Elon Musk Calls for Wizards of the Coast to "Burn in Hell" Over Making of Original D&D Passages

Elon Musk, the owner of the app formerly known as Twitter, is calling on Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro to "burn in hell" for the publication of Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons. On November 21st, former gaming executive turned culture warrior Mark Hern posted several passages from Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons on Twitter, criticizing the book for providing context about some of the misogyny and cultural insensitivity found in early rulebooks. These passages were pulled from the foreword written by Jason Tondro, a senior designer for the D&D team who also worked extensively on the book. Hern stated that these passages, along with the release of the new 2024 Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D's "40th anniversary" (it is actually D&D's 50th anniversary) both "erased and slandered" Gary Gygax and other creators of Dungeons & Dragons.

In response, Musk wrote "Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash E. Gary Gygax and the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons. What the [naughty word] is wrong with Hasbro and WoTC?? May they burn in hell." Musk had played Dungeons & Dragons at some point in his youth, but it's unclear when the last time he ever played the game.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash E. Gary Gygax and the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons. What the [xxxx] is wrong with Hasbro and WoTC?? May they burn in hell.

- Elon Musk​

Notably, Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons contains countless correspondences and letters written by both Gygax and Dave Arneson, including annotated copies of early D&D rulesets. Most early D&D rules supplements as well as early Dragon magazines are also found in the book. It seems odd to contain one of the most extensive compliations of Gygax's work an "erasure," but it's unclear whether Hern or Musk actually read the book given the incorrect information about the anniversary.

Additionally, Gygax and Arneson are both credited in the 2024 Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. The exact credit reads: "Building on the original game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and then developed by many others over the past 50 years." Wizards of the Coast also regularly collaborates with Gygax's youngest son Luke and is a participant at Gary Con, a convention held in Gygax's honor. The opening paragraph of the 2024 Player's Handbook is written by Jeremy Crawford and specifically lauds both Gygax and Arneson for making Dungeons & Dragons and contains an anecdote about Crawford meeting Gygax.

Musk has increasingly leaned into culture war controversies in recent years, usually amplifying misinformation to suit his own political agenda.

 

[Morrus]

foreword

Foreword…

… wait, never mind.

(thank you)

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Aaargh! Please! It's a foreword, not a 'forward'! One is an intro to a book, the other is a direction.

Yeah, I know, I'm a pedant. But that one makes me physically wince every time I see it. Could be worse, I suppose--I"ve literally seen it printed in books, and that's just painful. And embarrassing if you wrote the book!

I was about to break my own rule about correcting people's spelling mistakes... I've seen this one a few times in this thread and it was creating an itch I needed to scratch. Thanks for jumping on that grenade!

 

[Vaalingrade]

His platform still has hundreds of millions of people on it

Speaking of the number fo real actual people on Twitter the everything X: how's that getting rid of all the bots he used as a figleaf to justify wasting all that money going?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

deleted

 

[Parmandur]

No, the foreword is not.

And perhaps no one in the thread. What I meant to communicate is that is happening a lot. And Elon’s overreaction I suspect is more about that than this foreword whether he knows it or not.

I think he is speaking to that sentiment and is not taking a breath to really read the content of the mild foreword.

As this thread lengthened, I saw it here too. It’s a thing. And so is denial of inconvenient truths like sexist ideas held by our icons.

I mean, I doubt he knew or thought much beyond the one Tweet he was replying to.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

deleted

 

[jasper]

Again, I respect his daughter for defending him. I mean, even though he isn't named and people are just trying to stir stuff up.

Seriously, you know that, right? It's an expensive book that only people like me would get. Why would Elon Musk care, other than riling people up.
...

Because he is autistic, has no filter, and loved the game.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Speaking of the number fo real actual people on Twitter the everything X: how's that getting rid of all the bots he used as a figleaf to justify wasting all that money going?

Watched a video the other day. Guy did some big digging and investigating and came to the conclusion that 1 in 3 posters on a political post on Twitter is a bot or a paid foreign propagandist. IE China or Russia spreading chaos and misinformation

 

[Maxperson]

I'm going to take a stab at this, actually.

I think that there are people that fall into two camps.

One camp will defend their "heroes" and try to fight any attempt to discuss, you know, the actual facts about them.
Then there are others, unfortunately, who do try to take people down- those who only look at the bad, and forget the good.

I'd like to think that at some point we can realize that people are complicated, and we can both accept that people have done things that we don't like, but they have also done things that we do like, And just because someone has produced something "good" for you- art, music, literature, politics, a winning season for you team, whatever ... you can still not reflexively deny that the person in question may have done other things.

Like a lot of things, there's a lot of gray, and people often only see black and white.

Most things require some nuance. Except bards. They require termination... with extreme prejudice.

I think there are a sizeable number of us that can both accept that people have done things we don't like, but have also done things that we do like. Enough to be a third camp.

So I see a number of things at play here.

1) WotC has the right to do what they did.
2) WotC is not wrong to do what they did.
3) There are a good number of other sources out there disussing Gygax and his flaws, so WotC didn't need to do what they did.
4) WotC has a vastly larger influence on D&D and it's fans due to who they are and what they produce, which exacerbates the reactions of the first two camps.

While numbers 1 and 2 are true, for a number of people numbers 3 and 4 outweigh the first two and they would rather WotC had not brought it up. I think that's more in line with where @Henadic Theologian is coming from, rather than being in the first camp you mentioned.

 

[billd91]

Because he is autistic, has no filter, and loved the game.

And because it’s pandering to a political base he dearly wants to build his Twitter empire upon because it cements their support and furthers his government career. There’s not just an impulse control problem here. He knows how his base will react to this.