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.

 

[Voadam]

I'm going to preface this with the fact that I have a great mind for trivia. Well, an okay mind, I've met far superior. But I know off the top of my head, no Googling, that Shem, Ham and Japheth are the sons of Noah. What I did not know is what you're telling me here.

Without looking any of this up, I'm saddened by the fact that you felt you had to capitulate to this pressure. I say this because I don't think there is any way that a Biblical story from many thousands of years ago has an echo into today's world. Yes, I understand that slavery has perpetuated an effect into our time. But for that fact to have an effect on you today... not great... I'm sorry about the pressure you would have faced having to do an about face on your baby.

I guess I could go Google or ChatGPT this... but what was the pressure?

I am not aware of antisemitic aspects of the Curse of Ham but a relevant point is that it has been widely used as a justification of slavery and subjugation of black people. That is the biggest association that I am aware of and what comes to mind for me when the Curse of Ham is referenced (secondarily the debate over what the actual sin was).

Choosing to avoid that slavery/racial oppression justification association/allusion in creating your game mythology when made aware of it seems reasonable to me.

Alternatively having big nosed short gnomes turning into an evil race of goblins (who in 5e have also been artistically depicted as big nosed short people) can be evocative of antisemitism tropes outside of the curse of Ham that once you are thinking of them you might wish to avoid having in your game mythology you are creating.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I am not aware of antisemitic aspects of the Curse of Ham but a relevant point is that it has been widely used as a justification of slavery and subjugation of black people. That is the biggest association that I am aware of and what comes to mind for me when the Curse of Ham is referenced (secondarily the debate over what the actual sin was).

Choosing to avoid that slavery/racial oppression justification association/allusion in creating your game mythology when made aware of it seems reasonable to me.

Alternatively having big nosed short gnomes turning into an evil race of goblins (who in 5e have also been artistically depicted as big nosed short people) can be evocative of antisemitism tropes outside of the curse of Ham that once you are thinking of them you might wish to avoid having in your game mythology you are creating.

Great point.

In addition, I think part of the problem is that some of the tropes are buried so deeply, that people use them because they have been influenced by them without even knowing or thinking about the issues.

Take Drow. If someone was making a game today, and said, "I have an idea! I'm gonna make the good elves all white. But then there's going to be evil elves that live underground, and they will be black... even though it doesn't make any sense to turn black from living underground ..." I doubt that they would do so uncritically.

But I also don't think Gygax was even thinking these things- he just was like, "That's the source material I am borrowing. Makes sense!"

Same with B2- once you think of it as a Western (and the nits thing) some of it is hard to unsee. But I also truly think that Gygax probably wasn't even thinking "western" when he wrote it; instead, he just grew up when westerns were so much part of the culture, it was part of his worldview. The idea of civilization needing to put down ... well, you know.

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

Ironically, many conservatives say the exact same thing. In fact they formed parlor and many boycotted X because of the way they were supposedly victimized and bullied on X.

Today pretty much everyone is victimized - rich, poor, liberal, conservative, white, black, Latinx, man, woman, transgender ...... It doesn't matter, we are all victims in modern western society.

Indeed, truly we are all victims of late-stage capitalism and someday even the ancestors of the billionaires will pay the price for pretending that global warming doesn't exist. But for now, the oligarchs will continue to blame victims and claim they are oppressed to discredit anything that challenges their authority. To return the topic that started this thread--Musk's attack is just one salvo in the multi-faceted right wing war to radicalize white cis males and focus their attention against scapegoats--feminists, immigrants, transgender individuals, Jews...whoever is convenient to distract the citizenry from those who are actually plundering the world. Attacks like Musk made also serve to put fear even into corporate leaders! WotC, don't you dare call out sexism in material...<implied threat when coming from the richest man in the world>. You think these implied threats aren't being heard? DEI programs are being cancelled by corporations left and right as the wheel turns against equality and inclusion and threats of right-wing boycotts against corporations as "woke" for encouraging diversity. I recently read an article about a book published in France about Musk that can't find a publisher in the U.S. because corporations are now "self-policing" in order to avoid inspiring the rage of the right wing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Take Drow. If someone was making a game today, and said, "I have an idea! I'm gonna make the good elves all white. But then there's going to be evil elves that live underground, and they will be black... even though it doesn't make any sense to turn black from living underground ..." I doubt that they would do so uncritically.

