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.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

1) This isn't one of the statements I am inclined to defend
2) I disagree it wasn't said in anger. It looks like a very angry and frustrated response to me. People can type out angry responses and mail them. It used to happen all teh time (magazines would often print outraged and angry letters). And it happens on forums routinely (granted we aren't using snail mail but it takes time to post).
3) In terms of regret, I don't know how the man felt. My impression is he was probably very proud and stubborn and didn't seem the sort to retract many statements. I've certainly been guilty of being prideful and stubborn on forum threads so

If someone says something in anger and then pridefully refuses to retract it, how are they not putting conscious, non-angry force behind it?

For real here. How is that not explicitly being sexist due to being too prideful to ever apologize for the harmful things you (generic you) have said?

I can understand a person being reluctant to admit they said something out of anger or frustration that didn't capture the full architecture of their views

I can't. I genuinely cannot understand that. If you have erred, and you know you have erred, and that error has led others to believe you think something you don't, or has led you to say something harmful which you regret, SAY IT. Say, "What I said was wrong, and I'm sorry for the harm I caused by saying it. Those are not my beliefs. I believe that any woman can be just as helpful or harmful at a game table as any man could be. I won't be revising my books to include more names of women, but it's something I can think about for future work."

If you stick to your guns when you KNOW your guns are wrong, when you KNOW you fired them only in anger in a way that you actually do oppose down to your bones, all you are doing is making the situation worse.

When you've realized you've dug yourself into a hole, the correct response is to STOP DIGGING. If you keep digging because you're too proud to admit that you got stuck in a hole, you are knowingly making the situation worse. Which--per your own arguments!--reflects the person inside.

By this logic, his pride, his self-image as a resolute person, was more important than not saying harmful things about women. That--that thing RIGHT there--is a perfect example of being a sexist dick.

 

[Umbran]

This doesn't really make sense to me. When people speak we are meant to try to read their intentions.

So, it being "speech" doesn't really enter into it. Speech is a tool of expression. What tool you are using isn't the important point. What harm is done is the important point.

If we were playing chess, and when I started losing, I hit you with a baseball bat, and said, "Well, I don't have a deeply held belief that Bedrockgames should be hit with baseball bats, but I really wanted to win this game of chess," the fact of the matter would be that I still hit you with a baseball bat, and your resulting concussion would still be a concussion. That I didn't have a deeply held belief on it doesn't change the fact of the matter.

Moreover... the fact of the matter would be that I felt little enough about you that I thought it would be okay to hit you with a baseball bat to win a paltry game of chess! So, my claim about "deeply held beliefs" starts looking pretty flimsy. I would clearly have some beliefs that your value as a person is pretty low.

LIkewise: If I were not playing chess against you, and instead with my trans friend, and I tossed some slurs at her, knowing they'd hurt and shake her up, to win the game, well, she'd still be mightily hurt, and clearly my beliefs of her value as a person would clearly be pretty low...

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why aren't we seeking the best possible intention for the historians then?

Like maybe they were reporting the reality of what was in the works. Or being sarcastic. That's it. They were being sarcastic. And maybe they were nice to a game designer a couple of time.

Total absolution, right?

 

[mamba]

Nah. Understanding is the key to things.

the rest did not answer the question though but went on a sidetrack about potential reasons for why he was sexist. At least to me those have been discussed ad nausea already, and I certainly did not ask for a reason but whether that was an excuse

 

[UngainlyTitan]

But that is because the whole conversation online after Musk’s remarks turned to this topic (including people like Mentzer weighing in). I think it is hard to talk about the foreword without drifting into the subject of Gygax. And I do think there is a tacit judgment of Gygax in the foreword (it isn’t directly calling him out but the conscious misogyny statement is going to cause people to connect dots and sons have seen it as a slight)

If the misogyny statements are true, and Gary does not seem to be shy in making these utterances, why should pointing this out be a slight? Furthermore, why are they defending Gary's honour in this? If Gary freely admitted to being sexist, why should anyone be attempting to defend or deflect.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And I do think there is a tacit judgment of Gygax in the foreword (it isn’t directly calling him out but the conscious misogyny statement is going to cause people to connect dots and sons have seen it as a slight)

Gygax by his own account engaged in conscious misogyny though so is it really okay for people to see it as a "slight", rather than an unfortunate fact?

