Back-to-back seismic shifts rocked the tabletop gaming world in 2024: the resignation of Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams and speculation that Elon Musk might be eyeing Hasbro, WotC’s parent company.
While Williams’ departure marks the end of a tumultuous era for Wizards, Musk’s potential interest hints at a radically different future for Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Williams’ tenure at Wizards was marked by controversies, including the Open Game License debacle, corporate PR missteps, and even Pinkerton agents being dispatched over a botched product release. Many fans regarded these incidents as departures from the original ethos that made D&D a cultural touchstone.
Related: Wizards of the Coast President Resigns
Williams’ resignation has left Hasbro searching for a new leader to stabilize WotC’s course. But could Elon Musk be positioning himself to shake up the tabletop giant instead?
Musk, known for pioneering moves in industries from automobiles to space travel, recently turned his attention to the gaming scene0. Using his recently rebranded platform X, Musk lambasted Wizards and Hasbro for diminishing D&D creator Gary Gygax’s legacy, going so far as to tweet, “How much is Hasbro?”
Musk’s criticism comes at a time when Wizards’ corporate strategies, including the sidelining of D&D’s original creators in official narratives, has alienated many players. And his broader commentary on the gaming industry decried corporate control for stifling innovation. His proposal for xAI to create games that “make games great again” suggests he’s deeply invested in fostering creativity and restoring integrity to gaming.
If Musk were to take over Hasbro—or even just Wizards—he could bring this philosophy to the heart of D&D and Magic: The Gathering.
So, should Musk acquire Hasbro, the ripple effects on WotC would likely be profound. Here’s how his influence could reshape the company:
Musk has a track record of honoring the visionary figures behind his ventures. Just as he has revived interest in Nikola Tesla’s legacy, he could champion Gary Gygax and other early D&D pioneers. With any luck, he might reorient the game around its original design philosophy.
However, Musk’s mention of his xAI initiatives suggest he might integrate A.I. tools into WotC’s products. While such a move could pay off (Think A.I. dungeon masters procedurally generating campaigns), it could also depart even further from Gygax and Arneson’s vision.
Either way, one hallmark of Musk’s ventures is empowering users. Whether through Tesla’s open patents or X’s pivot toward user-driven content, he likes giving his customers options. Musk could push for an open-access philosophy, possibly reviving the OGL in a way that makes D&D even more attractive to third-party creators. A change like that could reverse the damage done by the 2023 licensing fiasco.
Because despite his critics, Musk often positions himself as a champion of the end-user. His focus on free speech for X users parallels a potential commitment to prioritizing the needs of D&D players over corporate profit margins. That could mean more transparent communication and a greater emphasis on quality over quantity in product releases.
However, Musk’s hypothetical involvement would not be without risk. His leadership style often has him walking the line between maverick and pariah. Drastic X-style measures like mass layoffs and feature overhauls at Wizards could aggravate tensions within the already toubled company.
Cynthia Williams’ departure and Musk’s rumored interest set the stage for a potentially major upheaval at Wizards of the Coast. Whether Musk’s involvement remains speculative or materializes into reality, WotC stands at a crossroads. A leader with Musk’s ambition and disruptive approach might revive D&D’s legacy. Or it could kill the brand.
If Musk does take the reins, players should brace for a radical reinvention—not just of Wizards of the Coast, but of the tabletop industry as a whole. And maybe it’s about time.
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Dark fantasy minus the grim plus heroes you can root for battling overwhelming odds
I don’t think AI-driven D&D would be a good idea, but I’m not sure it would be a departure from Gygax’s vision, at least at some points. From The Dragon #24:
“DUNGEONS & DRAGONS can be played on a computer … D&D program cassettes plugged into a home computer would obviate the need for a DM or other players. Thus the labor of setting up a campaign or the necessity of having a fairly large group to play in it would be removed. The graphic display would be exciting, and the computer would slave away doing all of the record work and mechanics necessary to the game, giving nearly instantaneous results to the player or players. Computerization of D&D has many other benefits also, and such games would not destroy the human-run campaign but supplement game participation. This is the direction we hope to make available to D&D. Let’s see if my foresight is as keen as my hindsight.”
And I have reports that WotC has been looking to remove the need for a DM from the game for a long time, although the forces pushing for that wax and wane in influence. So this may be on the horizon no matter who owns the Brand.
For years and years again (since at least the second half of second edition) the point of D&D for its owners has not been to sell a game, but to sell sourcebooks and other merch. The players might have put together a good game even in that environment, but that was not the primary aim of TSR or WoTC. You can distinguish this from Gygax and crew who did want to make a solid game (and of course make money while doing it.)
They have had a lot of success from people who would fill their bookshelves with sourcebooks that they would never read to be used in campaigns that didn’t last more than four sessions but which everyone came to decked out in D&D branded attire. Gen Y was particularly susceptible to this, but Millennials made good consumers too. Zoomers on the other hand don’t care that much about physical merchandise, and the only Zoomers who own books are the ones that actually read them. No more buying 50 sourcebooks just to put them in a bookshelf to stand in front of. The situation is going to be more pronounced with the generation after that. Thus a move to digital is inevitable.
