Elon Musk Teases He May Buy Hasbro To Save D&D After Lead Designer Attacks Critics As "Grognards"
Dungeons & Dragons remains a hot topic over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend thanks to conversations stirred about Elon Musk regarding how the current owners, Wizards of the Coast, are treating the game’s founder Gary Gygax. Now, Musk has stirred speculation he might by the parent company Hasbro to preserve D&D’s legacy.
D&D has been turned into a woke nightmare by the current crop of ownership. The 2024 edition leading into their online service One DnD has been riddled with identity politics from removing of half-races, changing race backgrounds, having BIPOC overrepresented in the art, presenting Mexican Orcs, to including safe spaces in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, players are more than frustrated with WotC’s treatement of the beloved fantasy RPG.
Still, the most egregious situation in the current iteration is the industry's lack of respect for its creator, Gary Gygax. Woke activists have taken over Dungeons & Dragons, which led to The Making Of The Original Dungeons & Dragons bizarrely attacking Gygax with misinformation maligning the D&D creator.
In the preface written by Jason Tondro, a Senior Designer on Dungeons & Dragons, and shared to X by user dLsd_25, Tondro attacks the original creators writing, “Some language in the first iteration of D&D presents a moral quandary. The documents reproduced in this book include many pages of charts and tables alongside lists of monsters, spells, and magic items. But that game content also includes a virtual catalog of insensitive and derogatory language, words that are casually hurtful to anyone with a physical or mental disability, or who happens to be old, fat, not conventionally attractive, indigenous, Black, or a woman.”
Tondro continued, “Some people have charitably ascribed this language to authors working from bad assumptions. In the 1970s, historical wargamers in America were predominately white, middle-class men; it isn’t surprising that they would dub a class of soldiers the ‘fighting-man.’ But when, in the pages of Greyhawk, the description of the Queen of Chaotic Dragons includes a dig at ‘Women’s Lib,’ the misogyny is revealed as a conscious choice. It’s an unfortunate fact that women seldom appear in original D&D, and when they do, they’re usually portrayed disrespectfully.
Tondro went on, “Slavery appears in original D&D not as a human tragedy that devastated generations over centuries, but as a simple commercial transaction.”
“The cultural appropriation of original D&D ranges from the bewildering (like naming every 6th-level cleric a ‘lama’) to the staggering; Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes (not reprinted in this book) includes game statistics for sacred figures revered by more than a billion people around the world,” he wrote. “Were players expected to fight Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism, kill him, and loot his ‘plus 3 sword of demon slaying’?”
Tondro concluded the preface writing, “Despite these shortcomings, D&D has always been a game about people choosing to be someone unlike themselves and collaborating with strangers who become friends. It has slowly become more inclusive, and as the player base has become more diverse, the pool of creators who make the game has expanded to include people with a broader range of identities and backgrounds. As these new creators make the game more welcoming, the game has attracted new fans who, in turn, continue to make the game more inclusive. The future of Dungeons & Dragons, here at its fiftieth anniversary, is bright.”
The controversy hit the mainstream when World of Warcraft designer Mark Kern, posting as Grummz on X, made a thread this week reiterating how D&D has fallen, saying, “DnD creators, Gygax, and others, are erased and slandered at the same time. WoTC and Hasbro just released the new Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, as well as the 40th Anniversary "Making of DnD" book, whose forward slams the original creators and attempts to distance themselves. I spoke with one of the original creators, Rob Kuntz @threelinestudio, about the problem.”
Elon Musk saw the post and chimed in with his passionate expertise, “Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash E. Gary Gygax and the geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons. What the f*** is wrong with Hasbro and WoTC?? May they burn in hell.”
The author of The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons then attacked Elon Musk on a Facebook post which he’s now either made private or deleted after getting public pushback on his ramblings.
As the situation went more viral, influencer Ian Miles Cheong posted regarding the Dungeons & Dragons controversy, “ RIP Dungeons & Dragons. Jason Tondro, the project lead of D&D and senior designer at Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast explains that the intended audience is woke, and that WOTC doesn’t give a damn about what Elon Musk or any other “grognard” (a slur for old school players) thinks.”
Elon Musk took note of the situation once more, which is where he teased he might buy the company to save Dungeons & Dragons asking, “How much is Hasbro?”
Ian Miles Cheong replied with what it would potentially cost, saying, “Around $8-12 billion according to Grok in terms of market cap. You could probably get it for half as much.”
Musk isn’t the only one who is upset within the tabletop gaming world about the situation. Battletech lore designer Blaine Pardoe told Fandom Pulse what he thought o the situation after watching his beloved franchise fall to the woke, “Gary was an innovator and pioneer in the industry. Attempting to erase or taint his contributions is little more than petty woke activism.”
Pardoe currently has his own Land & Sea military science fiction series outpacing sales of recent Battletech books because of a loyal fanbase, showing that there is a heavy market for properties involving non-woke tabletop franchises.
The price point is a high one, and Elon Musk has his hands full running Space X, Tesla, X, Starlink, and The Department of Government Efficiency. Could he possibly take on more? Become a paid member to leave a comment and support our journalism!
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