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!

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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)

 

[LordEntrails]

and how big would those fees be, roughtly?

Don't know. A WAG would be $100-200.

Approximately $996,000 as of the time NuTSR filed bankruptcy. Going nowhere but up since then (but a lot slower now than when the case was highly active).

It's interesting to note that Justin Lanasa tried to set a price of $990,000 on the 723 Williams St. property when the DHSM shut down. Hmm....

Pretty sure he was asking what the court filing fees were to file the charge against Winceworks. Not the bankruptcy fees.

 

[Wincenworks]

Pretty sure the query was re: WotC's fees but in regards to mine - the particular act is made to be as accessible as possible so doesn't require fees. He does owe me $250 NZ for my time though.

If he appeals then the fees are laid out publicly - I don't like his odds of it since he'd probably need a lawyer to do, and NZ law is a small community with very clear ethics. Those include that you cannot raise accusations of fraud etc (such as say, claiming I am a shill for Wizards of the Coast or that my reviews are all lies) without evidence.

So I suspect he'd be unable to find any lawyer in New Zealand who would take the job in the first place, and even if he could they'd likely want to be paid up front in full.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't like his odds of it since he'd probably need a lawyer to do, and NZ law is a small community with very clear ethics.

I keep reading this sentence, and while I understand the individual words, I cannot make sense of how they fit together....


I kid, but only partly. There are many very ethical attorneys in America. Unfortunately, there are many many attorneys in America.

Systems strongly influence behavior. The ethical framework for attorneys here is actually very strong, and most attorneys take it very seriously. However, there are also four countervailing factors-
1. Many of the ethical rules are designed to ensure fidelity to the client.
2. The ethical system presupposes that vigorous advocacy for the client will get to the truth, as opposed to a commitment to the truth.
3. There is a strong presumption of access to the courts.
4. The ethical rules (to the extent they are not policed by personal integrity and group norms) are policed by state bars. Generally, they tend to be harsh on things like "trust accounts" and "felony conviction" and relatively lax on things like "frivolous filings."

When you combine all of the above, you quickly learn that frivolous filings without support by the facts or the law are not only not ethical violations that result in disciplinary issues, those filings often won't even result in sanctions by a court for being frivolous.

 

[Wincenworks]

There are many very ethical attorneys in America. Unfortunately, there are many many attorneys in America.

Yeah, while the lecturer vigorously denied it - I am pretty sure NZ's ethics framework is shaped primarily by the fact it is a very small, crowded pond that is particularly vulnerable to public scrutiny. That does however also make them very reactive, with recently only clarifying that "harassment" includes "sexual harassment" due a high profile event.

The anti-fraud proceedings are linked to a number of very messy cases that occurred in very public arena, including a Family Court case where there had been some truly horrendous accusations and opposing counsel had been unable to comment on anything due to 1. no evidence and 2. everything else being tied up in his client's privilege.

Generally, they tend to be harsh on things like "trust accounts" and "felony conviction" and relatively lax on things like "frivolous filings."

Oddly one of the things the NZ Law Society has been oddly forgiving about in the past has been the type of financial crime that tends to invoke the doom klaxon in the USA (unless it involves a trust for a vulnerable person, then the doom klaxon gets sounded).

The NZ Ethics are written by our parliament at the guidance of our law society, and so they are written first and foremost with protecting the respect for the profession and dignity of the courts. Recently there's been a lot of focus on incorporating access to justice, and the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, so there's been a general progress trend and also an increased focus on alternative dispute resolution.

The ethics are polices by the law society, which means the most dignified lawyers who have the most to loss if the profession is brought into disrepute, so the #1 unofficial rule is do not be a clown featured on the front page of the newspaper.

(Also for complete certainty, I am sure there are in fact ways that he could create legal drama for me - but I am certainly not going to post a guide on that to a public forum that I am fairly certain he reads.)

 

[DLIMedia]

In their usual tradition of further confusing things, the Google Books entry for SF:NG has changed... kinda...

Apparently all that's changed is the title, and I'm not entirely sure where that's being sourced from. Dave "N@z!s Are Awesome!" Johnson still appears prominently in whatever this is.

ETA: It's also worth noting that they're crediting EGG Sr - not Ernie, but his father - as a "contributor", which... yeah...

 

[Faolyn]

Rot Hole Dungeon?

 

[Omand]

Rot Hole Dungeon?

A typo for Rat Hole Dungeon?

 

[Deset Gled]

Rot Hole Dungeon?

The Rot Hole Dungeon is one of the locations referenced in the lore of the Dungeon Crawl board game that NuTSR "produced". It is part of the writing that was done by @Wizard Tower Games, back when WTG was doing work for NuTSR.

For reference: https://ww.wizardtowergames.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rot_Hole_Dungeon

Of course, writing credit for this should go to Don Semora. And @GraphPaper Architect might get some credit as well, as he did some of the editing work for NuTSR on the board game. AFAIK, Dave "The Nazi" Johnson shouldn't be associated with anything related to the Rot Hole Dungeon. And it should go without saying that Jim Holloway and Gary Gygax Sr shouldn't appear anywhere on the credits list for this at all.

 

[jdrakeh]

The fact that they're claiming that EGG Sr. was somehow involved with this isn't only an easily disproven, damnable, lie, but a disgusting and ghoulish abuse of a dead hobby icon's persona for personal gain. I'm absolutely unsurprised that they'd stoop this low, but it doesn't make it any less gross.

 

[Deset Gled]

The fact that they're claiming that EGG Sr. was somehow involved with this isn't only an easily disproven, damnable, lie, but a disgusting and ghoulish abuse of a dead hobby icon's persona for personal gain. I'm absolutely unsurprised that they'd stoop this low, but it doesn't make it any less gross.

I'm a little surprised it's been allowed to linger in the ISBN listing for so long, especially knowing how litigious Gail Gygax was about Gygax Magazine, and that we have other members of the Gygax family distancing themselves on record from Lanasa and NuTSR. My best guess is that the Gygax and Holloway estates don't think it's worth the trouble; WotC is already doing the work in court to make sure it's never published.