This also allows D&D to become a “game as a service” meaning that WotC can shut down any third party homebrews and make the use of wrongthink impossible. Since the average Zoomer gets his music and videos through streaming services, and plays games that rely on external servers even when they really don’t have to, there will not be a big outrage from that cohort.
If Musk used AI for D&D, it’d kill the franchise. The core function is for human interaction and also the art made by human hands is cool. That and also I imagine many would quit because the typical D&D player hates Musk as an individual. They won’t give money to someone they hate.
I have to admit I’m getting tired of the meme of “fixing” cultural institutions gone woke by having Uncle Elon buy them out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s done wonders for twitter. But I think in a lot of spaces, it’s for the best that large megacorps keep burning down and getting replaced by an array of smaller companies and entities following more along the neo-patronage model. In books, gaming, and movies, that’s more the way forward.
“I have to admit I’m getting tired of the meme of “fixing” cultural institutions gone woke by having Uncle Elon buy them out.”
I know right? Historians a hundred years from now: Elon Musk bought Western Civilization and stopped the decay in it’s tracks.
I have to agree with this. It’s better to provide support to a (genuinely) diverse array of contributors to a hobby rather than trying to save monolithic corporations with buy-outs like this. In fact, it’s this kind of control by mega-corporations through things like consolidation that allowed so many hobbies to become corrupted in the first place, so simply aiming to put “the right people” in charge is frankly a terrible solution. It isn’t future-proof in any way at all.
Would rather have something be an actual hobby rather than one of Musk’s assets…
Not that I believe it will happen, but Elon buying WotC could actually be healthier for the hobby as a whole. The leftists who despise him (out of some misplaced idea of betrayal on his part) would immediately start looking for a replacement system to use to spite Elon and put him out of business (see: everyone who sold their Teslas after he endorsed Trump, or jumped to Blue sky). D&D as a brand has been the monolithic representation of the TTRPG hobby for decades, so a shakeup to the status quo would primarily be a good thing: WotC would face stiffer competition, causing them to have to work harder to maintain their market share, while smaller publishers could see greater success.
All theory, of course, but I would be so curious to see how that particular timeline would pan out.
While a mass Death Cult exodus from tabletop gaming would be fun to see, it would in all likelihood be temporary. The enemy live to nag normal people, which is why they’ve never stayed contained to their self-imposed bubbles for long. See the fate of Mastodon.
Unfortunately, we had a lesser demonstration of that in the early 2010s when 4E launched, and many people just jumped to the more woke 3.5 clone that was Pathfinder 1E. At this point, the only way to dethrone D&D is to kill the brand name, which would require dramatic revolutions of IP, copyright, and corporate law.
It was amusing how D&D was briefly undone by a golem of its own making back then. The fact that Wizards came back from that unforced disaster suggests you’re right.
As I’ve heard it, that unforced disaster was an early attempt at making D&D into a digital-only product, but between a lack of know-how and the fanbase’s revulsion at the more structured ruleset, it never coalesced. This time around, WotC has people who seem to know what they’re doing on the digital side of things, and thus may actually succeed in making the physical side of the hobby entirely “unnecessary” for the vast majority of people (who don’t actually play the game).
I’m honestly burned out on the D&D ruleset, personally, but they can have my 2014 Players’ Handbook when they pry it from my cold, dead hands. Original 5e is the superior 5e.
Musk doesn’t have the cash to buy Hasbro, but if he did, I wonder if he would do for D&D what he did for trucks and the value of social media companies.
Yes, you’re correct that Musk wouldn’t pay cash for Hasbro. He would pledge equity and obtain financing, like he did for X. I’m glad we can agree on that.
Who is going to finance Musk’s deal after his reign of error at Twitter has shaved off nearly 80% of its value?
Such factors may have been disqualifying in the olden days. But failing upwards is now a fact of corporate life. Just ask Donald Trump.
Well, if he could do something to save Magic: The Gathering, that’d be good. I used to be into it about 7~ish years ago, but I left when they banned old cards for “racist art” in 2020. On top of that, over the last 5 years or so, a combination of rapidly-accelerating power creep and gradual brand-ification have completely ruined the game. It started with a Walking Dead crossover that they assured everyone would never be legal in any competitive formats. Then, they progressed to Alternate Art Tie-Ins (ie, we will print a real in-universe legendary dinosaur card and will make a Godzilla alternate art for it, but it legally counts as the in-universe dinosaur). Then they made these cards legal in competitive play, but not in the Standard format, and they assured us they never would be legal in Standard. A few weeks ago, they announced that Crossover products would be legal in all competitive formats including Standard, and furthermore 50% of all Magic releases would be of Crossover product. There’s a Spongebob Squarepants set coming in early 2025, followed by Spider-Man. No, I am not joking. It’s just Top Trumps now.