nuTSR v WotC (inevitable outcome)

By now it’s a fact of history that eventually, Justin LaNasa(LaNasa) came to a confidential settlement with Wizards of the Coast(WotC) over the lawsuit he started over trade marks he poached for culture war nonsense and profit.¹ TSR LLC v. Wizards of the Coast LLC, 2:21-cv-01705, (W.D. Wash.), [nuTSR v. WotC] Document #66, 29 May 2024 This effectively ended his crusade to try to usurp the history to the table top role-playing game(TTRPG) hobby as well as Dungeons & Dragons(D&D).

I think its worth examining the final outcome in order to understand how absurd it was, how many lies it required to keep the campaign going, and how much waste it resulted in for a wet fart of an ending.

The settlement means there’s not really any fascinating statements on trade marks, since we never got to an actual trial and hence a decision by the courts.

Before we commence, I want to clarify that I will not be naming LaNasa’s counsel during these proceedings as – based off what I can see – she was simply doing her job. While I find some of the decisions questionable, based on the rest of the nuTSR ordeal I think she was just doing the best she could.

We’ve seen what she was working with, and a fundamental pillar of law in a free society is even terrible people deserve competent representation. There’s also good odds that she helped him realize he needed to settle.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. TRADE MARKS ↳A. Trade Mark Trolling ↳B. Market Saturation ↳C. Unexplored Hilarity II. CIVIL PROCEDURE ↳A. The Wheels Grind Slow And Fine ↳B. Respect In And Out Of Court ↳C. Choose Wisely And Promptly III. PUBLIC OPINION ↳A. The Market Is The Public ↳B. Public Opinion Is Admissible ↳C. Freeze Peach ↳D. Those Pesky Crimez

V. MONEY MONEY MONEY ↳A. The Bleak House ↳B. Costs And Compensation ↳C. Wait, How Much!? VI. CONCLUSION ↳A. The Products ↳B. The Pages ↳C. The Building ↳D. The Contents ↳E. The Collaborators ↳F. The Adversaries ↳G. Justin William LaNasa

I. TRADE MARKS

Trade marks are an interesting element of intellectual property law, since they are widely agreed to exist for the benefit of the public first, and the owner second. In almost every other area of ownership, its about the owner’s benefit and public can go fuck themselves. With trade marks (referred to as trademarks by the US) are there to let you know that what you’re buying is legitimate and authentic, and the defining law is The Lanham Act.

Once you understand this, the inevitable outcome of the case was that even if WotC were not interested in using the trade marks – the market would almost certainly be confused by the use of them by a third party who were also claiming they were the divine heirs of the properties.² Justin William LaNasa (16 October 2020) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>

Now, there is always the potential for a shock decision by the courts – but ultimately all of the arguments, evidence and proceedings in this were for two reasons.

1. Courts do not like “it’s obvious” arguments, they expect things to be fully explored and discussed so that they can eliminate the possibility of it being a novel or outlier case where the correct outcome is not obvious; and
2. Arguing that you should be compensated for the costs and problems caused in a counter-suit requires that you maintain clean hands and that you cooperate with the court in every step of proving it was bad faith.

So, while victory in litigation is never one of the certainties in life, the odds were already tilted very heavily in WotC’s favour. ⬆️

A. Trade Mark Trolling

There is a highly questionable practice in intellectual property – trade marks, copyright and patents – where people make bad faith registrations and count on the idea that it will be cheaper to settle (at a tidy profit for the bad faith actor) than follow through the process.

This process relies upon 3 major factors:

• It’s a volume game, you make a lot of small profits on quick settlements so that settling remains the “smart” option from a purely dollars and cents perspective.
• It’s a hidden market, your targets are not going to public humiliate them or put blood in the water – they are only interested in paying if it preserves their status in the market, and among their peers.
• It’s got to be quick. Because the longer it goes on, the less the points above fall apart. For this reason, the trolls always need to have an exit strategy lined up – or they end up being the subject of a TED Talk.

LaNasa did none of these, so was always guaranteed to have WotC not only fight every step of the way – but look for every opportunity to make an example of him.

For context, we know that in the TSR LLC bankruptcy³TSR, LLC, 23-01577, (Bankr. E.D.N.C.),[nuTSR Bankruptcy] Document #64, 18 September 2024 – WotC made an undisputed bid of $15,000 for the 3 trade marks disputed at the time. So that’s a cap of $5,000 a piece, if you could find a creative way to swing it and keep it quiet. ⬆️

B. Market Saturation

But if we, somehow, give LaNasa the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really intended to use these trade marks for his amazing products such as Star Frontiers: New Genesis, Those Pesky Goblinz, Cult of Abaddon, Dungeon Crawl, TSR Con and even Those Pesky Orcz — could he have made a reasonable argument for them?

Almost certainly not, because even these products had some sort of value, briefly consider what kind of sales and output they would have required to overshadow the catalogue of the original TSR Inc (now owned by WotC). The old products were still selling in impressive numbers on DriveThruRPG (owned by OneBookShelf).⁴ nuTSR v. WotC, above n 1, Document #33, 8 September 2022, at 2-3

In the original 8 year run, before the change of management, TSR Inc managed to put out not just highly memorable products that have become part of our collective cultural consciousness but sufficient sales that it turned Gary Gygax from a cobbler (who’s family bought his tools for him) working out of his garage into a millionaire.

They put out more products in the 1970s than nuTSR had even hinted at, and they did it into a new market that was easily dominated for the first few years. In order to establish anything similar to equality in recognition, they’d have to put out a dozen iconic products that people wanted.

