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...

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.

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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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).
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  • 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.
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(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)
 

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Right, I'm just curious if the "shy around girls" crowd are more common in the more computer geek, math geek, hard-science geek crowd than the theater kids. At least that was my experience in the 80s. But things are much different now. Being into computers is just the norm and not really nerdy or geeky. There are a lot more girls involved in tech and hard sciences. Gaming culture has gone mainstream. Many of the discussions on the topic of the acceptance of girls in games seems to be stuck in earlier decades and just doesn't reflect what I'm seeing with younger people getting into the hobby today. I'm not saying that it is no longer an issue, but it is much different and better than it was. And, experiences of how bad is was in the "old days" does vary.
I’d expect it would be, even with the societal changes you noted. A good part of the theater/performance environment is inherently social, and is going to draw more extroverted personalities, on average, than environments where success based on individual efforts & skills are more the norm.
(That’s not to say introverts aren’t present or even quite successful. Just talking odds of demographics.)
I'd agree. There's less self-selection into the social categories of old, but there are real personality types. There are computer, math, and hard-science people that are shy or introverted*. I think that will always be the case because those qualities don't strongly inhibit the exploration of those interests; nor does the exploration of the interest specifically work to address those traits. Likewise, an interest in theater or performance probably will be associated with extroversion, because it either appeals to people with such traits naturally, or necessitates a certain amount of learned** extroversion to continue far into the interest. Those social categories still exist, even if they do not stay static.
*among others who are not.
**any number of comedians supposedly got their start as a reaction to being a shy, insecure person.


What I think has changed are: 1) as you mention, greater social acceptance of girls in tech and hard science; and 2) the decupling of nerdy pastimes from the hard sci/math crowd. Everyone watches super-hero movies. Peter Jackson LotR was a mainstream success. As you say, everyone is on computers. Heck, Harry Potter. This was starting to happen in the 80s (Star Wars and Atari/Nintendo, and such), but it has really accelerated in the new century.
 

This is a really minor thing, but I'll report on it for the sake of completeness. It looks like Gamers on Games (a.k.a. Dave Simpson) did an April Fool's Day joke video where he announced that he was going to buy the DHSM. Obviously, this was an attempt at holiday humor.


Meh.

In other barely worth mentioning news, it looks like the realtor who is handling the attempt at selling the DHSM has lowered the asking price from $5,000,000 to $4,750,000. I guess we can all agree that's $250,000 cheaper. 😐
 

Ancalagon

Dusty Dragon
This is a really minor thing, but I'll report on it for the sake of completeness. It looks like Gamers on Games (a.k.a. Dave Simpson) did an April Fool's Day joke video where he announced that he was going to buy the DHSM. Obviously, this was an attempt at holiday humor.


Meh.

In other barely worth mentioning news, it looks like the realtor who is handling the attempt at selling the DHSM has lowered the asking price from $5,000,000 to $4,750,000. I guess we can all agree that's $250,000 cheaper. 😐
sometimes, real estate doesn't sell because the asking price is a wee bit too high. Lowering it a tad can be all that's needed to get offers from buyers.

But this isn't it, the asking price is off by an order of magnitude! It's like being asked to lift 1000 kg, and after you protest it's far too much they are now asking to lift 950 kg...
 

DLIMedia

David Flor, Darklight Interactive
Big news in NuTSR-vs-WotC... IANAL and am medicated right now (I have 4mm kidney stone, so I'm dosed up on morphine), but it seems WotC pays the estate $15K to settle the bankruptcy and in exchange they get all the trademarks in dispute.

The stay in the primary lawsuit is lifted, and WotC now gets to go after Justin personally, so this isn't quite over yet. Actually, this is probably going to hurt.

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Faolyn

(she/her)
I wonder if Lanasa will consider this a win, because he made WotC pay, or a loss, because he didn't get that million he thought he deserved (or whatever the ridiculous amount he wanted was).

Or am I completely misunderstanding and that $15k goes to someone not him?
 

Steampunkette

A5e 3rd Party Publisher!
Supporter
I wonder if Lanasa will consider this a win, because he made WotC pay, or a loss, because he didn't get that million he thought he deserved (or whatever the ridiculous amount he wanted was).

Or am I completely misunderstanding and that $15k goes to someone not him?
If I'm reading this right:

$15,000 goes to TSR Games LLC, which Lanasa owns, making it the biggest payment TSR Games has received since it's opening.

The name TSR, the Game Wizards, Lizardman Logo, everything reverts back to WotC's control.

The stay on the bankruptcy claim is lifted, and Lanasa gets to declare nuTSR Bankrupt and forfeit. All creditors become free to come calling.

And then WotC goes after Lanasa for his malicious use of WotC Trademarks and open Bigotry for the damages it may have caused the TSR trademark in their countersuit, tearing Lanasa's veil apart and possibly wiping out all of his resources.
 


DLIMedia

David Flor, Darklight Interactive
$15,000 goes to TSR Games LLC, which Lanasa owns, making it the biggest payment TSR Games has received since it's opening.
My understanding is that the 15K goes to the ESTATE, which will be used to pay off creditors somehow. Who actually gets paid off, I don't know. It's not like TSR gets a check and can do whatever they want with it; the creditors come first.
 

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