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”.

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)

 

[Cadence]

You do know that the original TSR fit all of that (minus an adventure) in exactly 48 pages of Holmes Basic D&D, right? It's entirely possible.

Levels 1-3 like Moldvay?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Levels 1-3 like Moldvay?

Yep.

In fairness, as great as Holmes Basic was, and as much of an improvement of the LBBs as it was, it was still somewhat difficult compared to the 64-page Moldvay.

 

[jdrakeh]

Levels 1-3 like Moldvay?

Yup, but expanding the level tables is easy and has been done without appreciably expanding the page count (I've increased them to 10, myself, and they fit on one side of a three panel DM screen along with some house rules).

 

[Cadence]

Yup, but expanding the level tables is easy and has been done without appreciably expanding the page count (I've increased them to 10, myself, and they fit on one side of a three panel DM screen).

Feels like the levels 4-14 might want at least the spells to go with them (4 more pages)?

Maybe some things from expanded travel (1 page), hirelings (2 pages), a few more monsters (from 1 to 15 pages), wilderness and sea rules (is that 3 pages?), magic research and castles (1.5 pages), and a couple magic items (1 to 7 pages).

Still pretty short all things considered!

 

[Steampunkette]

I am utterly unsurprised by the dearth of fluff. You get maybe a paragraph describing your class in the broadest of terms and... That's it.

 

[Deset Gled]

You do know that the original TSR fit all of that (minus an adventure) in exactly 48 pages of Holmes Basic D&D, right? It's entirely possible.

3 key differences.

1. Holmes was less. Less classes (I think?). Less levels (FWIW, Goblinz in 1-10). And Holmes directs you to Chainmail or AD&D rules for more rules and details. Holmes acknowledges that it is incomplete. Goblinz, AFAICT, refuses to name any other RPGs for fear of copyright/license issues.

2. Holmes was extremely dense in information. No wasted space. Example:

I'm roughly estimating Holmes is something like 75% text, 20% tables, 5% art. By comparison, the video makes it looks like Goblinz is ~50% table, 30% art, and 20% text. Plus, Goblinz has a page long foreword by Ernie, another by Justin, an Edgar Allen Poe poem, the ~12 page module (including a full page map, etc. Just so much wasted space.

3. Holmes was competent. For reference, I give you the explanation of falling damage from NuTSR's Cult of Abaddon:

FALLING DAMAGE:
When a character falls into a pit of any distance greater than 10 feet, the damage is cumulative for every 10 feet.
Each 10 feet of falling is 1d6 points of damage, for each additional 10 feet you tack on another 1d6, plus the original
amount. For example, falling 30 feet would be listed as 3d6 damage, but would actually be 1d6 (first 10 feet) +2d6
(taking original 1d6 and adding another 1d6, making it 2d6 for 20 feet) +3d6 damage (taking original 1d6 making it
2d6 for 20 feet and now tacking on another 1d6 for 30 feet making it 3d6).

So, yeah, I'm going to stick by the fact that 48 pages is not enough pages for NuTSR to make a rulebook. Holmes could do it. Others could do it. NuTSR simply isn't competent to do it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So, yeah, I'm going to stick by the fact that 48 pages is not enough pages for NuTSR to make a rulebook. Holmes could do it. Others could do it. NuTSR simply isn't competent to do it.

Well, if we're talking about nuTSR, page count doesn't matter. 48 or 480. It's not going to be a competently created book.

 

[Staffan]

FALLING DAMAGE:
When a character falls into a pit of any distance greater than 10 feet, the damage is cumulative for every 10 feet.
Each 10 feet of falling is 1d6 points of damage, for each additional 10 feet you tack on another 1d6, plus the original
amount. For example, falling 30 feet would be listed as 3d6 damage, but would actually be 1d6 (first 10 feet) +2d6
(taking original 1d6 and adding another 1d6, making it 2d6 for 20 feet) +3d6 damage (taking original 1d6 making it
2d6 for 20 feet and now tacking on another 1d6 for 30 feet making it 3d6).

That description is not only poorly written but also fairly dumb. I am guessing that the idea is that the impact is proportional to the square of the distance somehow, which is just not true.

If we're letting physics intrude, the kinetic energy when you hit the ground is equal to the potential energy you had when the fall started, which is proportional to height. Or if you prefer to have damage being proportional to velocity, that is in turn proportional to the square root of the original height. So this type of falling damage is just nonsense.

And that's ignoring the whole "what are hit points" debate.

 

[Jer]

FALLING DAMAGE:

Is that block of rules trying to say that 3d6=6d6?

It's almost Lovecraftian in it's twisted mathematics...

 

[Cadence]

That description is not only poorly written but also fairly dumb. I am guessing that the idea is that the impact is proportional to the square of the distance somehow, which is just not true.

