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.

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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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).
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  • 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.
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(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)
 

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Weirdly the "Abuse of the Mind" Dungeon Hobby Shop page is still posting now and again, making it very funny when they're shilling RPG stuff for people like Mick McArt, who describes his sense of humour as like every famous comedians'.
I'm usually not adverse to dumb, cheesy jokes... but some of the sample jokes on that Kickstarter are beyond terrible.
 

I'm usually not adverse to dumb, cheesy jokes... but some of the sample jokes on that Kickstarter are beyond terrible.
It's pretty clear that Mick does not really understand the concept of comedy - set up, payoff, subversion of expectations, etc. He certainly doesn't appreciate that the people he's comparing himself to do tons of drafts, work on multiple versions playing with timing, wording, etc and built their own unique styles over decades of hard work.

Rather he understands that sometimes people laugh at things, and so tosses a bunch of things out while also signalling that he is part of a community. In this case, a toxic community so the examples are presented the backdrop of racist caricture of cannibals, because if the jokes had to stand up for themselves they're not even Dad Jokes - they're just nonsense.

His earlier books have "book description" that is just him spamming out what his hobbies are assuring you he knows about Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, etc. He compares himself to every popular comedian because all he understands is, these are people who are generally thought of funny by the vast majority of the population.

Basically he is a classic example of someone who really wants to be a popular author/artist/etc but just... doesn't want to do any work and assumes that if they tell people it's good - they'll agree.
 

It's pretty clear that Mick does not really understand the concept of comedy - set up, payoff, subversion of expectations, etc. He certainly doesn't appreciate that the people he's comparing himself to do tons of drafts, work on multiple versions playing with timing, wording, etc and built their own unique styles over decades of hard work.
I just watched David Letterman's recent interview of John Mulaney. Mulaney said that the comedy show he just did (which Letterman saw and we did not) was him workshopping material for a new Netflix special and that he'd been working on it for two years already and has nightmares about filming a special of it in its then-current state.

Comedy only looks effortless because the great comedians work really, really hard at polishing and refining it. Letterman brought up a comedy bit that he had been sitting on since the 1970s and didn't ever figure out how to make work. (Mulaney, who is a generational talent, figured out how to do it during the interview, of course.)
 
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Updates-

The Second Circuit has posted the oral argument calendar.

24-1325-cv Justin Lanasa, TSR, LLR, et al v. {TENKAR} et al.
(10 minutes per side- note, the appellant (Lanasa) can and usually does 'reserve' time to speak at the end, but the total has to be 10 minutes)

Courtroom 1703, Thurgood Marshall US Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, New York (CITY).

Friday, February 21, 2025

Oral Arguments start at 10:00am. This is the FOURTH case on the docket. Oral arguments (as you see) give ten (10) minutes per side. If you assume ~30 minutes, then this should start around (but possibly before) 11:30am.

Now, you can always go to that courtroom and watch if you want (really!). You can wait until they post the oral argument video (probably later that day or the next day).

Or... they will livestream it.

I'd recommend starting the livestream no later at 10am if you want to see it. The docket requires all of them there at 10am, and it's possible that other cases settle or they don't show up, etc., and it gets called early.

PS- if you go to my threads on the briefs, they give an analysis and links to the briefs. If you want to get the full value of the oral arguments, I recommend reading the posts I made and the briefs.


ETA- To save space, I am only linking to the LAST post on the briefs. It has links to the prior posts and the prior briefs. If you haven't read any of them, follow the links.)
 
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