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)

 

[Ancalagon]

Just because a piece of media is bad, doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed. One of my favorite movies is "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter." It is a bad movie and I love every minute of it. At least what I can remember of it....I have to find my copy and give it a rewatch!

I saw part of it filmed!

 

[Umbran]

For those wondering at what sense it all makes...

What, in all of this, makes us think that LaNasa actually has a plan, and that plan is working? This guy is not a four dimensional chess master. It doesn't make sense because it isn't a crafted plan to some end. It is a series of moves that LaNasa thought might be lucrative, that he didn't think through, none of which have actually sunk the boat yet.

 

[Vaalingrade]

These guys always tend to think there's a hidden majority that supports them and will swoop in to save them from 'the bad guys' at the last minute, despite that majority with that kind of power failing to materialize ever for any of them.

 

[Willie the Duck]

When you step back and look at this from a very high level, it's really a tragic story.

Justin had it pretty good. Owned several businesses. Owned several properties. And he's throwing it all away, for what? Because he wants people to think he is part of the original TSR company?

From a macro level, that seems such a strange hill to die on and lose everything for.

For those wondering at what sense it all makes...

What, in all of this, makes us think that LaNasa actually has a plan, and that plan is working? This guy is not a four dimensional chess master. It doesn't make sense because it isn't a crafted plan to some end. It is a series of moves that LaNasa thought might be lucrative, that he didn't think through, none of which have actually sunk the boat yet.

It's worth mentioning that LaNasa got whatever businesses and properties he has through some rather risky endeavors -- tattoo parlors and oxygen bars and the like are right up there with starting a restaurant in the ranks of risky ventures where a huge chunk fail within 2-3 years. He's someone who has previously taken gambles, and (barring some brilliance we haven't as of yet otherwise seen simply through the fortunes that -- sometimes -- are afforded those who take big risks) they have paid off. He applied the same 'winning' strategy, and lo-and-behold, lightning hasn't struck the same spot for the fifth time.

 

[Umbran]

He applied the same 'winning' strategy, and lo-and-behold, lightning hasn't struck the same spot for the fifth time.

Um, "do something risky" is not a strategy. Unless his oxygen bars and tattoo parlors get their business by being transphobic and trying to steal IP from much larger companies, there is very little in common between them.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Unless his oxygen bars and tattoo parlors get their business by being transphobic and trying to steal IP from much larger companies

I'd want to see the flash up on display in the tattoo parlor before making that call.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Um, "do something risky" is not a strategy. Unless his oxygen bars and tattoo parlors get their business by being transphobic and trying to steal IP from much larger companies, there is very little in common between them.

"Um," call it what you like. I suppose I could have included strategy in the quote marks, but I think it somewhat is a strategy, if not an actually advisable one. Either way, it is a pattern of behavior and a reward-response structure that can explain decisions. Some people make a pattern of risky decisions that seem to work for an uncannily long time. Predominantly as an observer effect -- we don't take notice of people who did something risky and get hoisted for it on the first or second attempt, it's only the outliers that get talked about. Regardless, for those outliers, the previous success in that pattern reinforces to them that they ought to continue the pattern.

My larger point is that he's taken relatively big risks, and it has previously paid off for him*. Thus it is no surprise that it made perfect sense to him to try to play chicken with Hasbro. Likewise, for the rest of us it is no surprise that it didn't work.
*And I think we can all agree that it wasn't because of his phenomenal brilliance or business acumen.

As for the transphobia and such, I still wonder if that was the initial strategy. Maybe it was and he just gambled that WotC would rather pay him to go away than make an example of him. Or maybe it wasn't until Ernie's interview outed them and then he decided to lean into the cringe (either to really make WotC want him to go away, or else because he thought he could pull huge amounts from the like-thinkers). Either way we probably will never find out what he thought he was doing, and all the potential options seem mind-numbingly dumb.

 

[Umbran]

My larger point is that he's taken relatively big risks, and it has previously paid off for him*.

Well, paid off to an extent. He owns some small businesses with a handful of employees, a couple bits of real estate. But, we don't know what his income actually is, or what his debt profile is, or what those pieces of real estate are really worth.

Acting like past risky endeavors really paid off, whether they actually did or didn't, is part of the profile, isn't it?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I suspect he was confident that his plan would work, that he had cracked some secret formula for success that had eluded other "lesser" people, who just weren't reaching for the stars like he was, who just weren't as smart as he is. I think a lot of the random lashings-out we've seen are of a man who believed he could not fail and is being dramatically confronted with evidence to the contrary.

The extra weird thing is the people who were there: Tim, Luke, Ernie, Skip, etc. aren't making a ton of money in the industry. So why would he think he could? Let alone be willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in this fight. Makes no sense...

One thing that video mentioned is that it bodes ill for LaNasa following any judgments from the court. He seems like exactly the sort that thinks he could skate around them and no one would notice.

Already violating the court order from yesterday, good job Justin Lanasa.

 

[Faolyn]

Um, "do something risky" is not a strategy. Unless his oxygen bars and tattoo parlors get their business by being transphobic and trying to steal IP from much larger companies, there is very little in common between them.

They do have something in common, though: LaNasa. He thinks that because he was successful with those businesses, he would also be successful in IP theft. (I have no idea how successful they actually are, of course, but they're still open and he has multiple sites for his tattoo business.)

Don't forget that he still has employees and customers after it was made publicly known he made female employees wrestle in grits. And since his businesses thrive (or at least continue to be open) despite that and his generally odious personality, he feels that he can continue to be bigoted and have NuTSR succeed.