Does TSR3 Have Nazi Connections?

Evidence has been compiled by an anonymous website which suggests that TSR3's Star Frontiers: New Genesis (Star Frontiers being one of the trademarks under legal 'dispute' with WotC right now) is written by an author with extreme Nazi sympathies.

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)...

www.enworld.org

I'm not going to directly post the hateful images and tweets here because the content is extreme. It's one of the most focused outpourings of hate that I've personally seen.

But there is a website [CONTENT WARNING -- I need to post the link as evidence but I honestly do not recommend that you click on it] where somebody has anonymously and comprehensively compiled screenshots which indicate that a Twitter feed called 'DaveFilmsUS' (that they allege belongs to New Genesis author Dave Johnson) is filled with hate speech and Nazi imagery. These tweets include racist, homophobic, and transphobic content, along with Nazi and white supremacy memes. There are images of swastikas, and messages about the 'replacement' of white people. The tweets cover a long period of time, going back to at least 2017. They are extreme.

Star Frontiers: New Genesis is a book whose existence many doubt. It shows up as 'sold out' on TSR3's webstore on Dungeon Hobby Shop. Earlier this year, TSR3 posted manipulated images of piles of books (below) made to look like they were Star Frontiers stock. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has seen this book. The game was announced in June 2021.

Meanwhile, Star Frontiers owner Wizards of the Coast continues to sell the game on DriveThruRPG. TSR3 attempted legal action against WotC last year with the goal of claiming ownership of some of WotC's IP; WotC responded with a countersuit which is still ongoing.

Johnson, who runs Dave Johnson Games, also publishes an ezine called Alarms & Journeys, a name presumably 'inspired' by the the well-known zine Alarums and Excursions by the award-winning game designer Lee Gold. Alarums and Excursions has been running since 1975, and is still published to this day.

TSR3 is run by Justin LaNasa (a tattooist, weapon designer, and briefly a politician who refers to himself as Sir Justin LaNasa), who sent (real) TSR alumnus Tim Kask profane messages in January of this year. TSR3 is the third company to bear the name, and is in no way connected to the TSR which published Dungeons & Dragons from the 1970s to the 1990s.

WotC's countersuit against TSR3, which names the company and Justin LaNasa personally, currently remains ongoing.

​

 

[qstor]

What piece of (not wanting to get banned by Morrus)

 

[Vaalingrade]

This does not have to mean "appeasement" of the far right.

I clearly does when all opposition, from deplatforming to a simple punch to the face is all considered too far and 'vigilante violence' and we're told to be scared of their amount of guns (which is why they have the guns).

And all this talk of appeasement without saying appeasement is real easy to do for people who won't be first on the train to the gas chamber.

 

[FoolishFrost]

and again when the time comes I 100% support the need for people to physically stand up to them.

Just to be clear, "when the time comes" generally equates to, "When they've done enough damage and hurt enough people. Specifically, something or someone I care about."

While I think we all understand laws are made to punish offenses, not prevent them... I prefer to avoid waiting until they become a viable, organized threat.

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Martin Niemöller​

There is history about this. We should not have to learn this all over again. As a 50 year old, I can say I've directly spoken to people with tattoos and scars directly related to the "philosophy" of the nazis.

And they are not the only ones: We have the KKK, white supremist skinheads... Bigotry is rife in this country, and they are organized, political, and willing to use violence while they think they are being protected by legal and political means. (I mean, they get abandoned at the drop of the hat, but these aren't the brightest people, yanno?)

 

[Steampunkette]

I really, REALLY, hate the idea that I, and members of my minority groups and various other minority groups, should set aside our safety and comfort because MAYBE someone can talk SOME people out of wanting us dead.

And @FoolishFrost hit that nail right on the head...

"When the time comes".

"When I decide that the people I totally agree are bad and dangerous have done enough harm based on my personal tolerance for harm to myself and other people, only then is it time to fight back with the methods that I consider acceptable!"

It's ugly. It's so ugly.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This is a Strawman.

no it is a very detailed and thoughtful talk... the fact that you can just throw the word strawman out like that makes me think there is little we can discuse.

