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)

 

[darjr]

So.... if they don't publish anything real or worth buying... how do they make money?

Volume!


No sorry, grits and donations

 

[Willie the Duck]

The text feels like it was written by a poorly programmed AI. Or someone who had never taken an English or Communications class ever.

I suspect a moderate middle schooler or poorly performing high schooler might make some of these mistakes, especially if they did not then proofread their work. That this group of people continue to to turn out this kind of material, undoubtedly knowing that their poor writing and proofing is the subject of ridicule, indicates they are more than just someone who stopped developing writing skills at a young age (my suspicion: they are leaning into the bad, as it continues people talking about them, and they've resigned themselves to only selling to people who purchase their material as a political statement).

 

[Jer]

So.... if they don't publish anything real or worth buying... how do they make money?

1. Claim WotC copyrights as their own.
2. ???
3. Profit!

It's a very simple business plan. I'm shocked that nobody else uses it.

 

[Wilphe]

So.... if they don't publish anything real or worth buying... how do they make money?

Are they making money?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Huh? An idea. A contest thread to rewrite that passage. I might have an interesting prize too….

Well, I was giving away $1000 to small publishers who needed it (and boy do they need it), but the contest ended yesterday and they didn't apply

Agreed. I haven't read a lot of OSR stuff, but most of what I have read has been competently written and edited. As has the actual Basic and 1e stuff I've read, with the only problems being from the occasional wonky layout, because it had to be literally done by hand.

It's definitely laziness here. They didn't bother to read anything out loud. And I'm pretty sure they turned the spell/grammar check off on whatever writing program they used (all those wavy red underlines just get in the way) because even something as crappy as Word's grammar checker would have caught the "there is trees" bit.

For sure it's laziness. I'm not the best writer myself (especially when I type fast). But there is no excuse for this. None. Word underlines misspellings. Grammarly has a free version. Certainly, they know someone who can read it first. Or reading it out loud. Or printing a proof copy (in fact, many printing companies require this).

 

[freebfrost]

And in case you're wondering about the "Preview" banner on the top right of the video, it's because the site they got all the video clips from - iStock by Getty Images - has an in browser video editor that puts that on everything.

Also took me about the same time to find the "Spooky Alien" clip on iStock video.

I mentioned it on the SF FB group and LaNasa responded with a weak attempt at doxxing. Par for the course.

 

[DLIMedia]

Are they making money?

I don't see how... the only revenue they have so far is (1) over $5K from the IndieGoGo, and (2) whatever they've presold from Cult of Abaddon, and (3) anything they've made off the dollar products on the DHSM site.

When you consider the amount of legal fees they must have incurred so far, they have to be in the red.

All that being said, I don't know what their endgame is here. Given the amount of bad press they have, and their inability to promote their flagship product to the point of generating actual sales, I don't see how they're going to avoid being bankrupt within 1-2 months. And on that road to bankruptcy they're burning every bridge they come across.

 

[darjr]

Also took me about the same time to find the "Spooky Alien" clip on iStock video.

I mentioned it on the SF FB group and LaNasa responded with a weak attempt at doxxing. Par for the course.

Which fb group?

 

[Wilphe]

Well, I was giving away $1000 to small publishers who needed it (and boy do they need it), but the contest ended yesterday and they didn't apply

For sure it's laziness. I'm not the best writer myself (especially when I type fast). But there is no excuse for this. None. Word underlines misspellings. Grammarly has a free version. Certainly, they know someone who can read it first. Or reading it out loud. Or printing a proof copy (in fact, many printing companies require this).

Hey it might be arrogance, "I sur dont need no computer tellin me how to rite Merican"

or contempt for their audience


Also I am sure in their heads NUTSR don't think they are a small publisher, or rather they are as big or medium as they need to be for whatever the rhetoric requires.

When they talk about how they have a Gygax and associate themselves with "industry legends" and the "TSR Army" they like to project an image of bigness

But they are also medium enough to try to pull the "underdog threatened by corporate behemoth"

But they are never going to pretend to be small, not just because that would require humility and self-awareness and they aren't really overburdened with either, but also because it goes against the "We are TSR" attitude.


++++++++++++

In fact NuTSR, are giving off strong "Fantasy Heatbreaker" vibes, but lacking the "One Good Idea" that they each had that made them interesting

Its not surprising to me that at one point Giantlands was going to be a product of theirs

 

[Willie the Duck]

I don't see how... the only revenue they have so far is (1) over $5K from the IndieGoGo, and (2) whatever they've presold from Cult of Abaddon, and (3) anything they've made off the dollar products on the DHSM site.

When you consider the amount of legal fees they must have incurred so far, they have to be in the red.

All that being said, I don't know what their endgame is here. Given the amount of bad press they have, and their inability to promote their flagship product to the point of generating actual sales, I don't see how they're going to avoid being bankrupt within 1-2 months. And on that road to bankruptcy they're burning every bridge they come across.

I'm not sure they know what their endgame is. I think the initial idea was to create a small game company, possibly by bringing in some people who actually know how to write (Jim Ward, etc.) while simultaneously performing a longshot legal battle (to successfully claim that WotC had not defended those Trademarks, and thus they were up for the taking). I think once Ernie made those comments, they switched to a more 'hey, we can capitalize on the angry alt-right crowd (somehow).' I think after that didn't materialize (significantly), it's just been ducking and weaving and hoping something will emerge as a reasonable strategy.

But, in the end, I think these will be bankrupt themselves without anything popping up. Those immortal businessmen like Lasagna will go on to their next scheme, while the rest of the crew will mop up their lives as best they can (what did Ernie do, again, while not being a game developer?).