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.

 

[mythago]

Judge all you want with the info you have. At the end of the day his friends and family knew him best.

That doesn’t mean he was want a tad sexist, it just wasn’t his defining personality trait like a lot of people like to pretend it is.

As others have said, he was human and no human is perfect.

What does this even mean, though? We aren't allowed to point out if someone was (more than a tad) sexist because "nobody is perfect" or because it wasn't their "defining" personality trait?

 

[Parmandur]

Okay. So.

My child has autism (Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD). He was diagnosed at age 3. It creates a number of challenges for him in daily life. It is a diagnosis that came after extensive, rigorous testing by a team of highly credentialed medical professionals. Autism is a spectrum, as is well known, and traits that used to be associated with so-called Asperger's Syndrome, which Musk has publicly claimed, are now considered a part of that spectrum, at what would be called the mild range (my son has mild-moderate autism, and there are quite a few specific measurements that I won't get into).

There are a number of traits that are often associated with autism but that does not mean having some or all of them means that you are on the spectrum. As far as I can find, Musk is self-diagnosed, as an adult. So I am not convinced that he actually has autism; it is not a condition that you can self-diagnose, and it is more difficult for even experts to assess in adults, particularly functioning adults. It is certainly not something that an expert, let alone a non-expert, should claim to assess based on seeing someone on media.

Most people on the spectrum are gentle and kind, like my son, and are frequently the victims of bullying behaviour, not the instigators. They do not behave even remotely like Elon Musk. He may or may not be on the spectrum, but in any event, he is not very representative of what that is like for the vast majority of people with ASD. I would appreciate it, as a parent of a child with actually diagnosed autism, if we can leave the (possible) ASD angle out of the discussion and, as Parmandur suggests, just focus on the specific behaviours themselves.

Right, exactly. He may or may not be, I don't know beyond his having claimed the status. Irrelevant to his public statements, honestly, even granting that he may be on the spectrum.

 

[overgeeked]

Oh man, the troubles I've had getting my tablet to let me say bleep or bleep. (Not to mention bleep.)

Manually put them into your device’s dictionary. It will stop autocorrecting to something else.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Manually put them into your device’s dictionary. It will stop autocorrecting to something else.

Whenever I type on my phone, I have to "manually put in" at least one word that it is trying to change to another word. Heck, it sometimes tries to change perfectly normal words into utter nonsense. I think that it's trolling me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I thought of this explanation when it happened to me, so I tested it, but to no avail. The fault was mine

I'm sure that it was mine as well, I just was having fun with words! (And snarking about how much I hate auto-correct).

 

[polyhedral man]

If only people would choose to reflect on their own behaviour with one tenth of the level of scrutiny they dedicate to making a holistic moral judgement (on the basis
of a couple of quotes) for someone who is not only absent, but also deceased (and therefore can't defend their record). But I get it. The former is so much easier. Plus it makes you feel good too, because we're not the ones being sexist, phew!
Just wait until our grandchildren get hold of a couple of our quotes from the enworld forums. Maybe there will be a couple of -isms* assigned to our dead corpses by the even-more-civilised-future generations. But they can fight over that, let's focus on the task at hand :>

*like some sort of Damocles Sword (a +3, as Gary might say). Peace and stay with the Force.

 

[overgeeked]

Whenever I type on my phone, I have to "manually put in" at least one word that it is trying to change to another word. Heck, it sometimes tries to change perfectly normal words into utter nonsense. I think that it's trolling me.

Yeah. Autocorrect sucks. I just turn it off. That’s why there are so many mistakes and random edits to my posts.

 

[SlyFlourish]

none of the things that they don't like are relevant to today

Sorry, are you saying that racism and sexism aren't relevant topics today?

Ben should have been more honest about the context of the qoutes he used

Can you enlighten me to the rest of the qoute so we have the context?

 

[SlyFlourish]

pretty much what @SlyFlourish was asking...

Right. Let's all cower regardless of what's right or wrong.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah. Autocorrect sucks. I just turn it off. That’s why there are so many mistakes and random edits to my posts.

I tried turning it off, but the only thing that I hated more than having it on was having it off. I really have to teach myself to get better at hitting the word suggestions when one of the three are appropriate. I tend to ignore them, and try to type the whole word on my own, often hitting the wrong letter and backspace multiple times before getting to the correct one.