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]

It's not about owing anyone discourse. It's about not putting up walls in society.

Am I putting up a wall in society by blocking a homophobe who says homophobic things to me because I'm bisexual and am almost exclusively attracted to men?

Is it actually a problem to be "putting up walls in society" when those walls are about saying we don't accept someone being hurtful and hateful toward entire vast categories of human beings?

And about not branding people you disagree with as F*Wits. That's a good place to start!

I mean, I don't generally do that myself. But if, for example, someone is disagreeing by asserting the Great Ice Wall and calling everyone else sheeple for believing that the Earth is round, I'm certainly not going to be thinking very highly of the wit of the person saying that.

 

[Gradine]

Then, again, this is ENworld. We'd argue about the length of a cat's claw and see it as controversial if it came up,

I mean, if we accept the premise of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, we can't really be sure how long the cat's claw is at any given moment. In this essay, I will

 

[Bedrockgames]

This thread is still going this quickly. Over 20 pages a day!

Nothing breeds interaction as much as controversial topics!

Is this what we call...Rage bait??

Back to the Original Post. Perhaps half of what Musk posts (though with some of his recent actions, I'm sure much of it is not) is simply to cause a similar thing...rage bait. His hope would be to get people to interact with comments that are designed to get people upset or enraged so that they respond and interact about it?

I suck at generating likes and retweets on twitter but my impression is starkly stated, emotion inducing posts are what generate clicks on social media and I see a lot of people post that way, when if you talk to them face to face, their take is often much more normal sounding. Tweets with qualifiers like 'but' 'however' 'despite this', don't really seem to get much traction so I would imagine your rage bait assessment is accurate. I have seen countless videos on youtube where the title is something like "So and so is a fraud and liar!!!!!" only to have the video itself not even attack the person.

 

[Steampunkette]

I mean, if we accept the premise of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, we can't really be sure how long the cat's claw is at any given moment. In this essay, I will

I like your shoelaces.

 

[Remathilis]

I mean, if we accept the premise of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, we can't really be sure how long the cat's claw is at any given moment. In this essay, I will

Settle down Schrodinger...

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Good grief. Showing agreement and support for another member here is now seen as mindlessly clicking Like for an abnormally emotionally charged post. Just... wow.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Am I putting up a wall in society by blocking a homophobe who says homophobic things to me because I'm bisexual and am almost exclusively attracted to men?

Well you see because free speech, you must provide them a platform to attack you and if you fight back you're not being nice and are therefor bad.

 

[Zardnaar]

No, I absolutely do not. It is not incumbent on me or on anyone to build bridges with bigots to find "common ground". Because, frankly, there isn't any, not really. I don't care about the politics or the power of it, because that is absolutely none of my responsibility at all.

No, all I have to do, all that it is my moral imperative, is to make bigots feel unwelcome and unwanted. They have a worldview that is completely detrimental to and contradictory of the betterment of humanity, and the more unacceptable it is for them to espouse their views in public the less actual power they get to hold.


"B-b-b-but then they'll just dig underground-"

Let them rot there.

And how's that been working out? It's also not what I said.

Here about 35% fundamentally disagree with me. A similar number very broadly agree with me.

I cam jump up and down until I'm blue in the face and I'm not going to swing any of that 35%. 5-10% might be in play if they really screw up otherwise lost cause. But they're not reliable.

Not sure what the numbers are in USA. Probably more like 40%-45%.

Either way it's people not in that locked in side you need to appeal to.

If your message isn't the problem what is? My countries about 30 years ahead of yours (I voted for a trans MP in 1999 and she got in). Welcome to the 20th Century USA.

Do you want to farm up votes from people who agree with you or make the world a better place (I would settle for not worse atm).

ENworlds a bubble. Twitters another one. Bluesky will be another.

Someone needs to figure this out. That's what I'm saying.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You don't meet bigotry halfway.

They're not going to agree to put you only halfway back into the kitchen, the closet or in chains.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I'm willing to bet imaginary money that by pure page count the #1 most discussed subject on this site is Gary's sexism.

and how much 5E Rangers suck.

This isn’t true. It isn’t even the thread with the highest page count currently active on Enworld (that would be the thread on Rule Zero).

Edit. I’ve been corrected that the NuTSR thread has even more pages.