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)

 

[Nylanfs]

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.

I can generally explain to people how to fix/correct most things that deal with computers. What I can't do is explain those same things in a way that doesn't make the end user want to kill me over the phone. Hense my current job I told management that they do not want me to directly talk to the customers. They learned this twice, and I haven't talked to a customer in 12ish years.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I can generally explain to people how to fix/correct most things that deal with computers. What I can't do is explain those same things in a way that doesn't make the end user want to kill me over the phone. Hense my current job I told management that they do not want me to directly talk to the customers. They learned this twice, and I haven't talked to a customer in 12ish years.

So, have you tried turning it off and then back on?

 

[Wincenworks]

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

I just wanted to add that a recent high profile example of this was the "AI case" where, stripped to the studs - the issue was that the lawyers involved had become very efficient at filing personal injury claims and negotiating settlements in the Southern District of New York, but had accidentally agreed to represent in a case which took them out of that jurisdiction and required them to deal with complexities of the defendant having a temporary bankruptcy.

This was a scenario they were simply not equipped to deal with the situation - they had been running fine with their limited law library, and built up a volume business on what were essentially routine cases with margins to match. By agreeing to this one case that involved a personal injury on an international flight, they had put themselves in a no-win scenario where they either had to concede defeat and compensate their client, or roll the dice and take their best shot in areas of law they were completely unfamiliar and unequipped to deal with.

They became a circus because they chose exceptionally poorly in this case, relying on ChatGPT to do legal research - but they serve as a pretty good example of how lawyers and even a firm can cruise along making comfortable livings, while pretty much forgetting everything they studied in order to qualify, and can even be incentivized to fall into these habits by the market and the situation.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

lawyers and even a firm can cruise along making comfortable livings, while pretty much forgetting everything they studied in order to qualify,

At UT Law, I took civil procedure with Samuel Issacharoff, an experience in brutally pure Socratic methodology. Hell of an attorney, too- successfully defended UT Law against a few reverse discrimination suits. But as he himself said, he probably couldn’t pass the Texas Bar exam without cramming just like us.

I can personally testify that what I have retained about Oil & Gas and a few other fields wouldn’t fill a flash card.

Of course, a big problem with ANY profession dealing with rules of law on a daily basis- lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, sports agents- is that relevant, MAJOR sections of laws can change any time a legislative body says so, or even when a judge rules a certain way.

Meanwhile, other sections may not change over several human lifetimes.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Yeah. I wouldn't expect a criminal attorney to understand the finer points of drafting civil discovery, but it floors me that he wouldn't even bother to look up the rules. I mean, he has to know he doesn't know and that there are rules to cover it. They aren't hard to find or understand.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I mean, he has to know he doesn't know and that there are rules to cover it. They aren't hard to find or understand.

“I’ve got 99 motions, don’t care ‘bout this one!” Lay-Z

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yeah. I wouldn't expect a criminal attorney to understand the finer points of drafting civil discovery, but it floors me that he wouldn't even bother to look up the rules. I mean, he has to know he doesn't know and that there are rules to cover it. They aren't hard to find or understand.

So, that's actually not that hard to understand.

Recent example- it was a routine administrative matter. Administrative rules adopt many of the state civil procedure rules, but also have rules that are different. One major example of this is that in the state procedural rules, you are not required to confer on motions. In the administrative rules, however, you must confer prior to filing any motion; failure to do so means that motion is automatically denied.

Anyway, the attorney in that action simply didn't know this small distinction, failed to confer, got the motion kicked out, and missed the deadline (which led to the administrative tribunal losing jurisdiction). Same issue pops up with all sorts of things; same state has a federal court with local rules that require conferral on all motions (other than a few that are expressly excepted), and you will always see attorneys who didn't look at the local rules and fail to do so.

The discovery process is similar, but not the same, when it comes to criminal and civil practice. There are both more stringent safeguards as well as more informality in some areas. When I talk about informal differences, I really mean it. I remember some time ago when I was clerking for a judge, and they sent me to observe a family court proceeding. The point of the exercise was to see that while nominally, the rules of evidence were the same, the actual practice was wildly different and more informal.

As for why ... I think @Dannyalcatraz referenced it. I doubt that the client is paying the attorney a high hourly rate (ahem), so it's not like the attorney will be spending a ton of time researching additional issues. Instead, he will likely be plagiarizing himself.

 

[Gammadoodler]

At UT Law, I took civil procedure with Samuel Issacharoff, an experience in brutally pure Socratic methodology. Hell of an attorney, too- successfully defended UT Law against a few reverse discrimination suits. But as he himself said, he probably couldn’t pass the Texas Bar exam without cramming just like us.

I can personally testify that what I have retained about Oil & Gas and a few other fields wouldn’t fill a flash card.

Of course, a big problem with ANY profession dealing with rules of law on a daily basis- lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, sports agents- is that relevant, MAJOR sections of laws can change any time a legislative body says so, or even when a judge rules a certain way.

Meanwhile, other sections may not change over several human lifetimes.

And, while I can't speak for the bar, at least for accountants, the test tends to be a mile wide and an inch deep in terms of scope.

So frequently the tests will cover material you may not see professionally for the rest of your career, but at a lower degree of nuance or complexity from what you'd expect to see professionally in that field.

Ask a financial statement auditor about partnership tax filings or a professional tax accountant about required disclosures in an SEC filing. Both will probably give you blank stares, and both likely were covered on the exam they took.

Now..to be fair, both should also know that they'd need to do their research, but I wouldn't expect either to feel particularly comfortable advising a client on those subjects.

 

[Maxperson]

So, that's actually not that hard to understand.

Recent example- it was a routine administrative matter. Administrative rules adopt many of the state civil procedure rules, but also have rules that are different. One major example of this is that in the state procedural rules, you are not required to confer on motions. In the administrative rules, however, you must confer prior to filing any motion; failure to do so means that motion is automatically denied.

Anyway, the attorney in that action simply didn't know this small distinction, failed to confer, got the motion kicked out, and missed the deadline (which led to the administrative tribunal losing jurisdiction). Same issue pops up with all sorts of things; same state has a federal court with local rules that require conferral on all motions (other than a few that are expressly excepted), and you will always see attorneys who didn't look at the local rules and fail to do so.

The discovery process is similar, but not the same, when it comes to criminal and civil practice. There are both more stringent safeguards as well as more informality in some areas. When I talk about informal differences, I really mean it. I remember some time ago when I was clerking for a judge, and they sent me to observe a family court proceeding. The point of the exercise was to see that while nominally, the rules of evidence were the same, the actual practice was wildly different and more informal.

As for why ... I think @Dannyalcatraz referenced it. I doubt that the client is paying the attorney a high hourly rate (ahem), so it's not like the attorney will be spending a ton of time researching additional issues. Instead, he will likely be plagiarizing himself.

I'll take your word for it since you have experienced a lot more of this stuff than I have. All I can say is that I was taught in school and told by every attorney that I've worked for to always check the local rules and for federal judges, their individual rules.

 

[Nylanfs]

So, have you tried turning it off and then back on?