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)

 

[Azzy]

BTW - The crowdfunding campaign lists the WotC lawsuit as dropped on 1/27/2022.

That's just another lie from Lanasa.

 

[Staffan]

That seems actionable.

BTW - The crowdfunding campaign lists the WotC lawsuit as dropped on 1/27/2022.

That is at best a misunderstanding and at worst a lie.

There are currently two lawsuits regarding the issue. NuTSR have filed a suit A against Wizards where they ask that the court recognizes their claim to various trademarks as valid. Wizards has also filed a suit B against NuTSR where they say NuTSR have filed various claims with the USPTO that are fraudulent and that these claims should therefore be canceled.

NuTSR then filed a motion to suspend suit B until suit A can be dealt with, and Wizards didn't have any problem with that. This is what LaNasa calls "canceled", when it is nothing of the sort. It's just "let's settle this matter first because it might make the other matter irrelevant."

 

[pantsorama]

That's just another lie from Lanasa.

I figured. Is it a spin type lie, or just made up from whole cloth?

EDIT: Thanks for the details Staffan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My personal take is that Vince is trying to distance himself from NuTSR without burning any bridges.

Sometimes, the only way to save yourself is to burn a bridge.

 

[pantsorama]

Looks like Angry Dwarf Games has had a presence on Facebook for a while.

This is the only Angry Dwarf I'll vouch for.

 

[Jer]

SF appeals to a pretty large group for RPGs that have been out of official support (?) for so many decades. The FB group has over 4.5k members. Of which I'm one. It has at least 1 active fanzine in publication, has recently seen new modules released, and otherwise is still "alive" (whatever that means).

There is interest in a new version. But just because we are SF fans doesn't mean we believe that anything with a SF name is actually going to be good. "We" are just as skeptical of NuTSR as this community is, hence while their is general hope for it, their is no faith and little goodwill for SFNG.

I actually read Ralif's description (perhaps charitably) as applying to NuTSR's Star Frontiers offering - which from everything I've seen would have no appeal to actual Star Frontiers fans because it isn't Star Frontiers. It's at best an OGL game with the name Star Frontiers slapped onto it which nobody is asking for except maybe the circle of people right around NuTSR.

An updated Star Frontiers might be interesting, but honestly the 1st edition of the game still plays quite well and I'd be on the fence about an update at all. The game is surprisingly modern in a lot of its aspects (like its skill system, which even though I was there I'm still a bit surprised came out in the 80s as it's a nice balance of breadth and simplicity that you don't usually see in games of that era). I'd be worried that another update might take it into the Alternity or Zebulon's Guide directions (both of which I see as updates to the core Star Frontiers engine that didn't work - Zeublon's more than Alternity but you can see the bones of SF in Alternity IMO).

And since it's being sold in hardcover or softcover on DriveThru, the game is still in print and people can get ahold of it. So while I see some potential for a new edition there's a lot of potential downside there too, beyond the concern that an updated edition would just be D&D 5e in space or something like that.

 

[pantsorama]

So beyond other shenanigans, 5e just does not work well for most Sci-Fi. A good Sci-Fi game needs a robust skill system at the very least. 5e skills are too binary, not granular enough and lack any real group working together mechanic. That is OK for a fantasy game, but there are too many Sci-Fi archetypes that are passed over by such a system. If the game is all about combat, and only combat then go on with your bad self - but IMO, Sci-Fi is best when it involves Scientific discovery, Mechanical and Engineering feats, Diplomacy, etc. All things that 5e just collapses under with any real regular usage. YMMV, natch.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I actually read Ralif's description (perhaps charitably) as applying to NuTSR's Star Frontiers offering - which from everything I've seen would have no appeal to actual Star Frontiers fans because it isn't Star Frontiers. It's at best an OGL game with the name Star Frontiers slapped onto it which nobody is asking for except maybe the circle of people right around NuTSR.

An updated Star Frontiers might be interesting, but honestly the 1st edition of the game still plays quite well and I'd be on the fence about an update at all. The game is surprisingly modern in a lot of its aspects (like its skill system, which even though I was there I'm still a bit surprised came out in the 80s as it's a nice balance of breadth and simplicity that you don't usually see in games of that era). I'd be worried that another update might take it into the Alternity or Zebulon's Guide directions (both of which I see as updates to the core Star Frontiers engine that didn't work - Zeublon's more than Alternity but you can see the bones of SF in Alternity IMO).

And since it's being sold in hardcover or softcover on DriveThru, the game is still in print and people can get ahold of it. So while I see some potential for a new edition there's a lot of potential downside there too, beyond the concern that an updated edition would just be D&D 5e in space or something like that.

Since LordEntrails was responding to Ralif's response to my response to his somewhat about-something-else post (follow that?), yeah, we're all talking specifically about NuTSR's Star Frontiers: New Genesis vaporware. Referring to it by its proposed title as SF:NG would probably help reduce confusion.

I'd personally like to see an updated version of the original game, provided they stick with the d100 base system. Many others voiced interest in other threads regarding the occasional rumor of a new SF edition.

In particular, I'd like to see: A new core book that included space combat rules from the get-go. Some modern game design touches wouldn't be unwelcomed. New artwork would be nice, though I love the Elmore covers. (The interior art and layout could be improved; at a quick glance, I'd have trouble distinguishing between a Star Frontiers and Paranoia rulebook page.) Plus, ongoing support (though I understand there's lots of fan supported material out there now.)

 

[darjr]

@pantsorama I beg to differ. Esper Genesis is fantastic.

 

[Wilphe]

You wait and see. The night before the game's release in March, the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum will make a last-second announcement that....

1. There was a burglary, ALL hard copies of the Star Frontiers: New Genesis game were stolen, and new copies will have to wait to be printed until late 2023. Sorry fans! These things sometimes happen! (Womp womp.)

2. There was a vicious attack by the (insert random name of alt-left group) and they broke in and BURNED all copies of Star Frontiers: New Genesis because they hate Justin, Ernie, and the rest of the OSR and they hate everything that is cutting edge, bleeding-cool, and mindblowing to TTRPG gaming. New copies of the game will have to wait to be printed until late 2023. Sorry about this fans. It was totally unavoidable (Womp womp.)

3. The Star Frontiers: New Genesis game sold out all physical copies in the first 5 seconds of it's release! The Dungeon Hobby Shop is now proudly working on Star Frontiers 2nd Edition to be released in late 2023, which is now available for pre-order from TSR Hobbies! It's available for $140 (with shipping) if you use the coupon code attached below, and comes with a tube set of TSR's super-authentic "Gygaxian Dice."

I will take:

4 A Crisis of Treachery (TM) for $10 please

crisis of treachery

forum.rpg.net

I