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)

 

[Bolares]

They do not literally claim it. That would be like, "TSR, LLC, the same company E. Gary Gygax founded in the 70s..." or the like. They mention TSR and TSR, LLC separately, and allow the reader to assume they are the same entity, when they aren't. Intentional implication is not a literal claim.

Didn't they keep saying that "they created this hobby" and stuff like that back when they were active on twitter?

 

[Umbran]

Didn't they keep saying that "they created this hobby" and stuff like that back when they were active on twitter?

I don't know. I only read some of what they wrote when this blew up. My comment is restricted to the quote that Desert Gled posted.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Just out of curiosity, @Snarf Zagyg what happens if there is a hung jury on this?

It's federal court, so there is a requirement for unanimity (FRCP 48).

That said, hung juries are not common in civil litigation because of the different standard- preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not) means that it's usually pretty easy to get the jury to agree (or ... compromise) or issues.* In addition, they will be litigating a number of different "counts" so you won't get a hung jury on all of them.**

Regardless, the following can be said-

1. There won't be a jury trial. This is never getting that far.

2. If there is a mistrial due to a hung jury, it's just a new trial.



*Historically, the rate of hung juries in federal matters is roughly 2 to 3 times as high in criminal trials as it is in civil trials. This is likely due to both the burden of proof and the smaller jury size.

**This can vary depending on stipulation of the parties.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Such a fantastic movie. My brother and I regularly quote it at each other.

Also the point of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the movie (and surprisingly entertaining musical later on)

That's the thing that with modern works like Peterson's The Game Wizards and Ben Riggs' Plot Points (and upcoming book, presumably) - they lay clear the facts of the matter, the real history. That D&D was never so financially solvent and profitable as it is now.

That's what really angers me, honestly. When Ernie dismisses WotC as a "corporate raider" who "stole" the game from his father. No. Just, no. They SAVED the IP from being chopped up and sold off to anyone who bid on it after it was mishandled and driven to bankruptcy. Peter Atkitson and his crew cared about D&D. They cared about the legacy. And they have managed it better than Gary ever did. And Lorraine? She just out-mauveured Gary, who had demonstrated he was equally as morally bankrupt and inept as the Blumes.

I know that when they were banned from Gen Con, they posted something along the lines of "look at that, we've been banned from the convention we started." Which is a doubly false statement, since Gen Con predates TSR.

Didn't they keep saying that "they created this hobby" and stuff like that back when they were active on twitter?

 

[Shakeshift]

I don't think we need this projection of what Ernie Gygax's thought processes or mental state may or may not be. We don't know, and we're not going to just make stuff up here or interject any of our own armchair psychology. Please stick to commenting on facts, actions, and words, not thoughts.

Understood.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Can someone tell me about this "museum"? Why is it in a house- is there something historically significant about the house or is it just a random one? Has the entire house been turned into a museum or does someone live in it? What stuff is in there that makes it a museum?

 

[Mannahnin]

Can someone tell me about this "museum"? Why is it in a house- is there something historically significant about the house or is it just a random one? Has the entire house been turned into a museum or does someone live in it? What stuff is in there that makes it a museum?

The house at 723 Williams St was the official address and HQ of TSR at least briefly. For a year or two in the 70s, IIRC, before they got the space in the multi-story building on West Main Street where the original Dungeon Hobby Shop was on the ground floor and the TSR offices upstairs (seen in the vid below from 2018) They operated out of multiple relatively small locations right in the middle of Lake Geneva before getting the big offices out on Sheridan Springs Road.

Apparently nuTSR has maintained an apartment-sized living space on the second floor of the Williams St. site for a caretaker.

From what folks on here have reported, they have a collection of older game products in cases, but it doesn't sound like they have unique historical documents or artifacts.

 

[Shakeshift]

Didn't they keep saying that "they created this hobby" and stuff like that back when they were active on twitter?

Absolutely. They tried claiming that they created TSR, until hundreds of people called them out on their blatant lie, and then they backpedaled and pretended they never made the claim.

 

[adamantyr]

Regardless, the following can be said-

1. There won't be a jury trial. This is never getting that far.

In your professional opinion, what will happen that prevents this from getting to a jury trial?

I don't disagree, but there's still the odd guy on various places who are like "Well, you never know..."

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

In your professional opinion, what will happen that prevents this from getting to a jury trial?

I don't disagree, but there's still the odd guy on various places who are like "Well, you never know..."

In no particular order-

1. No civil litigation goes to jury. I mean, obviously it does happen, but given that it happens less that 1% of the time ….

2. Civil litigation is insanely expensive. I do not see LaNasa and nuTSR being able to fund this litigation. And no attorney would take this on contingency.

3. In evaluating the claims, it seems incredibly likely that (assuming it gets that far, which seems unlikely) that the major and dispositive claims related to trademark and copyright would be resolved via summary judgment.