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)

 

[Deset Gled]

I know the difference. Copyright lasts for a fixed period after the creation/publication of a work and/or the death of the author. Trademark has to be actively used or it will lapse. They no longer work as intended because of Disney lobbying the government to extend copyright terms to the point where they're actively detrimental to preservation efforts.

TSR stopped selling Star Frontiers in 1985. WotC only started selling PDFs in 2017. That's a large enough gap for the trademark to lapse, because trademarks have to be actively used or they will lapse. If WotC didn't register the trademark before NuTSR did, then they don't have a claim to the trademark anymore.

Using PDF sales of old books to maintain trademark (not copyright) when you're not actually making any new products with it feels like it's exploiting a loophole. Trademark law was created before the advent of electronic storage, so it doesn't take into account situations where someone might try to game the system by trying to maintain a trademark without actually doing any effort by simply selling a book on kindle unlimited and then forget it exists.

I'm sorry, but this is still just very wrong on many levels. Honestly, this just feels like gish galloping at this point, but I'll play for at least one more round.

There are a lot more differences between copyright and trademark than just the timeframes and how thy are maintained. And you are still conflating them. The argument about Disney is both irrelevant and incorrect; they've lobbied a lot (admittedly, in a way that's bad for the public) about copyright but have had much less effect on trademark.

Your timeline of when TSR used the Star Frontiers trademark is both incorrect and irrelevant. Even if what you are saying is correct, by using the trademark in 2017 they have reclaimed it. This may have been an argument that required corrections if NuTSR tried pulling their stunt in 2016, but it is completely meaningless today.

Selling PDF books is, functionally, no different than reprinting a physical book. Physical storage absolutely existed when trademark law was created. And, frankly, digital storage and digital IP has existed for about half a century at this point. And, let's be real, being a luddite is not a legal defense.

What nuTSR is doing is clearly wrong, I don't dispute that, but that doesn't let WotC off the hook.

There is literally no hook. WotC did nothing wrong. They didn't even start the lawsuit in federal court. NuTSR has been the aggressor and aggravator at every step. You are inventing a problem on both sides to try and claim the middle ground is some sort of a compromise. It isn't. What you are doing is supporting NuTSR.

 

[Waller]

There is literally no hook. WotC did nothing wrong. They didn't even file the lawsuit in federal court. NuTSR has been the aggressor and aggravator at every step. You are inventing a problem on both sides to try and claim the middle ground is some sort of a compromise. It isn't. What you are doing is supporting NuTSR.

I think the phrase is "blaming the victim".

 

[bedir than]

Racism and deceptive marketing aside, NuTSR is well within their rights to snatch up trademarks that WotC let lapse. The Star Frontiers and TSR trademarks have long since expired because WotC let them languish. WotC doesn't have any right to claim them now, and putting up low quality scans on Drivethrurpg after telling the fansite to take down their remastered PDFs is a jerk move that shouldn't count toward maintaining the trademark anyway. The trademark already lapsed sometime in the 90s I'm guessing since the last book was released circa 1985. Hosting PDFs shouldn't count toward maintaining a trademark, otherwise you could maintain a trademark forever simply because an ebook you released two hundred years ago is still being sold even though you did nothing with the IP since.

It's a really frustrating situation because both sides are in the wrong here. NuTSR really is using deceptive marketing practices to trick fans of the Star Frontiers IP when they don't have any right to it. WotC doesn't have any right to the trademark anymore and shouldn't be allowed to try re-registering until NuTSR's claim lapses, because they clearly didn't care about the IP before and still don't unless they get bad publicity over it.

One of the most telling acts here is that Sasquatch LLC already snatched the Alternity trademark and published their own retroclone a few years ago (it got cancelled and Sasquatch is now MIA, but whatever). This angered many Alternity fans who thought the IP was coming back only to learn it wasn't. What did WotC do then? Absolutely nothing. They still haven't restored the Alternity PDFs they removed back in 2008 during their infamous hissy fit over piracy. Word of advice WotC: the easiest way to prevent piracy is to sell PDFs legally, because when push comes to shove consumers will default to the option with the most convenience. Buying a PDF legally from an online store that will host the file for you indefinitely is more convenient that risking a malware infection or a lawsuit on the high seas.

Also, copyright law should be reformed. There are so many orphaned works being lost to posterity because it is illegal for anyone but the copyright owner to maintain them. This fate has befallen many of my favorite obscure RPG supplements like Grim Tales/Slavelords of Cydonia, Alternity, the paperback Hogshead edition of Puppetland, Aether & Flux, Starship Troopers RPG, and many more. If corpos don't care to preserve nor profit off their IPs, then they shouldn't be allowed to prevent others from doing so. That's a grotesque miscarriage of the original purpose of copyright: allow a creator to profit for a time off his labors, then let anyone else preserve and remix the work.

Anyway, if the judge rules in favor of WotC, then that would set a dangerous precedent for trademark by effectively allowing anyone to maintain a trademark forever. They do this just by registering it, posting an ebook on Kindle Unlimited, and then forgetting about it for centuries. This would prevent anyone else from ever registering that trademark ever again, even if the person who registered it has been dead for centuries or the company went out of business centuries ago. This would create the novel problem of "orphaned trademarks," which is similar to the current problem under copyright law where there are countless "orphaned works" whose copyright is either untraceable or held by owners who are deceased, out of business, apathetic, or don't even know they own it. This would be a bad thing for commerce and pervert the original intent of trademark law.

