D&D General Elon Musk Wants To Know 'How Much Is Hasbro?'

Following the richest man in the world's attack on Wizards of the Coast for two paragraphs in the 500-page celebration of D&D, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977, Elon Musk--who bought Twitter not that long ago--wants to know how much D&D's owner Hasbro would cost.

After the public sharing on Twitter of Jason Tondro's (who wrote the book’s foreword) private Facebook posts, Musk replied "How much is Hasbro?"

Hasbro's estimated capitalization is currently $8.71 billion, with $3.95 billion of debt.

It was on 21st December 2017 when Musk similarly enquired "How much is it?" before proceeding to make a bid for Twitter. He later tried to back out of the deal, but was forced to buy the platform for $44 billion in June 2022. Current estimates by investment firm Fidelity put the platform at a value 80% less than when he bought it, with a worth of only about $9.4 billion.

 

[Morrus]

People at Twitter thought that too.

He tried to get out of it and the 'people at Twitter' forced him to carry it through. I know he's your idol and stuff, but he's not actually Lex Luthor.

 

[Seramus]

So let's say he does....what then?

Rebrand as Xbro, and we're all playing X&X.

 

[Parmandur]

Wealth is power and he has massive connections as well. There is no one who could stop him from buying Hasbro, I just don't get the denial.

People at Twitter thought that too.

Hasbro could say "No".

 

[Mecheon]

Don't bet on it, I mean yeah some fans will be lost, but others may be picked up, you could see an explosion of Musk fan boys buying D&D products in large numbers.

Honestly I'm personally going no where until see what he does with it. If I don't like I'll bail then, but I'll give him a chance.

Musk fanboys are insufferable. They'd force out anyone normal. Every D&D stream online would immediately jump ship to any other game because being a Dungeons and Dragons stream would be actively a bad mark on you

It'd crash and burn the franchise about as good as TSR did which, I guess if he wants to replicate older editions is certainly a way to do so

Wealth is power and he has massive connections as well. There is no one who could stop him from buying Hasbro, I just don't get the denial.

I mean, Hasbro can go 'yeah, nah, we're good' and uh, hey, problem sorted.

Let's not forget he didn't intend to buy Twitter but legally messed around enough that he was forced to. He'll make noise but won't actually do anything. He's just some weirdo who spends too much time posting on the Internet

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I detest Hasbro but I certainly wouldn't want Elon to ruin it further.

 

[Burnside]

He's not a gamedev and wouldn't spend any time on the company so he's mostly meaningless in this context. He would hire someone to run the company in alignment with some kind of philosophy and that person would have some kind of impact. Without knowing who that is, we couldn't even venture a guess if it were good or bad.

We can venture a guess. It would be pretty horrible.

 

[Rabbitbait]

D&D neXt?

Dungeons X Dragons?

 

[Clint_L]

I don't see this as anything in danger of actually happening. Entertaining the actual thought for a moment ...

This is basically no better than his "I'm making an AI video game company" thing. It basically means nothing.

He's not a gamedev and wouldn't spend any time on the company so he's mostly meaningless in this context. He would hire someone to run the company in alignment with some kind of philosophy and that person would have some kind of impact. Without knowing who that is, we couldn't even venture a guess if it were good or bad.

I'm more than willing to venture a guess that anyone in line with Musk's worldview would be bad for D&D.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

If you’re a WotC-hater mad at them for flirting and gesturing at AI, cyclically firing staff, favoring short-term investors over fans, wait until Elon gets his rage-tourist hands in it.

 

[Clint_L]

I couldn't imagine what 100x worse could even possibly look like.

His picture is right there on the OP.