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.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Xungeons & Xragons (tm)

Sounds like a porn parody of D&D.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Musk buys WotC and names Justin LaNasa lead game developer of D&D!

You joke, but it could happen.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I wish Elon Musk would just **** off to Mars already! He’s like a badly drawn Bond villain at the moment. If he goes anywhere near Hasbro, he’d kill D&D stone dead. Stop politicising the hobby.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Jason Tondro is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. He made a series of comments about not listening to a certain group of people (and explains in some of those comments why, because they are reactionaries who send him threats and harassment, and isn't talking about all older gamers like myself, but the large group of toxic ones), and folks like Erik Tenkar create a video about just one of those comments out of context to get clicks and push the narrative that Tondro hates older white male gamers (calling him a "bitter F***"). Just look at the comments. That is highly irresponsible, IMO. Rather than actually look at Jason's other comments, Erik latches onto one comment out of context and ran with it. And calls Jason names and accuses him of crapping on all of our childhoods. No freaking wonder Jason said he doesn't give head space to these people. I wouldn't either. And I'm a grognard. Never have I ever seen a more fragile and easily offended group of people than many of my fellow older white male straight gamers.

@tenkar, in your video you asked you'd like to know why he did that? Well, if you bothered to look at his other comments you'd have an answer. Instead you went off on him with slander and assumption and name-calling, ironically showing yourself the exact behavior he said he doesn't pay attention to because he won't let you live in his head. Doing what you did in that video is exactly why he says he doesn't consider some people worth listening to. You proved his point.

*Edit: Let me make it very clear what he was talking about. He was asked about the backlash the forward got. He said the people losing their minds over it aren't worth listening to. Just go look at that massive thread we had over this and what was actually in that forward rather than what people thought was in it. Anyone who lost their minds over it? I wouldn't listen to them either because they aren't serious. If you want to know why I think that way, read that massive thread we just had.

 

[Gradine]

(calling him a "bitter F**").

Might be worthwhile to add a fourth asterisk to this, because the word I read from an F and two asterisks is not the word he said (and is actually quite a bit worse)

 

[Some Dude]

In related news Kuntz compared Tondo to Spaniards invading the Aztec Empire and slaughtering and looting the indigenous population (in this case Grognards), and then pointed out that both Mearls and Jeremy Crawford count as Grognards and that Jeremy Crawford once chased him down to give Kuntz a 5e PHB and signed it and that they were old Greyhawk fans.

So as you can see the situation totally isn't spiraling out of control .

Let's see who loses it on Tondo next. Jeremy Crawford's really got to be freaking out right now, Musk might be his new boss soon if Tondo keeps it up.

As someone in his 50s who first played D&D around 1980, I just wanna say... DESTROY ALL GROGNARDS*. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't like 5E, really doesn't like much D&D after 2E, actually.

And Kuntz? Imagine arguing that a man who said, "I am sexist" wasn't sexist, then comparing WotC devs to literal genociders. Complete lack of perspective. Grognard? More like "Pleurnicheur".

Whatever gets people playing anything else gets my vote, even if that's Muskrat at the helm.

The sooner "roleplaying games" becomes thought of as a category of entertainment, like "film" and "music", instead of just meaning "D&D", the better.



*not literally

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Grognard? More like "Pleurnicheur".

I'm stealing that.

 

[TravDoc42]

Isn't he supposed to be setting up some sort of government "efficiency" agency right now?

He's the world's most exhausting person. Literally, every time I hear something new from him, I want to hear less from him.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

As someone in his 50s who first played D&D around 1980, I just wanna say... DESTROY ALL GROGNARDS*. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't like 5E, really doesn't like much D&D after 2E, actually.

And Kuntz? Imagine arguing that a man who said, "I am sexist" wasn't sexist, then comparing WotC devs to literal genociders. Complete lack of perspective. Grognard? More like "Pleurnicheur".

Whatever gets people playing anything else gets my vote, even if that's Muskrat at the helm.

The sooner "roleplaying games" becomes thought of as a category of entertainment, like "film" and "music", instead of just meaning "D&D", the better.



*not literally

"Muskrat" this is going to just get crazier and crazier, F*** it, I'm just going to sit back and see how sideways Tondo vs the Grognard fight gets. The whole thing is surreal at this point.

2020s are just endlessly M. Knight Shamalan twists at this point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What Musk does or doesn't do is of no interest to me and I have no idea of guessing.

But what can we do about it? How can we ensure our love of this hobby doesn't depend on any single company?

The various SRDs are helpful. Anyone can build a game off of the existing SRDs and modify those SRDs.

The brand could very well be lost but can we still own "D&D" ourselves in every way but actual trademark law?

I'm sure cratering D&D wouldn't help bring new people into the game but there are a lot of people out there who now know RPGs and a lot of RPGs for them to play.

That 5.2 SRD can't come fast enough....

Yup. Hopefully WotC hurries up with all those past edition SRDs as well.