cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3992477
Elon Musk, the owner of the app formerly known as Twitter, is calling on Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro to "burn in hell" for the publication of Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons. On November 21st, former gaming executive turned culture warrior Mark Hern posted several passages from Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons on Twitter, criticizing the book for providing context about some of the misogyny and cultural insensitivity found in early rulebooks. These passages were pulled from the foreword written by Jason Tondro, a senior designer for the D&D team who also worked extensively on the book. Hern stated that these passages, along with the release of the new 2024 Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D's "40th anniversary" (it is actually D&D's 50th anniversary) both "erased and slandered" Gary Gygax and other creators of Dungeons & Dragons.
In response, Musk wrote "Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash E. Gary Gygax and the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons. What the [naughty word] is wrong with Hasbro and WoTC?? May they burn in hell." Musk had played Dungeons & Dragons at some point in his youth, but it's unclear when the last time he ever played the game.
Notably, Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons contains countless correspondences and letters written by both Gygax and Dave Arneson, including annotated copies of early D&D rulesets. Most early D&D rules supplements as well as early Dragon magazines are also found in the book. It seems odd to contain one of the most extensive compliations of Gygax's work an "erasure," but it's unclear whether Hern or Musk actually read the book given the incorrect information about the anniversary.
Additionally, Gygax and Arneson are both credited in the 2024 Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. The exact credit reads: "Building on the original game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and then developed by many others over the past 50 years." Wizards of the Coast also regularly collaborates with Gygax's youngest son Luke and is a participant at Gary Con, a convention held in Gygax's honor. The opening paragraph of the 2024 Player's Handbook is written by Jeremy Crawford and specifically lauds both Gygax and Arneson for making Dungeons & Dragons and contains an anecdote about Crawford meeting Gygax.
Musk has increasingly leaned into culture war controversies in recent years, usually amplifying misinformation to suit his own political agenda.
Elon Musk hints at buying Hasbro for D&D after announcing AI game studio
A week later, on November 27, X user Ian Miles Cheong posted a screenshot showing Tondro’s response to Musk’s prior concerns.
When addressing Musk’s criticism of the book, Tondro explained that he and others agreed that backlash would come from “progressives and people from underrepresented groups who justly took offense at the language of OD&D.”
“How much is Hasbro?” Musk asked.
Although the X owner didn’t elaborate on a potential purchase, if Musk does end up acquiring Hasbro, he would also secure the rights to Transformers, Axis & Allies, Monopoly, Magic The Gathering, and even My Little Pony.
We’ll have to wait and see how this unfolds and if Musk is serious about potentially acquiring the entertainment juggernaut.
God I hate Musk so much. Gary Gygax was a fucking turbo chud libertarian and he worked to screw Dave Arneson out of his credit and royalties for co-creating D&D, and whitewashing him as some genius game designer (when in fact he sucked quite a bit in ways that people didn't really understand until later) is a discredit to the entire hobby.
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Gygax was a genocidal racist, as was made quite clear in (probably among other places) some forum posts he made.
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He's probably the reason his son grew up to be weirdo Nazi freak.
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I hope Musk does destroy wotc, d&d is too big for the rpg industry's good. A lot of companies produce higher quality products at lower prices with not nearly their level of scale. Getting more people to consider alternatives to the $150 three "core books" and $50 adventure modules that you have to read through carefully three times to run without fucking up would be great.
EDIT:
Oh shit
- I hope he kills the cash cow that is Magic: the Gathering at the same time. The game is fine but the CCG distribution model is literally physical loot boxes, AKA scratch tickets that can be legally sold to children. This shit should just be illegal but I'll settle for destroyed by mismanagement.
Hopefully I can get a Sephiroth precon first though.
Context uh... You know, I'm just gonna spoiler tag the whole thing:
CW: violence against prisoners, racism against indigenous people, genocide
spoiler
Context here is someone explained that in their game, a dwarf killed a paladin's horse in retaliation for the paladin killing his prisoner (the one surviving member of a group they'd just fought) after interrogation because the paladin deemed that keeping the prisoner alive wasn't expedient.
So...