Great! You talk them off the ledge, I'll punch the people actively and openly calling for my death, sending me death threats, and generally trying to convince others that I don't deserve the same rights as anyone else as part of their continued political pogrom to... My death.

And the death of everyone who isn't like them.

you do realize those people call for my death too. They also call for the death of my cousins my half brother and my niece.
you are not unique for being targeted by Nazis... they target A LOT of people... it's kind of how it is so easy to see how evil they are.

If that person ISN'T a Nazi they're not going to BECOME a Nazi over a fistfight,

no, I doubt anyone WOULD become a nazi over a fist fight. However for someone throwing 'strawman' around you are taking alot of what I said, ignoring the parts that don't fit your counter argument and then trying to make a simple 1+1 out of a VERY complex situation.

The pipeline to becomeing an Nazi is long, and there are many points that you CAN talk people out of that path. However if that fist fight makes them ever so slightly more sympathetic to the person punched for talking and starts them down that path you did not help...

and you can still try and talk them down. Good luck. If you CAN'T talk them down, it's not because of the fistfight, it's because they were already a Nazi.

see you understand... at least in theory. No they can't all be talked down some are WAY too far gone. I would still like to save the ones I can.

You don't go "Uh! You can't hit him! He was just talking! Therefore DEATH TO ALL MINORITIES is my totally rational political swing in response to this situation!"

wait did I say YOU shouldn't hit them, or did I say the world needs people who will AND people who wont and they need to work togather? I don't remember telling YOU or anyone not do what you think is best... I do remember saying that without people like me there is a risk of you making it worse... but never did I tell you not to do what you think is best.

The world doesn't need Soldiers or Cops but that's a whole other argument.

please don't go there

Peaceful Protest works against GOVERNMENTS and BUSINESSES

yup.

Not Nazi jerkwads who don't currently have power.

did I say that peacful protest would stop spencer, or any nazi/neo nazi that was already too far gone? no I said talking to people in the pipeline to becomeing them can help thin the ranks of the worst.
again you throw strawman around then pic a peace of the idea out of context and argue against an argument I am not making.

Peaceful Protests, for them, bring CAMERAS and the chance to present their horrible, terrible, evil views as being reasonable. "Both Sides" politics gives the Nazi Political Machine weight it should not, and does not, have.

what both sides... there side is evil and I want to show how evil it is and convince as many people as possible not to get close to it.

Also Peaceful Protest doesn't work against Nazi Governments.

did someone suggest that?

Several people tried and got arrested, tried, convicted, and beheaded between breakfast and dinner of the same day.

non violent people were also killed arrested and beheaded for hiding people that were targets when if they had just NOT DONE ANYTHING they themselves would not be targets... the fact that what they did to help was not violent is not the same as doing nothing

But you do not get to tell people who are the targets of Bigotry not to fight back against bigotry by any means needed.

if I don't get to tell people anything (especially since I never said not to fight back) why do you get to tell people who are targets of Bigotry how they can react to it?

People get out of prison. And then you've got White Supremacists from across the state (or however wide the net is for the population of that prison) talking to each other and organizing. Kind of like... Y'know.

yes people get out of prison. I am 100% of the mind we need to work more on reform and less on punishment, but when they comit there next crime (or in a perfect world well planing it) they go back.

do you think every criminal ever needs to be killed? do you want the punisher?

reat! For that guy. And the next guy over that you could never talk down if you spent 20 years gently debating him?G

that is why you need BOTH people talking and people willing to punch... but they need to not turn on each other.

Then either I die a Martyr or people come to my aid.

or you die alone and no one knows... not everyone gets to be a protaganist and you sshould not assume you can force everyone to be willing to throw there life away.

But at least I'll have stood up to Nazis in my life, rather than passively letting them spread their hatred.

what makes you think I am not standing up to them? because my default weapon is words not punches? because my default is to shield not attack?

Or, worse, given some measure of validity to their position by trying to debate it.

right becuse argueing against evil is evil... this is the argument i hate and scares me that people make.

you are not a superhero... and in the real world I don't want vigilantes who answer to no one making choices based on what they think is right and wrong (notice that describe MOST heroes and villains)

 

[Morrus]

no it is a very detailed and thoughtful talk... the fact that you can just throw the word strawman out like that makes me think there is little we can discuse.

