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)

 

[Umbran]

Courts do not charge legal fees for the research that the judge and their staff do, that's just part of the general costs and also part of where the tax money involved goes. Whether a judge spends an hour, or a hundred hours, working on a judgment the fee is the same - to do otherwise is considered to be an accessibility to justice issue.

"Legal fees" or "legal bills" is colloquially expected to include paying lawyers, not just the court. If your lawyers are busy doing research, they are racking up hours that will have to be paid.

"Court fees" are fees from the court itself.

 

[Autumnal]

As a side note, just in time to avoid having to worry about anything in the module (assuming comes out ) - I present a needlessly well researched and cited review of GiantLands (2021).

Ugh. The lack of editing on that review drove me away halfway through. His supply of ellipses needs to go on strike for better conditions, including some sort of finder’s service and shelter for dropped words. Some key concepts get used and used without ever getting actually explained (like “Sigil”), and at several points there’s a chaotic scattering of examples without info I expect to find in a review. Like with species: how many of them are there? Do they include typical fantasy ones, with or without an attempt at reskinning? Thinks like that.

If I ever get really curious about the game, I’ll need to hunt up some other review.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but like so much when discussing the "old days" of the hobby, experiences vary widely based on location and culture and attitudes of local groups of players. I wonder if the existence of a gender divide depended the type of geek cliques one's game scene drew from. We always had girl players. Not 50%, but at least 25%. Twin Cities suburb. Minnesota. Mid to late 80s. But at least half, if not more, of the players were theater kids.

There are a bunch of factors that can play into it; if you've got teenage boys forming a game group, the same ones that are shy around girls aren't going to suddenly be less shy about them when trying to find people to game with.

 

[MNblockhead]

There are a bunch of factors that can play into it; if you've got teenage boys forming a game group, the same ones that are shy around girls aren't going to suddenly be less shy about them when trying to find people to game with.

Right, I'm just curious if the "shy around girls" crowd are more common in the more computer geek, math geek, hard-science geek crowd than the theater kids. At least that was my experience in the 80s. But things are much different now. Being into computers is just the norm and not really nerdy or geeky. There are a lot more girls involved in tech and hard sciences. Gaming culture has gone mainstream. Many of the discussions on the topic of the acceptance of girls in games seems to be stuck in earlier decades and just doesn't reflect what I'm seeing with younger people getting into the hobby today. I'm not saying that it is no longer an issue, but it is much different and better than it was. And, experiences of how bad is was in the "old days" does vary.

 

[Wincenworks]

Like with species: how many of them are there? Do they include typical fantasy ones, with or without an attempt at reskinning?

I was tapping out at 4,000 words going over the basics... and also it's difficult to say how helpful the information is.

Species
Anakim (1) - No variants, kind of like half-Giants from Dark Sun but unclear
Andro (5) - Five variants on them with no clear information other than 4 of them get extra bonuses and one (the "flesh" robots) do not.
Ion (1) - No variants and like... they're alien energy people who are vaguely defined
Manquatti (1) - Maybe rip off of some things in Star Wars
Morph (2) - Bird people and cat people, too generic to call
Nephilim - Humans but also giants, otherwise poorly defined
Sapiens - They're humans... but not, but yes.

So all up there's 12 species but some of them are overlap, some are weird (playing a Flesh andro is being a Sapien that can never die, and doesn't need to sleep) in that respect and none of them are well defined enough to say if they're a copy-paste etc.

Each one only gets about three paragraphs at most to sum them up, and often a lot of that is squandered explaining they can be x or they can be the opposite of x, or citing lore that is not present in the book.

Further complicated by the fact that the actual play with Jim seemed to go against a lot of player's understanding of the material.

Monsters
Monsters is where the real hinky-copy pasting happens.

Looking at the monsters, the fantasy ones because he has a tendency to grab from random cultures and either file the serial numbers off or use an alternative spelling etc.

For example the Atahsaia are in there... but the write up for them is so brief it's not clear if this was what they decided to whittle them down to in order for space considerations, or if Jim started hearing about them and just went "Yeah, those sound like ogres...."

It's extra complicated because even the ones that are referencing unique Native American mythology.... are doing it, very poorly.

Edit: Realized I addressed the wrong thing in the initial post, also thank you for your feedback.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right, I'm just curious if the "shy around girls" crowd are more common in the more computer geek, math geek, hard-science geek crowd than the theater kids.

I'd be the last one to know, being 66.

That said, I saw more groups with more female players back in the day based out of SF clubs and the like than out of wargame clubs.

 

[Deset Gled]

Lanasa v @tenkar update:

-----
ORDER. Upon further review of Plaintiffs' 62 Second Amended Complaint, the Court lacks sufficient information to determine whether the parties are completely diverse. The Second Amended Complaint alleges that Plaintiff LaNasa is a "resident" of North Carolina and that Defendants are "residing" in New York. For diversity purposes, an individual person is a citizen of the state where he or she is "domiciled." Van Buskirk v. United Grp. of Cos., Inc., 935 F.3d 49, 53 (2d Cir. 2019). An allegation that a person "resides" in a state does not establish that the person is "domiciled" there. Id. at 54. A person's "domicile" is where he or she both resides and intends to remain indefinitely. Id. A person can reside in multiple states but can be domiciled only in one. Id. By alleging only the individual parties' residency, the Second Amended Complaint provides too little information for the Court to ascertain their domiciles and thus their citizenship. It also leaves the Court unable to ascertain the LLC plaintiffs citizenship because the LLC plaintiffs share the citizenship of their sole member, LaNasa. Carter v. HealthPort Techs., LLC, 822 F.3d 47, 60 (2d Cir. 2016).To avoid the delay of permitting yet another amended complaint, and because curing this deficiency should be extraordinarily simple, the Court directs Plaintiff LaNasa to file a declaration by April 5, 2024, specifying the state in which he is "domiciled." The Court further directs Defendants to file declarations by April 5, 2024, specifying the state in which each of them is "domiciled." The declarations shall not address any other matters.The Court will address Defendants' argument as to the amount in controversy and argument that Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim in its forthcoming Memorandum and Order on Defendants' 64 motion to dismiss. Ordered by Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto on 4/2/2024. (MJF)
-----

Summary: Lanasa's lawsuit didn't properly handle with the issues of where he, his LLCs, and Tenkar legally live. He has three days to fix it.

 

[DLIMedia]

The court having to UNDERLINE instructions is probably not a good thing.

 

[Jer]

Lanasa v @tenkar update:

Summary: Lanasa's lawsuit didn't properly handle with the issues of where he, his LLCs, and Tenkar legally live. He has three days to fix it.

I'm not a lawyer, but this feels like something even a mediocre lawyer should have gotten right. Am I wrong about that?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm just curious if the "shy around girls" crowd are more common in the more computer geek, math geek, hard-science geek crowd than the theater kids.

I’d expect it would be, even with the societal changes you noted. A good part of the theater/performance environment is inherently social, and is going to draw more extroverted personalities, on average, than environments where success based on individual efforts & skills are more the norm.



(That’s not to say introverts aren’t present or even quite successful. Just talking odds of demographics.)