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)

 

[Sacrosanct]

Just saw the tweet from Kim Wincen

Winderfulled lost their domain. Or it’s expired.

View attachment 255119

http://wfd.games/

I guess those couples of Giantlands sold weren't enough to keep the lights on...

 

[darjr]

I guess those couples of Giantlands sold weren't enough to keep the lights on...

Eh, I dint want to encourage what I originally posted

 

[tenkar]

Yeah, me too!

I suspect he can't count past his fingers and toes, and is holding on to the last spot on the list for "someone special"

 

[DLIMedia]

Just saw the tweet from Kim Wincen

Winderfulled lost their domain. Or it’s expired.

The domain expired...

They get a grace period during which they can still renew it without losing it, so we can't take it from them so easily.

...but let's not bring the Giantlands guys into this thread; it's hard to follow as it is. Stick to NuTSR.

 

[Deset Gled]

Wow, I was busy this weekend, and I missed a lot of great discussion. I did manage to grab some files and screenshots along the way, and I've started to analyze some of the files from the data dump NuTSR provided. So far, it looks like everything they "leaked" makes NuTSR look worse.

Let's consider NuTSR's claims about the leaked SFNG playtest PDF (which I like to call the N&N version). They claimed it was faked, then they claimed it was written by either Michael or Logan Hovermale (@Graph Paper Architect). Here's the metadata that shows both those claims are false. First, we have the metadata from the PDF, as shown by @tenkar:

This shows that the author is one "George Johnson" and the date from the last mod was 2022-02-12. I previously told you that George D Johnson Jr is Dave's legal name. I can back that up with some links, but it would be tantamount to doxing him (the pages that show it also include his address, phone number, family members, etc). Luckily, NuTSR has provided the proof for us.

One of the files in the Google Drive that NuTSR shared with the world includes the file "Star-Frontiers-capital ship data.docx". This file says it was written by Dave Johnson. But, the .docx revision history shows that the authors username was, you guessed it, "George Johnson" on 2021-12-10:

For comparison, all of the Word docs created or edited by Logan Hovermale correctly attribute their work to their proper name. Here's an example from the file "organizations.docx" on 2022-01-07:

Now, I chose to use the file "organizations.docx" for two reasons. First, it shows the different metadata IDs. Second, this file shows how the New Genesis material changed after the Hovermales left NuTSR. Here's a list of space organizations in Logan's version, all written before Michael left in January:

• Accord Government:
• Mercenary’s Guild:
• Explorer’s Guild:
• Settler’s Guild:
• Craftsman's Guild:
• Merchant’s Guild:
• Zereria Tech Industries (Zindy):
• Shield Service Central (SSC):
• Military Supply Depot (The Despot):
• Bruce and Betty’s Armory (B&B):
• Huliwan Galactic (Huliwang):
• Korrnicus Enterprises (Corn-Cob):
• Herkimer-Battle (Herkimer):

And here's a list of space organizations from Dave Johnson's version in Alarms & Journeys 13, published in May:

• United Confederation of Planets and systems (UCPS)
• Pan-Galactic Mega-Corps
• Confederation of Civilized Peoples
• Herkimer Labs
• Seldon Bio-Techniques

Simply put, "Herkimer" is the only organization that appears in both versions of SFNG. But, all of the "organization" information shown in the N&N PDF matches what Dave Johnson published in A&J, not what Logan Hovermale wrote. As proof, here's a screenshot from A&J:

And here's a screenshot from the Truth Sucks PDF leak video:

Combined, I consider all of this to be extremely strong evidence that the N&N version of Star Frontiers New Genesis was made by Dave (aka George) Johnson, and not by Michael or Logan Hovermale. Not that I ever really believed NuTSR, of course. But it's nice to be able to back it up with a lot of evidence that NuTSR provided for us. I have additional metadata to review, but so far nothing as important as this is jumping out. Just a lot of proof that everything the Hovermales did ends by Jan 12th.

