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!

---

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]

Ernie update.

A Gofundme went up today to help with medical bills. Ernie "The Barbarian" Gygax Needs Aide, organized by Dave Conant The fund was started by Dave Conant (who I don't know anything about).

The summary paints a very grim picture of the situation. In addition to the things we have posted about here, the page notes "He even died for several minutes this past week, but was able to be revived." And the page talks about things in terms of "going forward with the time he has left" more than it does a path to recovery. This was discussed on Tenkar's youtube channel today, and Mike Badolato made the point that from a certain POV this Gofundme is more for Ernie's spouse Donna that it is about Ernie.

And to give credit where absolutely none is due, the DHSM finally acknowledged the situation and posted a link to the Gofundme. No comments or well wishes, but at least they did the bare minimum.

 

[DLIMedia]

For what he's dealing with there isn't really a "path to recovery"... you just brace for the inevitable and try to live your life as comfortably as possible.

And, for reasons I won't elaborate on here, he likely doesn't qualify to be on any sort of donor list.

 

[Willie the Duck]

To be fair, someone could scrape by on their bar exam and still be a decent lawyer.

The dirty little secret of (public perception of) education is that all of these things we treat as accomplishments (degrees, entrance and allowance-to-practice exams) are in some ways more gates to pass to go on and then accomplish something*. This is why I/we don't treat having an ________ degree as making one an authority in internet arguments, and why I find it so amusing when Hollywood does something like signal that Bruce Banner is just so unbelievably smart because he has 8 Ph. D.s**. The bar exam, passed in flying colors or just scrapping by, is just a point in time in a lawyer's career amongst the other things they will do which will determine/tell us how competent they are.
*this is not trying to diminish that degree or high score of which you are very proud.
**but rather ought have given you the skills to craft the points/find the sources which *do support your argument.
***instead of, I don't know, getting one Ph. D. and then 7 Ph. D.s worth of time accomplishing things in that field.

Despite (perhaps because of ) my work* with lawyers, I don't feel qualified to say how incompetent this discovery snafu makes LaNasa's lawyer look. However, I will say that, when the lawyers I know are not skilled at a given thing, they know to say so and find someone who is. If this guy really is first and foremost a criminal defense attorney, he really should be turning this over to someone focused on this kind of civic dispute, and that's the failure of competence upon which I am judging them.
*Digital Resource Governance -- what information we can share with whom.

For what he's dealing with there isn't really a "path to recovery"... you just brace for the inevitable and try to live your life as comfortably as possible.

And, for reasons I won't elaborate on here, he likely doesn't qualify to be on any sort of donor list.

I suspect, simply from how long he wasn't telling us how sick he was, that he's probably not in good enough shape to survive a transplant procedure.

We're all bracing for the inevitable (just some more immediately than others), but this does help explain his relative silence this past year. I guess it does make me more accepting that we haven't seen an about-face and fully-engaged bridge-mending tour (simply too late), but I'm still holding out hope that we hear some kind of 'this was a mistake' from him before the end (or recounted after by his wife, etc.).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I suspect that this is part of why this fiasco has gone on for a year - the judge wants this one-and-done, and so wants to ensure that Justin had adequate opportunity to make his case, and assess the effectiveness of his counsel. She does not want to it to be appealed on a claim of her cutting corners, etc and she will not shed a single tear if Justin does take up a suit against his lawyer for malpractice.

So a few things-

1. Judges will often give litigants enough rope to hang themselves with.


2. There are bad (and even incompetent) attorneys out there. Like ... a lot. Things that good attorneys will take for granted often seem like mysterious concepts to the bad attorney. I had a case some time ago with an attorney (bar licensed) who was so terrible at so many things that he ended up paying more in sanctions over the case than the case was worth, and ended up dismissing it prior to a contempt hearing. Just because the most basic procedural matters seemed to be beyond him.

But that's the bottom of the barrel. Even when you get beyond that, you will often see attorneys who don't understand basic concepts- for example, I am thinking of a case involving an attorney who was somewhat competent, but absolutely could not understand the difference between claims, counterclaims, cross-claims, and third-party claims.

Many of these attorneys survive because most of the issues they normally deal with are of minimum complexity.


3. Most importantly, I don't think people understand that "law" is a specialized practice. There are still generalists, but they are few and far between. An attorney that does transactional work will often be lost when it comes to litigation. An attorney that specializes in civil practice won't understand criminal law. An attorney that focuses on administrative matters might not understand the finer points of appellate practice. An attorney that has spent their life dealing with family law may not fully grasp the finer points of M&A documents. An attorney that spends all their time in state court may be at a loss in federal court. A labor attorney that is used to advising unions may not have the first idea about how to successfully prosecute a med-mal action. And so on.

