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)

 

[Maxperson]

I want to take a minute to revisit a problem with Those Pesky Goblinz and Those Pesky Orcz. Specifically, the problem that they're the same game. And I don't just mean that they're both a rip off of the same source material (because they are both a rip off AD&D). No, I mean that the game is literally the same with just a few minor changes to words and graphics.

Here's an example of some pages from both, showing the layout, side by side:

View attachment 354084

And here's some of the game text, side by side:

View attachment 354086

Almost all of the game material is like this. A few minor differences in graphics, a few places where things get slightly different names, a few minor edits to numbers. But in almost all meaningful ways, the two games are identical. Identical game mechanics text (THAC10, etc.). Identical flavor text. The only real difference is the starting adventure in the second half of the book (Goblinz has a re-print of Cult of Abaddon by Vince Florio, and Orcz has No Man's Land by the white supremacist Dave Johnson).

Why does this matter? In a lot of ways, it doesn't. The game isn't really published to be played as a game, it's just something for Lanasa to hawk to unsuspecting visitors to the DHSM during GaryCon.

But it might start to matter if you think about IP and ownership. Those Pesky Goblinz is IP of NuTSR. It's listed as part of their assets in the bankruptcy case, and there is no record of the IP changing hands. But Those Pesky Goblinz was also sold as a branded product of OSR Games. And Those Pesky Orcz is a product of Adamantite Games, which is privately owned by Justin Lanasa. And both of these games are sold exclusively at the DHSM (both on the website, and in person at the shop). The fact that these games are the same is another piece of evidence that these are all the same company.

NuTSR is OSR Games is the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum is Adamantite Games is Justin Lanasa. They are a single entity. This is one more piece of evidence proving it.

Those magics are very different! Clearly Goblinz magic uses multiple paragraphs and Orcz magic does not!

 

[Wincenworks]

We have been told the Bankruptcy will be most likely going through. Reason being monies given / used by Lanasa from his other LLC's were for the benefit of TSR, LLC. Allegations of hiding assets, although felt possibly true. Cannot be proven, and in court it is about what you can prove, and not what you know.

Sounds like Justin's lawyers he hired after his bankruptcy did their job.... which makes is statistically likely it would have been cheaper for him to just do it correctly up front.

The other important thing is once TSR LLC is dissolved, it cannot continue it's case in court... so WotC will almost certainly win by default on the trademarks issue, and Justin will be stuck dealing with the counter-suit element... ie the bit where he needs to keep spending money to avoid losing everything.

 

[DLIMedia]

First, the Bankruptcy. Myself and my attorneys have been in contact with the court and Trustee. We have been told the Bankruptcy will be most likely going through. Reason being monies given / used by Lanasa from his other LLC's were for the benefit of TSR, LLC. Allegations of hiding assets, although felt possibly true. Cannot be proven, and in court it is about what you can prove, and not what you know.

In theory, can't WotC provide evidence of those allegations at this point?

I mean, I'm not sure why they would anyway... as mentioned above, if TSR LLC gets dissolved WotC should win their case by default, but I can't help but wonder. If anything, Justin's getting the better end of a deal here because I'm not sure there's anyone besides yourself who is aggressively going after him; feels like WotC really wants to win their case, prove their point, and make sure TSR LLC is disintegrated.

If the bankruptcy "goes through", what happens to the DHSM?

 

[Wizard Tower Games]

The other important thing is once TSR LLC is dissolved, it cannot continue it's case in court... so WotC will almost certainly win by default on the trademarks issue, and Justin will be stuck dealing with the counter-suit element... ie the bit where he needs to keep spending money to avoid losing everything.

The thing is, since Justin Lanasa and the DHSM are listed as co-plaintiffs in the WOTC case the case will move forward. The only thing the TSR, llc Bankruptcy does is stop anything against TSR, llc. So this is not over by a long shot I think.

 

[Wizard Tower Games]

If the bankruptcy "goes through", what happens to the DHSM?

Nothing, as the DHSM is a separate LLC filed in Wisconsin. However the case will continue, and wince WOTC sued back, they will I think continue to litigate this.