I always wonder how much intentionality went into Mystara's shadow elves being fish belly pale. Was it just in the name of "realism" or was someone involved aware of the issues with dark-skinned drow?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Indeed, truly we are all victims of late-stage capitalism and someday even the ancestors of the billionaires will pay the price for pretending that global warming doesn't exist.

If someone will/has/is invent/invented/inventing time travel (whew, Douglas Adams was right about the grammar issues), I think the ancestors of billionaire oligarchs have a lot more than global warming to worry about.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I always wonder how much intentionality went into Mystara's shadow elves being fish belly pale. Was it just in the name of "realism" or was someone involved aware of the issues with dark-skinned drow?

Great question! Dunno....

@CleverNickName Got any good Mystara references that might shed light on this?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Great point.

In addition, I think part of the problem is that some of the tropes are buried so deeply, that people use them because they have been influenced by them without even knowing or thinking about the issues.

Take Drow. If someone was making a game today, and said, "I have an idea! I'm gonna make the good elves all white. But then there's going to be evil elves that live underground, and they will be black... even though it doesn't make any sense to turn black from living underground ..." I doubt that they would do so uncritically.

But I also don't think Gygax was even thinking these things- he just was like, "That's the source material I am borrowing. Makes sense!"

Same with B2- once you think of it as a Western (and the nits thing) some of it is hard to unsee. But I also truly think that Gygax probably wasn't even thinking "western" when he wrote it; instead, he just grew up when westerns were so much part of the culture, it was part of his worldview. The idea of civilization needing to put down ... well, you know.

@Voadam I was in the midst of typing up a response, but this does the job nicely.

 

[The Glen]

I always wonder how much intentionality went into Mystara's shadow elves being fish belly pale. Was it just in the name of "realism" or was someone involved aware of the issues with dark-skinned drow?

They wanted to make the shadow elves look more like other underground types from fiction. Morlocks or the humans from the Planet of the Apes series. Drow were originally going to have alabaster skin; problem was when it went to print in the first modules, it looked awful. So they palette swapped them in the future releases. The dark elves from GW look more like the original idea for drow.

 

[Alzrius]

Drow were originally going to have alabaster skin

That's actually not correct. While that first illustration (from the original G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, published in 1978) does show them as being pale-skinned, the accompanying text says that they have black skin.

Moreover, that's also how they're described in the Monster Manual, published in 1977:

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That's actually not correct. While that first illustration (from the original G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, published in 1978) does show them as being pale-skinned, the accompanying text says that they have black skin.

Moreover, that's also how they're described in the Monster Manual, published in 1977:

View attachment 387043

Yes.

That was just an artifact of the B&W printing. Alzirus is correct. Moreover, Gygax borrowed from a source ... which Gygax has described in various ways.


But it's actually probably from the Incomplete Enchanter.

The “G Series” modules (STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF, GLACIAL RIFT OF THE FROST GIANT JARL, and HALL OF THE FIRE GIANT KING) were certainly inspired by the de Camp and Pratt INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER.

The three “D Series” modules which continue the former series owe little, if anything, to fiction. Drow are mentioned in Keightley’s THE FAIRY MYTHOLOGY, as I recall (it might have been THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH—neither book is before me, and it is not all that important anyway), and as Dark Elves of evil nature, they served as an ideal basis for the creation of a unique new mythos designed especially for AD&D. The roles the various drow are designed to play in the series are commensurate with those of prospective player characters. In fact, the race could be used for player characters, providing that appropriate penalties were levied when a drow or half-drow was in the daylight world.

Gygax, Dragon 31, November 1979.


The Incomplete Enchanter by de Camp and Pratt that Gygax is referring to contains the story/novella The Roaring Trumpet; and that novella is the obvious inspiration for the G series. Notably, just like in the G series, the protagonist encounters dark elves with "licorice" skin when he is in Surt's (Snurre!) volcano fortress. Suddenly, the connections, the borrowings, seem obvious. It is not a straight lifting, but it is ... a strong adaptation.

So the source that he borrowed from had dark elves with licorice skin.