It turned out not only was nuTSR not doing great numbers, but the trend line was going in the wrong direction.⁵nuTSR Bankruptcy, above n 3, Document #1, 8 June 2023, at 21

It wasn’t going to happen, they didn’t even get Those Pesky Orcz out in time and that was mostly a copy-paste of Those Pesky Goblinz. ⬆️

C. The Unexplored Hilarity

One thing that we haven’t discussed, which could have been legally relevant – was the ridiculousness of the Lizard Man trade mark.

The original trade mark was drawn by Mike Bell, and is instantly recognizable to anyone who has owned an original TSR Inc product bearing it.⁶ James Maliszewski “A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Lizard Men” Grodnardia Blogspot (7 August 2024) <grognardia.blogspot.com> When LaNasa registered the trade mark, he used his own artwork – then later he started using a version of the original recreated by original TSR Inc legend Diesel.⁷ Justin LaNasa (13 January 2023) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>

Imagine the amazing lawsuit we could have had, with LaNasa’s lawyer arguing that this can’t be a breach of trade mark law because there’s no way an ordinary person would mistake LaNasa’s rude attempt for the original⁸ Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook, above n 2 – and after all, they didn’t use it – they used a much better artist’s interpretation.

Imagine Lanasa on the stand, testifying under cross examination that he is actually a terrible artist and it would be a terrible idea for someone to allow him to make permanent marks on their body at his tattoo shop.

Truly, we could have had it all. ⬆️

II. CIVIL PROCEDURE

To understand how we got to what was, dramatically, an unsatisfying resolution, you need to understand the process in place. While legal dramas make it seem like it is intense moments and having sex with your co-workers, the reality is very different.

Mostly its confidential conversations, writing drafts of paperwork the receiving notes on that paperwork before having more confidential conversations and rewriting drafts. ⬆️

A. The Wheels Grind Slow And Fine

Civil law suits are intended to resolve disputes where all other means have failed, and specifically to resolve them primarily through the payment of money or assigning of ownership. The assumption is that both parties are invested in the outcome, therefore may supply complicated arguments.

Should the matter come to a judicial decision, both sides are expected to present evidence and their interpretation of the law – then allow a fact-finder (a judge or a jury) to determine the reality, and the judge to determine how the relevant law applies to those facts.

Building up to this are countless steps of administration – agreeing to share information, to have meetings to discuss the information, etc. Negotiations over what will and won’t be admissible as evidence make up a huge part of the process, and there is an expectation the shape of the case will change and lawyers discover more about each side.

In an ordinary lawsuit, this tedious and the most common outcome is settlement is reached as both sides realize their case is not as strong as they originally thought, and that there probably is some common ground they can reach.

In this case, everything started tilted in WotC’s favour and that trend continued as it went on. Between that, and the general trend of LaNasa to make questionable claims, once can only imagine his lawyers found the take of protecting his interests to be Sisyphean – constantly denying everything and arguing to please have to give up nothing while asking if they happen to have a smoking gun in one of the filing cabinets. ⬆️

B. Respect, In and Out of Court

Courts expect respect, a lot of it. They expect inside, and outside the court’s walls.

So, if you were going to say – agree to a protective agreement to ensure witnesses are protected, it is really a bad idea to then harass a witness under your own name. Yes, LaNasa did this and it’s on the record.⁹ nuTSR v. WotC, Document #64, 18 December 2023

Hilariously, a defence raised was “freedom of speech”,¹⁰ Above, Document #60, at 8 which was a spectacularly bad idea since it essentially advertised that LaNasa did not take obligations to the court seriously – particularly given that his own response essentially took a bunch of Facebook comments from a private group and made them available to the public until the end of time. Many of them are discussions about people receiving harassment connected to LaNasa.¹¹ Above, Document #61

The evidence brought by WotC was Justin had been using his public facing Facebook group to directly harass and target Don Semora – including directing people to a web site that was clearly made to facilitate this. He was also emailing and calling venues to try to get them to refuse to work with Don.¹² Above, Document #59

Unfortunately, he was not sanctioned for this – but it almost certainly boosted WotC’s confidence in their case and which side would likely get the benefit of the doubt. It also pissed off the witness and made him even more determined to testify, so it was double fail.

Also like… all of this is on public record and discoverable to anyone who looks into this, or has a similar problem in the future. ⬆️

C. Choose Wisely And Promptly

Generally in court proceedings, you normally have the opportunity to go back and correct mistakes, adjust pleadings as new information becomes available etc.

Except when you don’t, and in the times when you don’t – it’s usually really significant and hard to roll back later. Personally I like to think of this as following the wisdom of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, that big decisions should be simple due to having being carefully considered well in advance.¹³ Yamamoto Tsunetomo Hagakure (initial publication details unclear)

Obviously, the fact that this dragged out so long shows LaNasas was not good at this – but let’s look at some of the unwise choices. ⬆️

1. Moving to federal court

This came before the District Court because when WotC moved to cancel the trade marks, LaNasa decided not to let the United States Patent Trademark Office decide the merits of their claim but rather move it to a big-boy federal court.

This was an unwise decision, because it’s what allowed WotC to raise the stakes from the cancellation of some essentially worthless trade marks (as covered, LaNasa didn’t have the aptitude to make anything worth publishing, or the juice to recruit any worthwhile creators) to every remedy available under US civil law.

Both federally and in the state of Washington.

So, but choosing to seek a declaration, LaNasa opened the door for WotC to seek hundreds of thousands of dollars from him. ⬆️

2. Accepting Countersuit

Importantly, the countersuit wasn’t just against TSR LLC – it was against Dungeon Hobby Shop LLC and (most importantly) Justin LaNasa himself. This was never disputed and not attempt was made to remove LaNasa from the docket.

In cases like this, damages are generally awarded as “jointly and severally”, which means that the debt can be collected from any party rather than being split across the various parties. Effectively, that would have completely bypassed the protection generally offered by limited liability companies.

