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).

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!

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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)

 

[Deset Gled]

I suspect that the "no digital products" idea ...

It's my belief that the real reason for "no digital products" is that these products actually aren't intended to be played. There are two markets NuTSR wants to make money from. The first is die hard fans or nostalgia hunters who will buy anything with the name "TSR", "Gygax" or "Star Frontiers" on the cover. The second is people who show up at the DHSM and are sucked into buying an RPG product (as a souvenir, nostalgia piece, or similar). The actual quality of the content doesn't really matter that much to either group.

I came to this conclusion after getting the PDF of Cult of Abaddon and wondering who was seriously going to pay money for an adventure with such terrible editing, then seeing it being sold at TSR Con. It makes so much more sense in that context; NuTSR is basically printing $15 bills for people who stop by the museum and think they're walking out with a piece of history. Ditto for the re-branded dollar store dice. It's the RPG equivalent of a buying a history book at Plymouth Rock from someone who claims to be an ancestor of one of the pilgrims.

That's also why the release date of SF:NG simply doesn't matter. They hyped it for March to use as advertising for TSR Con. Once it became obvious that no one was paying $100 to play it at the con, the next date of any importance is Xmas.

 

[DLIMedia]

From Discord...

A lot to unpack here...

• TSR accepts DaveJ as the author of Star Frontiers, despite all the terrible things he represents.
• DaveJ is a "volunteer" who is likely writing it without getting paid.
• Morgoth is definitely JustinL.
• The Discord admin doesn't know anything about their flagship product, like when any part of it will ever be released.
• We only want people that love us and sing our praises in the Discord. If you got a problem with anything we do, out you go.

I'll remind everyone that "RancidLord" is Michael Yach, the guy that has a Jefferson Davis avatar, so... yeah...

 

[ko6ux]

I assume that before the WotC complaint goes to trial, Justin Lasagna is going to request political asylum in Belarus.

 

[Jer]

I'll remind everyone that "RancidLord" is Michael Yach, the guy that has a Jefferson Davis avatar, so... yeah...

View attachment 249030

A man who calls himself "RancidLord" and also uses Jefferson Davis as his avatar?

If I put that into an adventure my players would pelt me with doritos for making it too obvious who the bad guy was.

 

[Morrus]

From Discord...

View attachment 249029

A lot to unpack here...

• TSR accepts DaveJ as the author of Star Frontiers, despite all the terrible things he represents.
• DaveJ is a "volunteer" who is likely writing it without getting paid.
• Morgoth is definitely JustinL.
• The Discord admin doesn't know anything about their flagship product, like when any part of it will ever be released.
• We only want people that love us and sing our praises in the Discord. If you got a problem with anything we do, out you go.

I'll remind everyone that "RancidLord" is Michael Yach, the guy that has a Jefferson Davis avatar, so... yeah...

View attachment 249030

I think they’re confused about who was posting about nazis.

Hint: it was them.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'll remind everyone that "RancidLord" is Michael Yach, the guy that has a Jefferson Davis avatar, so... yeah...

 

[Davies]

They don't have such keen self-awareness.

 

[dirtypool]

RancidLord announces his leanings fairly clearly. LaNasa using the name of the primary villain of Tolkien's legendarium is equally as telling

 

[Mallus]

Their attempts at marketing are... interesting. Like the center of a Venn diagram whose circles are 'press release' and 'evidence used in the prosecution of the perpetrator of a mass casualty incident'.

 

[Jer]

I think they’re confused about who was posting about nazis.

Hint: it was them.

Also I have to say - staking out the position that it's not okay to "post **** about Nazis" while waving away allegations that your friend has literally been posting Nazi stuff online is certainly a stance to take. There's even more "my 'don't talk about my Nazi friend' T-shirt is raising questions that have already been answered by my T-shirt" energy going on in that Discord post than we'd previously seen...

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is this the sad old man version of saying you're the Joker?

