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.

 

[Faolyn]

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?

Buy different types of games?

Thanks to Itch.io charity bundles, I literally have over a thousand different RPGs. And that's not including all the dozens of games I have from much bigger companies. My gaming folder has 80 sub-folders, and some of those folders actually contain several different but related games, or generic systems. If I never touched so much as touched another D&D-alike again, let alone an actual D&D game, I'd still be set for multiple lifetimes worth of play. And, of course, I can still play D&D and its clones for the rest of my life without ever purchasing another product for it.

I know we're all used to having tons of splatbooks and supplements (sounds like an RPG about RPGs), but all we really need to do is get more used to making our own stuff expansions instead of relying on others to do it.

 

[screwdrumpf4eva]

By the gods above and below, I wish this man would stay the hell away from my life's few joys.

 

[Remathilis]

By the gods above and below, I wish this man would stay the hell away from my life's few joys.

That's basically how I feel.

 

[Some Dude]

Has anyone started calling Musk "Elania" yet?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Has anyone started calling Musk "Elania" yet?

A lot of comedians have.

 

[SteveC]

I reading this thread, it seems like a lot of people really don't like Elon. I have a friend who knows him and he was genuinely surprised he ever played D&D. He did say that he was able to recognize his Earth Force officer's uniform from Babylon 5 so he expected he did know a fair bit about nerd culture.

If Elon did purchase WotC, I'd say the reaction would be incredible, so I sort of hopes he does do it (but don't expect him to).

The number one thing WotC could do to not have this sort of issue would be to not talk about how they don't want or need their older customers. Everyone is welcome to play D&D, even the people who were doing it in the 70s. Even the person who just heard about the game today. Everyone is welcome.

 

[ezo]

So... probably won't bother reading 350+ posts on this already (maybe this weekend?), but here's my 2 cents (Musk can buy them for $20, though! ):

TSR? WotC? Musk? Who cares, folks. D&D is D&D is what we make it. I am not one who, frankly, cares about who actually runs the company or designs the products. Musk won't do it, he'll hired someone to do it.

If whoever is in charge takes the game in a direction I prefer, great for me I guess? If they don't (like WotC), then woe for me. I've lived through it this long, and I'll live through WotC or Musk or whoever owns the game, and keep playing D&D my way.

Because when push comes to shove, no one know what will happen or what sort of product we will continue to get. Personally, it just doesn't matter to me (unless they give me a job developing D&D someday lol!).

 

[Zardnaar]

Not so fast - let's go back to my idea to buy hasbro.
I will open a go fund me and if every D&D fan gives their yearly d&d spending into the go fund me (roughly 500$ each if we have 10 million fans) I could get the 5 billion dollars needed to buy a majority of hasbro shares and stop any takeover from happening (or at least In would make it very expensive).

Getting 20 million people to pony up $500 each good luck.

 

[Zardnaar]

On Musk-friendly subreddits and Youtube channels? Musk is more likely to notice something if it showers him with praise than criticism.

Not 100% sure I've seen video thumbnails but wasn't familiar with the channels.

Megathread on reddit. More than 1.

 

[The Soloist]

I leave for a few weeks and WotC goes to HELL!

I'm glad I invested in Dragonbane, Shadow of the Weird Wizard and Fantasy AGE.

Kobold Press must be happy that they did Tales of the Valiant. It could become the 'new Pathfinder' D&D schism.