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)

 

[Deset Gled]

I mean, he can be both - his situation is doubtlessly as complicated as anyone else's. To me the bigger issue is that regardless of if he's an enabler, etc, he is essentially pretty powerless. He has no personal platform, and doesn't have the energy or situation to be able to say produce products for them. He's just really along for the ride, kind of like the people who signed up for a minimum wage job in the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum.

I disagree with the idea that Leason doesn't have the platform. He has podcast interviews like the one I just shared. He's done local TV news pieces on the DHSM. He's done interviews on NPR and local newspapers about the DHSM. He has just as much access to the internet as the rest of us. He has a Facebook account, and he's posted as the DHSM FB account before.

What he doesn't do is address any of NuTSR's controversies. He's never apologized or even acknowledged any wrongdoing. And he's never used his access to the DHSM accounts to stop Lanasa or remove any of his posts. But he apparently has no problem pontificating about WotC's faults for being too "woke" He has time to bring gender politics into a conversation about the OGL fiasco. Leason isn't a person without a platform; he's a person who has chosen not to use it.

As for power, I also disagree. When it comes to the OSR industry, Jeff Leason and Ernie Gygax are the ones with all the power. Without them, Lanasa would be just another schlub pushing amateur RPG products. Jeff and Ernie are the ones who give Justing relevance, and they could take that away from him at any time. Any single time Lanasa posted something homophobic on the internet, any time he promoted Dave Johnson, Jeff could call him up and say "Denounce this, or I don't open the DHSM tomorrow". I believe the line from Frank Herbert: The people who can destroy a thing, they control it. Leason has that power, and he chooses not to use it.

If he had bought one of these titles, even a knockoff version of them, he's have letters after his name as well to show what knighthood's part of and would be ranting about everything it does or stands for. Instead he tries to pretend he's exceptional beyond compare for... well all this:

I wanted to clarify that a previous comment about being on the 1991 "Perfect storm" Patrol was incorrect, but as you can see, December 1992 was just as bad, if not worse. The only reason there wasn't a movie about this storm is that the USCG saved just about all vessels & personal in distress that year

The stolen valor still riles me up every time I read about it. It's amazing how much his story on that has changed. For reference, here's an interview when he was running for office: Candidate profile: Justin LaNasa - WWAYTV3

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LaNasa says in his first month aboard the Diligence in the North Atlantic Ocean, he was part of the rescue mission that later became the basis for the book and movie “The Perfect Storm.”


“We saved six that month, but there was one we couldn’t save,” LaNasa said. “That was the ship the Andrea Gail.”
-----

You can't lie any harder than that. The one piece of solace I take is that this will seriously hurt his political career. I've always been afraid that our RPG drama won't really affect that part of his life too much. But lying about military service has a good chance to keeping him out of that game for a long time.

 

[Wincenworks]

When it comes to the OSR industry, Jeff Leason and Ernie Gygax are the ones with all the power.

Eh... not really. Jeff Leason is old school TSR but anyone who knows who he is almost certainly knows about who he is etc, he's not exactly commanding a massive audience.

Ernie has had more impact since he's sort of taken up the role of being authority on Greyhawk, and has the Gygax name... like the full name, and his support basically will always trump Jeff's for the wider market - since most people in TTRPGs these days don't know the various personalities of the early days.

Justin is pretty much now limited to reactionaries... most of whom hath forsaken him, and people who are absolutely clueless - who won't know who Jeff is or be impressed, and may briefly be impressed with Ernie after it's explained he's Gary's oldest son. Jeff can't end TSR any time soon, particularly now they've got hired hands to run the place and there's no evidence he has any way to use his theoretical "partner" status.

He wasn't essential the early plan - Ernie, the house and the trademarks were. Ernie has been backing off, slowly (and with the option to come back and still doing PR for them) but Justin is now all in on the trademarks. His limit of contribution to products is he is allegedly the editor for Justin's game for toddlers, that is so unimpressive they're not restocking it.

Justin also re-furbished the apartment that was supposed to be for Duck and decided it's better off as an AirBnB.

I mean... he already publicly told Justin it had to stop and Justin's response was "Whatever"

But he apparently has no problem pontificating about WotC's faults for being too "woke"

Tim Kask has also complained that he will not listen to people telling him about how some of the content is problematic etc, because he feels he knows better due to being there and Justin used one of his quotes to try to sell his stupid (forementioned) game for toddlers - people misunderstand things, particularly if they have people giving them a different narrative. A large part of reactionary "activism" is trying to rebrand to make their hate palatable and make the opposition look ridiculous etc.