 

[Gradine]

 

[dirtypool]

Justin L: Okay guys thanks for coming to todays staff meetings about Discord handles. I've decided we have to make sure we represent ourselves accurately to our fans. In that spirit I've chosen to use the name of Tolkien's Lucifer analogue from the Silmarillion.
Michael Y: Excellent, I was thinking something like ExcrementWeasel.
Justin L: Too on the nose.
Michael Y: RottingMeatSmell?
Justin L: Too descriptive.
Michael Y: RancidLord.
Justin L: THAT'S IT! That's the one.

 

[Deset Gled]

A lot to unpack here...

I see a lot of attempts to redirect attention away from Dave.

RancidLord has recently posted a number of things about the "Betrayal of Michael K. H.", calling him a "Traitor" and "gold-digger" (his capitalization). It feels a little odd to be defending someone that I was so openly critical of originally, but jeez, let it go. The guy left, and he did a pretty clean job of it. Don't try and throw blame at an employee who quit 5 months ago when your current writer is under fire for being a literal nazi. That's a really, really terrible way to redirect drama. Also, given that the Mario77 got really obsessed with Michael towards the end (I think that doxing Michael is what finally got the account banned), it definitely makes me wonder if that account was run by RancidLord.

RL also really, really wants people to get in on the Tenkar's Toilet channel, but it's just not happening. The only one there trashing Tenkar is RL himself.

Ernie Gygax is working on the redirect, too. The DHSM has had 8 FB posts in the past week (since Dave was exposed), without a single mention of Dave or anything related to SFNG. Before that, it took them 22 days to make the same number of posts. Their posting rate has tripled in a attempt to draw attention away. I think the only other time Ernie posted this much was during TSR Con. I find it hard to believe that is a coincidence.

Also, I want to point out that RancidLord is wrong to refer to everyone at NuTSR as "volunteers". IANAL, but my understanding is that you can only be legally considered a volunteer at non-profit organizations. NuTSR and the DHSM are private, for-profit entities. NuTSR has employees, they have investors, and they have contractors. They can also have members (and members with high ranking status, etc). But the people who work for them are absolutely not volunteers.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

H... how can you be a gold digger if you're not being paid?

 

[J.Quondam]

H... how can you be a gold digger if you're not being paid?

Blockchain?
Oh wait, my bad. That's a different dumpsterfire thread.

 

[DLIMedia]

RL also really, really wants people to get in on the Tenkar's Toilet channel, but it's just not happening. The only one there trashing Tenkar is RL himself.

There aren't a whole lot of people left on that Discord server... Sure, they may have 100+ members but no more than a half dozen have ever said anything.

H... how can you be a gold digger if you're not being paid?

My theory is that Michael H. may have volunteered at first but actually wanted to get paid eventually. When JustinL would do no such thing and expected his indentured servitude, Michael left.

 

[Deset Gled]

My theory is that Michael H. may have volunteered at first but actually wanted to get paid eventually. When JustinL would do no such thing and expected his indentured servitude, Michael left.

That's my best understanding of the situation as well. Before the account was deleted, Mario77 also made some bizarre comments claiming Michael was greedy because Justin paid his travel expenses when he flew from his home to visit the DHSM (and Michael may have refused to come to TSR Con unless Justin paid for that travel as well). The attempt was to make Michael appear bad, but it only made Justin sound like a villian to me. It should be understood that when an employee (or even a contractor) travels for work with a company, the company covers those expenses.

 

[Morrus]

Also I have to say - staking out the position that it's not okay to "post **** about Nazis" while waving away allegations that your friend has literally been posting Nazi stuff online is certainly a stance to take.

Yeah that’s the long version of what I said.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The attempt was to make Michael appear bad,

Just because LaNasa hates Michael, let's not forget that Michael made himself look bad. On several occasions. And repeatedly doubled down on it. He's no hero or innocent victim here. He defended bigotry and LaNasa for a long time before quitting.