And, just to end the weekend with some good old fashioned Facebook drama, here's my favorite back-and-forth (now deleted) with Justin on this whole debacle, from the "Oerth - Adventures in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk" FB group, late Saturday night (sorry, 3 screenshots due to size):

I think this is just the epitome of Justin acting unprofessional. Arguing with bizarre animated gifs. Using sexist non-sequitor comebacks like "ask your girlfriend". And literally ending an argument by posting "last word" before the thread is deleted. He's like a 12 year old, but with worse grammar.

 

[darjr]

 

[Deset Gled]

Just made this account to ask if showing this particular google folder (which may or may not contain only sanitized stuff) was part of their “master plan” to refute the accusations of bigotry.

At this point, there is no "master plan". They had an idea to squat on some trademarks, and an idea to make a tourist trap in Lake Geneva. Everything beyond that is a combination of improvisation and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The only issue I see with trying to sue for damages is that they have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the documents were in fact created by nuTSR. I don't think a private Google drive is admissible as evidence, nor a copy of the playtest materials.

If Justin LaNasa (or possibly someone else) is deposed in the WotC suit, they can be asked questions about where these files came from. At that point, they either have to admit they were blatantly ripping off the Star Frontiers IP that they didn't own, or come up with an explanation of where all the documents came from. Either way, it's highly unlikely to look good for NuTSR.

Wait. So are the racial slurs faked?

From what I can see, nothing that was shared by NuTSR shows any evidence that anything was faked in any way. There's always the sliver of chance that someone else hacked them or somehow did it, but nothing provided so far even hints at it. And honestly, if someone was going to go to that level of trouble, wouldn't it be better to go after financials or something better than just internet drama?

Still kinda miffed I didn't make the Hate List, ya know...

I was pretty sure I didn't stand a chance to make the list because I don't post enough on Twitter or Facebook, but I was kinda hoping ENWorld would get better representation. Oh well, at least we have our spot in Cult of Abaddon.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

 

[DLIMedia]

My theory continues to be that Logan was the only writer they had that was worth a damn, but they decided to leave for reasons we've already discussed.

At that point, I'm betting that Justin had some doubts as to whether he could use what Logan wrote in the final product. Either there were legal reasons why he couldn't (such as Logan being a "volunteer" and not paid for the writing) or if he simply didn't want to use it because he was angry at Logan... but now Justin has a problem: he has no product and nobody to write it except Dave Johnson, who has already contributed some small stuff.

In light of all the lawsuits, Justin needed to have some semblance of a product... so he hands it almost in its entirety over to Dave Johnson, who goes to town on it. Dave Johnson is an easy mark; he can be easily manipulated and taken advantage of by Justin.

Now, Dave Johnson proceeds to put a bunch of racist stuff in it because that's the kind of guy he is... Most normal people would have a problem with that, but not Justin. He not only needs some sort of product, but the way he sees it that controversial content will make the "woke" angry.

I'll use his own words, which are taken from the following image which was posted to the DHSM and TSR Facebook pages... "we might ADD extreme content we'd otherwise not just to offend these types".

So he embraces the racist stuff because it will upset his enemies... us "woke" folk.

All things considered, Justin doesn't know what he's doing. He's never personally published a large product and is in way over his head. But he's likely way past the point of no return, the point where he can't simply drop the project and walk away. He's vested, and there's no way to stop WotC from coming after him. So he'll likely keep stringing us along for the next year, at some point having not much choice than to declare bankruptcy or something, and will likely do something terrible like sell the DHSM land and turn the lot into a gas station.

Either way, none of this is going to end well.

 

[Deset Gled]

At that point, I'm betting that Justin had some doubts as to whether he could use what Logan wrote in the final product. Either there were legal reasons why he couldn't (such as Logan being a "volunteer" and not paid for the writing)

This sounds extremely likely. For someone who has run so many companies, Justin seems to have a very flimsy legal understanding of what it means to have employees (which is probably intentional). If Logan was never paid, he probably has a strong legal case that he owns everything he wrote.