If I wrote into a magazine and said "I'm a racist" and then explained in detail how I was a racist, and then later I was talking about how I believed in biological essentialism and that races were inherently different, and I refused to take any of it back would it be wrong to say "Yo that dude was racist" about me?

I've certainly been guilty of being prideful and stubborn on forum threads so I can understand a person being reluctant to admit they said something out of anger or frustration that didn't capture the full architecture of their views

One big problem for your argument here is that Gygax was perfectly happy to "take back" his views if he no longer believed them!

And he never did that with any of the sexism/biological essentialism as far as I am aware.

But he did, for a specific example, take back all the truly terrible advice he gave out in Role-Playing Mastery (1987). Same with quite a number of his earlier statements - he later acknowledged and contradicted them. But again, not the sexism.

So it doesn't matter if his was "prideful" or "angry" - he took back plenty of other statements which were far less offensive (though also very stupid), and some of which were clearly made in anger. But he didn't retract these.

 

[Umbran]

@mamba

This was worth quoting me for? Dude... you're better than this.

Mod Note:
Can we not make it personal?

 

[Maxperson]

my dad was born in 39, I have been around people that age. Yes they are more conservative than I turned out to be (and I am still more conservative than my brother is, so that is not a generation thing to begin with), but Gygax was not a representative of how they all were, he was an outlier even back then

It did not take until the 2000s for him to be called out on that either, he was being called out in the 1970s

People keep saying that because there were people calling out sexists in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc., that somehow proves that Gygax was an outlier or not a product of his time. This is faulty logic.

If you have 100 million people and 20% of them are not sexist and 80% are, the vast majority of folks are sexist and not outliers at all, despite there being 20 million people calling them out for being sexist.

You need to go beyond, "There were people who weren't sexist and calling him out" in order to prove that he was an outlier and not a product of his time. You don't need to go beyond that if all you want to do is call him sexist, because there's a lot of evidence that he was.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

This always particularly vexes me, in part because I don't think it's always active bad faith, as much as a sort of blind and senseless defensiveness, where any criticism of a person must be equated to criticising every element of that person. You'd think, given all the truly awful people in history who loved their kids/pets, authors who made great works whilst having horrifying personal lives and so on, that people would be past it, but no, we have to deal with "WHY ARE YOU SAYING HE WAS A MONSTER?!?!?" when someone is calmly pointing out a sexist or racist belief.

I am inclined to agree that it is not always bad faith, I think that many people (and I have been guilty of this in the past) have been trained to "win" arguments and also that they are not carefully reading the statement they are responding to but on seeing trigger words respond to what they imagine the other person is saying.
I have been guilty of this myself and am trying to do better.

It is one of the many things about current society that makes me believe that solid grounding in old fashioned rhetoric, its uses and abuses would be very good for society.

What is interesting to me is that discussion can move on though. HP Lovecraft shows that. We've gone from a situation where, in the past, people always defended him as being a "man of his time" (untrue) or even "not racist" ("lol, lmao even" if the only response there), but I haven't seen anyone even try that nonsense for like five years - rather an acceptance has formed that yes he was racist, but maybe his work is interesting and influential nonetheless (and indeed quite a few PoC authors have talked about being inspired by Lovecraft, in different ways - some to reclaim or take a different perspective on, some simply to write more existential horror without the weird racism, and so on).

I think that the change here may be due to the fact than many people now are engaging with Lovecraft indirectly through third party sources than his own works.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You need to go beyond, "There were people who weren't sexist and calling him out" in order to prove that he was an outlier and not a product of his time.

Nah.

It's very obvious from his own attitude in the letter he wrote to Europa that he feels he is in a minority and that people don't agree with him. That letter by itself certainly demonstrates that Gygax felt the sort of people who read Europa (the game mag) in 1975 would very much disagree with him. Gygax believed his peers regarded him as sexist (probably correctly, given he had to be bullied into removing the "women have different stat maximums" chart from 1E).

Also those people calling him out don't need to be "not sexist" - that is, as you would put it, "faulty logic". They just need to be less or differently sexist, and arguably not even that.