OK, so there's a lot of threads right now which have devolved into you have one very long intense argument with a single person. It seems to happen in many of the threads you participate in, and it's becoming really disruptive to the forum. I'm going to need you to disengage (again).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

removed per Morris right as I was posting

 

[FoolishFrost]

As a side note:
You do know this is not the only kind of bigotry going on, right? It's across the board. It's political. It's the exploitation of marginalized groups of all types in order to motivate a group in a single direction. The primary motivators are to gather sociopolitical power for those at the top of the food chain, and weaponize the base against what they consider their enemies.

They do their best to limit education, prevent any competing power structures, and using peer pressure and powerful threats to get those neutral and against them to step in line. All the while, inserting more and more people into positions of power. Not all of these positions are political

 

[grimslade]

Nope. Put me in the Nazis do not get to be in society unless they fully recant their antisocial ethos. Sometimes you can deplatform. Sometimes you punch them in the head. White Supremacy is a cancer that must be combated at its very whisper.
NuTSR can enjoy another bag of sodium crusted members for giving this slime mold any daylight.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Feck fascists. Feck tolerance for them. I've seen these bastards spew their naughty word online and get away with it.

Get them the fuek offline and out of public and political spaces. They don't fester in the dark, they die in the dark.

Ths naughty word has to stop well, well before things get worse. Cause they're already pretty naughty word bad.

 

[DLIMedia]

Well this thread is going as could be expected...

 

[Professor Murder]

People who feel we can just talk it out with Nazis, that feel the need to defend free speech even when it is vile, to be blunt, such people can do so because they will not be the people up against the wall when the time comes, not at first at least. To also be frank, I have enough privilege to know I would not be one of them either. So why do I not feel this generous? Because quite simply, we have already had this discussion. You don't need to hear people out forever. When genocide is a part of someone's desires, I don't need to hash out why. I just have to try to stop them. Is violence the answer? That's not for me to say. I am not going to be one of the first up against the wall. I will say it would be arrogant of me to demand that people under threat by White Supremacists fight against it as I dictate.

 

[Steampunkette]

Political compromise is great! I love finding the middle ground!

When the middle ground is "Fine, only half of every minority group has to die." or "Instead of killing you all, we'll just constantly commit violence against you based on things you can't change about yourself." there is no compromise.

A Nazi can stop being a Nazi. They can take off the jackboots and put away their ugly ideas and be a part of society. The people they hate cannot be made to change the things they hate.

There can be no middle ground.

There can be no compromise.

There can be no debate.

And TSR works with at least one out and out Nazi. I doubt they'll refute him, or cast aside his 'work'.

When you've got 11 reasonable people and 1 Nazi sitting at a table having a reasonable discussion you have 12 Nazis at a table.

 

[billd91]

Meanwhile, you punch a Nazi and they learn that Nazism isn't accepted within arm's reach of you. Everyone punches the Nazis and they learn there's nowhere that is safe to be a Nazi. That they have to hide it. That it's something society considers to be unacceptable.

Then they have a choice. Stop being a Nazi (or at least openly so), or keep getting punched in the teeth.

Dick Spencer stopped showing up in public for a reason. His political aspirations collapsed for a reason. His connections dried up. His wife left him. All for a Reason.

And that reason was a right hand to the side of the head followed by a strong elbow.

That, I think, is giving far too much power to a single punch. I think a very strong factor in getting him turtling up is probably the lawsuit brought to bear on him as well as the legal trouble of his followers. I couldn't even say that his wife filing for divorce and accusing him of abuse was a downstream impact of him being punched in public.

Getting into fights is what Nazis do. It's what brought them to power in the 1930s. It's what keeps the hard core radicalized. Before they brought the case about marching rights in Skokie back in 1977, the NSPA mostly just got beat up and it never stopped them. And when they finally did march, after changing location from Skokie to Chicago, they were utterly dwarfed by the counter protest (by something like 100 to 1). That is what seems to work best. Turn out to countermarch/counterprotest. Bullies don't seem to handle being outnumbered very well. Plus, it undermines their momentum - being the ones to turn out in large number emboldens them.