This is extra funny in the wake of Michael K Hovermale’s accidental leaking of all his text messages (I’m not posting screencaps because they were recalled) – which included an exchange where he and LaNasa discussed how TSR LLC was intended to take the fall so his other companies (specifically OSR Games LLC) could rise.

In failing to even attempt to remove himself from the docket, LaNasa essentially set himself up for a potential shit-fight to avoid losing everything by way of being personally liable for the damages incurred. ⬆️

III. PUBLIC OPINION

Now, there is a perception that what happens in court is supposed to remain sterile and isolated from the outside world – that the judge or jury is to act entirely on what is presented in the court room.

The reality is that evidence and witnesses do not spring into existence inside the court room, they must be introduced. In fact, pretty much most of the pre-trial work by lawyers is finding things to introduce, making sure they can be introduced and then working out how it call creates the best narrative for the court.

Every jurisdiction has its own rules regarding the process by which the outside world must be screened, but invariably anything that happens in the real world can filter into the court room.

Most famous is jury selection when the court has the ardours case of finding someone who finding someone who isn’t already biased against a famously awful person like Martin Shkreli¹⁴ Dominic Rushe “‘I hate him’: Martin Shkreli court transcript reveals struggle for impartial jurors” (17 August 2017) The Guardian <www.theguardian.com> or, more recently, Elon Musk.¹⁵ Stephen Council “Judge forced to slash SF jury pool over hate for Elon Musk” (20 February 2026) SFGate <www.sfgate.com>

It’s probably best for LaNasa this never went to trial. ⬆️

A. The Market Is The Public

At the time this case had started, we’d already had:

• The infamous Live From The Bunker incident with Ernie¹⁶Morrus “Ernie Gygax on New TSR, WotC Beefs, Trademarks, Licensees, 5E, & More” (24 June 2021) EN World <www.enworld.org>
• The “You’re disgusting.” incident where nuTSR’s official Twitter (controlled by Stephen Erin Dinehart IV at the time) had denegrated a trans woman for wanting her humanity recognized¹⁷ Kim Wincen “The TSR & Wonderfilled/GiantLands Saga – Introduction” (4 November 2022) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com>
• Confirmation that did not, in fact, care about Star Frontiers as anything but a trade mark¹⁸ Kim Wincen “Star Frontiers: New Genesis (Unreleased)” (6 October 2024) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com>
• A distinct lack of support from the Gygax family generally
• A giant thread on EN World, a major TTRPG discussion hub of the Internet
• Numerous people in the OSR area voicing their concerns and discontent
• No significant products other than Tales & Tots, a product for children by a man with no particular training or expertise in childhood development.

I’m not going to say this is the worst possible state to enter the market in, because they obviously made it worse as it went on – but realistically anyone with a lick of sense would have realized there was no reasonable opportunity to establish the trade marks in the market – let alone establish them as more noteworthy than the originals.

Any reasonable analysis would have concluded this was doomed from the beginning, there was never going to be a way to show they had a good faith need for the trade marks and a market that would rely upon them. ⬆️

B. Public Opinion Is Admissible

One element that is generally not discussed in public discourse and depictions of law in popular media is every bit of evidence introduced in a trial (civil or criminal) must be introduced through a witness who will be willing to explain what it is, what it means and what they know about it.

Every witness, except under very rare circumstances, can be cross-examined. That is, the other side may ask them questions to interrogate the validity and value of their statements. Parties doing the cross-examining aren’t allowed to introduce evidence per se, but they are certainly allowed to use evidence they discover to guide their cross-examining.

So, you can’t realistically bring in random members of the public, but when you can do is get an expert to look at a huge amount of information and submit that as evidence of their opinion.

Expert witnesses are professionals who get brought in to explain either very techical or very vast amounts of information. Something like say: pages of screenshots, reviews, transcripts of YouTube videos, etc. They can also anything the jury would need to gain an informed understanding of them, such as the culture of TTRPGs.

WotC already did this in the motion for an injunction.¹⁹ nuTSR v. WotC, above n 1, Document #32, 8 September 2022

Due to the costs, this tactic is not really widely accessible but when you can afford it in a case like this – it can be brutal.

Videos about how people were excited when they heard TSR was back, but now they’re pissed off and felt lied to? Please allow the expert to explain how this hints toward both trade mark dilution and deception.

Screeds on X née Twitter about how the TSR trade marks will always mean Gary Gygax to them and they are glad they’re being clawed away from WotC? Please allow the expert to explain.

Questions on Reddit, and EN World, and social media about “is this the old TSR? Should I be excited?” You get the point.

There was no way that LaNasa was ever going to insulate himself from everything going on – WotC wouldn’t need to call every critic as a witness, they’d just need to call an expert or two to explain what’d mean.

Yes, LaNasa’s lawyers could get to cross-examine them, but that can only do so much and many professional witnesses are very seasoned at being cross-examined. Yes, LaNasa could hire his own expert witnesses but they are both famously expensive and also obligated to serve the court above their employer, so must be truthful in their testimony even if it sinks their client. ⬆️

C. You BlinkBankrupt, You Lose

Early on in the piece, LaNasa essentially shows WotC that he did not have the fortitude to take the case all the way to the conclusion.

1. Injunction

When the Star Frontiers: New Genesis leak (which LaNasa denied was authentic) happened, WotC sought an injunction to prevent its release.²⁰ nuTSR v. WotC, above n 1, Document #31, 8 September 2022

Injunctions like this are hard to get, as they essentially are a form of prior restraint on freedom of speech and a major interference in the market – all based on minimal information.

The system prefers to work slow, and be exceedingly thorough.

