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...

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.

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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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).
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  • 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.
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(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)
 

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Shakeshift

Adventurer
He can't, he's banned.
After everything Justin Lanasa has pulled if Justin shows up at GaryCon my guess is that they'll have him arrested for trespassing and they'll ask the police officers to take him down to the station house.

What will most likely happen is that Justin will probably linger in the parking lot and the sidewalk outside the convention, trying to stir up trouble while not actually being on convention grounds. I've had numerous experiences with troublemakers at conventions who have been banned in the past and show up at a venue anyway, hoping for drama.

There are certain "solutions" to this same formula which work remarkably well. I checked the county and it seems that some of these tactics can work well if you can get some help. I plan on giving Luke Gygax a printed list of a few of his legal options, in case Lanasa becomes a pest and leaves his own empty con in order to cause problems at the SUCCESSFUL con going into it's fourteenth year, happening across town.

If I'm around, I'll make sure to share any footage I take.
 
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jdrakeh

Front Range Warlock
After everything Justin Lanasa has pulled if she shows up at GaryCon my guess is that they'll have him arrested for trespassing and they'll ask the police officers to take him down to the station house.

What will most likely happen is that Justin will probably linger in the parking lot and the sidewalk outside the convention, trying to stir up trouble while not actually being on convention grounds. I've had numerous experiences with troublemakers at conventions who have been banned in the past and show up at a venue anyway, hoping for drama.

There are certain "solutions" to this same formula which work remarkably well. I checked the county and it seems that some of these tactics can work well if you can get some help. I plan on giving Luke Gygax a printed list of a few of his legal options, in case Lanasa becomes a pest and leaves his own empty con in order to cause problems at the SUCCESSFUL con going into it's fourteenth year, happening across town.

If I'm around, I'll make sure to share any footage I take.

Dammit. I'm angered that Luke (as well as other GaryCon staffers and attendees) have to deal with this madness for daring to commit the apparently egregious sin of... running a successful convention and having fun, honestly. :(
 

Shakeshift

Adventurer
Justin Lanasa wanted nothing to do with GaryCon initially. He wanted to have his own con, on his own weekend, and siphon off some of the convention money he was seeing everyone making but himself. Justin's biggest mistake was in not realizing how much work a convention requires. It's months of planning, problem-solving, phone calls, emails, and crisis-dealing.

As we've seen with Justin Lanasa on multiple forum boards, he's incapable to running a convention no matter his claims to the contrary. He's not motivated enough to put in the serious work required to make it successful. He just wants to be a part of the TTRPG industry and thus far he's been able to fake his way through the majority of it, but now everyone is onto him and he can't bluff his way past anyone any longer. He's a one-trick pony. He can't design a sci-fi gaming system, he can't launch a successful Kickstarter, and he can't manage an RPG convention. It's beyond his ability to understand and run.

Every time he tries to run a con job past people (like his Star Frontiers rulebook), people call him out on his obvious scams and point out the flaws in his plan, like no table of contents, no author, and no samples of his gameplay. Rather than admit defeat, he just does the "deny everything" strategy and claim that he's succeeding wildly and that everyone else is wildly jealous of his unheralded success.

Cut to a month later, and Justin can't even book the same venue, or get the weekend that he wants for his convention, because he doesn't have the funds to make a downpayment at the venue and he waited to long to organize and schedule his first-time con. Rookie mistake.

So instead Justin tries to affix himself (like a lamprey) to the successful GaryCon, and tells Luke Gygax that for $5000.00USD he can pay Justin to "take some of the heat off of him" and let the DHSM handle some of the overflow from con weekend. Naturally, Luke can find better uses of 5K than to throw money at an untried, untested person with zero gaming credentials, who is already making amateur mistakes left and right. Justin looks at this point a bit like a fan, trying desperately to hitch his own failing wagon to someone far more successful.

Now Justin's just trying to affix himself like a full parasite onto Luke with the intent of trying to finish him professionally. Justin reaches out to the U.S. Army to try and get Luke's 26 year pension revoked. Justin reaches out to Luke's wife to try and destabilize his marriage as well. These are all the efforts of a small person, behaving poorly. These are the efforts of a desperate and somewhat-sad individual.
 
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Shakeshift

Adventurer
That's a shame. I'd love to see him on the panel. His insights into IP law would be fascinating.
If his past behavior is any indicator, it's refuting everything anyone says about IP law with "You're wrong!" or "You're so stupid!" and then refusing to elaborate his own point or explain it in any way. It's the equivalent of "Nuh-uh!" for adults.
 

Marandahir

Crown-Forester (he/him)
So the phony Indiegogo campaign say they got WotC to drop their C&D against them on 1/28.

The OP doesn't include this part of the history. Can someone fill me in on what happened?
 

Emrico

Adventurer
So the phony Indiegogo campaign say they got WotC to drop their C&D against them on 1/28.

The OP doesn't include this part of the history. Can someone fill me in on what happened?
NuTSR is lying as usual. The lawsuit from WotC was put on hold pending the outcome of the suit by NuTSR for declaratory judgment. No suit was dropped, no suit was canceled, and NuTSR didn't win anything. Except in their own deluded little minds, no matter how many times they post on the internets claiming otherwise.

Jim
 


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