 

[Wincenworks]

The thing is, since Justin Lanasa and the DHSM are listed as co-plaintiffs in the WOTC case the case will move forward. The only thing the TSR, llc Bankruptcy does is stop anything against TSR, llc. So this is not over by a long shot I think.

They're added as co-defendants in the counter-suit - which is the bit with the risk for Justin.

The original action was entirely by TSR LLC - presumably with the assumption that if it would protect him from blowback - but also TSR LLC is the sole owner of the disputed trade marks.

If Justin wants to continue protecting the trade marks, he'll need to argue that a new party needs to be added as plaintiff, late in the proceedings... and explain why he didn't add them at the start.

 

[Wincenworks]

I really have to wonder how much of these recent changes is due to Jim not longer being here to share his thoughts with Dinehart.

Update on this by the way... it appears Dinehart is outsourcing all the work that would be done to warrant adding his name to cover credits to Penny Williams... as yes, in this tweet he misspells Duck's name.

So um... yeah... the choice to put his own name on the cover sure is something.

 

[MNblockhead]

Based on when Williams got her undergrad degree ('94) she's about the same age as me. My sister-in-law who is younger than I am couldn't join any D&D groups when she was 12-13 because none of the guys her age who had groups were willing to let a girl join. And her own friends weren't interested. Even her slightly older brother wouldn't run games for her. She didn't get to play until she went to college and found out she really liked it. The idea that school-age guys in the 80s were all clamoring to get girls to play at their tables is just weirdly revisionist.

Sure, but like so much when discussing the "old days" of the hobby, experiences vary widely based on location and culture and attitudes of local groups of players. I wonder if the existence of a gender divide depended the type of geek cliques one's game scene drew from. We always had girl players. Not 50%, but at least 25%. Twin Cities suburb. Minnesota. Mid to late 80s. But at least half, if not more, of the players were theater kids.

 

[MNblockhead]

This one is particularly slow likely because the judge has received a credible to request to dismiss with prejudice, and award costs. It's a complicated thing with some stakes, and the judge doesn't want to have it kicked back to them on appeal.

Judges have to be pretty certain on making decisions like that, and as long as it is on hold...

(1)

nobody is running up legal bills etc

(2)

so they tend to take their time to do all the research, check for anything pending decision that might mess with their decision, etc.

#2 tends to contradict #1.

 

[Wincenworks]

(1)

(2)

#2 tends to contradict #1.

Courts do not charge legal fees for the research that the judge and their staff do, that's just part of the general costs and also part of where the tax money involved goes. Whether a judge spends an hour, or a hundred hours, working on a judgment the fee is the same - to do otherwise is considered to be an accessibility to justice issue.

Sometimes decisions also take longer because the judges have other things going on, in my Ethics class we had a barrister who told us the story of how he had to wait eight months on a judgment that was not particularly complicated, but presumably coincided with some very complicated cases arriving on the judge's docket.

To clarify: Judges in the Common Law systems do their research to confirm that everything they're about to say is in line with everything that judges of equal or greater standing have said before... or can be justified as being substantially different to the situations those judges dealt with... sometimes including that times simply have changed.

Judgments can range anywhere from two to hundreds of pages... depending on the history of facts, the history of the evidence and the history of the law involved. Judges can end up citing anything from just a single statute, to dozens of cases, statutes and textbooks.... sometimes to essentially explain a yes/no answer.

I myself recently had to read a more than 100 page judgment from an office (rather than a court) which answered the question.... can you trade mark the term "Manuka Honey" in New Zealand? To get that far cost both sides a fortune, not because someone had to write the 100+ pages but because they factored in expert opinions, reports, write ups, citations of case histories, etc, etc.

Basically the court can spend a lot of money, but while the action is pending dismissal and sitting in the period between discovery and trial - there is no reason for the counsel on either side to prepare anything for the court (though they can still negotiate with each other... but like... lawyers can do that at any time before, during and after the proceedings).

As a side note, just in time to avoid having to worry about anything in the module (assuming comes out ) - I present a needlessly well researched and cited review of GiantLands (2021).