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)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In a bankruptcy case update, WotC has chosen legaL representation local to North Carolina.

View attachment 289506
View attachment 289508

...and, compared to Justin's attorneys, these guys seem like heavy hitters. They have well over 100 attorneys on staff.

About Us

www.parkerpoe.com

You know how many attorneys are in Justin's law firm? TWO.

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

That said, given what is known of this litigation so far, I’m thinking LaNasa’s attorneys are not thinking that they will WIN, they’re going to aim for mitigating the losses.

And like I said many pages ago, my instincts tell me WotC isn’t interested in letting LaNasa off easily. They’re going to aggressively assert their rights in an effort to set an example to anyone else who wants to try them with frivolous BS. They want his head on a plaque on their wall.

 

[Zardnaar]

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

That said, given what is known of this litigation so far, I’m thinking LaNasa’s attorneys are not thinking that they will WIN, they’re going to aim for mitigating the losses.

And like I said many pages ago, my instincts tell me WotC isn’t interested in letting LaNasa off easily. They’re going to aggressively assert their rights in an effort to set an example to anyone else who wants to try them with frivolous BS. They want his head on a plaque on their wall.

Shane. Anyway.....

 

[Jer]

That said, given what is known of this litigation so far, I’m thinking LaNasa’s attorneys are not thinking that they will WIN, they’re going to aim for mitigating the losses.

As this saga has gone on for a long time it's useful to remember that what started it is that LaNasa sued Wizards of the Coast and not the other way around. Wizards brought their suit on him after he started all of this.

So IMO if LaNasa's attorneys are at the point where they're mitigating the losses it's reached the point of farce.

And like I said many pages ago, my instincts tell me WotC isn’t interested in letting LaNasa off easily. They’re going to aggresively assert their rights in an effort to set an example to anyone else who wants to try them with frivolous BS. They want his head on a plaque on their wall.

As another reminder, this time from the big timeline at the top, what Wizards is suing for is:

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.

IANAL so maybe someone who is can explain this - it seems like if LaNasa wants out of this mess he could just agree to give everything to Wizards and see if they'll negotiate on the treble damages and costs side of things. Instead of all of this bankruptcy and hiding assets he could just hand it over and say "sorry for trying to jack your copyright" and see if he could get Wizards to agree to just let it all move on with each side covering their own costs. Is that right?

 

[LordEntrails]

IANAL so maybe someone who is can explain this - it seems like if LaNasa wants out of this mess he could just agree to give everything to Wizards and see if they'll negotiate on the treble damages and costs side of things. Instead of all of this bankruptcy and hiding assets he could just hand it over and say "sorry for trying to jack your copyright" and see if he could get Wizards to agree to just let it all move on with each side covering their own costs. Is that right?

But why should he do all that when he can shuffle funds and product around , declare bankruptcy and say he has nothing to give them?

Of course the chance that such is going to work in his favor is... minimal. But its the way he thinks.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

IANAL so maybe someone who is can explain this - it seems like if LaNasa wants out of this mess he could just agree to give everything to Wizards and see if they'll negotiate on the treble damages and costs side of things. Instead of all of this bankruptcy and hiding assets he could just hand it over and say "sorry for trying to jack your copyright" and see if he could get Wizards to agree to just let it all move on with each side covering their own costs. Is that right?

That would probably be his best move. Hasbro may be in more of a murum aries attigit mindframe at this point, and I would salute them for it.

 

[Jer]

That would probably be his best move. Hasbro may be in more of a murum aries attigit mindframe at this point, and I would salute them for it.

I think if LaNasa were to basically hold his hands up and surrender it all over to them, the story shifts from "garbage person thinks he's found the one weird trick to soaking a company for a lot of money" to "big corporation beats up on little guy". From a PR perspective I'd think that Wizards would have to consider standing down their own side of things if he gave them the stuff that they demand in the lawsuit and issued a public acknowledgement of their rights.

But why should he do all that when he can shuffle funds and product around , declare bankruptcy and say he has nothing to give them?

Of course the chance that such is going to work in his favor is... minimal. But its the way he thinks.

Yeah - that's the thing. He'd have to admit that he was wrong about all of it. That his clever scheme was actually really stupid.

So I can see why he's not doing it. Heck, I can see why he probably doesn't even consider it an option.

 

[Umbran]

So IMO if LaNasa's attorneys are at the point where they're mitigating the losses it's reached the point of farce.

It was already a farce when it started, honestly. His lawyers are bound to give him the best defense they can, which likely falls sort of "winning".

IANAL so maybe someone who is can explain this - it seems like if LaNasa wants out of this mess he could just agree to give everything to Wizards and see if they'll negotiate on the treble damages and costs side of things.

In theory. In practice, WotC has no real motive to negotiate.

 

[Nikosandros]

In theory. In practice, WotC has no real motive to negotiate.

I agree. It seems that WotC has a very strong case. Also, one of the reasons they gave for attempting to change the OGL was that they wanted to protect the D&D brand from hateful content. Whether they were sincere or not, it seems to me that they have quite an incentive to "punish" LaNasa and quash his racist material.

 

[JackMann]

I mean, from our perspective, it seems clear that Justin deserves to be ground down in court. However, I could see them settling for somewhat less provided they got their main objectives met, if only to avoid the possibility of him spinning it into "big corporation bullying the little guy." But that's not likely to happen, because it would require him to admit he was wrong.

He has to believe he's cleverer than everyone else. That his legal trickery, movement of assets, and other schemes will pay off big time. Because if they don't, if he was wrong, then not only does he face real consequences, it will turn out that he wasn't smarter than everyone in the room. He's staked his own identity on the idea that he's the smartest guy in the room. It's why he's obsessed with his net worth relative to other people. He views his wealth as proof of his native superiority. If he fails here, he has to find some way to rationalize it that doesn't require him to admit he was wrong. He'll keep pushing it, and when he still loses, he'll say he was cheated. They defrauded him. It was the United Forces of Woke coming to cheat him of his birthright.

 

[Nylanfs]

Yea, people like this I'm fairly sure can't even contemplate the mere possibility they are wrong.