoid giving them clicks) with Old School Rules Games given credit. The book stars the 100% Mary Sue character "Lord George the Younger" (Dave's first name is George) and featuring Duke Justin of Wilmington. Here's the synopsis; make a sanity check.

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In "The Inaugural Journey, or Perturb," readers are introduced to Lord George the Younger, B.S. of D., a man who is both young and old at the same time. Despite being known for his wisdom, he is not considered a wise teacher. Instead, he is a man who loves women and is loved by them in return. Lord George is also the author of two "The Book of Foretelling" and "The Book of Casings," which is all about sausage.
Lord George's closest friend and confidant is Lady Eliza Havenfurst. She is a determined, resourceful woman fiercely loyal to Lord George. With her intelligence and grace, she can easily navigate difficult situations. As the story unfolds, their lives become entwined as they face numerous challenges.
The story revolves around the mysteries of the Dystopian and Discordian Comedy of Life, which Lord George and Lady Eliza must solve together. The journey begins with Top Secret materials and documents kept in Byden's garage. As they investigate, they uncover a conspiracy involving wild creatures converging. At the same time, nations of humanity disperse, volcanoes emit fiery heat while water solidifies and melts away, and other strange events.
The inciting incident occurs when Lord George and Lady Eliza discover that the Earth is trembling and the Heavens are resonating with the sound of Truth. From here, the conflict rises as they delve deeper into the conspiracy and face numerous obstacles. They must use wit, intelligence, and resourcefulness to overcome these challenges.
As the story progresses, readers are taken on a journey of cause and effect. Every action reacts, and every obstacle they face has a consequence. The conflict becomes more intense as they uncover more secrets and face more significant challenges.
In the end, Lord George and Lady Eliza successfully unravel the conspiracy and solve the mysteries of the Dystopian and Discordian Comedy of Life. They emerge victorious, having overcome all obstacles and challenges. The story concludes with a revelation of all major plot twists and characters, satisfying readers with a full understanding.
Overall, "The Inaugural Journey, or Perturb," is a thrilling tale of mystery and intrigue that keeps readers on the edge of their seats from beginning to end. The main characters, Lord George and Lady Eliza, are compelling and well-developed, making them easy to root for throughout the story. With its rich language and intricate plot, this novel will captivate readers of all ages.
Duke Justin of Wilmington is a close friend and fellow eccentric who joins in the quest with Lord George and Lady Eliza.

120 pages, Paperback
Published June 29, 2023
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The book has one review so far.

 

[Autumnal]

blink For abusing the Principia Discordis that way, he deserves Kerry Thornley’s ghost haunting him forever.

 

[DLIMedia]

Here's my relatively short commentary on this, via a Twitter thead.