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.

 

[Parmandur]

I still think Rosewater stays, even at Twitter he didn't fire everyone, he kept like a third of the company.

No way Rosewater stays under Musk, specifically.

 

[Remathilis]

Like what? Without resorting to histrionic memery, What company in his history is an example of not good? At least, in comparison to every other company? He's not the world richest man by accident. he didn't stumble into it. You could easily make a very strong case that he's an unethical man-child, but what series of company failures point to evidence of you're "not good" dataset?

He's the world's richest man because he leveraged generational wealth into a bunch of tech investments that he acted as hype man for, over-promising and under-delivering but never the less convincing the rubes he's the smartest man in the room.

 

[J.Quondam]

Like what? Without resorting to histrionic memery, What company in his history is an example of not good? At least, in comparison to every other company? He's not the world richest man by accident. he didn't stumble into it. You could easily make a very strong case that he's an unethical man-child, but what series of company failures point to evidence of you're "not good" dataset?

TO be sure, "not good" doesn't have to relate to making money. It could relate to employee safety and treatment, customer service, environmental or community responsibility, investor accountability, and so forth. All those things can be "not good" and still result in tons of money being made. Indeed, it seems to me that modern money-bro style capitalism demands it.

 

[OptionalRule]

Twitter is haemorrhaging users, after years of haemorrhaging advertisers.

Twitter is fine. It's stable and profitable after years of not being. Twitter could go down to 1 user if they still turned enough profit. Random metrics don't make any kind of case, but I do get it. I don't particularly like him either. I wouldn't want him to buy DnD. This idea that he's a bad buisness man though, is a cope of epic proportions.

 

[billd91]

Grog: "D&D was always inclusive"

Googles D&D club in the 80s. 9 out of 10 people in every photo is a white male.

"Inclusive". I don't think that word means what you think it means.--Vizzini

*I started in 1981 and I didn't even meet my first female gamer until 1992, but I try to stay away from anecdotal experience on things like this, because a lot of the grognards making that claim like to say "I had a female in my group, so it was totally inclusive!"

And the thing is… to them, it may have been or at least seemed that way. I think a lot of the old timers may have said they’d welcome anyone to the table and be telling the truth.

And none of that would recognize how hard it is for someone to approach the table in the first place when nobody already at it is like themselves. That’s why the inclusivity efforts have been important. You can’t just sit back and wait for diversity to happen. It doesn’t. And that’s why various idiots in the manosphere oppose those efforts - they don’t want diversity at the table, it undermines their privilege of being already there. That’s Musk anne his goons.

And unfortunately, there are also those who don’t want the inclusivity efforts because it makes them feel uncomfortable about change or their previously unexamined history and they don’t necessarily like what they see, either in themselves or who they esteem. Those are the ones who need to do the work, get over it, and move on to a brighter and broader future. I would hope this may be where Kuntz could fall, but we’ll see.

 

[OptionalRule]

He's the world's richest man because he leveraged generational wealth into a bunch of tech investments that he acted as hype man for, over-promising and under-delivering but never the less convincing the rubes he's the smartest man in the room.

This is a nonsense statement. There are plenty of people that have inherited wealth and haven't become anything near the richest person in the world. Most generational wealth disappears after a few generations.

 

[Staffan]

I think Musk is the Dragon, all Billionaires are, it's the perfect metaphor.

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

"As a knight, the king said, "it is your duty to kill dragons."
"Very well, my liege,' the knight said. "Um. May I ask why?"
"Because they hoard wealth without sharing, and people live in fear of their capricious moods."
"Very well, my liege," the knight said and drew his sword.
— O. Westin

Umm you mean more than it's already? There's a whole line called Universes beyond which is for crossovers, we're due to get either a marvel set or a spider man set next year (I forget which) including

Spider-Man, which is supposed to be the first full MtG/Marvel crossover set. And calling it "first" of course implies that there will be more to come – I'm guessing at least one each for Avengers and Mutants, and maybe getting cosmic/space as well and maybe Fantastic Four.

They did a limited Secret Lair release only recently of five 5-6 card sets with one Marvel hero each (Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Wolverine, and Storm) alongside four old cards with new art and occasionally a new name (changing "Manamorphosis" to "Ororo Borealis" for the Storm cards was inspired) plus sometimes a token the hero makes use of.

 

[OptionalRule]

TO be sure, "not good" doesn't have to relate to making money. It could relate to employee safety and treatment, customer service, environmental or community responsibility, investor accountability, and so forth. All those things can be "not good" and still result in tons of money being made. Indeed, it seems to me that modern money-bro style capitalism demands it.

I can get behind this statement.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

That's because he doesn't know much about really anything.

Despite all his bluster, he is not an inventor or engineer. He's not a rocket scientist or electrical engineer.

He's an investor who got really lucky. He inherited a fortune from his father, who operated an emerald mine during apartheid-era South Africa, a mine staffed with unfree labor. He fled South Africa for Canada when he came of age, to avoid conscription into the SA Army (and could go to Canada because his mother was Canadian and thus he had birthright Canadian citizenship).

He bought his way into the US with an investor visa after being in Canada. He took the fortune he got from his father and got really lucky on some venture capital investments, like PayPal.

He didn't get his money by being a skilled businessman, or an inventor or scientist. He got to be the richest man in the world by inheriting a fortune earned through slave labor, and raw dumb luck in some venture capital investments after fleeing the draft in his home country.

Expecting him to know how a market cap works would be like expecting him to know how electric car design works. . .and the engineers who designed the Cybertruck already indicated he knows absolutely nothing about the field (but absolutely will overrule the actual engineers on design issues because he's sure he knows better than he does).

He's rich in spite of himself, not because of skill.

He might be a nepo baby, but when business after business of his reaches massive heights, and charts completely new territory, it becomes more then just luck, plenty of rich kids blow their fortunes or just coast.

Telsa revolutionized electric cars, star-links has government contracts and Ukraine is completely dependant on it, he's the dude who actually going to bring cyberpunk brain chips to market, Telse met EVERY SINGLE BENCHMARK, which is why his pay is going to be in the tens of billions now that the courts can't get in his way anymore, etc...

Luck can only account for the head start, which admittedly is huge, it doesn't account for how he turned that into one of the world's most powerful financial empires.

And I had no idea Musk was a natural born Canadian citizen, I just thought he was American and South African. That means he can never be stripped of Canadian citizenship and his kids are automically Canadian too, good for his trans kid if things get too intense in the US, Canada is still welcoming.

 

[Future_Monkey]

And the thing is… to them, it may have been or at least seemed that way. I think a lot of the old timers may have said they’d welcome anyone to the table and be telling the truth.

And none of that would recognize how hard it is for someone to approach the table in the first place when nobody already at it is like themselves. That’s why the inclusivity efforts have been important. You can’t just sit back and wait for diversity to happen. It doesn’t. And that’s why various idiots in the manosphere oppose those efforts - they don’t want diversity at the table, it undermines their privilege of being already there. That’s Musk anne his goons.

And unfortunately, there are also those who don’t want the inclusivity efforts because it makes them feel uncomfortable about change or their previously unexamined history and they don’t necessarily like what they see, either in themselves or who they esteem. Those are the ones who need to do the work, get over it, and move on to a brighter and broader future. I would hope this may be where Kuntz could fall, but we’ll see.

Also, a lot of the time these oh-so 'tolerant' individuals who said that everyone was welcome at their table, required those people to tolerant toward their racism, sexism, or homophobia.

I really wasn't that surprised when I found out that Gygax apparently is the guy who made the -4 Strength for women 'rule'.