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).

• 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.

(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)

 

[coyote6]

As a side note, it appears Justin's lawyer is currently dealing with a motion for sanctions due to disrespecting opposing counsel, and seems to be handling that issue even more bizarrely than this appeal.

That's Lanasa's lawyer?!? I read that thread yesterday on Bluesky, and had no idea.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Okay. I went through it quickly, and ... yeah I will not inflict that on anyone else by making it a separate explainer post. There's too much wrong with it to use as an explainer about appellate issues. So I will very briefly describe my problems with it.

1. It doesn't follow the requirements of an initial brief under FRAP (Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure) 28. There is supposed to be a jurisdictional statement (Br. 9-10), and while it kinda sorta does the timeliness thing, it doesn't have the basic "this is the district court's jurisdiction, this is the appellate court's jurisdiction, this is the final order that disposed the claims." Basic stuff.

2. The facts section. OMG. First, you get a little play to have an introduction or a preliminary statement. But this? It's seven pages (Br. 10-17) of rambling, with legal citations (NO!) making a policy argument that asserts facts with no citations to the record (NO!) and made me cry a little inside. It was painful.

3. Then, the detailed fact section (Br. 17-24). Again, there are factual statements that do not have citations to the record. There are references to things that are not in the record. Many times! Over and over! You can't do that. And the fact section is just argument- you can certainly arrange your facts to make an argument, but you can't simply argue in your fact section.

4. The final fact section (Br. 24-28), the decision by the district court, is again argumentative. In addition, it makes the error of trying to personalize the issue. Never attack the trial court; just point out what the decision states.

In short, I am already regretting reading this. This is poor appellate advocacy. Very poor.

Next, the arguments. As I previously stated, the worst thing you can do as an appellant is to kitchen sink it- if you have bad issues, then don't raise them.

Let's start with the thing that immediately was noticeable. When you appeal, you always tell the Court what the standard for the appeal is. So when I got to pages 30-33 of the brief, I was mortified. You don't tell the appellate Court what the district court's standard is. You say, "The standard of review is de novo, as the lower tribunal dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim."

Next, the first argument (about service) is terrible. It shouldn't have been made, and it's worse because it's the first thing the appellate court sees. The argument should be that the lower court should have allowed time to serve, not that no service is service.

The second argument (defamation) makes the classic mistake of not sticking to the order being appealed, and instead makes a general free-roaming argument. And it's filled with bizarre footnotes that don't help. This could have been a good argument- and it's the one that might have merit, but I couldn't follow it. At all. It's terrible.

IIED and prima facie? Ugh.

Finally, the leave to amend argument. Again, the problem with this is that instead of focusing on the issue in the order on the MtD (failure to request leave, etc.), this is just a bizarre attempt to re-argue the service argument. NO. ARGHH! There is a lot of good case law on leave to amend, this is something that should have been competently argued. Not even close.


TLDR Appeals are about raising specific issues. It's not about the airing of grievances. This is a terrible brief. It doesn't mean that it is destined to lose, but a brief like this makes it so much harder to win an appeal. The appellate court doesn't care about your case. They want to know what specific legal issue are you raising, and what are the specific facts in the record.


ETA- I should add that I regret looking forward to this. I thought it would be fun! Instead, it wasn't comedy gold, but it also was bad enough to make me cringe repeatedly.

 

[Deset Gled]

TLDR Appeals are about raising specific issues. It's not about the airing of grievances. This is a terrible brief. It doesn't mean that it is destined to lose, but a brief like this makes it so much harder to win an appeal. The appellate court doesn't care about your case. They want to know what specific legal issue are you raising, and what are the specific facts in the record.

Just keep in mind that after you peel back the layers of legal jargon, wade past the pain and emotion, cut through the red tape, and finally look at the heart of the matter, this is all about bringing back Old School gaming the way it was meant to be played. Somehow. I guess.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Just keep in mind that after you peel back the layers of legal jargon, wade past the pain and emotion, cut through the red tape, and finally look at the heart of the matter, this is all about bringing back Old School gaming the way it was meant to be played. Somehow. I guess.

So I should add that I was reviewing this as a purely legal exercise. Of course I am horrified that the suit was filed in the first place, and even more horrified that the subject of the lawsuit has to spend money defending an appeal.

There is the saying with the police- you can beat the charge, but you can't beat the ride. In a similar fashion, as I have covered before, with the American legal system you can beat the lawsuit, but you can't get the money and time back.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Just keep in mind that after you peel back the layers of legal jargon, wade past the pain and emotion, cut through the red tape, and finally look at the heart of the matter, this is all about bringing back Old School gaming the way it was meant to be played. Somehow. I guess.

