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]

True. However, if Musk were to acquire Hasbro and through it WoTC, which of the 5e-adjacent games could see a big spike in players?

None, their is a big difference between people loudly complaining here and the actual market, during the OGL scandal D^D Beyond kept growing and barely even felt the boycott.

 

[Corinnguard]

Level up A5e and Tales of the Valiant both resemble 5e a lot more.

True. Both were built off of the 5e chassis, so there is a degree of familiarity that will allow 5e players to easily jump into either one. Level Up A5e adds a level of crunch that some of us 5e players have wanted to see in some time. So, if WoTC/Hasbro were to be bought up by the Muskrat, a number of us would go straight into A5e and continue to have fun. I don't know enough about ToV to know how well it would fare in this situation.

 

[Corinnguard]

Do we get to vote?

We'll need another thread for that. "Who will succeed WoTC?"

 

[Some Dude]

A whole lot of the old guard are progressive folks. Most of them are in fact. I think Gary thought he could get away with what he did not because those beliefs were reinforced by others working for him, but because he was in charge and didn't really care what others thought. Gary's way or the highway. It wasn't until the infamous Sheridan Springs "ambush" that Gary realized he wasn't in charge and couldn't do whatever he wanted. That's why it's called "ambush".

For example, I mentioned in the other thread maybe that when Roger E Moore was hired in 1983 as Dragon Editor, he responded to the complaints about sexism in the game with honest thought and promise to do better. Pretty sure any concerns Roger may have brought to Gary about that would have been met with combativeness and dismissiveness. So even if/when the old guard would bring these up, we didn't see changes because no one told Gary he was wrong about anything, based on all the stories we've all heard about how it went down when those things happened.

This is true, and something glossed over by Grognards who insist that D&D was always inclusive. In, what, July of 1980, The Dragon ran an article about the sexism faced by female gamers. This was a known issue even then.

Another canard from the "old school" is that gaming wasn't political. But The Dragon had a regular column, "Up on the Soap Box", that addressed social issues of all kinds as they related to gaming. In one column, Larry "Masks of Nyarlathotep" DiTillio wondered whether GMs including gay NPCs might be helpful for any of their (out or not) gay players. Of course, in the following issue, another columnist rebutted that with the "keep politics out of gaming" routine. But still, the idea that gamers were never politically minded, in or out of game, simply isn't true.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Since there are so many Musk fans here, Papa Meats Elon Musk animated parody.

 

[FrozenNorth]

How's he losing, he has folks absolutely freaking out.

D&D 2024 is still an incredible success. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that his rant has had any impact on D&D 2024 or Hasbro’s share price.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

That is, of course, assuming Musk would not survive to remove D&D from the CC and then go after 3pp that tried to use those rules. Musk has infinite money to wage lawfare that I don't know if Paizo or KP could afford to fight.

 

[dimonic]

Actually it make sense. The far right have been buying media forever, creating an entire consistent unified media sphere of propaganda and lies. See XTwitter. It makes sense to extend that into game platforms.

It's not about the money. It's about raw political power. When you start a coup in the 70s, you take out the radio and TV stations.

Today, young people consume media via their game platforms.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

That is, of course, assuming Musk would not survive to remove D&D from the CC and then go after 3pp that tried to use those rules. Musk has infinite money to wage lawfare that I don't know if Paizo or KP could afford to fight.

Luckily Paizo has put in a lot of work with the remaster to try to avoid this exact problem.

And I'm willing to bet that right now they're feeling really validated in doing so.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

But still, the idea that gamers were never politically minded, in or out of game, simply isn't true.

We're talking about people who think the machine being raged against is, I don't know, a printer or something.