As you previously surmised, an attorney with a long and successful practice in criminal defense may be at a disadvantage when it comes to prosecuting a defamation claim.

 

[Umbran]

Rudy Guliani and Sidney Powell are both lawyers and have been in the news a lot over the past few years. The assumption all lawyers are competent went out the window a while ago thanks to those two.

Those two? Pah!

 

[Gradine]

Those two? Pah!

Say what you will but Lionel Hutz never actually lost a case (and even if he did, your pizza's free!)

 

[Kannik]

3. Most importantly, I don't think people understand that "law" is a specialized practice. There are still generalists, but they are few and far between. An attorney that does transactional work will often be lost when it comes to litigation. An attorney that specializes in civil practice won't understand criminal law. An attorney that focuses on administrative matters might not understand the finer points of appellate practice. An attorney that has spent their life dealing with family law may not fully grasp the finer points of M&A documents. An attorney that spends all their time in state court may be at a loss in federal court. A labor attorney that is used to advising unions may not have the first idea about how to successfully prosecute a med-mal action. And so on.

To some degree this is true of architecture as well -- the residential and commercial codes are different enough from each other* that companies that do both often will have separate divisions for each. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of things such as hospital design with all of the additional requirements and regulations...

And then there's "passing an exam" vs "being effective in practice." During university I worked on a technical helpdesk, and we had people come in and apply for positions with a bevy of certifications. But have them work through a call/issue and they would either fumble and bumble horribly, or go completely tharn. It's quite possible to know something but not get it.

* Fun story: I did a house addition for a friend. During plan check, the city reviewer said "Ok, let's check that the bedroom window is of the right size for emergency egress," and I inwardly panicked. I hadn't checked for that at all. You see, in commercial buildings we generally don't plan for people jumping out of our windows... (Fortunately, the window in my friend's house was the correct size and proportions and so everything got passed without concern.)

 

[Staffan]

The dirty little secret of (public perception of) education is that all of these things we treat as accomplishments (degrees, entrance and allowance-to-practice exams) are in some ways more gates to pass to go on and then accomplish something*. This is why I/we don't treat having an ________ degree as making one an authority in internet arguments, and why I find it so amusing when Hollywood does something like signal that Bruce Banner is just so unbelievably smart because he has 8 Ph. D.s**.

In the case of Banner, and many other super-scientists, he has an incredibly broad field of expertise. He doesn't just do radiation and mutation, but programming, engineering, architecture, and all sorts of other things. So it sort of makes sense that he has multiple PhDs, or at least has studied enough to potentially get them.

That sort of broad competence tends to exist in other areas as well. For example, and sort of on topic for the thread, Bruce's cousin Jennifer is a Lawyer. What kind of law? All of it.

 

[LordEntrails]

For example, and sort of on topic for the thread, Bruce's cousin Jennifer is a Lawyer. What kind of law? All of it.

Sure, the abilities of a mythical character. I guess that's on topic G

 

[Willie the Duck]

In the case of Banner, and many other super-scientists, he has an incredibly broad field of expertise. He doesn't just do radiation and mutation, but programming, engineering, architecture, and all sorts of other things. So it sort of makes sense that he has multiple PhDs, or at least has studied enough to potentially get them.

That sort of broad competence tends to exist in other areas as well. For example, and sort of on topic for the thread, Bruce's cousin Jennifer is a Lawyer. What kind of law? All of it.

My point is that that is how tv/cinema try to communicate 'just that unbelievably smart' because terminal degree = intellectual accomplishment (so just keep adding more to signify superhuman levels thereof), whereas in my experience it is the gateway/avenue for accomplishment. I know a couple people with 2-3 Ph. D.s (predominantly because it extended visas). While they all are smart and have every reason to feel proud of their accomplishment (and each was an incredible accomplishment from a life-and-finances-management metric alone), they aren't smarter than some other people I know who got the a specific degree (terminal or otherwise) and then went and did something with it that is no longer on the academic trajectory yardstick.

This is really getting far-afield from the thread topic, and one I've circled around a number of times around here. I could go on my spiel again about people with whom I engage who've been troubled by not being able to adjust to the world not really working this way and finding life milestones after the grade/entrance exams/finishing out degree path yardsticks end, but it's not really germane to the discussion.