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)

 

[Jer]

Did some digging and found a couple things...

First, these books were already at the museum. I found pictures that had them in the shot:

Interesting - if those are the same books then they have them for sale in that display case.

It's doubtful they have a digital master of each AD&D book as well. The more logical solution is to order POD's from DriveThruRPG and cut the spines and covers off to insert into your larger cover binder.

I'll lay dollars to donuts that what they have there are actually old copies that have been rebound into a collection the way some folks bind up their comics or magazines into a single volume. It's not terribly cheap to do - $200 or so per book is what I've seen these days. I suspect that these are that kind of archival volume, not a new printing. And right of first sale means that you can do things like this with original printing and resell them and it's all fine.

Also, I've looked into getting manual covers that were slightly more upscale with gold foil printing before. The prices are crazy high AND you have to get bulk. Nobody does them on demand with custom text for each individual order.

If these are single archival volumes then the prices are high but not that high and you don't need to order in bulk. It's like Thesis binding or library binding but usually more expensive because thesis binding is priced for college students and library binding gets a volume discount (also the mechanics of restoring old books is very different from binding new books for a library or a stack of printed pages for a thesis).

OTOH - if these are actually new printings that they've made from a digital photocopy or something and they're reselling them, that's a completely different story. And would be utterly insane to do because the prices would be insane and also they have an ongoing copyright/trademark lawsuit going on with Wizards. So I guess it can't be discounted that this might actually be what's going on given the people involved.

 

[Bolares]

I don't think those are the exact same books. The one on display in the DHS does not seem to have the TSR logo on it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

You are all in dream land. WotC can't even stop a certain guy from stealing every single piece of 5e content, throwing it up on a website for free and profiting through ads and patreon. "That guy" even put the official electronic version of Monsters of the Multiverse on his website, before its available in April.

I don't know who you're talking about, but I do know that WoTC is currently suing LaNasa. So it appears you're wrong, unless you think that the judge will rule against WoTC and in LaNasa's favor for some reason.

As far as attendance, when I stopped by at noon on Saturday (you'd think a pretty busy time for a convention) there were only about six people there. No games going on. No events. It looked like a regular store. So I am very dubious they had 800 people, and I am positive that the claim "80% weren't even aware GaryCon was going on" is false.

These guys can't help but lie. I had an ex-roommate like that. They had to lie about everything, even minor things and things no one else really cares about.

 

[Jer]

I don't know who you're talking about, but I do know that WoTC is currently suing LaNasa. So it appears you're wrong, unless you think that the judge will rule against WoTC and in LaNasa's favor for some reason.

To be completely "fair" - they likely would only have a trademark dispute with them in the PTO right now if LaNasa hadn't filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against them first. I think Wizards would have been happy to let the PTO process work because it's very likely that they would have gotten a much cheaper win than having to go through a lawsuit.

But it doesn't change your underlying point that they are going after folks who infringe on their IP.

(And trying to stop people from pirating books is almost impossible. It's whack-a-mole - you can take one down and another will rise up in its place. It also can take a huge amount of resources just to figure out who's doing it and where to serve the papers - throw in international law and it gets worse. Who knows what's going on on their back end - at least they aren't overreacting and pulling down their digital content like they did in the 4e era...)

 

[the Jester]

Also, I've looked into getting manual covers that were slightly more upscale with gold foil printing before. The prices are crazy high AND you have to get bulk. Nobody does them on demand with custom text for each individual order.

You need to look for a company that binds theses for college students. I used to get these done for people all the time when I worked at a print shop- although we did outsource them to somewhere in, I want to say, Minnesota. (We were in California.)

 

[pantsorama]

You are all in dream land. WotC can't even stop a certain guy from stealing every single piece of 5e content, throwing it up on a website for free and profiting through ads and patreon. "That guy" even put the official electronic version of Monsters of the Multiverse on his website, before its available in April.

You speak very confidently for someone with no grasp of how litigation works.

NuTSR is actively in a lawsuit with Wotc, and are really pooping the bed. When they likely lose, any public claims about income will be used in discovery for the judgement phase, and will be open to damages rewarded. As opposed to this "fer sure real" guy on the internet who has no lawsuit with WotC or otherwise, because "that guy" is likely a fictional construct.

But assuming the website is real (much more likely as this stuff pops up all the time), it is likely those who run it are not selling WotC's stuff, nor claiming it as their own copyright, nor did they sue WotC first to unfairly claim WotC's IP. Still, not cool, but I state this to contrast what this alleged website allegedly did vs. what NuTSR is actually getting sued for, and probably is gonna lose. Also - two wrongs do not make NuTSR escape responsibility for their trademark and IP theft.

Besides, this kind of thing gets handled via a DMA take down and not through law suits (at least not at first). If what you allege is true, then I would wager a DMA action is probably already in progress, but I have no way of knowing since you made a random allegation with no sourcing, and no relevance to the discussion at hand. Suffice to say, these people get nuked from orbit all the time by all sorts of firms protecting their IP. Almost, but not quite, as fast as they pop up.

In summary, your response is a complete non-sequitur, and is obviously designed as a red herring from the very real brick wall NuTSR is hurtling towards.

But awesome hot take I guess.

 

[Froderik]

I'll lay dollars to donuts that what they have there are actually old copies that have been rebound into a collection the way some folks bind up their comics or magazines into a single volume.

I think that's exactly what these new TSR tomes are. They want $650 each, so even if these are used copies rebound, they're going to make a significant profit. Of course they haven't really explained what they've done, so anybody with more brains than money will see through this and buy their own second-hand original copies and save themselves $500 or more (if they don't already own them).

 

[Guest 7034872]

I think that's exactly what these new TSR tomes are. They want $650 each, so even if these are used copies rebound, they're going to make a significant profit. Of course they haven't really explained what they've done, so anybody with more brains than money will see through this and buy their own second-hand original copies and save themselves $500 or more (if they don't already own them).

Seems plausible.

I noted they even double-dipped on the two Monster Manuals. I admire chutzpah in people and all, but this feels more like they already know they're going down in flames and they've decided to go out swinging really hard.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think that's exactly what these new TSR tomes are. They want $650 each, so even if these are used copies rebound, they're going to make a significant profit. Of course they haven't really explained what they've done, so anybody with more brains than money will see through this and buy their own second-hand original copies and save themselves $500 or more (if they don't already own them).

They said they can do any combination, so that tells me that they have digital files and are just sending them off to be printed in these books. Which obviously is a clear copyright violation, and they seem to be blocking anyone on their group who points things like that out.

 

[billd91]

Interesting - if those are the same books then they have them for sale in that display case.

I'll lay dollars to donuts that what they have there are actually old copies that have been rebound into a collection the way some folks bind up their comics or magazines into a single volume. It's not terribly cheap to do - $200 or so per book is what I've seen these days. I suspect that these are that kind of archival volume, not a new printing. And right of first sale means that you can do things like this with original printing and resell them and it's all fine.

Yes, that is what they're claiming on Facebook now - and that they have approval from WotC in writing. That last claim I find suspicious given the lawsuit.