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...
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.

65B1E080-EEE9-45DD-AC2C-C55BD9DB6104.jpeg

gencon.jpeg
  • 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.
tsr_tweets.jpg
  • 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.
dineharttweet.png
dinebreakup.jpeg
concon.jpg
fr.jpeg
1639501994946.png
  • 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.
lanasa.jpg
  • 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.
lawsuitwotctsr.png
  • 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).
Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 10.10.12 AM.png

  • 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.
FYDaZwYXkAsdjW0.jpeg

(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)
 

log in or register to remove this ad


log in or register to remove this ad

Please don't compare someone burning a game manual to the willful erasure of LGBTQ+ people from history by the Nazis.

Those were the books that were burned.
If you are referring to Umbran's post, how did you make that jump? There are plenty of instances throughout history of people burning books that contained ideas that they did not agree on, on all sides of just about any political, religious, and cultural debate.
 

If you are referring to Umbran's post, how did you make that jump? There are plenty of instances throughout history of people burning books that contained ideas that they did not agree on, on all sides of just about any political, religious, and cultural debate.
Because it's the big one. The one that is being referenced 90% of the time. The one where we know, without a shadow of a doubt, the people who were doing the book burning were on the wrong side of history.

Even if it -wasn't- the big one, and you compared it to, say, the burning of the abolitionist books right before the Civil War, you're still comparing something childish and ultimately pointless (Burning some game manuals) to burning books in support of the cessation of Slavery in the US.

One of these is vastly more important than the other and I find the comparison to be hamhanded in elevating some Giantlands RP Manual to that degree of cultural importance.
 

Burning books is generally what people on the wrong side of history do.
I labor under the weight of your admonishment.

Shall we recycle them instead? Funny how people generally don't object to that approach despite it being equally censorious and often just as performative. This very site had a member proudly showing off the Edgar Rice Burroughs books they were composting because they objected to the content in the first few pages of one novel. There's others who've stated they simply threw out all their Marion Zimmer Bradley books or MAR Barker stuff when the revelations about those authors came out. How is any of that substantially different from torching a few copies of Giantland in protest of both its contents and creator?

What's the stance here? Is destroying a book more justifiable as long it doesn't involve fire? Is it better when it helps grow some vegetables?
Even if it -wasn't- the big one, and you compared it to, say, the burning of the abolitionist books right before the Civil War, you're still comparing something childish and ultimately pointless (Burning some game manuals) to burning books in support of the cessation of Slavery in the US.
It was intended to be childish and ultimately pointless, thank you. I would contend that all attempts at destroying any form of objectionable media are by default pointless and performative in this day and age. Yes, even the current regime's. The internet makes information eternal - and, sadly, disinformation, but believing everything you read has always been a trap. There are deceitful cave paintings, that antelope was never half that big. At least it also makes your misdeeds permanent as well, as this thread has done repeatedly by dredging evidence up out of NuTSR's swamp of lies.

And really, being childish about the truly nonsensical garbage at least adds some entertainment value to the process of destructive censorship. Doesn't anyone appreciate a toasted marshmallow any more?

While I'm thinking about it though, can't help but notice you omitted quite a large victim group when discussing those German book burnings. Last I checked "J" is not part of the unmentioned categories lumped into that big, fat + symbol, for the very good reason that its not any kind of gender or sexual orientation. Why the omission, pray tell?

And of course that's grossly unfair. Just by asking that, I've started mindworms in some folks' heads about whether you're some kind of anti-Semite. You can refute it easily enough or just go edit the post, but for some people that suspicion will always linger. They'll look a little more closely at everything you've said and say in the future, and you probably don't deserve any of it.

Which, to loop this back to the start, is the exact same thing that just done to me by Umbran. Some of you will always wonder if I'm a book-burning fascist bigot, and I'm not making it better by deflecting off to the inherent hypocrisies of how (or if) one chooses to dispose of unwelcome media. Maybe I just refuse to defend myself against a catchphrase that borders on being a dog whistle for accusing people of extreme right-wing leanings. Maybe I've been caught out in my secret evil predilections and should be viciously cancelled.

But I can say one thing in parting (because this is my last post on this forum, obviously) - unlike Umbran, I actually feel bad pulling Steampunkette into this just to make a point. He didn't think for a minute before he dropped the "you might be a Nazi if..." card, and I hope it comes back to haunt him even though I expect it won't. Mod status and all.
 

Related Articles

Remove ads

Remove ads

Top