Tag: Michael K Hovermale

nuTSR declares BANKRUPTCY!

So, at this point in the saga, the situation was:

Justin LaNasa (LaNasa) had taken out multiple lapsed trademarks, and was claiming his new company TSR LLC was the divine heir to them, and was now having to throw money into a bottomless pit due to having taken Wizards of the Coast to court over it.1 TSR LLC v. Wizards of the Coast LLC, 2:21-cv-01705, (W.D. Wash.)

This was, not sustainable given that is its products were generally bad and it’s convention failed to generate any buzz for obvious reasons. 16 months in, Justin had clearly noticed it wasn’t going great – hence the numerous meltdowns.2 Kim Wincen “Dungeon Crawl, TSR Cons & Meltdowns” (9 January 2026) A gentleman with opinions <blog.wincenworks.com>

So naturally, in May of 2023, he decided TSR LLC should just go bankrupt, and it was very funny. Yes, normally bankruptcies are tragic and heart breaking but this one was very funny. Bankruptcy was filed for on 8 June 2023.3 TSR, LLC, 23-01577, (Bankr. E.D.N.C.)

The first area of hilarity was Stephen Erin Dinehart IV, (Dinehart) of GiantLands infamy, immediately jumped into try to blame Wizards of the Coast for nuTSR putting themselves into bankruptcy.4 Stephen Erin Dinehart IV (8 June 2023) Wonderfilled Facebook <now deleted>

A Facebook post by Wonderfilled, which uses the terrible Transformers-esque TSR logo and declares "Yes, it's true. Maybe you've heard, they killed TSR. Again. That said, the courts are clear who owns TSR, & its not Hasbro dba Wizards of the Coast." It carries on for 3 paragraphs with similar nonsense.
It should be noted that the courts never had to decide who owned TSR, but the answer is Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary (not a Doing Business As) of Hasbro.

LaNasa himself chose to amplify this message, but decided to make no effort in doing so – leaving it open to speculation if he’d agreed with Dinehart – a man who he’d previous branded a traitor and put on his haters list – should basically resume his old job as nuTSR’s public relations.

A screenshot of Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum re-sharing the post by Wonderfilled.

TSR original Tim Kask had a much less sympathetic response to it.5 Tim Kask (Kaskoid) (16 June 2023) Facebook <www.facebook.com/tim.kask.9>

A text on image post by Tim Kask, 16 June 2023, "NuTSR bankrupt? Oh my, waht is the world coming to? Ah, it's senses. Big surprise when you are headed by a slimeball."

Rest in peace Tim, you were rough around the edges but you were an entertaining man of integrity right until the very end.

Continue reading nuTSR declares BANKRUPTCY!

NuTSR’s recruitment drive and the Fall of Michael

From June 2021 to mid January 2022 – nuTSR went into a mission to try to build up credibility as a games company and recover from losing their flagship product as well as the individual they had given control of their social media presence to. Pretty much all of this effort would fall onto the shoulders of “volunteer” Michael Hovermale as Justin focused on talking things up and recruiting terrible people to make terrible products.

I put scare quotes on the volunteer because Justin and… accounts very defensive of Justin have always maintained that Michael was purely a volunteer who never expected to get paid – but as you’ll see he was doing an awful lot of work and putting up with awful lot of shit (including from yours truly) – so I’m inclined to believe this was supposed to be a “volunteer for now and then we’ll talk compensation” type arrangement.

Particularly given some later events involving some accounts called “Mario Real” but… more on that later in our story.

Side note: If this was professional reporting I would have reached out to people for comment, but since I didn’t do it while it was happening and I think there’d be rather massive differences in responses due to personal reasons. (Don & Michael would probably be happy to comment, I’m pretty sure Justin would not) Therefore all this is based on observation and public interactions.

The Official Discord

Before being promoted to head of PR, Michael had been the head moderator at the Discord and had implemented a lot of rules that were in place to try to keep the conversation entirely about games – and not about politics. These, ironically, would have been prohibitive of Justin being a member of the Discord – but Michael didn’t realize that yet.

A screenshot of the server rules for the TSR Official Community Discord. "1 Respect each other harassment & bullying isn't allowed. This includes personal attacks, slurs, racist, sexist, homophobic, hateful or derogatory speech. Also don't attempt to create drama. It's not nice to make fun of others, let's make sure that this remains a safe and positive space for everyone. 2. No NSFW or obscene content. This includes text, images, or links featuring nudity, sex, hard violence, or other graphically disturbing content. A good rule of thumb is keep things PG-13. Discord allows members as young as 13 to join. If you're unsure if your post is "ok" you can ask a moderator. 3. Avoid sensitive or controversial topics. Real world politics, religion, race, gender, current (sensitive) real world events, depression/suicide, violence, etc. These discussions can easily turn into heated debates, which does not reflect the positive and inclusive nature of this server."
Ironically Justin would later demonstrate the only thing that stopped him breaking all of these rules was disinterest in his own “community”.1My Twitter, 8 August 2021 https://twitter.com/wincenworks/status/1424151599375519749

And I want to stress here, as misguided as it was to try to run a Discord about any role-playing game with no discussion of politics around it in the first place – given that invariably a part of world building in role-playing games is working out the politics, and the implications of your interpretations of those politics. Even something as simple as creating a “good” society means making political statements on what is encouraged and what is encouraged by “good” people.

Continue reading NuTSR’s recruitment drive and the Fall of Michael