Like, WotC is currently selling scans of the Amazing Engine RPG from the early 1990s. They haven't produced any books for it since the original printings and are almost certainly only selling the scans to reduce piracy. Do you think their behavior constitutes good faith maintaining of the Amazing Engine trademark, such that nobody else should ever be allowed to register it for as long as the PDFs are sold on Drivethru? I certainly don't. I'm no lawyer or judge, admittedly, but I think that's a perversion of the spirit of trademark law. When trademark law was created, we didn't have computers or the ability to easily make and sell infinite copies of a book's content. So claiming that using electronic storage constitutes maintaining a trademark is no different than claiming that libraries storing a copy of your book constitutes maintaining a trademark, since ebook stores are essentially privatized libraries.

Counterpoint, WotC was selling TSR branded pdfs prior to LaNasa claiming the mark as his own. Use always trumps registration

 

[Mannahnin]

No, they didn't. They allowed the registration of the trademark to lapse. But, while the registration makes defense of the mark easier, registration is explicitly not required to maintain the trademark. Simply continuing to sell products with the mark is sufficient.

Deset Gled has covered in more detail, but I'll quote this one just because it's succinct and hits the key point of fact.

@BoxCrayonTales, trademark law exists to prevent consumer confusion and fraud.

nuTSR explicitly attempted this exact kind of fraud, first coming on the scene claiming to be the original TSR returned, to be the creators of Gen Con, the inventors of D&D, etc.

In contrast, Jayson Elliot's TSR, the publisher of Gygax Magazine, registered the trademark but explicitly did not engage in this kind of fraud or deliberately try to create consumer confusion. They commissioned their own logos, for example, rather than simply stealing or copying the original TSR's marks. nuTSR simply ripped off the old original TSR marks, as part of their campaign of fraud.

WotC is in point of fact zero percent in the wrong here. Legally or morally. Even if I probably agree with you to a large extent about copyright law.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Look, I despise nuTSR as much as any sane person would. They're horrible people and they're soiling the trademark. I can't say anymore about what I think of them without violating the forum rules against saying nasty things about people.

But I despise WotC. I have despised them ever since their stupid hissy fit in 2008 when they took down their PDFs, many of which still haven't been restored. I disagree with piracy on general principle, but these stupid corpos make it really difficult for me to maintain my principles. I despise them way less than I despise the bigots, but I still despise them for their abandonment and mistreatment of beloved IPs. I don't want to let them win anything, even if they do have a point.

So fine, I admit to any legal mistakes I made. As I said, I am not a lawyer or judge.

 

[WarDriveWorley]

Look, I despise nuTSR as much as any sane person would. They're horrible people and they're soiling the trademark. I can't say anymore about what I think of them without violating the forum rules against saying nasty things about people.

But I despise WotC. I have despised them ever since their stupid hissy fit in 2008 when they took down their PDFs, many of which still haven't been restored. I disagree with piracy on general principle, but these stupid corpos make it really difficult for me to maintain my principles. I despise them way less than I despise the bigots, but I still despise them for their abandonment and mistreatment of beloved IPs. I don't want to let them win anything, even if they do have a point.

So fine, I admit to any legal mistakes I made. As I said, I am not a lawyer or judge.

So they're not entitled to due justice because you dislike them based off previous decisions? Sounds super fair.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So fine, I admit to any legal mistakes I made. As I said, I am not a lawyer or judge.

What is considered "right" or "fair" may not always match up with what the law requires.

I recommend listening to this brief podcast available here-

If you're familiar with the law, you will quickly know where this is going. If not, you might be in for a surprise as to how trademarks work in the real world.

 

[darjr]

I’m not sure the same management is at WotC from back then. There has been some churn.

 

[Deset Gled]

Look, I despise nuTSR as much as any sane person would. They're horrible people and they're soiling the trademark. I can't say anymore about what I think of them without violating the forum rules against saying nasty things about people.

But I despise WotC. I have despised them ever since their stupid hissy fit in 2008 when they took down their PDFs, many of which still haven't been restored. I disagree with piracy on general principle, but these stupid corpos make it really difficult for me to maintain my principles. I despise them way less than I despise the bigots, but I still despise them for their abandonment and mistreatment of beloved IPs. I don't want to let them win anything, even if they do have a point.

Now this is something that I completely understand. I don't share your hatred of WotC, but I understand. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is an age old saying, and there is good reason people still say it.

But, if I may pontificate, you have shown how this mentality can be dangerous. It seems that you legitimately don't want to support the bigotry that NuTSR has perpetuated. But they have managed to channel your dislike of WotC and funneled it into support for NuTSR's cause. That's where this can become dangerous.

My advice is this: don't be binary. You don't have to choose between the two. There is nothing that says you have to support WotC if you dislike NuTSR. It's okay to hate them both. You don't have to find a compromise between them.

 

[CleverNickName]

Wanting to punish Wizards of the Coast for being a big corporation, or for taking down their PDFs a decade ago is certainly your prerogative. It's a very popular opinion here in EN World. But NuTSR isn't facing them in a court of popular opinion--NuTSR is facing them in a court of law. The courts are going to decide which laws were broken, and by whom, and what damages (if any) should be paid, and I think we all know how that is going to go.

It's not about wanting Wizards of the Coast to "win anything." No matter how hard NuTSR tries to brand themselves as a victim, no matter how often they claim to be the Little Guy vs. The Big Bad Corporation, the law is very clear.