So, when LaNasa essentially applied the injunction without needing a ruling on it, by agreeing to not release Star Frontiers: New Genesis, that basically signalled to WotC that he was going to fold when push came to shove. ⬆️

2. Bankruptcy

It was, however, an extremely small stumble compared to putting TSR LLC into bankruptcy – a move that essentially turned a lawsuit against WotC into a lawsuit against LaNasa himself.

Since TSR LLC had been the sole plaintiff, it was pretty much guaranteed that they when they went into bankruptcy the main case would be discontinued. There was no compelling reason for the trustee to want to continue funding it, particularly when WotC had the option to simply buy the trade marks from the trustee.

WotC had the bigger claim, and had more money, so there wasn’t even going to be an option to outbid them – it was a guarantee slam dunk for them. ⬆️

3. Protective Order

Agreeing to the protective order was, a fairly banal move – but what really secured it as a problem was when Justin breached the order during the bankruptcy, then tried to defend it by claiming he was the victim and entitled to freedom of speech.

More than anything that came before, this showcased to the court that LaNasa could not be trusted to keep his word to the court and probably had a lot of shady stuff going on in the background.

The judge who handled it was a separate judge to the one who would have handled the trial – but it it was still part of the record for the proceedings and thus could be used against LaNasa.

Oh boy could it have been used against him. ⬆️

D. Lies, Lies And Damned Lies

I mentioned above, all evidence in a case has to be introduced by witnesses – all witnesses must be examined and then may be cross examined.

The primary fact witness in LaNasa’s case was always going to be himself. He’s the guy who registered the trade marks, he was the singular officer of TSR LLC, Dungeon Hobby Shop LLC, OSR LLC, etc. He was a named author of Tales & Tots, Those Pesky Goblinz, Dungeon Crawl and Star Frontiers: New Genesis. He as the named organizer of TSR Con.

As you may have gathered from this saga, LaNasa is not good at high pressure conversations where he is not “the boss”. He made a circus of the hearing during the bankruptcy, he couldn’t even managed a coherent argument in his complaint against me, he was certainly not going to hold up on the stand, in front of a jury, with a seasoned trial lawyer cross-examining him.

Because the standard wouldn’t be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, as in a criminal court, the standard would be what did the jury conclude was more likely:

• That LaNasa just innocently registered the trade marks and people just happened to misunderstand it as usurping from WotC?
• That he registered the Star Frontiers trade mark so close to its 40-year anniversary with the belief it was not really relevant?
• That its complete coincidence accounts spring up to harass people and spread misinformation for his benefit, or he oversees it happening?

Then they can move into the credibility area:

• Is it true that you claimed for years that you had participated in the events that inspired The Perfect Storm, when in reality you had not even joined the Coast Guard at the time?
• Is it true that in a recent defamation suit you claimed you had no criminal history, despite knowing you had a history of being arrested and been convicted at least one charge? Also that you’d once been arrested for assault and terroristic threats?
• Isn’t it true that North Carolina has had to sue you to recover the taxes owed for your oxygen bar business, and that you have consistently lost disputes over the validity?
• Is it true that you posted a clearly anti-LGBTQ image and then reposted it with a link to video spreading the “drag queens are groomers” disinformation that had already resulted in multiple acts of public violence?
• Is it true that you’ve previously used DMCA takedowns to try to silence criticism of your posting videos of you seeming to make two female employees wrestle in grits, while claiming they are competing for a promotion?²¹ Bailey Aldridge “Video of women wrestling in grits sparks feud between NC primary election candidates” (25 February 2020) The News & Observer <www.newsobserver.com>

Because that is the danger in these kinds of ambiguous scenarios, where you’re asking 12 strangers to decide what the facts are. LaNasa might be honest in his answers, but if he comes across as simply unbelievable or WotC as more believable then he legally becomes a liar.

If he legally becomes a liar regarding his intentions and plans regarding the trade marks, then he becomes exposed to damages for fraud.

If he legally becomes a liar regarding the harassment, or responds very badly to the cross examination, then becomes exposed to contempt of court.

This is the same system that allows assholes like Zak S to “win” a defamation case against his ex and lose against GenCon, assholes Chris Avellone to obtain a retraction via simple risk of proceedings and assholes like Johnny Depp get a jury to overlook his long history of domestic violence because they don’t like Amber Heard.

It’s very often not fair, it’s always a risk and in this case – between the evidence and LaNasa’s own history of representing himself poorly – it was a mega-risk. Settlement was probably the best option he could ever hope for. ⬆️

IV. LIMITS OF LAW

If the current administration of the United States of America has demonstrated anything, it’s that law is not magic. It has limits, and judges will explain them when counsel demonstrates an inability to understand them. ⬆️

A. The Trade Marks

In 2006, Joya Williams, then the secretary to an executive at Coca Cola, attempted to sell the legendary trade secret that was the recipe for Coca Cola to company’s bitter rival for $1.6 million. It famously backfired spectacularly, with Pepsi notifying Coca Cola and working to assist in the prosecution of Williams.

This is often used not just as an example of how protecting intellectual property, including trade secrets, is always seen as beneficial by the major players in the industry – because they all have to swim in the same pond.

TSR LLC, was asking for was a declaratory judgment on the validity of their trade marks. The best possible outcome for LaNasa was the court simply decided that they were legally viable and belonged to TSR LLC – thus allowing the company that brought you Those Pesky Goblinz to keep making the community angry by putting it on more awful products`.

That’s it.

No money, no apology from WotC, no obligation from WotC to buy them. Nothing

There was pretty much no reliable way to convert this into a win. Even if LaNasa prevailed, all he would do is generate public good will toward WotC and Luke Gygax.

