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)

 

[DLIMedia]

I haven't had time to give the audio real attention yet, but the parts I purused made it sound like Lanasa's lawyer did a pretty poor job...

I haven't heard the whole thing, but the judge already tearing into him just one minute in can't be a good sign.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

the parts I purused made it sound like Lanasa's lawyer did a pretty poor job

Shoulda called Saul.

 

[Wincenworks]

https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/54afaa91-aa59-48a8-a2e0-42933ffa1285/1/doc/24-1325.mp3

It is up to

Okay, been listening to this. Obviously I can't promise an outcome but I didn't really hear anything that leads me to believe there appeal judges are going to find any merit to the appeal.

For this those who want the breakdown without subjecting themselves to 35 minutes.

Justin's lawyer:

• First four minutes are a judge telling Justin's lawyer the District Court should have dismissed it purely for the bit where he went way outside the scope of the permitted amendment, and "It wasn't a redline". Then Justin's lawyer insists he stands by the proposition that he did nothing wrong - so they move on.
• Follow up is an argument on which statements are facts, Justin's lawyer makes some weird claims in response to an appeal judge pointing out Nazi is often used as a statement of opinion:
  • Before claiming that someone is a Nazi you should know if they have pictures of Nazi leaders like Himmler in their house... even though it's often used as an opinion/judgement
  • The jury should also be able to decide if there is a meaningful disitinction between supporting Nazi ideology and Nazi imagery, and being an actual Nazi (somehow?)
  • He claims its impossible for Justin to show evidence he didn't have a Nazi in nuTSR (which never had any large number of people involved in their projects so... a normal person would just say they know all the people and they're not Nazis?)
• He also stumbles over the idea that Justin f'd over his business partners and starts to build up some energy, then he gets interrupted and asked to point to which statement is most clearly factual... at which point he conceeds he doesn't know if any of them actually are. For those keeping score Justin's lawyer is basically 0/2 at this point but still wants to keep going, and is maybe going to answer some of these questions in rebuttal.
• He then starts to want to into the IIED but gets told he used his time and has to sit down.

Tenkar's lawyer:

• Gets to start by pointing out the judges already basically made his first point for him (re: amendments), and how basically has to check what else he has to say.
• Tenkar's lawyer raises the idea that judge gets to decide the sufficiency of claim as a matter of law, so was entitled to decide that without further exploration of the facts.
• Next, it is pointed out that who better to tell people who is or isn't in nuTSR, and who among them is or isn't a Nazi than the owner of the company (Justin LaNasa)? Judge asks for an example of what response Justin should have supplied - mostly it's a talk about if Justin provided any facts or just the prima facie case.
• It shifts onto the discussion of who f'd over someone to get the Trademark, which leads us to amazingly having the phrase, "...Ernie Gygax, whoever that poor fellow is, who's not even here..." on the official record for a "TSR" case as one judge points out that it doesn't even seem to relate to Justin (and that Justin hasn't clarified why it is relevant).
• Tenkar's lawyer has to spend pointing out this is not actual defamation with real consequences but largely inane Internet drama in a small community.
• Then there is the issue of posting the photo of the child, where it is pretty clearly a non-issue because it was a thumbnail from when the spouse entered the chat with that as a profile picture.
• Moves on to the IIED and defamation are not actionable because no reasonable jury could agree the criteria were met.
• Tenkar's lawyer points out if you watch the video the context is actually quite harmful to Justin's case, the judge asks if it gave him a more negative option of "Mr LaMana" - which is name I now really want to appear in a JRPG

Justin's lawyer on rebuttal:

• Starts by agreeing the posting on the image was a non-issue except for the bit where Tenkar implied he'd shoot anyone who came into his house - and Tenkar knows where he lives etc. (Weird that the claim is it was a problem due to the possibility of AI child abuse imagery in the complaint then?)
• Judge immediately points out that the threats of violence are always contextualized with "if he comes to my house" and Justin's lawyer seems confused and says he doesn't remember, so the judge reads out his own submission to him about this. Justin's lawyer just seems to instantly forget this and rant on more.
• Judge points out Tenkar never actually did anything weird or outrageous with the photo, so its not really of interest to hear about what he could have done if they can't say he did it based on issue. Justin's lawyer keeps trying to ignore the judge pointing out that "the image is there forever" because Mrs LaNasa put it there.
• Justin's lawyer continues to desperately try to ignore the judges pointing out that he just failed to do his job in explaining what defamation occurred and why it was defamatory. Its also highlighted to him the time to fix it was the first amendment of the complaint.
• In his final ramblings, after being asked what he would clarify if he were allowed his third amendment to the complaint, the lawyer bumbles through and now wants the new standard to be Tenkar should have to prove that "Mr LaNasa's Chief Clerk..." (a term he invents in the moment) "...is a member of the Nazi party." (which was disestablished in 10 Oct 1945). I'm not convinced any judge is going to agree that's a "reasonable interpretation" of the statement "x person's business involves a Nazi".
• He then starts to invent other scenarios he wants the defence to prove out of thin air, not really specifying anything he would amend or ways he would clarify the basis of the complaint.

Notably the tenor is extremely different where in the opening the judges are very clearly trying to tell Justin's lawyer they think he's wrong and he keeps ignoring them, where Tenkar's lawyer they are testing and asking for greater clarification - so um, outlook not good for Justin. Largely the impression I got is the judges understandably want to be very careful where they draw the lines in saying what isn't defamation and what isn't IIED (which is their job, so that's good).

