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.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Gygax flat out said he was.

"When someone tells you who they are, deny deny deny until you're blue in the face because I don't want you saying bad things about someone who had a partial role in making something I like."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean he'd have to be a hardcore player to have any reason to have an opinion about this.

Musk's real job: Full time clout chaser.

His social media feeds are a depressing/hilarious compilation of old memes and controversies that he always doesn't quite seem to understand that he uses to whip up his blue checks into a frenzy and give him the affirmation he never got from his (amazingly, even worse) father.

 

[Steampunkette]

This is the kind of quote I would be inclined to be more skeptical of than some of the others. I commented on this one the last time it came up but I see a number of obvious, equally valid possible interpretations:

1) one he was a proud sexist
2) he was frustrated and said it in a moment of outrage
3) he was engaging in some form of hyperbole
4) he said it to provoke a reaction rather than express a genuine belief

I think people reading it as 1 is fair. But I also think the alternative are also fair readings.

"As I have often said, I am a biological determinist, and there is no question that male and female brains are different. It is apparent to me that by and large females do not derrive the same inner satisfaction from playing games as a hobby that males do. It isn't that females can't play games well, it is just that it isn't a compelling activity to them as is the case for males."
- Gary Gygax, Jan 25, 2004.

By all means. Explain the context in which Gary Gygax is able to peer into the inner worlds of the women around him and divine that they don't enjoy gaming on a purely internal level and thus isn't actually just saying something patently, blatantly, sexist in the above quote.

Philosophers the world over would -love- to know how to do it.

"Oh it's out of context! There's probably more than those sentences!"

TSR - Q&A with Gary Gygax

This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.

www.enworld.org

Here is the full context.

Like. I get it. MAYBE one off the cuff comment might be forgiven. But this is a lifetime of being a sexist, not just a single moment. Over and over and over he repeated sexist BS.

Gary Gygax was a sexist. Full stop. he was not "A Tad Sexist" or "A Product of his Time". He was born just a few years before my father was and my father didn't hold those views and what views he -did- hold that were sexist my mother largely corrected him over before my sister and I were born.

Gary Gygax was a sexist. For everything else he did, he was also a sexist. And a racist. And an antisemite. These things do not counter his creation being a net positive for the world.

But denying them or couching them in pleasantries does nothing positive for anyone.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Musk's real job: Full time clout chaser.

His social media feeds are a depressing/hilarious compilation of old memes and controversies that he always doesn't quite seem to understand that he uses to whip up his blue checks into a frenzy and give him the affirmation he never got from his (amazingly, even worse) father.

Oh, try his grandfather. Moved to South Africa because he thought Canada ("free mass grave with every Indian school!") wasn't racist enough.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

Musk's real job: Full time clout chaser.

His social media feeds are a depressing/hilarious compilation of old memes and controversies that he always doesn't quite seem to understand that he uses to whip up his blue checks into a frenzy and give him the affirmation he never got from his (amazingly, even worse) father.

All without realizing he's a grade A shite father himself.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Context does and to use your analogy, so does testimony from actual witnesses’ matter

Eyewitness testimony is widely acknowledged to be terrible by scientists and legal experts.

It just works great on juries.

 

[Bedrockgames]

"As I have often said, I am a biological determinist, and there is no question that male and female brains are different. It is apparent to me that by and large females do not derrive the same inner satisfaction from playing games as a hobby that males do. It isn't that females can't play games well, it is just that it isn't a compelling activity to them as is the case for males."
- Gary Gygax, Jan 25, 2004.

By all means. Explain the context in which Gary Gygax is able to peer into the inner worlds of the women around him and divine that they don't enjoy gaming on a purely internal level and thus isn't actually just saying something patently, blatantly, sexist in the above quote.

Philosophers the world over would -love- to know how to do it.

"Oh it's out of context! There's probably more than those sentences!"

TSR - Q&A with Gary Gygax

This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.

www.enworld.org

Here is the full context.

Like. I get it. MAYBE one off the cuff comment might be forgiven. But this is a lifetime of being a sexist, not just a single moment. Over and over and over he repeated sexist BS.

Gary Gygax was a sexist. Full stop. he was not "A Tad Sexist" or "A Product of his Time". He was born just a few years before my father was and my father didn't hold those views and what views he -did- hold that were sexist my mother largely corrected him over before my sister and I were born.

Gary Gygax was a sexist. For everything else he did, he was also a sexist. And a racist. And an antisemite. These things do not counter his creation being a net positive for the world.

But denying them or couching them in pleasantries does nothing positive for anyone.

As I said in the previous thread on this, that particular quote seems somewhat sexist to me. At the same time I also don't think it at all unusual for a man his age in 2004, to think women and men would have different levels of interest in different activities (or that men and women are biologically different). I think he is wrong about the amount of interest women would have in D&D. I don't think the quote makes him a monster though. I think anyone who had a grandparent born its eh 1920s or 30s gets how different that generation was. That said, I could certainly see other people viewing the quote differently.

I'd say that quote is very different from one where he is declaring himself to be a sexist. I tend to be skeptical around these kinds of remarks because in my experience few people are that cartoonish in reality. It sounds like it is something where there is greater likelihood that the statement is provocative or a product of frustration.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I feel bad for the kids, because they are in a difficult place. To defend their family legacy they need to defend him. And part of me gets it. My dad was waaaaay worse than Gary ever was, but part of me feels like I have to defend him because I'm 1/2 him, so if he's a horrible human being, am I?

For good or ill, we are not our parents. And even the worst people can compartmentalize that and still be decent parents. (Although often they can't or don't.)

Please don't ever tie up your self-worth in whose genetic tissue you spring from or even from who raised you.

And even those who come from the worst places and the worst people can always make a choice (sometimes an incredibly difficult choice) to rise above that and make the world a better place, even in a small way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Exactly. From the man himself. Character witnesses, even friends and family, don’t matter. Gygax flat out said he was.

Quite.

Similarly it's all very well for friends of Gygax to say he "wasn't racist" or w/e, but that is rather undermined with Gygax himself was approvingly quoting "nits make lice" as a truism and one that was an example of "Lawful Good". It is a truly psychotically racist/pro-literal-genocide phrase (and scientifically very inaccurate! < adjusts nerd glasses >) popularized by a man who was such a racist maniac that even white US society in the 1860s thought he was a gross lunatic racist mass-murderer/genocidaire (Colonel Chivington - don't go read his Wikipedia if you don't want your day ruined repeatedly! There's a reason I didn't link!).

I think anyone who had a grandparent born its eh 1920s or 30s gets how different that generation was.

I supect that even by 1938-born standards, Gygax was more-than-typically sexist (and racist). And I grew up exposed to obviously a huge number of people born in the 1930s (a lot of my teachers, older relatives, etc.), and I didn't see that kind of aggressive biological determinism (for which Gygax even knows the specific descriptor) as common. People often had slightly sexist views, but the absolutism - that's what wasn't common - that's where Gygax is, I would suggest, actually atypical. Likewise with thinking "nits make lice" was a truism.

Other parts of his life definitely align with this too - he was a Kentucky Colonel back when they were full-on "THE SOUTH WILL RISE AG'IN!!!", wrote a book fanboying about the Nazis, etc.

Re: "monster", that's kind of irrelevant isn't it? He clearly didn't kill anyone, or openly support the Klan or w/e, let alone commit the kind of nastiness somewhat common to people even ten or fifteen years younger than him, so "monster" seems a bit silly. But I also don't think his views were quite as common as you seem to be implying them to be. Obviously this is a bit of feel-based thing for all of us, but my impression is that absolutist biological determinism and thinking Col. Chivington was a good guy would put Gygax on the fringes of how most people around his age thought, rather than in the more normative range. That he would be considered a "weird dude" if he started talking about that stuff.

(Bizarrely I can't argue from grandfathers because my grandfathers were both older than born in 1920s or 1930s (let's not get into it - but both were born between 1901 and 1910), and whilst were both notably not sexist or racist in that way, they were both very different "independent thinkers" and somewhat eccentric.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm not sure why you think this is a helpful post or adds in any way to what's being discussed. Throwing gas on a fire is not a useful contribution to a conversation in my opinion.

People are going to respond to the initial post as long at it's online. They cannot be expected to read through 48+ pages of posts before expressing themselves.