He couldn’t even rent them out or sell them to anyone. WotC, being owned by Hasbro, is pretty much the only player in the scene who could afford to pay prices that would make him a profit – and nobody else was going to want to touch it with a ten-foot pole for the same reason Pepsi didn’t want the recipe to Coca Cola. ⬆️

B. The Disclaimer

In the inadvertently hilarious IndieGoGo, LaNasa claimed that nuTSR would also somehow make WotC remove the controversial disclaimer from old school titles like Oriental Adventures.²² Justin LaNasa “Support TSR against Wizards of the Coast” (8 December 20201) IndieGogo <www.indiegogo.com>

This disclaimer is a little infamous for coming in the wake of an in depth breakdown by Azns Represent, and I think why the controversy is unhelpful is best explained by Legal Kimchi.

But, specifically in this case, I cannot stress enough – this lawsuit was not a legal mechanism for accomplishing that, and there is not actually a legal mechanism in the US to allow a third party to force the removal of a disclaimer like this.

The only person who could have had any grounds to challenge the disclaimer is a man who nuTSR mysteriously never seemed to mention, David “Zeb” Cook, who was the primary author of Oriental Adventures (which for those keeping track, means Gary Gygax was not) and one of the few remaining original TSR Inc alumni still alive and working in games.

He doesn’t really have a reason to – he’s doing fine. He’s working at Obsidian on products like The Elder Scrolls Online. He goes to conventions, talks to fans, has a good time. Almost nobody ever speaks poorly of him, and all the discussion of his work recognizes that its stuff he did in the past – in a different time, with different access to materials and different expectations.

In fact these days he’s more likely to have his career impacted by the worst members of the anti-disclaimer crowd, the people who use “woke” an all purpose pejorative and insist that empathy for fellow humans is both everywhere and ruining everything, but also over.

Because I have seen precisely zero old school groups rush in to defend Zeb as an individual – rather most of them seem to attribute his work to Gary Gygax. That’s not cool guys. ⬆️

C. Freeze Peach

Naturally – the guy who filed a complaint against me for a mean review, loved to argue that this was a free speech issue. But, as usual, he had it backwards. This was never about him not being able to

1. Declare that whatever terrible slop he puts out is authentic D&D and reflective of the brand and hobby as a whole; and
2. Not having the full editorial control over what WotC could and could not publish under the D&D brand.

This was, pretty self evident when you looked at the sort of people that he collaborated with – whether its Venger Satanis horny brain farts, or Dave Johnson’s… literal Nazi nonsense, it was allowed to be published. Just not under the D&D brand, and often not on any respectable platform.

Because that was the real problem, it’s not that there was not anything prevent people from putting stuff on the Internet the same way I put up this stuff.

The real they were having is, of course, nobody wanted to read it. The guy they were getting to shill Those Pesky Orcz didn’t want to read or play it.

Also they had established a pretty firm history of wanting to silence all kinds of people – their critics, people in the LGBTQ spectrum, people who didn’t like Nazis and people who care about reproductive rights.²³ Justin LaNasa (15 December 2023) Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum (@HobbyMuseum) <now deleted>

So there was never any issue there, other than the incompetence of LaNasa and his collaborators. ⬆️

D. Those Pesky Crimez

An ongoing element of this was the constant excitement by both sides that somebody might go to jail, for crimes. None of this, ever became an issue.

The main crime people tend to fixate on with these sorts of events is perjury, ie knowingly deceiving the court. This is, by and large, a pretty rare thing to get charged with since courts don’t want to micromanage people’s honesty and also don’t want to compound the loss for whoever the jury doesn’t believe.

Plus perjury is a criminal charge, which means it needs to be proven that someone definitely believed something not to be true.

Far more common in these kinds of events are sanctions (like the one that LaNasa received for the harassment he inflicted on Don Semora under his own name, while agreeing to a protective order) or contempt of court.

Contempt of court was definitely a possibility if we’d gone to trial, and LaNasa had acted the way he’d done during the bankruptcy hearing – but it was never going to be big boy jail time, it’d be things like being exiled from the court room and the jury instructed to factor his noncompliance into their assessment of his credibility.

It can also result in you being ordered to pay the other side’s costs.

Likewise, the far more common event where people are found to have destroyed evidence – known as spoliation – has a very simple non-criminal remedy: the jury are simply instructed to assume the evidence was entirely unfavourable to the party who destroyed it when reaching their decision. ⬆️

V. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

As mentioned above, these were all civil actions which is to say they were all always about money. ⬆️

A. Bleak House

As part of my ethics and law class, I was encouraged to look into (well, read, but realistically at least look into) a book by Charles Dickens, Bleak House. Spoilers for a 174 year old, famously difficult to read story, ahead.

The premise is the passing of an individual leaves a hotly contested estate, which is ultimately consumed in full paying the fees of the lawyers and the courts involved.

It was inspired by real conversations Dickens had with lawyers at the time, and remains an ongoing concern to this day.

This is, tragically, very easy for a lawsuit to be a a no-win scenario entirely due to the costs accrued – and in the US there are only limited circumstances where you can be awarded costs, and no protections to stop your opponent going broke fighting you.

A recent example of this was the award against the “TikTok Psychic” who is pretty much living hand-to-mouth and now owes $3 million due to constant, non-stop doubling-down and disrespecting the process.

Or for a more recent, more games related example – how Alyssa Mercante is trying to settle with Smash JT as it’s clear he 1. is not well in a mental, emotional or spiritual way and 2. will likely go broke trying to defend his obvious defamation of her.

In this case, if the case had continued to trial there is a reasonable likelihood that the fees would essentially have consumed LaNasa’s entire net worth and made him “judgement proof” in the sense there was no money to recover.⬆️

B. Costs And Compensation

Based on the figures provided in the TSR LLC bankruptcy, it seems like both sides spent six figures on their lawyers – which is not surprising. Pre-trial work is expensive because you don’t just have to pay lawyers.

