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.

65B1E080-EEE9-45DD-AC2C-C55BD9DB6104.jpeg

gencon.jpeg
  • 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.
tsr_tweets.jpg
  • 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.
dineharttweet.png
dinebreakup.jpeg
concon.jpg
fr.jpeg
1639501994946.png
  • 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.
lanasa.jpg
  • 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.
lawsuitwotctsr.png
  • 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).
Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 10.10.12 AM.png

  • 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.
FYDaZwYXkAsdjW0.jpeg

(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)
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad


log in or register to remove this ad

Faolyn

(she/her)
Never mind the grammar, why are the font sizes different between the two? Why does Mi-Kar have the text indented for 'Realms' but the 'adventure' is still hidden beneath the staff? Are these fixed already, or are they examples of what is to be/being fixed? (Might be a rhetorical question...)
Because LaNasa has no understanding of layout or design.
 



... and the judge has already responded to Lanasa. Emphasis mine.

...

Translation: Your yammering about not filing on time is complete BS, and you'll get one more chance to actually respond to the very real points brought up by Tenkar or the case will be dismissed. I think I like this judge.

"Plaintiffs are advised to review Chambers Practices." Ha. Hope you spent good money on that garbage, Lanasa.

We should have an update response from Lanasa in three days, and a real court date on Jan 6th, 2023.

Lanasa's next response in this case is in, and it's absolutely terrible. He basically* just repeats the same arguments from his last filing, complaining about the filing date of Tenkar's response.

I'm going to jump around here and pull out what I think are the key bits:

-----
Your Honor:
I submit this Letter in Response to the Letter Motion filed by counsel for the Defendant. ECF
No. 14.

Underlying Facts
[5 paragraphs re-hashing the times when things were filed] ...

The Court Should Deny the Request for Additional Time and Treat the Letter as Efiled on November
21, 2022 as Defendant’s Rule 12(b) Motion in its Entirety

[half a page of the same BS that he already said in his last filing]

Thus, based upon this Court’s Rules alone, it should deny Defendant’s counsel’s Letter motion in
its entirety in so far as a request is made for an extension. The Court should hold that the mutually
agreed upon Stipulation should be fully enforced as to Attorney Schneider and his client

[another page and a half repeating things from the past filing] ...

Conclusion
As was noted above, Attorney Schneider has had more than five weeks to prepare any motion to
dismiss. This Court should deny the request as made by Attorney Schneider for an extension and an
Initial Conference. It is further respectfully requested that the Court grant Plaintiffs’ counsel
permission to respond to this Motion for Rule 12(b) relief within the time constraints of the Federal
Rules, from the date of the Court’s ruling on this motion for an extension.

Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Bernard V. Kleinman
Bernard V. Kleinman, Esq.
Attorney for Plaintiffs
-----

That's it. No discussion of the actual important things said in the motion. No discussion of the case itself at all*. Literally, no defense. He completely ignored the judges last statement. He basically just re-submitted his last document. Completely phoned it in.

Based on the judge's last ruling, I don't think this is going to go well for Lanasa.

*Edit: Buried in three pages of absolute crap, Lanasa's lawyer did actually spend one paragraph addressing Tenkar's reasons for dismissing the case. Formatting and emphasis mine:

-----
Attorney Schneider makes his request based upon an alleged planned Rule 12 Motion to dismiss.
This Court should construe the letter motion (ECF No. 14) as that Motion under the Stipulation, with
whatever persuasiveness, and shortcomings it may possess. The letter motion submitted by Attorney
Schneider sets forth both a legal and factual basis for his Rule 12 request for relief. While it may
contain any number of shortcomings, such as supported evidence, affidavits, etc., as it also contains
any number of specious arguments and assertions as made by Attorney Schneider
, and not
represented as relying upon statements of his client, and these should be treated appropriately. For
example, Attorney Schneider, himself[1] makes the following (unsupported) statements of “fact”:

"This lawsuit stems from Plaintiff Lanasa’s conscious involvement in public controversy
(e.g., as a public figure repeatedly running for public office), engagement in myriad forms of
inappropriate conduct, and invitation attention from the public and Defendant (e.g., by
publicly harassing Defendant and, upon information and belief, mailing feces to Defendant’s
home). Such conduct by Plaintiff Lanasa also includes distribution of reprehensible racist
materials, open affiliation with individuals who publicly disseminate vile pro-Nazi and white
supremacist materials, . . ."

See Letter Motion at p. 1, ¶ 2. Emphases added.[2]
Further, Attorney Schneider has already laid out a legal argument as a basis for his proffered
Rule 12 relief; citing to both case law and statute. See Letter Motion at pp. 2-3, Ns. 2-16. He has
cited to more than fifty cases. Thus, his Motion as having been researched and briefed
-----

Basically, this is claiming that Tenkar's lawyer (not Tenkar himself) is saying all these things about Lanasa without properly laying the foundation (e.g. evidence). I don't think it's well stated, but it is a real, legal argument. It might be just barely enough to prevent the case from be summarily dismissed.
 
