D&D General Alleged disgruntled NuTSR insider spills the beans.

[Sacrosanct]

Supposedly. People who post in their favor on twitter, at least.



Their actions make a lot more sense if we stop thinking of them as legitimate attempts to hold rights. I don't think they actually care about the action - if they lose the right to use the marks, they'll spin it to claim to be victims, which to them is a PR win.

If WotC sues, they hide behind an LLC that has no assets to speak of. Indeed, the stated plan for TSR3.5 seems to have been to allow others to do creative work, and license out their trademarks to the creators - which means they'd never really intended to have many assets. A few contracts, and that's about it. Most of the time they could take license income, quickly disburse it as salaries/bonuses, and not even keep much in the bank.

I don't expect LaNasa considered what might happen to them if WotC is really annoyed, and manages to also attach LaNasa personally to a suit. That sounds like the real failure point.

IANAL, but the way I understand LLC law is that there are laws in place to address people who create LLCs just to hide culpability. For the life of me I can't recall the term off the top of my head though. Piercing the veil or something like that.

 

[Umbran]

IANAL, but the way I understand LLC law is that there are laws in place to address people who create LLCs just to hide culpability. For the life of me I can't recall the term off the top of my head though. Piercing the veil or something like that.

Yeah. It is possible, but my understanding is that it takes a bit, and maybe LaNasa hasn't planned expecting it.

Lawyers here could possibly correct me, but there might be another failure mode - if, in discovery (which, I understand, can be pretty broad) it is found that LaNasa hasn't been keeping his companies separate, even if he himself is not personally attached to the suit, assets for other companies, like, say, the Museum, might come into play.

 

[darjr]

Yeah. It is possible, but my understanding is that it takes a bit, and maybe LaNasa hasn't planned expecting it.

Lawyers here could possibly correct me, but there might be another failure mode - if, in discovery (which, I understand, can be pretty broad) it is found that LaNasa hasn't been keeping his companies separate, even if he himself is not personally attached to the suit, assets for other companies, like, say, the Museum, might come into play.

Like raising funds for the lawsuit by selling memberships to the museum? Maybe?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah. It is possible, but my understanding is that it takes a bit, and maybe LaNasa hasn't planned expecting it.

Lawyers here could possibly correct me, but there might be another failure mode - if, in discovery (which, I understand, can be pretty broad) it is found that LaNasa hasn't been keeping his companies separate, even if he himself is not personally attached to the suit, assets for other companies, like, say, the Museum, might come into play.

Well, I know he does cross his LLCs. The TSR Hobbies LLC redirects to the Dungeon HSM LLC for the products. And if you purchase something via paypal on TDHSM, the business name is Port City Kava LLC (which expired over a year ago but still has a physical presence).

 

[Umbran]

Like raising funds for the lawsuit by selling memberships to the museum? Maybe?

I would expect other failures to keep the finances separate would be more concrete.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

IANAL, but the way I understand LLC law is that there are laws in place to address people who create LLCs just to hide culpability. For the life of me I can't recall the term off the top of my head though. Piercing the veil or something like that.

Piercing the corporate veil is when you go after the owners of entities that provide protection from legal liability. It's very rare- although an inability to keep your books separate and deliberate undercapitalization doesn't help.*

That said, it is possibly that WoTC could go after LaNasa individually through artful pleading. If they did so, then you know that he has really gotten their attention.


*In Washington state, for example, the required showing is that the the corporate form was intentionally used to violate or evade a duty and that piercing the veil is necessary and required to prevent unjustified loss to the injured party. But while that sounds simple, it is only done in exceptional circumstance- which is almost never.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I don’t know. It’s tempting to gloat, but this is also pretty sketchy.

I think we should apply the same levels of discernment and credulity to everybody.

We already know there are parody twitter accounts of them. I'm inclined to distrust. We mostly have Tenkar's word/faith in Tenkar's ability to know if he's dealing with the real deal (and, to be honest, I have no idea about that, particularly the latter) and as mentioned above that this would have taken a lot of work to be a spoof.

 

[Shiroiken]

Do you have employees if you don’t pay them?

Is that like "prisoners with jobs?"

 

[Deset Gled]

We already know there are parody twitter accounts of them. I'm inclined to distrust. We mostly have Tenkar's word/faith in Tenkar's ability to know if he's dealing with the real deal (and, to be honest, I have no idea about that, particularly the latter) and as mentioned above that this would have taken a lot of work to be a spoof.

To give an example of details that just seem to line up:

Tenkar posted a video of himself with his niece on Christmas day, and was trolled by "Dungeon Hobby Shop" in the Youtube comments very shortly after it was posted (see here). RevengeChad has a screencap of Morgoth (LaNasa) posting in Discord "What I should've said was that guy Tenkar shouldn't be even around allowed anywhere [...] within 100 feet of children he looks like a [expletive] peto. Iam glad good way to start off the year need 100 more from him." That post is dated 12/27/21. It sounds exactly like what LaNasa would say in private as a response to the Xmas day encounter they had.

The point I want to show is that the dates match up perfectly to tell a complete story. And other dates match up too; Morgoth's comments about Darlene, some of the comments about Tim Kask, etc. Is it proof of truth? Certainly not. But it's a level of attention to detail that is above and beyond. If it's trolling, it's serious long term trolling. It is, in all seriousness, a higher level of quality and technical detail than we have seen NuTSR deliver in any of their professional products.

 

[J.Quondam]

The allegations of LaNasa going after Luke Gygax trying to mess up his military pension was new to me. Anyone know what that's about?