A huge part of pre-trial is discovery and analysis, which means you end up having to pay two classes of third party.

1. The parties providing the information are entitled to reasonable compensation for the work they have to do to get it. If you ask a telecommunication provider to supply the complete text history directly from the servers, they can charge you for the staff time and resources to fulfill the request.
2. The experts who look over the information and advise how they would explain it to a jury charge fees proportionate to their expertise and the area of expertise. This is, by far, the bigger expense as experts who have 10+ years of experience in lucrative field’s reasonable fee are exorbident.

On top of that, you have to pay for your own lawyers to read everything and do any research that they need to in order to be confident they understand the material and can give you reasonable advice. ⬆️

C. Wait, How Much!?

So you’re probably thinking that for this to be a concern to WotC, there had to be some serious money being spent here right?

Well, we don’t have all the numbers but we definitely have the figures that were declared as part of the bankruptcy.

At the time of the bankruptcy:

• WotC had spent $718,696.04 on trade mark litigation Claim 5-1
• LaNasa had spent about $335,186.05 on the trade mark litigation Document #1

So we definitely entered into Dr Evil territory, without even getting close to going to trial on the core issues.

You can probably see why this process was rapidly turning into an endless money bonfire, and that why WotC probably concluded that it was best to agree to a settlement rather than risk running up more bills and finding that they’d spent twice as much as Justin’s net worth for nothing in return.⬆️

VI. CONCLUSION

While many doubtlessly wanted LaNasa to be prosecuted to the limit of the law, and left penniless – and WotC was almost certainly in a position to do it – the smart move was to just settle.

It’s a confidential settlement, so we will never know the terms of it and even if I did find out I wouldn’t share it because it’d be disrespectful to the courts and the process.

LaNasa may or may not have had to pay WotC something, but he almost certainly had to share humiliating facts about his situation to convince WotC it was a good deal.

He also, in my opinion, certainly had to agree to shut it all down, and while he seems to do the occasional cheeky move – is heavily limited on his capacity to talk about WotC. ⬆️

A. The Products

While I’m sure nobody will be heartbroken that Star Frontiers: New Genesis will not be getting released, not all the products associated with the nuTSR / Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum brand(s) had such a specific fate.

For those Goblinz: Those Pesky Goblinz: A Role-playing game by Justin LaNasa is no longer directly available for sale on Amazon, it appears it and Dungeon Crawl are still available via resellers.

In the case of Dungeon Crawl, the reseller is Mick McArt, who seems to still keep them on display when he sets up his stalls at various markets. He hasn’t posted any incredibly awkward, proof–of-life style pictures in a while so its unclear if he’s no longer publicly verifying sales, or if he’s just not getting sales.

And well, Orcz: Those Pesky Orcz: A Game About Vile, Corrupt, Abberant Creatures: By Justin LaNasa is available on Amazon again – but doesn’t seem to have acquired any positive reviews from anyone but the author, making it less popular with the mainstream that Stephen Erin Dinehart IV’s AI generated novel, GiantLands: Tuskaloosa’s Reckoning: The Sun Sword: Book One.

Yeah these guys love their run on titles and subtitles.

Also for reasons unclear to me, LaNasa proudly brags that he was the “pesky” books as well as Tales & Tots. ⬆️

B. The Pages

All of the web sites went down pretty much immediately, with linking to WotC’s corporate page before presumably being sold to some brokerage service that was essentially using them as an ad service. Still, a better fate than before.

The TSR Con, TSR Hobbies and OSR Games pages on Facebook were deleted pretty much immediately after the settlement – and Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum renamed to DHS Hobbies for a while. Kind of. It went through a weird, hilarious rebrand.

Yeah, LaNasa decided to try to really throw all his toys out of the cot by going full Satanic Panic and trying to depict TTRPGs as a cause of mental illness. Specifically a condition that it seems LaNasa invented as a means to try to discredit his critics in advance (ie even he knew was nonsense).

It’s been rebranded to Dungeon Hobby Shop now and posts occasionally, but tellingly did not post on the anniversary of Gary Gygax’s death this year. I can only assume that’s because Ernie is no longer around to mention it, and for LaNasa it was never about Gary or the games.

C. The Building

After some strange announcements about continuing it as a non-profit, etc, but then LaNasa listed it as for sale (contents not included) for $5,000,000.00. It appears that he actually had a sincere belief both that this was viable and that this summary would compel a sale:

In case you’re wondering: No he very specifically was not selling the business, just the empty building. He had, apparently been shopping around and trying to get a much higher price for the wildly unprofitable and non-viable business.²⁴ Justin LaNasa (11 September 2024) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>

It didn’t sell. Or more correctly, it wasn’t sold at this price or by LaNasa.

Later, after this failed to manifest, he would halve the price.

I’m not going to dive into the specifics, but around the end of this fiasco it transpired that LaNasa and his wife separated. As part of the proceedings, she was given ownership of the property and set the much more reasonable price of $375,000 resulting in the most Wisconsin outcome possible: The building being sold to a cheese vending business.²⁵Justin LaNasa (30 August 2025) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>

Naturally, LaNasa and his father are sure that someone is to blame for this, criminals— but it definitely isn’t LaNasa.²⁶ Above

Wonder how he grew up this way. ⬆️

D. The Contents

So if the building wasn’t available with contents included? What happened to the contents?

That’s a difficult question as we have varying reports that some items were returned, some items (such as the door with the signatures on it) found safe homes, and that the rest of the items were sold with a split between: LaNasa, his wife, and Ernie Gygax.