Duck's probably not the greatest person in the world, but let's not pretend that he's the foundation of TSR who can simply make the whole thing collapsing by removing himself, or that he's overloaded with other opportunities.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Leason may not be load-bearing, but he could still walk away from Omelas and he hasn't.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Tim Kask has also complained that he will not listen to people telling him about how some of the content is problematic etc, because he feels he knows better due to being there and Justin used one of his quotes to try to sell his stupid (forementioned) game for toddlers - people misunderstand things, particularly if they have people giving them a different narrative. A large part of reactionary "activism" is trying to rebrand to make their hate palatable and make the opposition look ridiculous etc.

Tim is one of the most progressive original old school names, and constantly is addressing toxic gamers and problems in the game, calling out the nonsense people like Justin and people of similar beliefs on a daily basis. If he has become a target now? Then I'd seriously ask people to start doing some serious reflection, because if the line between who is fair game to go after is "not perfect in my opinion", then there's a big problem.

Duck's probably not the greatest person in the world, but let's not pretend that he's the foundation of TSR who can simply make the whole thing collapsing by removing himself, or that he's overloaded with other opportunities.

Duck's an adult, and responsible for his own actions. However, to hold him up as equally culpable as Justin is not fair to him, IMO. Not only has he never said anything remotely as bad as Justin, but he's attempted to call him out. This is a classic abusive relationship. Justin sucked up to him and complimented him until he got in. Then he created a situation where Duck is completely dependent on him, and threatens him any time Duck doesn't toe the line. Duck literally becomes homeless without Justin, and Justin ensures he's reminded of that. How much do you blame the victim in an abusive relationship? Needless to say, I'm not a fan of "she should just leave then" because it's never that simple or easy. As anyone who has been in an abusive relationship knows. The whole "woke" comment doesn't surprise me either, as I would expect someone in an echo chamber to repeat phrases they hear from the person who controls them, as that's common as well.

I'm not saying he shouldn't be confronted when he says something like that, I'm saying this is a classic abuse relationship and that should be taken into account. It's easy to be judgmental from behind a computer screen.

 

[Wincenworks]

Tim is one of the most progressive original old school names, and constantly is addressing toxic gamers and problems in the game, calling out the nonsense people like Justin and people of similar beliefs on a daily basis.

Tim is absolutely 100%, of the old guard, most likely to actually punch and Nazi and smile in his mugshot.

He also sometimes accidentally repeats non-sense about critics of WotC being delusional, agrees with loaded statements in his chats, etc. Not because he's a bad person, or not progressive, but because he's human (thus prone to error) and has some strong emotions about how his old friends (most of whom are now dead) are talked about.

Hence why I am not particularly impressed with the general trend that because Duck mumbled some general complaints about WotC he must be Team LaNasa - he's an old man who's been out of the hobby a long time and is probably getting a lot of his news about it through people like Ernie and Jim Ward. He certainly doesn't have someone on hand to explain full context of a lot of issues, some of which are understandably baffling in isolation.

I'm not saying he shouldn't be confronted when he says something like that, I'm saying this is a classic abuse relationship and that should be taken into account. It's easy to be judgmental from behind a computer screen.

100% agree.

 

[Deset Gled]

Hence why I am not particularly impressed with the general trend that because Duck mumbled some general complaints about WotC he must be Team LaNasa - he's an old man who's been out of the hobby a long time and is probably getting a lot of his news about it through people like Ernie and Jim Ward. He certainly doesn't have someone on hand to explain full context of a lot of issues, some of which are understandably baffling in isolation.

Well, not to dwell on the point too much, but I largely consider Duck to be Team Lanasa because he is outwardly Team Lanasa. He works for Lanasa. He's promoting Lanasa's business. He considers himself "lucky" to have me Lanasa. And he calls Lanasa a "partner."

All that being said, I legitimately hope that you are right. I really, really want to be wrong about Duck. I eagerly look forward to the day that Leason renounces Lanasa's actions. And as some others can tell you first hand (maybe @GraphPaper Architect if he's around?), I am very negative about people who work for Lanasa but am happy to forgive anyone who actually turns it around. But Leason has now been working for Lanasa since 2019, and with each day (and each interview) I am less optimistic that the day will ever come.

 

[DLIMedia]

This was posted by Don on Facebook...

(Spoilered due to content)

Spoiler

 

[CleverNickName]

There's "scraping the bottom of the barrel," and then there's this. I wonder what he hopes to accomplish?

Whatever it is, he's willing to trade his decency for it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So every day, we all choose what kind of person we're going to be.

Spoilered for... depraved behavior:

Spoiler

And this guy chose to be the kind of person who searches through people's autopsy photos with the express purpose of tormenting a parent who lost their child.

 

[Emrico]

So every day, we all choose what kind of person we're going to be.

Spoilered for... depraved behavior:

Spoiler

And this guy chose to be the kind of person who searches through people's autopsy photos with the express purpose of tormenting a parent who lost their child.

I guess that it is probably possible to sink lower than whatever piece of slime sent that. But damn, it would take a lot of effort.