Last edited:

Ancalagon

Dusty Dragon
Lanasa's next response in this case is in, and it's absolutely terrible. He basically* just repeats the same arguments from his last filing, complaining about the filing date of Tenkar's response.

I'm going to jump around here and pull out what I think are the key bits:

-----
Your Honor:
I submit this Letter in Response to the Letter Motion filed by counsel for the Defendant. ECF
No. 14.

Underlying Facts
[5 paragraphs re-hashing the times when things were filed] ...

The Court Should Deny the Request for Additional Time and Treat the Letter as Efiled on November
21, 2022 as Defendant’s Rule 12(b) Motion in its Entirety

[half a page of the same BS that he already said in his last filing]

Thus, based upon this Court’s Rules alone, it should deny Defendant’s counsel’s Letter motion in
its entirety in so far as a request is made for an extension. The Court should hold that the mutually
agreed upon Stipulation should be fully enforced as to Attorney Schneider and his client

[another page and a half repeating things from the past filing] ...

Conclusion
As was noted above, Attorney Schneider has had more than five weeks to prepare any motion to
dismiss. This Court should deny the request as made by Attorney Schneider for an extension and an
Initial Conference. It is further respectfully requested that the Court grant Plaintiffs’ counsel
permission to respond to this Motion for Rule 12(b) relief within the time constraints of the Federal
Rules, from the date of the Court’s ruling on this motion for an extension.

Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Bernard V. Kleinman
Bernard V. Kleinman, Esq.
Attorney for Plaintiffs
-----

That's it. No discussion of the actual important things said in the motion. No discussion of the case itself at all*. Literally, no defense. He completely ignored the judges last statement. He basically just re-submitted his last document. Completely phoned it in.

Based on the judge's last ruling, I don't think this is going to go well for Lanasa.

*Edit: Buried in three pages of absolute crap, Lanasa's lawyer did actually spend one paragraph addressing Tenkar's reasons for dismissing the case. Formatting and emphasis mine:

-----
Attorney Schneider makes his request based upon an alleged planned Rule 12 Motion to dismiss.
This Court should construe the letter motion (ECF No. 14) as that Motion under the Stipulation, with
whatever persuasiveness, and shortcomings it may possess. The letter motion submitted by Attorney
Schneider sets forth both a legal and factual basis for his Rule 12 request for relief. While it may
contain any number of shortcomings, such as supported evidence, affidavits, etc., as it also contains
any number of specious arguments and assertions as made by Attorney Schneider
, and not
represented as relying upon statements of his client, and these should be treated appropriately. For
example, Attorney Schneider, himself[1] makes the following (unsupported) statements of “fact”:

"This lawsuit stems from Plaintiff Lanasa’s conscious involvement in public controversy
(e.g., as a public figure repeatedly running for public office), engagement in myriad forms of
inappropriate conduct, and invitation attention from the public and Defendant (e.g., by
publicly harassing Defendant and, upon information and belief, mailing feces to Defendant’s
home). Such conduct by Plaintiff Lanasa also includes distribution of reprehensible racist
materials, open affiliation with individuals who publicly disseminate vile pro-Nazi and white
supremacist materials, . . ."

See Letter Motion at p. 1, ¶ 2. Emphases added.[2]
Further, Attorney Schneider has already laid out a legal argument as a basis for his proffered
Rule 12 relief; citing to both case law and statute. See Letter Motion at pp. 2-3, Ns. 2-16. He has
cited to more than fifty cases. Thus, his Motion as having been researched and briefed
-----

Basically, this is claiming that Tenkar's lawyer (not Tenkar himself) is saying all these things about Lanasa without properly laying the foundation (e.g. evidence). I don't think it's well stated, but it is a real, legal argument. It might be just barely enough to prevent the case from be summarily dismissed.
again, IANAL, but... with a bit of a weak argument like that, ignoring the previous directive from the judge is... not a good way to get them to entertain the argument?
 

again, IANAL, but... with a bit of a weak argument like that, ignoring the previous directive from the judge is... not a good way to get them to entertain the argument?

Especially when the underlying argument is so fundamentally stupid. The idea that when a judge says "This is due by Nov 21" what he really, legally means is "This is due by Nov 17" is blatantly a losing proposition. I have to admit it's so wrong that it makes me step back and wonder "what am I missing here?".

But then I remember that the brains in this operation is the guy couldn't even get his name right when suing someone; the legal company name is "TSR Hobbies, LLC", but is referred to as just "TSR LLC" in the court docs for this case.. The stupidest explanation is usually best; this is probably all the work that Lanasa could afford to pay his lawyer for.
 
Last edited:




Related Articles

Remove ads

Remove ads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Remove ads

Recent & Upcoming Releases

Top