This of course, raises a lot of questions as to what Ernie’s status in the business – if he was a partner why was it never admitted? If he wasn’t a partner, why is was he getting a cut at this point?

While I do not have the specifics, I have been reliably advised by multiple sources that the door loaded up with signatures found a safe home with someone who understands and appreciates the significance.

LaNasa claims all the donated items were returned, but without there ever having been an inventory and list of donors – this is impossible to confirm or deny. ⬆️

E. The Collaborators

LaNasa hoarded everything and ultimately, that included hoarding a lot of legal responsibility and potential liability. But he didn’t act alone, he had collaborators. ⬆️

1. Stephen Erin Dinehart IV

As you can probably tell from GiantLands Saga, Dinehart has not been making a terrible success of his own products – relying heavily on generative AI to create works he credits to others.

If you’re wondering has he learned anything? Absolutely not. He’s currently attempting to buddy up another infamous grifter, Ken “Whit” Whitman – master of multiple perpetually unfinished Kickstarters with a “old school TSR” talent agency with no talent, and (of course) an “AI company”.

He briefly dropped onto the Facebook group to accuse me of defamation because he didn’t care for my review of The Broken Road and has now released yet another unplayable, error filled GiantLands product.

As of 3 April, having alienated himself from the entire TTRPG space (regardless of political stance), he has released a massive novel about Moytoy of Tellico that he desperately wants to be recognized as a foundation text. He’s naturally very passionate about the issues provided he can be the centre of them, use them to promote his game and/or present himself as inherently important.

So I guess he’s also trying to get alienated from Native American groups and is generally slow cooking his brain with generative AI. ⬆️

2. Michael Keen Hovermale

While I don’t personally have the evidence of it, I’ve been informed by various parties that Michael continued to quietly collaborate with LaNasa while trying to work with people harmed by him.

Ultimately, he parted ways with them – though never publicly acknowledged it on his YouTube channel or other social media. Ordinarily, I’d worry about reporting on this as it’d be impossible to prove without invasive evidence etc.

Fortunately for me, nothing I can say about that can be more damning than what Hovermale has been doing openly – partnering with Clownfish to interview Grummz, and proudly promoting it on his LinkedIn. (📸screenshot)

Aside from that he’s been struggling to try to become a big fish in the extraordinarily small puddle that is the reactionary old school gaming crew, and allegedly is working on his own TTRPG that Clownfish will publish.

If that ever happens I guess we’ll have yet another “universal” TTRPG that we can look at before concluding that GURPS, Savage Worlds, Cypher, Fate, BRP, and Tiny d6, really did do it better.

But more realistically it’s never going to happen because he’s too busy proudly being a generic reactionary and failing to get attention because by the current standards, he’s just a boring guy. ⬆️

3. Ernie Gygax

Ernie did, due to the help of others, have his module released. More importantly he was married to the woman he loved, with his brother Luke as celebrant. LaNasa was presumably invited as he showed up in a poorly maintained Coast Guard semi-dress uniform to the wedding.

Unfortunately, Ernie’s health did take turns for the worse and he eventually passed away in hospital – surrounded by family and people who loved him.

All he got out of all this was the destruction of his personal reputation, presumably a lot of arguments with his family, and leaving a legacy of being associated with hate and grifting. A warning to be careful with your legacy at the end of your life. ⬆️

4. Dave Johnson

While he briefly enjoyed some half-arsed promotion by LaNasa during the saga, he’s since attempted to re-invent himself and been left to twist in the wind. Essentially he lost his weird, unsuccessful TTRPG magazine and now has an even less successful combination of Substack, Rumble, Truth Social and X née Twitter accounts.

The general trend has been for him to announce stuff, then either never follow through or melt down and delete everything. While Kindle Vella was operating he was spamming it with AI generated nonsense under a variety of uncomfortable pen names (including his cosplaying as a Korean-American woman called Bobbie Lee).

Honestly I think he peaked with this post.

Due to the climates on the platforms he inhabits, Dave is pretty much entirely ignored and even when he announces a product its not actually for sale or comprehensible to humans. ⬆️

5. Michael Yach

He seems to have decided to sling back into obscurity – he’s left Costa Rica and is now back in North Carolina, and apparently recently re-discovered Jesus (but still posting weird hateful shit). Also, he thinks a mail shirt is going to protect him as a security guard, in an open carry state.

I think it’s safe to say he got nothing out of it other than time wasted and relationships harmed by him fixating on hating people he’s never met. Could not happen to a nicer, or smarter, fellow.

Naturally I can’t find any evidence he’s received any support from LaNasa at all. ⬆️

6. Vincent “The Evil Dungeon Master” Florio

This is probably the funniest outcome, since it seems that Vincent is desperately trying to carry on with his podcasting/content creator pursuit — desperately hoping people who love to talk about games that are more than 40-years old will forget he was openly betraying his fellow commentators and the community in general.

At time of writing he seems to have a Patreon which promises “almost” daily updates which seems to have zero paying members and hasn’t updated in a full month. A Truth Social account that has pretty much no posts and no engagement, and way, way too many “podcast” episodes.

His subscriber count has been going up, but largely his videos are not getting any sort of traction – sometimes getting single digit views. The previously privately hosted blog has moved to Substack (presumably to try to set up payment processing and distribution people who still use Substack despite the owners’ ongoing support of actual Nazis).²⁷ Geraldine McKelvie “Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters” (7 February 2026) The Guardian <www.theguardian.com>

The most excitement it seems was when he made his obligatory “I’m not quitting” video, after which he continued to make videos – he was mostly just blaming his failures on YouTube and proposing the solution is more channels.

I don’t think his credibility or significance in the old school TTRPG community is coming back any time soon. ⬆️

F. The Adversaries

The drama ended with a whimper, not a bang. Basically nobody at a professional publication cared to cover much after the bankruptcy since it had heralded the inevitable victory of WotC over an evil clown.

