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)

 

[Shakeshift]

I

 

[Sacrosanct]

It would not surprise me at all if, at the end of all this, LaNasa tries to throw Ernie under the bus.

Oh for sure. Just look at how fast he turned on Michael.

 

[Bolares]

Oh for sure. Just look at how fast he turned on Michael.

And Dineheart (or Dineheart turned on them? I lost track of it)

 

[Sacrosanct]

And Dineheart (or Dineheart turned on them? I lost track of it)

And his response to Tim Kask. If he did that to Tim, I am without doubt he'd treat Ernie the same way the minute Ernie ceases to be of use to him. I'm not a psychologist or anything so obviously I'm not diagnosing anyone, especially online. I'll just say the three people I know personally who treat people horribly as soon as they aren't valuable to them are all classic narcissists.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That is the thing, Wizards has done so much to keep 0e, B/X, 1e, and 2e stuff in print and available. I certainly wouldn't have my copy of OD&D without that deluxe reprint however many years back.

For all the claims that Wizards has somehow mismanaged D&D legacy, it's hard to imagine any other major company not mostly following the same path they did without being much less successful.

What's sad about all of these people is that Wizards is actually keeping AD&D in print. 1e and 2e. You can pick up a 1e PHB or a 2e hardcover printed from DriveThru for under $25. DMGs and Monster books likewise.

You can't get 3e or 4e in print from Wizards anymore, but you can get the games that TSR produced. They're good stewards of the game in a lot of ways. You'd think that would count for something (Except that isn't why they're complaining, of course).

It would not surprise me one bit if that's what LaNasa believes. It's yet one more small-time version of the same playbook we've seen used in countless other instances.

My guess is that he thinks all of this hinges of Ernie Gygax. Based on what "Grits" has drunkenly posted in the past on social media, he believes that the sale of TSR to Wizards was faulty for some reason, and that because the sale wasn't legitimized or legal for some reason, the rights should 'revert' back to businessman Gary Gygax (or, in this case, his heir, Ernie Gygax Jr.) - That would give Justin Lanasa keys to the kingdom (or at least, put him within spitting distance of it.)

Absolutely correct.

I think he thought he could beat Wizards with the original lawsuit Because, even for a grifter, entering into a lawsuit you don't think you can win would be a bizarre move (though this saga has not been without its share of the bizarre). At this point, a settlement is the best he can hope for.

I still suspect he thought somewhere along the line he could get the rights to AD&D, somehow, based on some spurious logic. This all began in the eons past of the last two years with them thinking "oh, we can just scoop up the TSR trademarks because nobody is using them."

Let's not even say "there's a chance..." because there isn't one.

For one thing, the court lawsuit is about trademark ownership, nothing else. I'm not a lawyer myself, but my understanding is that it's nothing like what you see on television shows. There's no dramatic "Ah ha, I will bring this up in front of the jury and surprise everyone!" thing. All of this has to be given during discovery, and there won't be any surprises.

I think if LaNasa had wanted to, for example, challenge the validity of the sale of TSR to WotC, he would have to have stated that in the initial declaration. The same goes if they wanted to pursue the idea that "Digital publishing doesn't count for trademark use" which is an equally stupid direction. I suspect any attempt by their lawyer to steer things that way in court will earn him a sharp rebuke.

The facts are pretty clear on this one. LaNasa registered trademarks fraudulently and broke every single law that trademarks exist to protect consumers for. My guess is they will try for some kind of settlement during discovery rather than take this all the way.

 

[Staffan]

"Inside of you there are two Ernies..."

 

[Stormonu]

I still suspect he thought somewhere along the line he could get the rights to AD&D, somehow, based on some spurious logic. This all began in the eons past of the last two years with them thinking "oh, we can just scoop up the TSR trademarks because nobody is using them."

If that's the case, he might have been trying to take a page from Kenzer & Co. in the way they were able to leverage Hackmaster/2E content/3E "official" content when TSR/WotC goofed with reprinting several of the Knights of the Dinner Table comics in the Dragon CD Archive without Kenzer's permission.

Of course, the head of Kenzer was also a lawyer, and things must have been pretty amicable between the two that it all happened at all. Pretty much the opposite with these guys.

 

[Shakeshift]

If that's the case, he might have been trying to take a page from Kenzer & Co. in the way they were able to leverage Hackmaster/2E content/3E "official" content when TSR/WotC goofed with reprinting several of the Knights of the Dinner Table comics in the Dragon CD Archive without Kenzer's permission.

Of course, the head of Kenzer was also a lawyer, and things must have been pretty amicable between the two that it all happened at all. Pretty much the opposite with these guys.

That's actually a great example! Kenzer found out about that whole blunder from a fan who bought the CD archive, and saw the multiple infractions and then of course it was the usual "What's going on?" and there was so much egg on TSR's face they were only so happy to make a few modest conceits in order to get out of a lawsuit. I believe (but not 100% certain) the use of the words "Holy Avenger" "Sword of Sharpness" and "Drow" were a few of the conceits they made to Kenzer, along with a few other ones. It's been so many years though it's all fogged over now in my mind.

Justin Lanasa however, is NO lawyer.

 

[CleverNickName]

Justin Lanasa however, is NO lawyer.

That might be the understatement of the year.
(We'll know for sure in a few weeks.)

 

[adamantyr]

If that's the case, he might have been trying to take a page from Kenzer & Co. in the way they able to leverage Hackmaster/2E content/3E "official" content when TSR/WotC goofed with reprinting several of the Knights of the Dinner Table comics in the Dragon CD Archive without Kenzer's permission.

Of course, the head of Kenzer was also a lawyer, and things must have been pretty amicable between the two that it all happened at all. Pretty much the opposite with these guys.

More specifically, David Kenzer is a patent lawyer, well-versed in the area.

Rather than get damages, the deal they struck with WotC was they could use the AD&D rules system as a baseline for Hackmaster. The deal also had a limited timeframe in which they could produce products. That's why the 2nd edition of Hackmaster is a homegrown rules set instead.