That is wasn't the paladin's warhorse makes the matter less serious, but only marginally so. the paladin's honor was besmirched by the dwarf, and as the DM I would call that to the attention of the player of the paladin if there was less than great umbrage taken. To allow the incident to pass without punishing the offending dwarf would be a dark stain on the honor of the paladin.
Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old addage about nits making lice applies. Also, as I have often noted, a paladin can freely dispatch prisoners of Evil alignment that have surrrendered and renounced that alignment in favor of Lawful Good. They are then sent on to their reward before thay can backslide :lol:
Cheers, Gary
Now it's generally disturbing in a "Jack Bauer fan" way to say that murdering POWs is fine, like, it's a war crime. But the bolded part is VERY concerning. Another poster pointed out that the guy responsible for that quote was a genocidal murderer who was explaining why he felt compelled to kill native children.
Gygax claimed that the quote was much older than that guy but if you Google the quote he's all that comes up. This is a "the swastika is actually an ancient Eastern symbol that represents..." argument.
EDIT: this is what Chivington, the guy Gygax was quoting, is known for. The quotes are chilling:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Creek_massacre
There's a few things, this article covers sexism specifically, the quotes directly from Gygax himself are all you need to prove he was a chud in his day.
Even if Musk destroyed WOTC,DND would be fine and people can just keep home brews and whatever is currently available for eternity. It’s not like most people recommend new DND anyways it’s mostly 3.5 and pathfinder with some saying to use 5.
You're running in the grognard circles if you think it's all pathfinder and 3.5. 5e is the most popular edition of DND ever and the most popular ttrpg ever. I've met so many people who think the entire hobby is just 5e. They've never heard of pathfinder and frequently don't understand why people wouldn't play the newest edition of DND instead of older ones
5th edition is still insanely popular, but I think it's a result of timing and luck. Everyone plays it, but half the reason is because everyone else plays it lol.
When it first came out, I recall hearing "it's everyone's second favorite edition" and that still seems to remain true.
5th is something like 1/2 of all games played on Roll20. I'd bet it's that proportion or more in person, if people could even quantify that. DnD 5th is so big, it's almost like TTRPGs as a genre should be split off lol - like theres TTRPGs and then DnD 5th ed. Between DnD 5th, Pathfinder 1 and 2, Call of Cthulhu to some extent, everything else (including previous editions of dnd) are fighting for scraps
I would absolutely never suggest someone use 3.5.
If someone absolutely insisted on playing a D&D based RPG I'd suggest 5e for ease of finding a group, 4e if they wanted something where things are basically balanced and all the players and playing the same game, or one of the many good OSR games if they wanted access to a ton of good adventure modules (or wanted decisions to be more logistics based than tactical, but I'm not sure a new player would consider this at all).
3.5 is all the complexity and fiddlyness of 4e but instead of deciding what cool special move you want to use you count up your charge attack damage multipliers and then the wizard just trivializes the whole encounter with one spell anyways.
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Gygax is already burning in hell so shrug. Anyway old D&D bad & racist as fuck, new D&D also bad, play pathfinder, genesys, pbta or smth
One detail they got slightly wrong: it’s Mark Kern, not Hern. That’s the same guy Shaun just did a 2 hour video essay on over his “anti-woke” crusades.
Please, buy Hasbro, ruin D&D
It hasn't been very good in a long time
BG3 is good because it basically ignores all the shit that makes 5e bad
And even then, they had to set a low level ceiling because once you get past 12th, the rules basically go down into the shit pit because they didn't bother balancing anything past that point
Even the new 5.5e doesn't fix any of this, it's basically them trying to crib the good stuff from Pathfinder 2e
But... he would also ruin GI Joe
It's a price I'm willing to pay
I really fell off that game over the past year and never actually went beyond 3.5. (scheduling conflicts and my style of group kept me from 5). From the sounds of it (pinkertons and all), it sounds like there's not much left for him to ruin.
For better or worse 5e is the best selling TTRPG ever and the community is stronger than it ever has been. Sucks if you wanted to play something else, also sucks if you wanted to play for free since everyone is online now and half the GMs charge money.
Elon Musk hints at buying Hasbro for D&D after announcing AI game studio
Do it, coward. You have the power to finally get this hobby away from D&D.