Of course, I’m still here – for my sins, but what about the others?

There was one guy who basically stopped commentating on this after a very dramatic issue where he tried to cancel small conventions that invited Ernie Gygax. I’m not going to go into that in any further detail, but suffice to say he didn’t do himself any favours and the pressure to step back didn’t come from LaNasa.

Others have decided to simply shelve the issue a move on, wider folk than I.

But there are two I think are worth spotlighting.⬆️

1. Wizard Tower Games

Don Semora’s business seems to be running fine – he’s getting jobs, he’s working with people like Paulie Kidd – getting ready to publish some of the last work by Tim Kask (including a mouse themed game I have to get when it comes out).

I believe he’s also networked out to collaborate with Magic: The Gathering founder Peter Adkinson – so it seems like he’s probably going to do well out of it.²⁸Peter Adkinson (25 March 2026) Facebook <www.facebook.com>

Essentially what the got out of this all was a lot of stress and drama, offset with some networking and heightened presence in his community. He got a lot of street cred by standing up to LaNasa. ⬆️

2. Tenkar’s Tavern

Tenkar already has a pretty big presence in the community, and ultimately has received a lot of support from his community for his refusal to back down in the face of a defamation lawsuit.

At time of writing, his video talking about the reprehensible racism in the leaked version of Star Frontiers: New Genesis (which LaNasa denies was authentic) rates as his 9th most popular video, right in between a video about the OGL fiasco and a video about Shadowdark being polarizing in the OSR.

At time of writing he seems to reliably pull in 1k+ of views per video, with a real uptick since April 2025.

So despite Justin’s best attempts to end his presence, Tenkar keeps on keeping on. ⬆️

G. Justin William LaNasa

As mentioned above, Justin:

• Lost a shit ton of money on this foolishness
• Seems to be getting divorced acrimoniously
• Lost the building that he paid cash for to the divorce
• Is banned from multiple conventions throughout the USA
• Had to update his web site to try to apologize for lying about being involved in rescue operations during the The Perfect Storm
• Has become a laughing stock among reactionaries as well as normal people

Ultimately its impossible to know the true cost to him since we will never see the lawyer bills for the additional lawyers he had to bring on to protect him from his own bankruptcy, the amount he spent on things to help him cope with the stress, the lost opportunity cost, etc.

I am, based off the figures I’ve seen – confident that his cost him at least six figures purely in direct monetary losses.

But we can safely say that trying to usurp the history of Dungeons & Dragons and TTRPGs generally was an objectively bad decision that caused him a lot of suffering in the short and long term.

Also, thanks to this blog, Tenkar’s YouTube channel and Star Frontiers New Genesis discussion group (unofficial) he’s basically got no opportunity to simply wait for the bad press on this one to fade away.

As it should have. ⬆️

• 1
  TSR LLC v. Wizards of the Coast LLC, 2:21-cv-01705, (W.D. Wash.), [nuTSR v. WotC] Document #66, 29 May 2024
• 2
  Justin William LaNasa (16 October 2020) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>
• 3
  TSR, LLC, 23-01577, (Bankr. E.D.N.C.),[nuTSR Bankruptcy] Document #64, 18 September 2024
• 4
  nuTSR v. WotC, above n 1, Document #33, 8 September 2022, at 2-3
• 5
  nuTSR Bankruptcy, above n 3, Document #1, 8 June 2023, at 21
• 6
  James Maliszewski “A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Lizard Men” Grodnardia Blogspot (7 August 2024) <grognardia.blogspot.com>
• 7
  Justin LaNasa (13 January 2023) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>
• 8
  Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook, above n 2
• 9
  nuTSR v. WotC, Document #64, 18 December 2023
• 10
  Above, Document #60, at 8
• 11
  Above, Document #61
• 12
  Above, Document #59
• 13
  Yamamoto Tsunetomo Hagakure (initial publication details unclear)
• 14
  Dominic Rushe “‘I hate him’: Martin Shkreli court transcript reveals struggle for impartial jurors” (17 August 2017) The Guardian <www.theguardian.com>
• 15
  Stephen Council “Judge forced to slash SF jury pool over hate for Elon Musk” (20 February 2026) SFGate <www.sfgate.com>
• 16
  Morrus “Ernie Gygax on New TSR, WotC Beefs, Trademarks, Licensees, 5E, & More” (24 June 2021) EN World <www.enworld.org>
• 17
  Kim Wincen “The TSR & Wonderfilled/GiantLands Saga – Introduction” (4 November 2022) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com>
• 18
  Kim Wincen “Star Frontiers: New Genesis (Unreleased)” (6 October 2024) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com>
• 19
  nuTSR v. WotC, above n 1, Document #32, 8 September 2022
• 20
  nuTSR v. WotC, above n 1, Document #31, 8 September 2022
• 21
  Bailey Aldridge “Video of women wrestling in grits sparks feud between NC primary election candidates” (25 February 2020) The News & Observer <www.newsobserver.com>
• 22
  Justin LaNasa “Support TSR against Wizards of the Coast” (8 December 20201) IndieGogo <www.indiegogo.com>
• 23
  Justin LaNasa (15 December 2023) Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum (@HobbyMuseum) <now deleted>
• 24
  Justin LaNasa (11 September 2024) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>
• 25
  Justin LaNasa (30 August 2025) Dungeon Hobby Shop Facebook <www.facebook.com>
• 26
  Above
• 27
  Geraldine McKelvie “Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters” (7 February 2026) The Guardian <www.theguardian.com>
• 28
  Peter Adkinson (25 March 2026) Facebook <www.facebook.com>