Elon Musk Buys Hasbro

What's the worst that could happen?

Okay, let me clarify, Elon Musk hasn’t bought Hasbro but this is going to be more of an exploration of a hypothetical.

Right now, the hysterical claims of Musk buying Hasbro are that he’s “anti-inclusion” and the like. The same people (looking at you, Jason Tondro) love to make these nebulous claims as a shutdown tactic with only one true message being buried beneath the garbage they’ve sprinkled on top of it and that is that you will play the game their way, you will view universes their way, you will buy what they sell you whole hog or you won’t and you’ll be just as bad as the people they’ve labelled bad for not going all-in on their dizzying insanity.

Case in point: If you don’t accept the “optional” rule for Combat Wheelchairs then you don’t allow disabled players at your table.

I’m not kidding, people.

This is only one of the many examples of the type of expectations that have cropped up increasingly on Dungeon Masters since 5th Edition’s release ten years ago.

We’ve seen DMs burn out and walk away, we’ve seen some, not necessarily en masse, exodus from the game to other games or even to retro clones. The OGL had many really making a mass exodus and some were a little too forgiving in my opinion.

But really, we’re just talking about D&D. What else would Musk own if he bought Hasbro or initiated and completed a hostile takeover?

Well, for starters, it’s possible that there wouldn’t be any more of this trans ideology in Transformers. G.I. Joe, Power Rangers, Board Games and so many other brands are owned by Hasbro that, you’d be amazed. I just listed a few off the top of my head here.

It’s possible that political ideology and identity politics may be straight up Thanos-snapped out of existence for every IP, which, to me, would be nice. There’s also a possibility that we may just replace one set of politics with another, a hypothetical that even I find odious and wouldn’t support.

Did you know there is another group that wants to buy up all those IPs rather than just pay for a license? Yep, Tencent, a Chinese company that is, in fact, owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

Why is that such a problem? Well, when it comes to IPs, Beijing has certain rules. Allow me to show you an example of the contrast.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (American Movie Poster)

And here’s the version for China

There are two major differences. First John Boyega, the British Actor who plays Finn is diminished heavily and second…no Chewbacca. At all.

China’s Tencent would be the most anti-inclusion company out there. If you want this game to sell in China, you’d best believe that certain groups of people would not be represented in any way, shape or form and, were they given any latitude, you can expect them to be an afterthought. This has more supporting evidence behind it than the hysteria surrounding Elon Musk.

Is it a possibility with Musk buying Hasbro in relation to D&D, Magic: The Gathering, etc? Yes, nothing is out of the realm of possibility. Likely? On that, I won’t be holding my breath.

Now I know there will be people that will ask for proof that the insanity has taken over and, in light of that, courtesy of

Fandom Pulse

, I present the following from the official brand Discord…

I love the assumption that “No one is going to play by his rules” in that one. That’s hysterical because, if D&D were to return to the BECMI/AD&D formula, yes, we most certainly would.

Assuming that’s true, then I’d love to ask them why WoTC unvaulted all this stuff?

Well that’s easy. The Old-School Rennaisance which was kicked off by this lovely game that I drone on about all day long.

Meet Castles & Crusades. It’s a game without identity politics or without any real-world politics involved so that’s the way I play it at my table but if someone else wanted to play it as Modern Audiences…whatever, yes, you can do that. So, I think dangerstranger needs to be honest. It’s that person who won’t play it if Musk enters the equation, hires the best from independent, New and Old-school alike. Adios.

So what does Castles & Crusades have to do with WoTC unvaulting all of their older stuff? Easy. They kicked off a movement of people taking their old rule sets under the Open Gaming License (OGL) and publishing them. We had titles like OSRIC (AD&D 1E), OSE and Basic Fantasy RPG (Basic/Expert), For Gold & Glory (AD&D 2E), Pathfinder (D&D 3.5E), and many other games that we were priced out of in the secondary market. This filled that niche which became part of the very market share that WoTC was aiming to reclaim. How could they do that? Offering the older editions and adventures.

So if no one will play a version that is made under Musk, then how are those games so widely popular? If your response is “huh huh huh…they’re not…” then I submit to you that this is a thing. Meet The RainbOSR. I’m not joking…

Tenkar’s Newsletter

covered this on YouTube about a year ago…

So if no one will play something else, no one does play anything else, no one wants to play anything else…well, I’ll leave it to you to make it make sense.

dangerstranger again with the claims. Literally no one is affected? Then there’s no reason to put it in there and, if I don’t like it, I also don’t have to pay for it. I’ll find a system without that and doesn’t set expectations that I have to battle at my table. Simple. I’m not paying for that. I’ll pay for a game. You can keep all your identity politics to yourself.

In the hypothetical that Musk buys Hasbro, my take on it is, I’ll take a wait and see approach. If D&D returns to form, I may return to it but, as demonstrated, I’m kinda invested in Troll Lord Games’ SIEGE Engine that the core books may just be bought more for display than anything. One thing is for certain, we’ll probably get better book binding out of the deal…just sayin’.