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)

 

[J.Quondam]

After spending the last couple years seeing how Sidney Powell and Rudy Gulianni have law degrees, I lost my faith to assume that lawyers all know what they are doing. Maybe that was my fault, because I assumed the Bar is hard to pass and thus assumed lawyers had to be pretty smart. I guess they're like everyone else, and there are plenty who....aren't. LaNasa's lawyers sure seem to proving this.

Sometimes I get the impression that "brazen" can be a viable replacement for intelligent, at least for some.

 

[Willie the Duck]

After spending the last couple years seeing how Sidney Powell and Rudy Gulianni have law degrees, I lost my faith to assume that lawyers all know what they are doing. Maybe that was my fault, because I assumed the Bar is hard to pass and thus assumed lawyers had to be pretty smart. I guess they're like everyone else, and there are plenty who....aren't. LaNasa's lawyers sure seem to proving this.

Speaking as someone who studied in a field at the intersection of law, medicine and academia (and working at the intersection of the first two and tech), I've discovered a dirty little secret about all terminal degrees (JDs, MDs, PhDs). It is that to get one you probably can't be dumb as rocks, but you really don't have to be smart, so much as dedicated, good at studying, have a good memory, and so on (all of them part of broad-concept smartness, I suppose).

Beyond that, just think of the old joke: "Q: What do you call someone who graduated from Med School at the bottom of their class?" "A: Doctor." Switch that to Law School and it still works. There are always people squeaking over the line of being able to do something (sometimes, and maybe only long enough to get through the qualifying process and then fail spectacularly when they get out into the wider world).

Regardless, smartness (and competence) are often a lot more siloed than one might imagine. Gulianni is a good example -- he was a successful federal prosecutor. Pretty much none of the things he's done since which call his smartness into question are related to him attempting to prosecute someone else in court.

LaNasa's lawyer... I don't know. Part of me almost has to believe that they are just counting down the days until they can be done with him and completely phoning it in. The number of times we've noted where he's continued to hamper his own case makes me think the lawyer is simply not in control of the situation. But then again that might be the same 'no lawyer would be that stupid' line of thinking you're realizing may not be valid.

 

[Umbran]

Plus the whole "No Coasters" rings and an open water bottle just scream responsibility.

Coffee rings are a whisper compared to the bellow of the weapon in the open without a trigger lock.

 

[adamantyr]

I'm betting LaNasa's galaxy-brain strategy is to get Musk to buy D&D and put him in charge of it.

Doesn't it have to be for sale first? Its not like it's up on eBay with a "Buy it Now!" button.

Right now, Elon's acumen with purchases is very much in question... Just because Hasbro posted lower than expected earnings, they're in the same crowd as everyone else.

And also, Elon is a guy with a huge ego. He buys social media platforms, space programs, futuristic technology... I can't see him wanting to buy a "toy company".

 

[Vaalingrade]

I can't see him wanting to buy a "toy company".

He can get more Deus Ex cosplay guns for his bedside table!

 

[Deset Gled]

The following is pure speculation but I think that either:

1: The lawyer isn't very competent
2: The lawyer knows this case is doomed, so he's making "showy moves" to make it look like he gave it a good fight to impress LaNasa (he know his client can't win so he's trying to make the client happy).
3: The lawyer knows the case is doomed, has told LaNasa so but has been ordered to fight, to object etc and is doing these "moves" under direction of LaNasa

People with more court knowledge, please feel free to tell me how wrong I am

To expand on my comments about this from earlier, I think Lanasa's lawyer was attempting to spend Tenkar's money. They probably didn't expect to win this motion. Rather, they had hoped that the judge would have asked for a response from Tenkar's lawyer. That response would cost Tenkar money. There's also a possibility that Lanasa's lawyer is laying the ground work for an appeal when they lose; again, not an appeal they expect to win, but an appeal to cost Tenkar time and money.

Luckily, the judge is both smart enough and bold enough to call this out, and nipped it in the bud. It's worth pointing out that Tenkar's lawyer wisely brought up the possibility of enacting NY's anti-SLAPP laws in their earlier motion (but stopped short of asking for action using that option) to help call out to the judge that Lanasa is likely to use these tactics.

Lanasa wants everyone to think he's rich enough that he can throw endless money and lawyers, so people will be intimidated and back down. But I really don't think that's true. Lanasa has a lot of net wealth in real estate, but I don't think he has very much fluidity in his investments.

 

[Ancalagon]

Coffee rings are a whisper compared to the bellow of the weapon in the open without a trigger lock.

it's apparently a toy/cosplay item?

Why would Elon do that? I don't know, trolling?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why would Elon do that?

Being an eternally sleep deprived maniac who didn't get enough non-monetary attention as a child?

 

[Mannahnin]

Being an eternally sleep deprived maniac who didn't get enough non-monetary attention as a child?

Being divorced means your wife can't shame you for leaving your videogame cosplay replica gun and $169.99 George Washington replica flintlock on the nightstand, or for not using coasters and getting soda rings on that same nice piece of furniture.

 

[Umbran]

it's apparently a toy/cosplay item?

Why would Elon do that? I don't know, trolling?

Okay, that's weird.

The only things that come to mind are not Grandma-friendly, so, I'll just leave it at that.