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!

---

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)

 

[Stormonu]

I think the Alarums and Journeys is an even deeper reach…a portmanteau of Alarums and Excursions AND Dangerous Journeys.

 

[jdrakeh]

I know he's not officially part of NuTSR-Us but he's just as sleazy and slimy as the rest of them. And seems to have an even worse understanding of copyright, tm, and ip law than Jerkoff Lasagna (which I did not think was even possible) as he consistently grabs stock art and art done by others from the internet and slaps his own "Copyright Dave J" on it and thinks that makes it his.

He's a complete slime-ball.

He's also a virulent transphobe as evidenced by his various Facebook posts, which I assume is part of why he has thrown in with Justin and Ernie.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’d be careful about hoping for that sort of outcome. Overzealousness against someone really deserving it can inadventently lead us back to the bad old days of “They Sue Regularly” - and we have another CBS/Chapterhouse on our hands.

I’m not “hoping for“ that sort of outcome*, I’m looking at this as an attorney.

If WotC/Hasbro wants to stop the proceedings of their countersuit, they can at any time. However, the timing of its filing tell me they’re done with this BS, and will be inclined to follow through until the end. And the White Plume Mountain of evidence against La Nasa et alia means this is going to be a cakewalk for their attorneys.

They gave nuTSR many opportunities to step away and stop their shenanigans, and they didn’t. Now is the time of finding out.











* OK, TBH, I really am.

 

[jdrakeh]

I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet - so far, this is just calling out (really) bad actors. However, once a company does deal with IP-theft jerks, we’ve seen where it’s really easy for the lawyers to take over and the company starts attacking its own fans, treating even the most innocuous fan content as IP theft/competition. That would mean for us possibly the death of DMs guild and other fan publications, and I sure don’t want to see something like that come out of this mess.

I don't expect to or want to see the end of their official fan content programs like DM's Guild or their open license, but I absolutely expect to see them come down hard on future instances of copyright and trademark infringement that don't conform to the terms of the OGL or DM's Guild program.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Since the worthy Alarums & Excursions has come up again, I thought I'd make people aware, if they're interested, that Lee Gold is selling pdfs of the magazine on her website: ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS (updated July 2021) I picked up the first twelve issues, and they are a treasure trove of the sorts of discussions that happen on forums nowadays, back at the beginning. Really interesting for a certain kind of nerd!

 

[Deset Gled]

I don't normally try to re-hash common internet drama, but things have been getting really nasty on a couple of social media fronts about NuTSR lately.

NuTSR created a channel on their Discord specifically to trash on Tenkar:

Welcome to #tenkars-toilet!
This is the start of the #tenkars-toilet channel.

RancidLord — 05/09/2022
This channel is for anyone who wants to talk about Tenkar and his naughty word. It is not meant to be a positive chat, but rather more a chat where you can take a large [censored] on Tenkar. I know he reads my posts and makes videos about me, so let's give him the special "Toilet" status here at TSR. As far as I'm concerned, say whatever you want about Tenkar, but let's try to keep it negative. After all, he is always so quick to point out the bad with TSR. Have fun and enjoy.
@TSR

Morgoth — 05/09/2022
One day Tenkarp will get a lawyer letter that he will not like

Yes, this is the same RancidLord that threatened to shut down the SF:NG channel for being too negative. It's not as hostile of a forum as you would think (so far). A lot of people there hadn't heard of Tenkar before this, so it's actually driving traffic his way. As a highlight, someone posted a copy of the forum rules in the channel to call out RancidLord, and promptly got banned for it. They have now updated their rules specifically for this channel. Here's the current rules:

RancidLord — 01/28/2022
1.
Respect each other, harassment & bullying isn't allowed. This includes personal attacks, slurs, racist, sexist, homophobic, hateful or derogatory speech. Also, don’t attempt to create drama. It’s not nice to make fun of others, let’s make sure that this remains a safe and positive space for everyone.

2.
No NSFW or obscene content. This includes text, images, or links featuring nudity, sex, hard violence, or other graphically disturbing content. A good rule of thumb is keep things PG-13. Discord allows members as young as 13 to join. If you’re unsure if your post is "ok" you can ask a moderator.

3.
Avoid sensitive or controversial topics. Real world politics, religion, race, gender, current (sensitive) real world events, depression/suicide, violence, etc. These discussions can easily turn into heated debates, which does not reflect the positive and inclusive nature of this server.

4.
No spam allowed. This applies to both text & audio channels. Huge walls of text, screeching audio or mass-posting of images are not allowed. This includes repeated mentions, baiting, begging for money or general trolling within the server or within the user’s direct messages.

