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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...

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.

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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
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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(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)
 
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Morrus

Morrus is the owner of EN World and EN Publishing, creator of the ENnies, creator of the What's OLD is NEW (WOIN), Simply6, and Awfully Cheerful Engine game systems, publisher of Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, and co-host of the weekly Morrus' Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk podcast. He has been a game publisher and RPG community administrator for over 20 years, and has been reporting on TTRPG and D&D news for over two decades. He is also on the socials.

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J

JackMann

Adventurer
Nikosandros said:
I agree that confirmation bias is very common, we all suffer from it and it is important to be mindful about it. OTOH, this is in the realm of far-fetched fantasies that have no basis in reality.
Click to expand...
It's remarkable that people can convince themselves of things like this, it's true. Also of things like "the Earth is flat," or "there's a conspiracy of famous pedophiles hiding under pizza places." And yet people do.

It's important to note that they don't generally come to these beliefs all at once. It's usually a gradual process. They have some bias that they start with, and it takes them to a plausible (but incorrect) belief. But then someone pokes a small hole in it. They could accept that it's wrong, but they don't want to admit they were taken in. Or maybe the person pointing it out is someone they strongly dislike, and they want them to be wrong. So they look for some justification why, no, they're still right. And then some other hole gets poked. And another. And soon they think that all human history is a lie to keep the Freemasons in power. It's ridiculous, but they got there in small, incremental steps, and at this point they've invested a great deal of energy and their personal identity into this belief. It becomes devastating to abandon even a small part of it. They'll only abandon one part when they've moved onto a new belief they've invested into (and may not admit they held the original belief).
 


Umbran

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
JackMann said:
It's remarkable that people can convince themselves of things like this, it's true. Also of things like "the Earth is flat," or "there's a conspiracy of famous pedophiles hiding under pizza places." And yet people do.

It's important to note that they don't generally come to these beliefs all at once. It's usually a gradual process. ...
Click to expand...

And this doesn't even touch on the tribal aspect of it - that sometimes adherence to some belief is required to be part of some social grouping or identity. Accepting the outrageous statement then becomes part of Us vs Them.
 

Deset Gled

Deset Gled

.
This weekend saw a small con at Dragonlands (the Ernie Gygax Estate) called Robert Donald Paiser Con. This is a charity event that Ernie has hosted for a number of years for the titular Robert. Despite the fact that this is ostensibly an event hosted by Ernie as an individual, it seems all the major players at NuTSR were involved, namely Justin Lanasa and Jeff Leason. This means that the DHSM also received a visit from the con, and that the DHSM FB page shared some pictures with us.

Here's an example of what they shared:
RDPcon1.JPG

Personally, I think it's in kind of poor taste that the DHSM shared multiple shots of Lanasa, including this one, another of Justin with Tom Wham, and a video of Justin using a trebuchet, while Robert and Ernie were largely ignored. But I guess the DHSM is promoting a business, so it's not much of a sin.

Here's one of Jeff at the counter of the DHSM during the con:
RDPcon2.JPG


But it's what's in the background that's more interesting:
RDPcon3.JPG


Remember how NuTSR removed the TSR logo from everything on their website, including the dice? Well, it looks like the DHSM didn't get the memo. There they are for sale. It's also worth noting that NuTSR claimed to have no assets in their bankruptcy filing, but this is proof that Dungeon Crawl is still in stock. I guess the Museum owns it, not NuTSR?

I guess they were also playing games at the DHSM during the con, because they posted posted this in the middle of it:
RDPcon4.JPG


Once again, it's the details that are interesting:
RDPcon5.JPG


That's an email address used by Justin Lanasa for for many things. It's the one he uses on his personal website, to contact him directly as a politician. The same one he uses for other private companies that aren't LLCs. I'm not showing this to dox him (the email address is very public). I just want to point out that he's using his own Paypal account to process payments for the Dungeon Hobby Shop Musuem. I'm fairly certain this pic is advertising that he's co-mingling funds between his personal accounts and multiple corporate ones. Its like he's challenging WotC and the bankruptcy court to audit his finances.

And just to round out the weekend, the DHSM felt it was necessary to share this along with the con pics. It's censored (by them) but still on the edge of NSFW. Mods, let me know if it needs further clean up:
RDPcon6.JPG

Remember, everyone, it's all for the kids. We can't have RPGs mention the fact that homosexuality exists, because it would be seen by kids. We don't want people to identify as trans, because then we'd have to explain it to the kids. Drag queens are obviously bad for kids. But then there's this. Which I guess is safe for the kids? :(
 
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