When you're up to your bleep in alligators, it's hard to convince people that you're going to drain the swamp.

 

[Wincenworks]

What the whatting what?

That's a pretty accurate summary of the whole thing yeah.

That's Lanasa's lawyer?!? I read that thread yesterday on Bluesky, and had no idea.

Yeah it was a truly bizarre crossover for me - I am a fan of Mike Dunford, who works for the same law firm as Kathryn and his Discord has a blanket ban on discussing WotC related stuff because the firm sometimes does work for them.

So imagine my shock and confusion when I read OC brief in response to the motion and recognized the name, then frantically googled to check maybe it was just another lawyer with the same name. Nope.

When you appeal, you always tell the Court what the standard for the appeal is. So when I got to pages 30-33 of the brief, I was mortified. You don't tell the appellate Court what the district court's standard is.

I think my favourite for this is how he asserts that the judge erred by using her own standard for what qualifies as IIED, and it shows because she didn't point to authorities... then he fails to make any case as to 1. what the standard actually would be in this case and 2. any basis for authority at all (a law paper about theoretical crimes of the future is not an authority, nor is Google Terms of Service) that he knows better than the judge. ie "Just trust me I know the law better than a District Court judge."

And by no authorities I mean, once again, authorities that work against him. He cites Ratto v Oliva which stands for the general principle that generic threats, naughty word talking and unverified incidents cannot rise to the standard of IIED.

Here, the defendant's allegation that the plaintiff, on a single occasion on an unspecified date, made a verbal threat against the life of the defendant's estranged husband, fails, as a matter of law, to allege conduct that is sufficiently extreme and outrageous as to meet the threshold requirements for intentional infliction of emotional distress (see Ajie Chen v Deliso, 169 AD3d at 762). Accordingly, the Supreme Court should have granted the plaintiff's motion pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(7) to dismiss the defendant's counterclaim to recover damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

He also argues he should be allowed to just be taken at his word that it's actually IIED by citing Hemi Group LLC v. City of New York, which is a complicated case over whether a city could have a RICO action over unpaid cigarette tax and includes in the majority statement:

Unfortunately US citations don't require pinpointing like New Zealand do, so it's not clear to me how he gets to this conclusion about the case other than if he's referring to the opinions of the dissenting judges... but yeah it's a stretch at best, but more likely completely unrelated.

Later he makes this baffling statement which seems to imply that he, as a New Yorker, thinks that being an ex-cop is a reason that you should believe someone in NY owns a gun... not that it's a castle doctrine state with gun laws that make it fairly easy to own a weapon for self defence. He also keeps saying "supposedly" like it isn't something that is confirmed or easily confirmed by a simple record check (it took me less than 30 seconds to confirm Tenkar's service and badge #).

He then cites Risetto v County of Clinton, where he once again quotes a quote within the document, which is a case where IIED was dismissed because even if all the facts were correct - it still didn't count as IIED. Here it looks like Justin's lawyer interpreted the quote of from the defendant's memoranda of law as the authority, not the actual ruling by Judge Suddaby.

Basically the whole thing once again has all the hallmarks of a lawyer who is not well versed in this area of law, doing rapid fire searches in databases and copy-and-pasting without reading to try avoid having to learn the specifics of the law and give reasonable advice to a client before agreeing to file a case and an expensive appeal.

I can completely see why this is not comedy but simply a barrage of agony for @Snarf Zagyg since while this would be merely entertaining as a inane drama between the excessively wealthy (like say the Carano v Disney case) it is essentially here illustrative of how this legal process can be effective in costing people time, money and stress even when wielded extremely ineptly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Unfortunately US citations don't require pinpointing like New Zealand do, so it's not clear to me how he gets to this conclusion about the case other than if he's referring to the opinions of the dissenting judges... but yeah it's a stretch at best, but more likely completely unrelated.

Great post. Just wanted to say one thing- you are supposed to use pinpoint citations. And there are a few.

But ... that's just another thing this brief fails to do correctly.

 

[bedir than]

ETA- I should add that I regret looking forward to this. I thought it would be fun! Instead, it wasn't comedy gold, but it also was bad enough to make me cringe repeatedly.

This may be my favorite moment in the thread

 

[GuyBoy]

IANAL but LaNasa, his lawyer and his various acolytes all seem a bit weird.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This may be my favorite moment in the thread

Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?
-Snarf's most common reaction to the wisdom of Mama Snarf