Elon Musk is one of the worst Dungeons and Dragons players to ever live.
Other Resources
- Elon Musk’s anti-semitic tweet
- JD Vance calling Trump ‘America’s Hitler’
- Elon Musk telling people to burn in Hell
- Elon Musk threatening to buy Hasbro
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Transcript:
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:19
Bennett
Elon Musk is, at least according to some rankings, the richest man in the world. He's parlayed that wealth into incredible political power, becoming the largest single financial supporter of the party led by who its own vice president calls America's Hitler. This is not particularly surprising, considering how openly and publicly Elon Musk has been willing to exhibit his anti-Semitism, even performing Nazi salutes at the second inauguration of America's Hitler.
00:00:29:21 - 00:00:56:20
Bennett
He is a morally contemptible billionaire. And besides those serious issues, he may be one of the worst Dungeons and Dragons players in the world. Like the kind of player they write about in those Reddit stories about catastrophically bad daddy players who just destroy a table. In the approved biography of Elon Musk, authored by Walter Isaacson, there is a story about a Dungeons and Dragons event that Musk entered when he was younger.
00:00:56:22 - 00:01:23:19
Bennett
This is described in the book as a tournament where and I quote the tournaments Dungeon Master assigned their mission. You have to save this woman by figuring out who in the game is the bad guy and killing him. A relatively classic and straightforward damsel in distress storyline, where you get the opportunity to investigate the intrigue around the area, figure out who may be connected to the victim of the scheme, and then have your heroic final conflict.
00:01:23:21 - 00:01:47:20
Bennett
However, Elon Musk did not want to play Dungeons and Dragons. Elon Musk wanted to find a way to win this collaborative storytelling exercise. But how can you win a collaborative storytelling exercise? Well, when the Dungeon Master introduced the first NPC, Elon looked at the Dungeon Master and said, I think you're the bad guy. And so they killed him.
00:01:47:22 - 00:02:09:04
Bennett
Elon was right in the game, which was supposed to last a few hours. Was over, is how Walter Isaacson describes it. Perhaps that NPC actually was the bad guy. Or perhaps the DM had to improvise to try to keep some kind of story on the rails. After this player decided to kill the very first NPC, they met. We may never know.
00:02:09:06 - 00:02:27:01
Bennett
What we do know is that this selfish form of play is one of the worst ways to play Dungeons and Dragons. It does not just ruin your own chance to engage with the world in the story. It ruins the chance for your entire party to do that, and it even ruins your Dungeon Master's chance to play the game.
00:02:27:01 - 00:02:28:00
Bennett
They love.
00:02:28:00 - 00:03:00:18
Bennett
When your Dungeon Master gives you adventure hooks it is better and more fun for you and your party to engage with that hook, to see the adventure, not to try to trick your friends who are engaged in this exercise with you fundamentally. Elon Musk does not seem to understand what makes Dungeons and Dragons great, and instead sees it as he sees most of the world as an opportunity for him to pretend he is superior and impose himself on the world, which we can also see in his more recent engagements with the hobby.
00:03:00:20 - 00:03:28:04
Bennett
In November of 2024, when Wizards of the Coast released a book about the making of Dungeons and Dragons, there was a small section in the foreword that noted that some language in the first iteration of D&D presents a moral quandary. Before explaining that the original version contained misogyny uncritically included slavery, and includes strange choices in terms of cultural appropriation, and also includes sex and race essentialism.
00:03:28:04 - 00:03:55:12
Bennett
Basically, in response to these simple statements of fact, Elon Musk took to X and decided to claim that nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash Gary Gygax and the Geniuses Who created Dungeons and Dragons, which feels like it contradicts Elon Musk's self-professed free speech absolutism. But the atheist further insists that anyone who does criticize Gary Gygax should burn in hell.
00:03:55:14 - 00:04:17:15
Bennett
Following this, Ian Miles Cheong who once professed to love Hitler, took to X to point out that one of the senior designers at WOTC noted that he was not expecting that simple preface to arouse the ire of grognards, before noting that he does not take those critiques seriously, and added that he considers those people not worth listening to.
00:04:17:17 - 00:04:27:08
Bennett
This led Musk to respond publicly to this Hitler lover. How much is Hasbro suggesting he would purchase the company to put the racism back in Dungeons and Dragons?
00:04:27:08 - 00:04:59:05
Bennett
Probably Elon Musk does not understand Dungeons and Dragons, and seeks only to control it so that he can ensure it accords with his white supremacist worldview, a view wherein there are those who are innately, racially better fit for certain tasks than others. Elon Musk, the alleged sexual harasser, needs to maintain the sex and gender essentialism that used to be part of the game, because he wants to ensure that his disgusting worldview remains normal enough that his power is not threatened.
00:04:59:07 - 00:05:25:09
Bennett
Dungeons and Dragons, for all of its many flaws, is a game that is far grander than Elon Musk's reductive worldview. It is a game that allows people to create a variety of worlds and characters that ignite their imagination. Elon Musk's hateful worldview should be incompatible with the future of this game. And should Elon Musk ever go through with his threat to purchase the game, I would immediately switch to another system.
