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.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If the subject is what I think a history book should do, my point from the beginning has been: They should be allowed to do it how they want, people should be allowed to respond, people are going to disagree over whether this or that feature of the game is sexist.

I mean, that's what's happening, so there's no problem, I guess?

If I were the one calling the shots, I would have done it differently because I take a different view on media criticism than the foreword writers I believe, and I wouldn't have asserted whether something was sexist, I would have simply tried to describe what the range of views are about it. Again this was just a foreword we are talking about. But if I would probably want more oral history elements for a history book covering this subject (especially thoughts of people who knew him, including both people who have called him sexist and defended him: and I get the foreword doesn't directly say Gygax's name in that respect, this is just my answer to the above post)

Why, though?

It seems like the central issue for you at least is that people are calling Gygax sexist, and this somehow means they have to know his heart and his soul to pass this judgment. So, of course, character witnesses about how not-sexist he was have an important role to play - we are trying to figure out the man's moral character, after all.

But that's not the case. That's not what the project being engaged in. That's an impossible project for anyone to engage in. We are not Literally Anubis.

It's a history of D&D. And we can see what Gary wrote and published as part of that history. And we can describe the man based on those actions. And we are obliged to do so, because those actions had significant impacts on people who have loved and labored for D&D.

You don't need to know someone's TRUE HEART to call them a sexist. You can just see their actions in the world, and see that they are sexist actions. You can do that even if the person in question would have no idea what "sexism" even was, much less that there was any alternative.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

Exactly. Showing he was outside the norm of sexism in that time takes more than just someone from that time claiming he was sexist.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

For anyone still concerned about echo chambers, I can point you to a good example of why they have value in this very thread.

You know, I cannot ever recall someone unironically using the term 'echo chamber' who was not doing their best to drown out every opinion other than their own.

 

[Umbran]

I don’t think that is how it reads either

Ah.

Well, folks can take that, then, and figure what they want to do with that bit of information, I guess.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Not to be that guy, but there are two people keeping this thread going by missing, evading, contorting, or simply ignoring every point. They've shown they're not persuadable. They aren't offering new insights, just sort of throwing jabs every so often to show they're still in the fight.

The question is, are they worth this? There's certainly no groundswell of support for them here on ENW. They've been dunked on sufficiently, imo.

This isn't me defending them, to be clear. I just think some folks get a kick out of being on the business end of a dogpile—even, or especially, when they had it coming.

 

[Umbran]

Exactly. Showing he was outside the norm of sexism in that time takes more than just someone from that time claiming he was sexist.

Right. And the norm for sexism in that time... was particularly nice or something, that it then gets forgiven?

 

[Maxperson]

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.

No. That is also not the case. The tone of that letter is, "This is how I was I was raised. This is how I am. This is how I will continue to be." It is not indicative that he thinks he is in the minority, just that he feels called out and is going to stick to his guns.

 

[Gradine]

Not to be that guy, but there are two people keeping this thread going by missing, evading, contorting, or simply ignoring every point. They've shown they're not persuadable. They aren't offering new insights, just sort of throwing jabs every so often to show they're still in the fight.

The question is, are they worth this? There's certainly no groundswell of support for them here on ENW. They've been dunked on sufficiently, imo.

This isn't me defending them, to be clear. I just think some folks get a kick out of being on the business end of a dogpile—even, or especially, when they had it coming.

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[mamba]

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.

show me the study that shows that 80% of males born between say 1935 and 1945 were sexist and then we talk.

Also, him being sexist might not have been an outlier, but even among the sexists a post like the one in Europa would have been an outlier, that is what definitely makes him one, whether being one already does is up for discussion

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

That may be part of it - in that people don't feel they're being personally attacked because they enjoyed his works, because they enjoyed something based on his works instead, which wasn't racist. But I think a lot of it is simply the racism being acknowledged in such ways that it's impossible to say it wasn't there - but also perhaps the get-out clause that it was pretty ridiculous and clearly eccentric.

You know, I cannot ever recall someone unironically using the term 'echo chamber' who was not doing their best to drown out every opinion other than their own.

I think that's pretty common but at the same time there are situations where it being used are valid - usually they're about either specific times and places and given context, rather than used as a weapon or to spread FUD as the term commonly is.

For example, at Blizzard entertainment in the early-mid "WoW years" I think it's probably fair to say and indeed has been said that it was something of an "echo chamber" for views which were reflective of being a white, male, nerd, gamer, kind of "frat-y" and straight. Which is not to say everyone working at Blizzard was all of that (though the vast majority were, and most others at least 4 out or 6), but during this era, Blizzard had a specific attitude to hiring (discussed in Jason Schrier's recent book), where it was all about hiring people who "fit in" with the company culture. Further, during this era, promotion and opportunities at Blizzard were very much based on people liking you, and you fitting in, rather being more meritocratic. There's always a bit of that, but it was particularly extreme during this period of Blizzard's existence. This specific echo chamber ensured employees were not able to successfully raise issues with the company culture, and lead to a wide variety of problems down the line for Blizzard, including absolutely tons of sexual harassment (and worse), the infamous "Cosby Suite", missteps like the initial concept of Real ID, losing a lot of skilled employees who just couldn't take it any more or who were being blocked from advancement for not fitting in enough, and so on.