If we're letting physics intrude, the kinetic energy when you hit the ground is equal to the potential energy you had when the fall started, which is proportional to height. Or if you prefer to have damage being proportional to velocity, that is in turn proportional to the square root of the original height. So this type of falling damage is just nonsense.

And that's ignoring the whole "what are hit points" debate.

Having just written an infinite fall room with a gate are the top and bottom. What is the damage for slamming into a wall at 120 mph terminal velocity spread eagle vs 170 mph dive?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Is that block of rules trying to say that 3d6=6d6?

It's almost Lovecraftian in it's twisted mathematics...

He's trying to copy the original rule, where it was an extra d6 for every 10 feet cumulative with the steps before it, so:

10ft fall = 1d6
20ft fall = 3d6 (2d6+step 1)
30ft fall = 6d6 (3d6 + step 2 + step 1)
etc.

At least how Frank Mentzer explained the early gaming sessions, even if I can't find that in an actual rule somewhere

 

[Arakhor]

I don't remember the mathematical term for that progression, but I've always called it  triangular maths.

 

[Gradine]

He's trying to copy the original rule, where it was an extra d6 for every 10 feet cumulative with the steps before it, so:

10ft fall = 1d6
20ft fall = 3d6 (2d6+step 1)
30ft fall = 6d6 (3d6 + step 2 + step 1)
etc.

At least how Frank Mentzer explained the early gaming sessions, even if I can't find that in an actual rule somewhere

With terminal velocity that'd top out at 11,325d6

 

[JackMann]

With terminal velocity that'd top out at 11,325d6

To be fair to Gygax, it was capped at 20d6 (which you'd reach just after 60' fallen).

Funnily, in the first printing of the rules, it was the more modern flat 1d6 per 10'. Gygax had written "1d6 per 10’ for each 10’ fallen," meaning a cumulative increase. But someone had misunderstood and thought it was redundant, so it went to print with just "1d6 for each 10' fallen."

As Staffan pointed out, the impact is fairly linear, so 1d6 per 10' reflects that better. Though, the amount of injury isn't necessarily going to line up perfectly with the linear increase in energy.

If I wanted to come up with a better system, I'd probably look at how the odds of serious injury go up as height increases. I also probably wouldn't tie it directly to a set damage, but maybe make it a save vs. death and a save vs. injury (say, half your hit points and maybe some broken bones as a status effect), to try and avoid the problem of "your average person can't survive any falls," vs. "your average 6th level player character is only momentarily inconvenienced by gravity."

The odds of an average person surviving a fall of 48' is about 50%. At 84 feet, it's 10%. So, toss those numbers around some average saves and tune from there.

 

[Faolyn]

You do know that the original TSR fit all of that (minus an adventure) in exactly 48 pages of Holmes Basic D&D, right? It's entirely possible.

Wasn't that all rather dense text, though?

 

[Staffan]

The odds of an average person surviving a fall of 48' is about 50%. At 84 feet, it's 10%. So, toss those numbers around some average saves and tune from there.

So, an average human has like 2-4 hit points (depending on edition, but it is well known that a farmer is always in mortal danger should their cat decide they're more useful as lunch than as provider of the same). So maybe 1d6 per 50 feet? That doesn't seem right though...

 

[Knorrrssk]

Falling damage has never really worked well with the whole concept of hit points. Frankly it ought to be a saving throw, with several stages of injury instead.

 

[JackMann]

Yeah, that's kinda my thinking. If you fix it to a set amount of damage, you're either going to have falls way too lethal for NPCs/low level characters, or no threat at all to high level characters.

 

[Mannahnin]

The explanation JackMann provided about how Gygax allegedly INTENDED falling damage to work is indeed something Frank Mentzer explained, as Sacrosanct remembered. That was in Dragon Magazine issue 70 (page 13). Of course, as Frank openly admits in that article, that never actually made it into the rulebooks. And the ridiculous explanation nuTSR gives for it in their module is far from clear.

Dan "Delta" Collins also tackled the falling damage question in a lot of detail on his blog some time back, and covered much of the same ground you guys just have. Including the bimodal lethality distribution (relating, IRL, to whether the falling person hits their head) and how a saving throw is probably a smart way to model that.

Falling Revisted

Math, history, and design of old-school D&D.

deltasdnd.blogspot.com

Falling Re-Revisited

Shouldn't we have at least considered air resistance in our models of falling in D&D and other RPGs?

deltasdnd.blogspot.com

 

[Umbran]

Hit points are an abstract mechanic for gameplay purposes. I am not sure it is reasonable to try to model falling damage specifically if you aren't going to also start working with ballistic dummies and swords....

Because, that's the real question - how lethal is falling compared to the weapons and powers PCs wield?