Edit: It also takes their implicit threat of mob violence from them and turns it into a losing proposition. You don't even have to deploy the violence in the end.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I feel there is rather unfair binary being presented here. It's not a choice between appeasement and physical violence.

I fully believe that hate speech should be prosecuted, I think bigots should be deplatformed and generally not welcomed in the society.

I'm still a tad sceptical about the merits of violent vigilante justice thought... Sure, I certainly grant that there are rare situations where violence is a valid choice, albeit my bar is pretty damn high there.

There was recently this news story about a taxi driver who told bigots to get out of his car and was very clear about why. This is the attitude everyone should have. But had this guy started to punch the prospective customers, the reporting might have had a rather different tone...

 

[Professor Murder]

I think we should also accept the stark reality that if a persecuted minority member goes out to harm a White Nationalist, they are at best going to risk arrest if not being killed by law enforcement, while a White Nationalist can walk out of a supermarket after executing some ten people and police will do all they can to take them in alive.

 

[Blue Orange]

From what little I can tell, Spencer seems to have been stopped by the legal actions against him after the Unite the Right rally went violent. You don't see much from him after that. The punch deflated him a little, but he obviously survived it. So...was punching Spencer really all that effective? Not sure. In the larger sense of 'is punching Nazis a good idea' (not moral, no ethical problem with it on my end)...antifa does seem to have at least provided a countervailing force to the more violent right-wing demonstrations so I guess yes, it does work.

The (actual) Nazis killed a bunch of my (distant) relatives too, so I've no love for LaNasa and the like (who seems to be the real deal), and I want to see these guys fail.

So...what's the actual best way to fight the far-right? Not sure, honestly. Every country and time is unique--there's no guarantee that the strategies that succeeded elsewhere will here, and anyway whatever was tried in Weimar failed. A lot of it has to do with overall material conditions (makes me sound like a leftist)--extreme viewpoints are less attractive when times are good.

I think unionization would help--it unites working-class people across racial lines--and a stronger welfare state (worked here in the USA in the 1930s).

I do think a lot of this 'all cishet white men are bad' stuff in the media hurts, TBH. There are a lot of lower- and middle-class men in that demographic who aren't particularly privileged, and it definitely has a radicalizing effect from what I've seen. That and in an era of demographic change, crowing about how you're going to replace people (Michelle Goldberg in the NYT comes to mind) and talking about having one billion Americans (thanks Matt Yglesias!) is a bad idea. (Forget race, tripling your population sounds awful.) You honor those who came before and welcome new arrivals--we're all part of the polity. IMHO, of course. You usually wind up having to coopt the center-right at some point--not enough of the country leans left. After all, Winston Churchill kept Hitler out of the UK.

EDIT: Winston Churchill and several million Tommies kept Hitler out of the UK.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think we should also accept the stark reality that if a persecuted minority member goes out to harm a White Nationalist, they are at best going to risk arrest if not being killed by law enforcement, while a White Nationalist can walk out of a supermarket after executing some ten people and police will do all they can to take them in alive.

Go after a white nationalist?

A guy in my city got iced for carrying Subway sandwiches into his house.

 

[FoolishFrost]

I feel there is rather unfair binary being presented here. It's not a choice between appeasement and physical violence.

I believe the problem is not this.

I didn't see much discussing appeasement, as much as refusing to engage in vocal discussion with a person aligning with a group that thinks genocide is a historically proven way to protect your interests.

Perhaps, the problem here is, they're NAZIS. Just being a part of such a group means you are aligned with the use of violence against those you deem "Lesser". At this point, the table is kinda being set for preemptive strikes...

 

[HammerMan]

I think we should also accept the stark reality that if a persecuted minority member goes out to harm a White Nationalist, they are at best going to risk arrest if not being killed by law enforcement, while a White Nationalist can walk out of a supermarket after executing some ten people and police will do all they can to take them in alive.

This

The legal force of the nation I live in is broken (I don’t know if it is in other countries)