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.

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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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In what way?

Apparently he's come out swinging against WotC, not for anything legitimately bad that they've done, but because of the "woke" disclaimer and trying to tone down racism and sexism in D&D being some kind of an attack on TSR (it isn't). You know, the same stuff LaNasa and company were crying loudly about in the beginning (they ran an IndieGogo campaign to try to fund a lawsuit against WotC for this very thing and failed miserably).
 

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So in the latest chapter of NuTSR's fantasy world setting, Don was arrested, held without bond, awaiting extradition to North Carolina.

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Given that Don was on the phone with Tenkar 5 minutes after the email was received, and was live on air in a spur of the moment live feed 45 minutes later, let's file that under "things that most definitely never happened."

And that's not even touching the fact that that's not how the law works.

Apparently they sent that email to multiple people and expected someone to just run with it... I'm guessing because their side of the political spectrum doesn't expect any fact checking to take place.

Given that Don's in jail without bond and I'm apparently dead (not related to NuTSR, but impeccable timing, no?), it's amazing we can get anything done.
 


Apparently he's come out swinging against WotC, not for anything legitimately bad that they've done, but because of the "woke" disclaimer and trying to tone down racism and sexism in D&D being some kind of an attack on TSR (it isn't). You know, the same stuff LaNasa and company were crying loudly about in the beginning (they ran an IndieGogo campaign to try to fund a lawsuit against WotC for this very thing and failed miserably).

Huh.

I have very mixed feelings about Rub Kuntz ... which aren't worth going into.

That said, I do recall that he participated here, and that when this whole mess started with Ernie, he made a point of saying that he tried to reach out to him, and he was shocked and disappointed at how Ernie wouldn't change course (re: his dealings with nuTSR and his endorsement of exclusionary rhetoric).

I haven't gone back and seen exactly what was stated, but I think that was the gist. If this is true (and I'd need more context), then that is definitely something that is surprising given his approach not very long ago.

ETA- quick search found this summary from him:
 

Huh.

I have very mixed feelings about Rub Kuntz ... which aren't worth going into.

That said, I do recall that he participated here, and that when this whole mess started with Ernie, he made a point of saying that he tried to reach out to him, and he was shocked and disappointed at how Ernie wouldn't change course (re: his dealings with nuTSR and his endorsement of exclusionary rhetoric).

I haven't gone back and seen exactly what was stated, but I think that was the gist. If this is true (and I'd need more context), then that is definitely something that is surprising given his approach not very long ago.

ETA- quick search found this summary from him:

I'll second the notion that Rob Kuntz is a complex topic. But as far as I know he has always been anti-NuTSR, and has never worked with Lanasa. His brother, Terry Kuntz, got pulled into signing the basement door of the DHSM in 2023, but I believe Rob mananged to keep his name off that list.
 

Huh.

I have very mixed feelings about Rub Kuntz ... which aren't worth going into.

That said, I do recall that he participated here, and that when this whole mess started with Ernie, he made a point of saying that he tried to reach out to him, and he was shocked and disappointed at how Ernie wouldn't change course (re: his dealings with nuTSR and his endorsement of exclusionary rhetoric).

I haven't gone back and seen exactly what was stated, but I think that was the gist. If this is true (and I'd need more context), then that is definitely something that is surprising given his approach not very long ago.

ETA- quick search found this summary from him:
I think it is mainly referring to the stuff covered in this one below:


Where Rob Kuntz called the following (or some part thereof) slanderous:

"Well authors Jon Peterson and Jason Tondro mention that early D&D made light of slavery, disparaged women, and gave Hindu deities hit points. They also repeated Wizard’s disclaimer for legacy content which states:"These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This content is presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed."
 

No, he's been going of from time-to-time on his Twitter.

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He's also been working with Griff Morgan, presumably mostly about Secrets of Blackmore but Griff can't help but try to complain about progressives every chance he gets. He's been having GiantLands creator, Stephen Dinehart, sucking up to him - apparently with success.

But primarily what they've been jumping on is Rob's tendency to idolize Gary, etc and so rail against any criticism of their work, particularly in the modern lens.
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And at the same time following and reposting the sentiments of people who's whole identity is being a reactionary who has chosen games as the battleground for culture wars:
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It basically seems to have kicked off since August, almost certainly as a result of the Ben Riggs thing bringing him to the attention of reactionaries in the hobby and broader gaming space.

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Largely it seems to stem from a tendency to go from 0 - 100, where someone largely inconsequential will say something harsh about Gary - Rob will reply that it definitely wasn't the case in a not-great manner ("Gary never told me he was a racist, so he wasn't!") and then will go on to blame Marxism, etc for the bad take of one Internet rando.
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He's not like Justin LaNasa or Dave Johnson levels of reactionary, but he definitely has an undercurrent of it that is easily brought to the surface and that's made him popular with the people who desperately need a "authority" to validate their ideology - and probably making it harder for him to get mainstream support... etc etc

Basically he's not that different from the infamous "older relative on Facebook" but for the fact he was part of the original TSR crew and hence has all the worst people in gaming and those who see gaming as a culture war courting him now.
 
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@gban007 @Wincenworks

I appreciate your sourcing that, and I am certainly not going to defend any of it.

The only thing I will say (and this is NOT a defense) is that part of the reason my feelings about him are complicated is that I have personal experience seeing him go (as Wincenworks put it aptly above) from 0-100 because he felt slighted, or someone was disparaging him, or not crediting his ideas correctly, etc.

That said, I am having trouble reconciling what he is apparently tweeting (or retweeeting) now with his prior discussions here (which, as @Deset Gled also indicated, were definitely pushing back against nuTSR and anti-inclusive comments).

Ugh. Anyway, I'll say nothing else since I have no knowledge of this other than what he previously posted here. People say what they say, and the consequences follow.
 


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