X.com owner Elon Musk has expressed an interest in purchasing Hasbro, the corporate owner of Wizards of the Coast and ultimately the Dungeons and Dragons license. With an estimated personal worth of $323 billion, Musk could singlehandedly fund the establishment of a dozen RPG studios – surely a red-blooded capitalist would find it much more fulfilling to launch his own bold vision of tabletop gaming into the market, to conquer the current ‘woke’ version of DnD?
Musk’s public interest in DnD began on November 22, following discussions on flagging social media platform X about ‘The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons’, a new book that gives a historical retrospective on the game.
Responding to a post complaining about factual sidebars in the book that raise problematic elements of Gary Gygax’s personality and writing, Musk stated “What the fuck is wrong with Hasbro and WOTC?”, adding “May they burn in hell”, like a normal adult.
On November 28, in response to a post claiming that Wizards of the Coast is now targeting DnD specifically at the “woke” audience, Musk asked “How much is Hasbro?”
Elon, my sweet summer child, you’re the richest man on earth: is this really the limit of your ambition? Why go to the trouble of buying Hasbro – with its troubled toy business and pesky eight billion dollar market capitalisation – when you could set up the biggest RPG development studio in the world overnight?
You don’t even need that much money. The whole of the DnD 5th edition system reference document is in the creative commons. It’s never been easier to make your own version of DnD. And if you’re actually interested in innovating – which is exactly what we’d expect from the man who’s going to take us to Mars – you could come up with a totally original RPG. Itch.io is brimming with them!
Is it just easier to co-opt popular culture, than to try to build something original? But Elon, you’re renowned among your fans as a radical free thinker. You’re not the kind of man who is afraid to compete in the free marketplace of ideas. Why, between your business genius, and the thinktank of innovative game designers who would no doubt flock to your side, you could easily create a product that would take the public imagination, and the games market, by storm!
Maybe you should tell us what DnD should be like, because so far we only have an idea of what it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be ‘woke’. Got it. But we know you’re not a reactionary, you’re a forward thinker, an ideas guy! So lay it on us – let us know how you’re going to purge all that worrying woke and simultaneously ensure DnD is a smash hit.
Is it just the original version of DnD? That’s already available, babe. People can already play OSRIC, or Old School Essentials, or Whitehack. They’ve been around for years.
Do you want more serious combat, and a setting which doesn’t quibble about violence being heroic? There’s Gubat Banwa. The combat rules are evolved from DnD 4e, while the setting is a mythic fantasy inspired by pre-European-settlement Indonesia. Violence is its beating heart.
Do you want a radical libertarian DnD variant? Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a dark horror variant of Basic / Expert DnD with a single theme – its products must push back the boundaries of what is conceivable or acceptable in RPGs.
I’m not sure you have the guts to see what “free speech” really looks like, though. There are multiple adventures designed explicitly to screw over your campaign. There’s a spell that makes a corpse piss out its liquified guts onto you, with a realistic illustration of a young woman bathing in the blackened shower.
If you’re really, really committed to making a game that offends the sensibilities of progressives, you could track down and buy the rights to F.A.T.A.L., which has rules for calculating anal depth and penile girth, or conducting sexual assault. It’s a shit, shit game, mechanically broken to its core but slogging through it is a great way to “own the libs”.
The problem is, these games aren’t what the major consumer base driving the hobby game market wants. Aside from DnD, most of the RPG market is split into hundreds of little segments of gamers all looking for something very specific. DnD is the lingua franca of gaming because it has first-player advantage, a lot of brand recognition, and its ‘politics’ are too bland to offend anyone. Except for you.
This is a diagnosis, not a commendation – I’ve argued recently that modern DnD plays it too safe for my tastes. But that’s what the people want. So if you do decide to buy Hasbro, and decide to pivot DnD into something that you think the silent majority really desires, well, I hope you enjoy it while you have it. I hope it fills that hole. I’m sure Paizo, publisher of DnD’s old rival Pathfinder, will be very happy when you’ve made the DnD brand cheap enough for them to buy it. A good hose down, and it will be good as new!
Oh! I almost forgot – I’m sure you know DnD back to front, but just in case, we have useful guides to the DnD classes, DnD races – or species as they’re now called – and DnD backgrounds. And don’t forget to check what’s coming next on the DnD release schedule!
Source: Wargamer
