Anti-Woke Paladin
defaultHere is one of the reasons I say that Elon Musk is, broadly, really stupid:
I am dubious of the source of this quote, but it’s often attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald:
Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.
Put another way: Gygax made the tremendous and inspired leap to turn historical tabletop wargaming to fantastical, theatre-of-the-mind role-playing, a singular and important achievement in the human tradition of storytelling; and also, Gygax was sexist and racist, and a religious weirdo.
Or, consider “the death of the author”: Gygax’s work is significant and important, such that it’s no longer “his”. We, the consumers of the art, have take it and transcended his original intent. The 2024 D&D rules get called “woke”[1] because … that’s the median reader in 2024. TTRPGs are created by a feedback loop, of designers and authors interacting with the community to produce a work that reflects their desires. Whatever Gygax may have wanted is immaterial, because he’s fucking dead and thus no longer producing material.
To the best of my knowledge, Musk doesn’t even play D&D presently. We know he plays Diablo 4 and is extremely bad at Elden Ring but I haven’t found anything showing he is currently a D&D player or generally, owns the books.
So what you have is a commercial product that spent literal years engaged in costly and complicated play testing and feedback, and used that information to craft a game based on feedback. Then, someone who does not play the game presently learns of this and, by virtue of their expansive wealth, decides to at least threaten to override the community and its decisions.
Presumably his plan is to buy WotC, demand editorial control, force them (presumably at great cost) to roll back any changes he dislikes in 5e+2024, and then continue to not play the game, because of his culture war beliefs.
It is important to also note that if D&D is too “woke” for you, don’t buy it. We have approximately 11 billion tabletop games that exist on a wide variety of spectrums, and more than a few are partially or completely compatible with D&D. D&D remains the most recognizable name but there are innumerable games out there, for every imaginable need or desire.
But even if you do want to play legit, real D&D: ok look man. I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to run a game where you house-rule the old system where women had STR penalties, hey man, it’s your game. Take out a piece of paper and write a bunch of slurs on it and assign dice values to each and use it at your table. I do not want to play in this game but it’s your game. Go goddamn nuts.
Above all, the worst characteristic of the culture warrior is inserting themselves into everything. We fundamentally have the freedom to take D&D - or any work of media - and make it our own. But not when you’re a culture warrior: my opinion, the anti-woke paladin, must defeat yours.
And if you retort, but you are the one owning the source! You made it woke! I must again ask you to read what I wrote above: WotC is meeting the demands of its audience as a result of a careful and lengthy feedback process, and the artifacts produced must make more money than it costs to produce, or they go out of business. This is a simple case of the market can and will decide. Any culture war intervention is, by definition, contrary to a belief in free markets.
Funny how the richest culture warriors always end up there.
A good comment can be found here generally summing up the problem: he’s a dope, knows nothing about the business or the game ecosystem, and will end up doing for Paizo et al what his Twitter acquisition did for Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.
[1] by simpering culture warriors with no personality of their own and little ability to critique media