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.

 

[Sacrosanct]

According to payroll.org, 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And yet, we're in a world where techbro buys a banana for $6 million and another techbro could seriously drop $8 billion on a whim to buy a major corporation.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Sorry. I probably shouldn't have posted yesterday. It was a very hard day (I found my father-in-laws body in his bathroom a couple days ago so the family get together felt...well...) And Jason is a genuine good guy. The vitriol directed to him was the stick that broke the camel's back so-to-speak. I apologize for not just the misspelling I should have caught, being a publisher and all, but for the anger in my post.

My condolences also.

 

[Clint_L]

I think folks are going overboard on the panick, you'd think Musk had said he was going to ban women and minority from the game, which he has not, anyone can buy a Tesla and there are still transfolks on twitter. It's more likely he just fires Tondo for baiting him and puts Kuntz in charge of D&D. Kuntz has skills so that's not too bad in my opinion and is more likely to respect canon. Maybe he also pulls trigger warnings off of older products.

Kuntz being in charge of D&D is exactly the kind of outcome that would cause me to never buy another product from WotC, and while he might make products that appeal to a subsection of the 5% of the base who are mostly over 50 and mostly don't play 5e anyway, he would not fly with the actual player base.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah, I know. I work with a number of large publicly traded companies in my day job and their ability to do long term damage to themselves in the interest of short term gain is mind-boggling.

This is truth. I work for a major corporation. Just last week on a call discussing impending layoffs, I said, "This seems like a very poor idea, especially when the incoming administration has said they want to cut H1-B visas (half of our technology business group is here on an H1-B visa--hundreds of people). What's going to happen if you layoff 15% of the people and then lose 50%?"

The answer? "I didn't think of that. I don't think senior leadership has as well."

And when I said, "We laid off people to save $100,000 in salary costs which led to the project going $1 million over budget because we lost that expertise and no one could do the work as efficient or in the same time frame. How does that make sense?"

The answer? "Honestly, there are senior managers who won't give that information to the board."

So yeah, you're on it. I've long said that corporate leadership only cares about short term cost custs because they will leave and get a golden parachute anyway, so long term planning doesn't get considered. It's maddening.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

So let's say he does....what then? I assume he will follow the anti 5e crowd, but they are already playing something else. The 5e fans go to one of the many options (that are now fully protected).

So I would love to read others best guess for that future.

I suspect that most 5e players barely know who ultimately owns the D&D brand, much less care about it. So I doubt there would be any immediate effect on the playerbase, but over time Musk might mismanage the game and make people lose interest because of poor quality products.

Sadly, given D&D's unique position, I think many of those who stop playing 5e will just leave the hobby instead of finding alternative RPGs.

 

[Remathilis]

I suspect that most 5e players barely know who ultimately owns the D&D brand, much less care about it. So I doubt there would be any immediate effect on the playerbase, but over time Musk might mismanage the game and make people lose interest because of poor quality products.

Sadly, given D&D's unique position, I think many of those who stop playing 5e will just leave the hobby instead of finding alternative RPGs.

I am a long-time player and know of dozens of alternatives, but I would be far more likely to leave the hobby.

 

[Remathilis]

I think folks are going overboard on the panick, you'd think Musk had said he was going to ban women and minority from the game, which he has not, anyone can buy a Tesla and there are still transfolks on twitter. It's more likely he just fires Tondo for baiting him and puts Kuntz in charge of D&D. Kuntz has skills so that's not too bad in my opinion and is more likely to respect canon. Maybe he also pulls trigger warnings off of older products.

Folks imaginations of Musk owning Hasbro have gone wild.

D&D is a very different medium then twitter, it's not opinion, debate driven, it's just a series of fantasy settings and rules.

Musk is going to look at the whole "D&D is under monetized" thing and put it on steroids. AI powered D&D Beyond tools? Rules sold only online and frequently updated? NFT Magic cards? Character sheets on the block chain? You laugh, but have you ever seen what Tesla has done to car design? You can't unlock the car without an app and a subscription!

He won't care about if the game plays any good, he will care if you are playing for the subscription to access the rules and tools needed to play.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I suspect that one of the several '5e clones' would end up suddenly doing extremely well, just like how the original Pathfinder did well once 4e happened.

So far none of the 5e-alike games have managed to gain much traction, as 5e still exists and currently dominates the market.

But if Musk nabbed the IP and brought out 'DnD X Edition (now with less woke)', you'd suddenly see these alternatives get a massive influx of players.

 

[Azzy]

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.

That's absolutely stupid. Why not go all the way with the stupidity and compare it to the Holocaust? That's how stupid he's being. Rob needs to get over himself.

 

[Parmandur]

You can't unlock the car without an app and a subscription!

While I agree with youcby and large here, thisnpart is not true: the cars use an NFC wallet card like a hotel room, the App isn't needed, and is free. The subscription is for internet usage.