5.
All Anti-TSR accounts will be banned!
6.
Never leave your cookies out in the open. DM/GM/MODS will spot them and they will never be seen again.

7.
Follow the channel topic. Please make sure that when you post, it's in the correct channel. If you’re unsure whether your post belongs in a channel you can ask a moderator.

8.
We can’t fix the universal translator. Please keep all conversations in English, use an appropriate language channel or include a translation in your posts.

9.
No Piracy. Do not post any links to databases, materials or content that you don’t have the rights to. Don’t break the law.

10.
Malicious intent - We can’t possibly go over every single scenario in our rules, moderators may take action against clearly malicious actions, even if they aren’t completely spelled out in the rules.

11.
Be polite when having discussions, presenting feedback, or debating anything to either, other members, or the staff. Be constructive and positive even if you disagree.

12.
Self-promotion for your own business posts will not be allowed outside of the self-promotion channel. We want to help creators self-promote and get noticed! POST ONCE A MONTH. This helps everyone have a chance to be seen. Abuse of this space will get one warning then a BAN.
These rules echo Discord’s Terms of Service (Terms of Service | Discord). Please keep in mind that violation of our Code of Conduct may result in removal from the server and violations of Discord’s Terms of Service will be forwarded on appropriately.

Breaking the rules can lead to punishment. Ranging from deleted messages, strikes, mutes, kicks or permanent bans. The mods are here to help make everyone’s experience better. You can help by making sure to abide by the rules, and if you see something getting out of hand, please give them a ping.

RancidLord — Today at 7:03 AM
13.
Please note that Tenkar's Toilet is the only channel where some negativity is allowed. Tenkar throws his own garbage, so if anyone wants to throw some back at him, please feel free to do so.

The Mario77 and Chad Revenge twitter channels have also been going crazy for the past few days, with a lot of things that are too vulgar to post. Mario is calling Chad "Michael Keane Hovermale" and making a some really, really disturbing comments about Michael's disabled son. I don't care how bad of a beef you have with someone, but dragging their kids into the insult mix is really low, making fun of disabilities is even worse, and throwing in transphobic insults on top is just.. I have no words. Meanwhile, Chad has started posting meme images with Justin, and has starting calling out Vince Florio for his roll in The Cult of Abaddon. The fact that these two both seem to only be active at the same time and are so focused on people that have worked hard to remove themselves from NuTSR (Vince and Michael) does a lot to reinforce my hypothesis that they're the same person, and still working with NuTSR.

Surprisingly, the NuTSR FB channels have been pretty dead lately. I'm guessing that's because they're primarily run by Ernie, who seems to have gone pretty quiet since TSR Con. I'm still really curious to see what goes on at the NuTSR MeWe channel, but I still can't bring myself to join it.

Still no updates on the real SFNG release, and the Joint Status update for the lawsuit is due on May 17th. I'm guessing this flurry of negativity from NuTSR is due to one, the other, or both.

 

[eyeheartawk]

NuTSR created a channel on their Discord specifically to trash on Tenkar:

I never thought I'd say this but...I disapprove of dunking on Tenkar like this. There's lots of things to criticize Tenk for ( Like that time he narcd on somebody to Drivethru for saying meany-mean things about the police) but covering this trash fire isn't one of them.

 

[Faolyn]

Just when you think they can't get any more immature...

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Just when you think they can't get any more immature...

Shh!

 

[DLIMedia]

NuTSR created a channel on their Discord specifically to trash on Tenkar.

Not only that, but they amended their Discord rules to allow "negativity" only in that channel.

13. Please note that Tenkar's Toilet is the only channel where some negativity is allowed. Tenkar throws his own garbage, so if anyone wants to throw some back at him, please feel free to do so.

G... — Today at 11:45 AM
i dont know the guy, but is this really the stance a business should take? openly mock your customer base?

R... — Today at 12:22 PM
So is this the "negativity allowed" space?

RancidLord — Today at 12:44 PM
Tenkar has been attacking TSR for months, so I am taking a shot at him in return. Tenkar is not a customer, he is an naughty word, who even delighted in buying Star Frontiers Not Genuine, which was an illegal product.

RancidLord — Today at 12:45 PM
Yes, in regards to Tenkar. Do not attack TSR, that's covered by the rules section.

G... — Today at 1:56 PM
do you actually work for tsr, or are you just a moderator here?

RancidLord — Today at 2:02 PM
The only employee of TSR is Justin LaNasa and I am not him.

ETA: There's strong evidence that "RancidLord" is Michael Yach... I don't know much about him, but having a picture of Jefferson Davis - President of the Confederacy - as a Facebook avatar is probably not a good sign.