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)

 

[Staffan]

Yes, they are OGL content, so it's legal.

Assuming they got the Section 15 of the OGL right. Otherwise, Paizo might want to jump in for a piece of the pie.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Kinda my point.

It‘s like he made a low-budget Faustian bargain, and whatever it was he hoped to gain has probably been moved farther out of his grasp. And each move he makes pushes it farther still.

…kinda like the original Bedazzled:

If only the person who needs to understand that most did.

I imagine it wouldn't take much for Ernie to build/have a sphere of influence that is, while not the biggest, quite comfortable. It would require some work though. Instead he has.... something else...

 

[Jedion357]

49. The image of the SFNG Game depicted on the Museum and TSR websites (as seen
in Exhibit P below and in paragraph 7 of the Rainwater Declaration, which I have reviewed) was
merely a digital mockup of a book showing what the future game book might look like. It does
not show an actual product that is currently in existence and available for sale. There is not one
page of text between the digital covers. The book does not exist.

AS I remember there was a copy of SFNG that was to be handed out at TSR con to the participants in the SFNG game that Dave Johnson was to run. He did not run it because of catching Covid but did go to a restaurant and live stream maskless at the end of the con. I also remember statements that "It was on the way back from the printers" that came out during the con. I had given real thought to showing up to play SFNG in a mask and secretly recording the session just to get a copy of the book but $100 buy in for the game + plane ticket+ plus an air B&B? for what was no doubt going to be a 3 ring binder?

I don't believe that there were actual real copies of anything but they certainly asserted there was.

 

[Jedion357]

Johnson's apparently a lot more gung-ho about his bigotry than LaNasa is. Maybe he was just thrilled at the idea of getting to sell his bigotry. Or he had a deal where he'd get a large percentage of the gross or whatever and he really thought that a lot of people would buy it.

Dave Johnson is desperate to belong and be accepted
When he did his independent film gig, which was just horrible, he gave himself a fake horror award,
When he switched to radio plays his actors all bailed on him
Alarms and Journeys- gave himself a fake award from a fake publisher association.
He invented a fake game publishing co and claimed millions in revenue on linked in
Joined a communist forum and tried to post and the real communist uniformly ignored him
After the communist he dove into white supremacy
But then tried to post Antifa videos and even those people were like "poser" In fact Dave eventually posted the pic of a Antifa rioter punching him like that did something for him.
Its one long trail of failure and rejection after leaving the Navy. And even in the Navy he was a corpsman assigned to a marine unit. Outsider among marines who all have the semper fi brother in arms ethic and while he endured what they did with them there is still a separation there.

Then along comes Lanasa the manipulator. Who reads this poor bastard like a book and for a little feigned acceptance uses him to advance his agenda. Yeah, Dave is working for free because Lanasa is the first person to pay attention to him. No doubt Lanasa has adopted Dave's prejudices as part of stroking dave's furs. OR the prejudices were always latent in Lanasa anyway and he got more vocal because it served his purpose in manipulating Dave J.

 

[Jedion357]

I keep going back to this picture and the early days of this crap show when Earnie and Duck were "partners". How does one become a partner? By volunteering? or by investing?

There is a persistent rumor that Duck sold property and just recently someone suggested to me that Ernie had access to Mamoreal Tomb money So despite all the denials I seriously think these two brought money to the table.

In the early days of the dumpster fire there was cash being thrown around 70k to purchase the building and its reported to be a cash purchase and 10k to buy the D&D collection and any other cash would likely have been burned through on the remodel and stuff. The early assumption was that Lanasa being a business man brought the financing. I don't think he did. Sure running a tattoo shop keeps him flush with cash but most of his money is tied up in the 20 some odd properties he owns in NC. Why was the DHSM building bought with cash instead of leveraging equity in the NC properties?

My belief is that Ernie and Duck foolishly committed cash to Justin's hands and Lanasa has set this all up on other peoples money. he tried to use other peoples money to fund the lawsuit with WotC which failed and he sold a property in NC in January most likely to cover the mounting legal fees.

In the early days Duck and Ernie were touted as partners but once the lawsuit was started and WotC counter sued I think fear set in for Duck and Ernie and they got manipulated to say they were only volunteers and that Justin would take the heat. If they lack paper on that partner deal, and that is possible, they have to trust promises from Lanasa like Ernie said to me. Lanasa is laughing in that they've stated they are volunteers and if they cant prove the investment then he can blow them off for the money. He can also keep them holding on and volunteering hoping he makes good on his promises. If they don't do what he wants they can kiss that money goodbye.

This is what I think is going on and the hold that Lanasa has over these two.

EDIT: My theory effectively makes Duck an indentured servant to Lanasa.

 

[Staffan]

I keep going back to this picture and the early days of this crap show when Earnie and Duck were "partners". How does one become a partner? By volunteering? or by investing?

There is a persistent rumor that Duck sold property and just recently someone suggested to me that Ernie had access to Mamoreal Tomb money So despite all the denials I seriously think these two brought money to the table.

If, and that's a big "if", that's true, couldn't Ernie be sued by Marmoreal Tomb backers and/or Troll Lord Games for fraud or something? He was given money to fund the Marmoreal Tomb/Hobby Shop Dungeon, but instead "invested" that into the "museum"?

 

[pantsorama]

Firstly, side note: Please don't treat 'well-actually' as a positive. Nerd culture needs to stop validating it (the 'technically correct, the best kind of correct' scene from Futurama was supposed to lampoon this mindset, and instead people treat it as license to continue such behavior). It treats conversation as a competition instead of a collaborative endeavor. It also assumes that, since I didn't bring something up, I clearly don't know it and you get to educate my ignorant self, boosting your nerd cred in the process. Trust me, everyone here has read most all classical myths. It is a unflattering look and I encourage you not to do it.

As JLP put it:

Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
By our standards, the customs here, their... code of honor, is the same kind of pompous, strutting charades that endangered our own species a few centuries ago. We evolved out of it because no one tried to impose their own set of... I'm sorry, this is becoming a speech.

Counselor Deanna Troi:
You're the Captain, sir. You're entitled.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
Hmm - not entitled to ramble on about something everyone knows. Carry on.

 

[Willie the Duck]

As JLP put it:
<quote>

It's really not worth sidetracking this thread over.
I have a half-formed thread initial post that I keep occasionally working on about my frustrations with nerd-culture and forum culture. Very hard to do diplomatically -- much of what I am complaining about is nerds being unkind to each other, and calling out my fellow nerds (self-included) on this can reasonably be seen as a nerd being unkind to other nerds.

Suffice to say, whatever toxicity it is, it is a lower-case-t toxicity, as opposed to the amazing horribleness of the people at the heart of this thread-subject.

 

[Fifth Element]

If, and that's a big "if", that's true, couldn't Ernie be sued by Marmoreal Tomb backers and/or Troll Lord Games for fraud or something? He was given money to fund the Marmoreal Tomb/Hobby Shop Dungeon, but instead "invested" that into the "museum"?

This seems to enter the realm of pure speculation based on nothing at all.

 

[DLIMedia]

Yes, they are OGL content, so it's legal.

Neither beta document includes the OGL legal text, so technically not legal.