The main issue they seem to be wanting to consider is where is the line between a self-evident statement and just a prima facie conclusion. Things like if "The claim I involve a Nazi in my business is false." is clear enough on its own or if Justin should have said "The claim I involve a Nazi in my business is false, I have a small number of employees and can vouch that none of them participate in behaviour that reasonably warrants being called a Nazi."

Obviously from Justin's point of view, he doesn't want to have to swear to that last one because it'll make it super awkward when they ask him if he's aware of No Hate In Gaming.

I wish the lawyer for Stein said "He did employ a nazi at the time. As evidenced by that employee's many public posts espousing nazi ideology and expressing support for nazis and their beliefs. You can find a collected number of them posts at the website, here."

Sadly you're not allowed to introduce new evidence in appeals unless you get very specific approval for very specific purposes, otherwise we'd probably get Justin's lawyer wanting to reference 49 other videos and ask the court to just trust him they're bad.

I haven't heard the whole thing, but the judge already tearing into him just one minute in can't be a good sign.

Particularly not when the tearing into him is specifically "I think we can just dismiss this due to your abuse of the process" regarding his going outside the scope of his amendment and the inaccuracies in his redlining.

 

[Steampunkette]

Sadly you're not allowed to introduce new evidence in appeals unless you get very specific approval for very specific purposes, otherwise we'd probably get Justin's lawyer wanting to reference 49 other videos and ask the court to just trust him they're bad.

Oh, I thought they presented the evidence that he was a nazi in the initial response, which is what Lanasa's lawyer was referring to when he said "They provided links that the court would have to waste hours looking over"?

Less "New Evidence" more "Presenting the evidence from the case as to why that point was proven false, earlier"

Particularly not when the tearing into him is specifically "I think we can just dismiss this due to your abuse of the process" regarding his going outside the scope of his amendment and the inaccuracies in his redlining.

I'll be honest: That made me giggle. Hearing the judges just shred him for messing up the filing in several ways, and he tried to defend and double down on it! chef's kiss Lanasa gets what he paid for.

 

[Wincenworks]

Oh, I thought they presented the evidence that he was a nazi in the initial response

They went with the strategy of just pointing out that his initial pleading was completely inadequet, which is why Justin's lawyer then had to spend most of the appeal trying to explain why he thinks that while people get called a Nazi as an insult all the time - for the purposes of this one particular lawsuit the standard should have to be you're a card-carrying member with pictures of various Nazi leaders in your house.

Since they were moving to dismiss the argument was "it's not defamation even if everything Justin says is true", with the backup of proving that there was definitely a Nazi involved with nuTSR if the judge decided to let a jury decide was what the facts were. This is largely because the trial process is 1. decide the questions to be resolved by the court, 2. agree on what the pivotal facts are prove the answer to those questions 3. present arguments to the fact-finder (judge or jury) and 4. let them decide the facts, and the judge apply the law to the answers to the questions from #1.

That's why Justin's lawyer was having a rambling meltdown at the end, because he never even got to finish step 1 before getting dismissed and he really wants to set the requirements to be something absurd like "prove someone who worked with Justin has a shrine to Hitler and a membership in the Nazi Party".

 

[Deset Gled]

Adding this link here for reference:

Thread 'Ernie Gygax Has Passed Away'

Feb 28, 2025

Ernest "Ernie" Gygax Jr., son of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax and an early playtester of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. The Gygax family confirmed the news via Gary Con's website today. Cause of death was not given, but Gygax had been hospitalized several times in recent years. Gygax is best known for the creation of Tenser, the first magic-user character, and whose name appears on several D&D spells used in current editions. Per Ernest's bio, some of his contributions to the games include multiattacks for fighters, different hit dice for different...

• Christian Hoffer
• Replies: 64
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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[Ancalagon]

I just got noticed for jury duty.

Irony- it's for the same trial period as my scheduled trial. In other words, I was noticed to serve as a juror on my own trial.

Luckily, I find myself very objectionable.

... can you get away with doing a little skit where you're sitting in the potential jury bench, get up, ask yourself a silly question, sit down, answer a silly reply, get up and say "your honor, this jury is clearly an idiot, I don't want him in this trial!".

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

... can you get away with doing a little skit where you're sitting in the potential jury bench, get up, ask yourself a silly question, sit down, answer a silly reply, get up and say "your honor, this jury is clearly an idiot, I don't want him in this trial!".

With the right actor and director, that would be comedy gold.

 

[Mannahnin]

... can you get away with doing a little skit where you're sitting in the potential jury bench, get up, ask yourself a silly question, sit down, answer a silly reply, get up and say "your honor, this jury is clearly an idiot, I don't want him in this trial!".

See Jim Carrey's 1995 MTV movie awards speech.

Or 0:59 of this...

 

[Malmuria]

Adding this link here for reference:

Thread 'Ernie Gygax Has Passed Away'

Feb 28, 2025

Ernest "Ernie" Gygax Jr., son of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax and an early playtester of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. The Gygax family confirmed the news via Gary Con's website today. Cause of death was not given, but Gygax had been hospitalized several times in recent years. Gygax is best known for the creation of Tenser, the first magic-user character, and whose name appears on several D&D spells used in current editions. Per Ernest's bio, some of his contributions to the games include multiattacks for fighters, different hit dice for different...

• Christian Hoffer
• Replies: 64
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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Part of Ernie's contribution to gaming, per the WOTC lawsuit: