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.

 

[dbolack]

Nobody should have to apologize for simply reporting the truth.

At most, apologize that some of the forthcoming word choices may be unpleasant to some people but are presented in full for context. Which, coincidentally exactly what the &%^(^& debate is about.

:note: Dovetailing your thought, not disagreeing - if unclear.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have, more than once, asked why positive threads never get requests for "nuance" but negative ones do. Are you willing to answer that question? Or would you prefer to ignore it?

I answered that question when I first responded to you this morning

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ah, yes, the part of the thread where we talked about Jen Wells... that was page... um...

... Huh. Woops. Looks like we never did.

Also I was wrong. It wasn't 2 weeks it was 3 days.

View attachment 387021
"I also suspect, but am not positive" that Gary Gygax in his 30s had a 19 year old woman he'd never met sleep over at his house for 3 days and being a 19 year old woman had a lot to do with it.

YOU DON'T SAY.

And then hired her and gave her none of the guidance he promised to get her to produce work he could use. He had 3 days with her in his house assuring her he'd teach her, but once hired just didn't bother.

Gosh. I wonder why that could be from a man who was an admitted sexist.

View attachment 387022

She even felt like the "Token Female" because they didn't give her any training. That's a whole other level of messed up.

Anyway. Yeah. Lot and lots of evidence he was a sexist scattered around the history of TSR.

@Steampunkette can you please be nicer when you respond to me. I am happy to comment on things I missed, or failed to address. But I don’t feel like responding when the posts are framed in this way.

For some reason I thought we had discussed this the last time this subject came up. If I have time I will look at the story again and give my take (it has been a while since I looked at it).

 

[FrogReaver]

It's definitely possible.

It's also much more likely that I'm synthesizing a bunch of evidence that supports Gary Gygax being a garden variety sexist. Like the fact that he went to Hollywood and reportedly spent a lot of cash on cocaine and sex workers while constantly carrying a firearm.

Which we know 'cause of the whole FBI investigation into him that included making sure he wasn't the Unabomber...

This part bugs me more than the rest.

It's really hard for me to square the notion that women should be able to choose sex work as a profession without shame and that men who pay for their services are then sexists and shameful.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No. But it is an evaluation of evidence--and the repeated insistence, from several people in this thread (including you!) that pretty much everything we could possibly talk about is really:

• hyperbole/sarcasm, and thus worthless because he doesn't actually mean what he's saying
• "taken out of context," without any explanation for the context that could possibly make these statements make sense
• "uncharitable," without any explanation for why a statement like "Damn right I'm a sexist" merits charity
• "trying to provoke a response" (which is a deflection I genuinely don't understand...being intentionally provocative on a very sensitive subject IS being offensive, no?)
• coming from historians, biographers, or third parties, who thus "couldn't know him" the way "friends and family" did--because apparently only the evaluations of friends and family are valid (a premise that has never been defended in the thread, just asserted ex nihilo)

I think you are limping my arguments in with other peoples here. I never said that you had to accept my conclusions, and there are places where I said the criticisms seemed grounded in some truth. But it is also okay for me to see hyperperbole where you see sincerity. This is a subjective judgment call

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I feel like I tried to address this post elsewhere. I generally want nuance on anything. But I suppose because the negative statements are more damaging and harmful. Part of it is I dislike how the internet impacts peoples reputations in negative ways. If we were part of a group writing a historical biography of Gygax, I would expect nuance (though I think I would also be out of step with a lot of the thinking some of the other writers might have about how to prioritize a person's moral failing and how to find them in their writing). On a forum where we are talking about someone who was still around in my lifetime, and whose relatives and colleagues are still part of the hobby, I take much less of that historian mindset and and more concerned about the state and condition of the hobby itself. But to be clear, I never said people can't be critical. In most of these threads, I've said it isn't the criticisms that I mind. I expect there to be people with negative criticisms of the game, its designers, etc. What troubles me is, the critique itself almost becomes sacred or considered a priori true (and I think the critiques often do lack nuance). You tend to get hammered if you don't agree with this kinds of critiques of games and media. So I can often come across as very contrarian

Somehow missed this. My apologies.

But the portion I bolded is very important here.

Nobody is doing this. Not one person in this thread. Why do you feel this is so? Who is behaving in such a way that the criticism is somehow totally above reproach?

Because it's quite clear to me that, if anything, the thread has gone in exactly the opposite direction. It is Gygax's heroic persona that is sacred and a priori true. It cannot be called into question; anyone who does so is either deluded, or has an agenda, or is "hammering" anyone that disagrees, or is being nefarious, or committing character assassination against Gygax, or...

Do you not see how all of this is imputing profoundly negative, moralized rejection of criticism? Because that's exactly what it is. And it further isn't the "nuance" you claim to seek; it rejects any form of criticizing as being necessarily either a factual error or a moral fault.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No, we do not. We have a disagreement about what is even possible to talk about. We have a disagreement about whether it is even possible to criticize someone at all. That's the problem here. That's why you are getting SO much pushback against your polite and mild-mannered words. It is entirely possible to be polite and mild-mannered...and still uncivil.

I never said you can’t talk about anything. And I never said criticism of Gygax can’t be made. See my post where I stated that I have no problem with the critics saying what they said. My only issue is when people don’t let you disagree with or be critical of the criticisms (or push back in a way that feels overly hostile)

I do not believe I am being uncivil. My posts may not be perfect. For example Umbran pointed out where one of my posts failed to address the poster and seemed passive aggressive. I’ve taken those kinds of responses to heart and tried to avoid anything that could be read as bad faith, anger, uncivil or mean spirited.

 

[Some Dude]

The 1960s and 1970s were some of the most active times for the Women's liberation movement in the US. Anyone pushing back against that in that time knew exactly what they were doing. The fact that Gygax took aim at "Women's Lib" by name seems a deliberate and telling choice.

I'm not proclaiming Gygax a monster, or calling for him to be forgotten and excoriated. But, as Voltaire once wrote, "To the living, one owes respect. To the dead, one owes only truth."

 

[Bedrockgames]

Nobody is doing this. Not one person in this thread. Why do you feel this is so? Who is behaving in such a way that the criticism is somehow totally above reproach?

Sacred was too strong a word. I agree. I was having trouble expressing myself precisely. I simply meant I feel the kinds of critiques found in the foreword are generally assumed to be true and when you push back on them the reaction sometimes feels out of proportion. Admittedly things are getting better I think. But it is very easy to get labeled toxic, problematic, or worse for simply disagreeing with how language in media ought to be judged and evaluated.

 

[Maxperson]

Don't even get me going on how Earth has won every Ms Universe pageant...

I mean, to be fair we don't actually KNOW that. There could(and probably is) other life out there and some of it could have Ms. Universe pageants of their own.