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.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Perhaps John Stuart Mill is more to your liking?

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

Or the quote falsely attributed to Edmund Burke?

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Or perhaps the rock band Rush?

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

Point being, silence favors the opposer. And WotC not commenting on it while presenting these views in a product they are selling for profit is to say they are completely accepting of those views when it comes to making money.

Not a good look.

Again I simply don’t think republishing a book is an endorsement of all its content. And I think the things people are concerned about in the text don’t rise to level of concerns these figures had in mind

 

[Justice and Rule]

Again I think the tweet analogy is kind of muddying the waters on this front

It's not. In fact, it's incredibly instructive as to how you presenting two contradictory arguments.

I am saying a couple of different things here. First off, this isn't the lost cause. The issue of disclaimers is hotly debated for a lot of reasons. How problematic the old content is, is also hotly debated.

Again, you say "hotly-debated" without weighing in. Who cares who is debating it? That's the point of bringing up the Lost Cause: plenty of people are still arguing for it, hotly, yet that doesn't mean we should give both sides of that argument or treat them with the same amount of respect. In this case, the people who have issues with disclaimers are the people who don't like recognizing the problematic nature of old content. Who cares what they think?

Yes if they are going to tack it, I am saying nuance would be a good approach. If you are just republishing somethingi without getting into it, obviously nuance is not a consideration. But they have chosen to, so I think a more reasonable approach would be to do it in a way that at least makes it feel like it is not a one sided account

You always say this, but that comes off as fundamentally dishonest: you never remark upon what extra nuance is needed, only that it needs more. It's begging for some sort perfection and that if we can't reach it, we shouldn't pursue it in the first place. It's the same rhetorical argument vaccine truthers ("I'm not against vaccines, I just want safe ones!") as a way of hiding that you're actually against something being there in the first place. The context here is fine, arguing against having it because you think "it's not nuanced enough" is inane given that it catches the gist and you can just ignore it, and if you continue to have a problem with it maybe you should just be honest what your argument actually is rather than trying to create different rhetorical knots that we have to cut.

You don't think it is obvious if you follow someone who likes marshmallow fluff, but retweets an attack on marshmallow fluff, that they probably don't agree with the attack?

Man, it'd be much easier to actually just provide context in the tweet, rather than forcing me to search your timeline just in case it were to pop up in my timeline at random. Almost like Wizards was already trying to prevent misunderstanding by doing that...

 

[TiQuinn]

I think the hobby is extremely divided right now.



It isn't a few people

Mmm. Okay.

 

[Remathilis]

EGG didn't say what you just said he said.

You're going to need more than a one-sentence "nu-uh" to prove I'm wrong.

 

[Remathilis]

Again I simply don’t think republishing a book is an endorsement of all its content. And I think the things people are concerned about in the text don’t rise to level of concerns these figures had in mind

I'm going to quote this post. You can decide if that is an endorsement or refutation of the content of it.

 

[S'mon]

So what would have been the proper way to handle this?

WotC could have published it with no mention of the derogatory language in the work. That would have been WotC tacitly endorsing that they do not find that language problematic.

WotC could have edited the text to remove the offending passages, creating an incomplete text and stoking talk of censorship.

WotC could have not produced the book, banishing all mention of OD&D to the memory hole except in generalized references but limiting access to the works which no longer reflects their values .

WotC could have stated what is in the text could be offensive, but it was not Gary's intention and that people have vouched for his character, essentially apologizing for and excusing its inclusion.

Which of these options gets them the least bad optics? Trick question, all of them do. So pick your poison and decide what PR battle you would rather fight.

I would not have taken publication without comment/condemnation as endorsement. These are historical artefacts not 5e Spelljammer.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I'm going to quote this post. You can decide if that is an endorsement or refutation of the content of it.

Look, we need more nuance. And until we get it, we should completely avoid giving any sort of context.

 

[Retros_x]

I am amazed that we got 152 pages of discussion about "is it actually good to callout sexist problematic behaviour".

 

[S'mon]

Easy as it is to write this sort of thread off with the usual, tired observations about "the internet, amirite?" or even that we're all somehow falling for Elon's devious schemes (the guy is a world-class moron—he's not 4D-chessing anything or benefiting from exposure in an RPG forum), I think these threads are perversely valuable. Why? Because you get to see who shows up, again and again, to defend awful behavior with all the usual mealy-mouthed excuses (man of his times, things were different, sexism isn't real, sexism is real but only when there's a crime, jokes are impossible to critize, etc).

Naturally, there are different flavors of brave defenders of terrible behavior. The guys so worried about echo chambers and cancel culture that they don't know what either concept actually means. The guys just setting the record straight—not defending sexism, you see, but terribly invested in nitpicking and scolding the language and tone used to decry sexism. My favorite, the "you just don't get the joke" guys, who also somehow think transgressive comedy is a thing of the past, even though it's literally everywhere and more lucrative than ever. And I say guys in all these cases cause it's the fellas, the lads, the dudes of a certain age, so worried about pumping the brakes whenever some element of their cherished past is even mildly criticized.

Anyway it's good to know where people stand, so the next time they wander into a thread about just about anything, you can say to yourself, "Ah yes, this extremely reasonable chap! Can't wait to take his perspective very seriously and engage in a discussion that's surely in good faith."

Or instead of compiling a hit list you could just put them/us on Ignore?

Funnily enough the only person on this thread I seem to have on Ignore is apparently on "my" side. We must be an annoying lot

 

[Remathilis]

I would not have taken publication without comment/condemnation as endorsement. These are historical artefacts not 5e Spelljammer.

What about reprinting Oriental Adventures without comment? Orcs of Thar?

Would you consider the same with old WW2 Superman comics? The Song of the South? Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will? Lovecraft's writing? Uncle Tom's Cabin? Othello or Merchant of Venice?

At what point is there a difference between reprinting something because it's a historical document and because you endorse the beliefs inside it?