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)

 

[Kannik]

Solarian Games (the company formerly known as TSR2) just posted a kickstarter update on their Top Secret: NWO game:

As you may or may not already know, in 2021 a company from North Carolina named TSR, LLC chose to register trademarks under the name TSR, causing us to have to make a decision about our own company name.

The short version of the story is that we decided it would be too expensive to launch a legal battle with them over ownership of the trademark that we had been legally using since 2012. They bet that we would not have the stomach for protracted and expensive litigation, and they were right.

Anyone who's followed us over the years has seen us publish Gygax Magazine, Top Secret: New World Order, and a number of smaller projects. For us, the name TSR was always a tribute to a golden era of gaming. We have always been our own company, never claiming anyone else's legacy, with our own brand, our own logo, and our own purpose. To be honest, after years of using the name TSR, we had been looking for a way to build our own unique brand anyway, to go beyond celebrating the legacy of gaming and embrace all the things that are great about the new generations of tabletop games.

Being stabbed in the back or having the rug pulled by underhanded means might be appropriate for some superspy games, but not so much fun in real life. It seems that though it may have not been the entire plan they're making the best of it to go forward.

The update continued with this gem:

And for what it's worth, seeing what the "other" TSR has done in the gaming community, the name is simply not something we would want to be associated with anymore. If you want to know more, Russ at EN World has a good summary: https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-full-glorious-history-of-nutsr.684697/. That's all I think needs be said about that.

Indeed.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I saw the videos and the photos. I saw four people inside someone's house, and that's it. If Justin Lanasa had 200 people in there each day, surely there's videos of that available? No? Oh, well.... I'll assume then that the added numbers represent ghosts, imaginary people, and invisible spirits. Because from where I was watching, he had nobody seeing him at his con. It was completely dead. I would say that he's lying about his numbers because he's an insecure person who needs to lie about success to feel good about himself. THAT sounds like the same Justin Lanasa we've been dealing with for the past year, right?

If there were hundreds of gamers at the con, there would be social media posts from people who went; Photos on Facebook or Instagram; video; and so forth. This all seems like a con (as in con job) from the late 90s where things were harder to verify.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If there were hundreds of gamers at the con, there would be social media posts from people who went; Photos on Facebook or Instagram; video; and so forth. This all seems like a con (as in con job) from the late 90s where things were harder to verify.

I'm sure there are, you're just not looking at the right forums and sites....

In all seriousness, I have seen a lot of photos from people. Most of them were GaryCon attendees who also went to see the memorial and stopped by the museum. In every single case, with all of those dozens of people I've seen, no more than a half dozen or so people were ever in the actual museum. Most only had one or two other people there.

Let's be real. If it weren't for GaryCon, 90% of the people who stopped by wouldn't have been in LG to begin with. Justin literally has it backwards. If he has any faith in his own statements, he wouldn't have moved the con to the same weekend. I think we all know what attendance would be like if he had a TSR con any other weekend but that one.

 

[DLIMedia]

I'm sure there are, you're just not looking at the right forums and sites....

Well, to be fair, they've banned most of us from pretty much everywhere, so who knows.

 

[Shakeshift]

Well, to be fair, they've banned most of us from pretty much everywhere, so who knows.

Oh no! Someone with no business sense and no social skills and about to be crushed by a crippling lawsuit from Hasbro for doing shady things to a beloved property has threatened everyone with being banned from his doomed company's social media profile???

Say it ain't so!

It's okay, he's about to be stepped on like a bug by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. The last thing he'll hear as he gets stepped on is everyone else applauding in joy.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Oh no! Someone with no business sense and no social skills and about to be crushed by a crippling lawsuit from Hasbro for doing shady things to a beloved property has threatened everyone with being banned from his doomed company's social media profile???

Say it ain't so!

It's okay, he's about to be stepped on like a bug by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. The last thing he'll hear as he gets stepped on is everyone else applauding in joy.

Yoooouuuu... are almost enjoying this too much. Like, almost orgasmic levels of schadenfreude.

Almost.

 

[ShadowofNarcissus]

Well, to be fair, they've banned most of us from pretty much everywhere, so who knows.

Getting banned anywhere is easy, especially when people react to your opinions like special little snowflakes. People have become so excessively sensitive that even having a differing opinion is taboo these days.

Its almost as if you're not allowed to think or be yourself unless everyone else agrees with you. ...and if they don't...boom...you're cancelled by the mob.

 

[Bolares]

Oh look, another bait!

 

[ShadowofNarcissus]

Oh look, another bait!

Not bait. Just an observation. I noticed everyone else around here was sharing theirs. I'm no different.

 

[Bolares]

yeah yeah, I'd advise you to read the forum rules...