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.

 

[abirdcall]

So... few things.

1) His tirade about sexism was not "Sarcasm". At the very -least- there's no evidence it WAS sarcasm since his whole "Women don't belong in gaming" schtick continued on 'til 2004 at the earliest and may have made it through the last few years of his life. There's good evidence he was sexist the entire way through.

You can find that evidence ON THIS FORUM. His handle is Col. Playdoh.

The fact that after writing a rant about how he should have a chapter on harlots he created a table for prostitutes to act on the "Sarcasm" of his rant and canonize his sexism permanently in the material kinda goes against it being anything but literal, too.

2) Yup! He hired -two- women to work for TSR in the early days! Both of them hired on pretty much to be eye candy and sit around. One, in fact, he flew out from South Carolina, where she lived, had her stay in his home for a couple weeks until she could find a place to stay, promised he would teach her all the rules of how to write D&D material and get her started. Then plopped her at a desk near the front window of the office with no guidance and no expectations of work other than to call out "Hot Chick Alert" when some pretty girl walked down the street so Gygax and the rest of the guys in the back could run to the front to ogle the pretty girl walking down the street.

How do we know? Because she WROTE about it and talked about it at conventions.

3) It is entirely possible to be a sexist jerk while also being nice to kids young enough to be your grandchildren. I KNOW! So crazy, right? It's almost like people contain vast unknowable internal selves which allow them to choose some people as targets and other people as people they shouldn't target. Wild stuff. I hear it's even possible that being a rampaging jerk to children in public -tends- to have significant negative social repercussions, while being kind to children in public tends to gain a significant positive social reputation. CAN YOU IMAGINE?!

Anyway, yeah. I hate that we're still fighting this fight to get people to even acknowledge that the man was sexist.

Yeah. Regarding #3, something I think a lot of people don't know is that there is sometimes a phenomenon that happens in families that hold discriminatory views when someone in the family comes out as queer.

Of course often that family member gets ostracized, but sometimes they are accepted as 'one of the good ones' and the family continues on being hateful towards others.

I suppose their sense of 'family before all others' is stronger than their hate but then doesn't extend past that.

So someone being good to those in their personal life while writing some awful stuff about the population at large? That is entirely unsurprising to me.

 

[Steampunkette]

@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).

I could be. And I've previously tried to be. The issue is that patience and kindness was met with deflection and disregard, showing that the effort is largely wasted. That there is in this conversation a demand for a veneer of civility to paper over an issue of respect and accuracy. That the content of what is being said is less important than maintaining an air of politeness.

I've never been a big fan of that form of civility. Between the strawman arguments and the shifting of goal posts it's been shown that the civility exists almost exclusively as a mask.

The fact that you outright acknowledge you skim posts and "Come Back to Them" (unless something in it is uncivil and respond in seconds) as a matter of course shows that you don't read to understand or come to a consensus in a discussion, but read to respond. A classic bad faith tactic in discourse.

So I probably won't. Doing pointless emotional labor isn't my thing.

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.

That's an interesting strawman you've bowled over, there, good job! That's not remotely what I've said and doesn't represent my feelings on the matter, but it's an impressive sidestep of the actual statement!

But since you clearly and DESPERATELY want my honest opinion on your strawman position you've set up for me:

The men and women and other people who pay for their work and then use them as an insult to others are sexists and should be shamed. This guy, in particular, who spent time writing out a series of insults based on the theme "Sex Worker" to make a random table in a D&D book as a repugnant repudiation of feminists calling him a sexist is a sexist.

Which shouldn't be a shock to anyone, since he acknowledged it, himself.

 

[mamba]

If we were part of a group writing a historical biography of Gygax, I would expect nuance

it wasn’t a biography and it was nuanced, and yet here we are, you defending anything but praise as lacking nuance

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

My parents were hippies in the 60s and very progressive. While these movements were present and have had a huge impact we still feel today, people born before the war had a very different worldview. And even in the 60s and 70s (heck into the 80s) there was enormous division. Even here in New England, you had feminists born in the 20s and 30s but if you spoke with the average man or woman born in those decades they were far more likely to be in line with Gygax’s thinking in my experience. I do think that context matters here, as Heidi Gygax said in her post about the subject

 

[Bedrockgames]

it wasn’t a biography and it was nuanced, and yet here we are, you defending anything but praise as lacking nuance

I don’t think the foreword is unnuanced. I have other criticisms of it though

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

To use the old saw: "It's not the crime, it's the coverup." These people (male or female!) are quite happy to use these women, control them, etc. But they do so under false pretenses, denying they ever do this sort of thing, perhaps even vilifying it. It's particularly galling in a context where someone downplays his other behavior by emphasizing his "traditional Anglo-Saxon Protestant family" upbringing "with traditional biblical family values".

 

[dbolack]

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

Look, the deadline is public information. If they don't do the paperwork it's not a human's fault....

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

The reason people take the things from the foreword seriously is because we have the evidence people keep referencing, which you and others keep dismissing.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I could be. And I've previously tried to be. The issue is that patience and kindness was met with deflection and disregard, showing that the effort is largely wasted. That there is in this conversation a demand for a veneer of civility to paper over an issue of respect and accuracy. That the content of what is being said is less important than maintaining an air of politeness.

I've never been a big fan of that form of civility. Between the strawman arguments and the shifting of goal posts it's been shown that the civility exists almost exclusively as a mask.

I think it is fair for me to ask you to be nice in your responses. And all I can say is I am not making any effort to straw man or shift goal posts. I am trying to engage points and have a good faith and respectful conversation

The fact that you outright acknowledge you skim posts and "Come Back to Them" (unless something in it is uncivil and respond in seconds) as a matter of course shows that you don't read to understand or come to a consensus in a discussion, but read to respond. A classic bad faith tactic in discourse.

I skim everything before I read it. But I read the post. Sometimes I have things going on around me and miss things. I can be an imperfect poster and reader (am dyslexic). But I am not trying to shortchange your posts)

 

[mamba]

If I recall the story correctly, it wasn’t just her coming to his office for an interview and then being hired. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

not really sure what that has to do with anything. Are you saying that Gygax not only hiring males is the same as him going out of his way to hire females?

Is it that a 19 year old stayed at his house for a few days? Yep, that might be going out of his way, but not in a good way