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WotC Ray Winninger Is Head of D&D RPG Team; Mike Mearls No Longer Works on RPG

People have been wondering where Mike Mearls has gone for quite some time. It seems that he has not been working on the D&D tabletop RPG since some time last year, and the new head of the team and Executive Producer is Ray Winninger. Winninger is an RPG industry veteran. Amongst other things, he was co-designer of DC Heroes and Torg, and wrote the Dungeoncraft column for Dragon Magazine. He...

People have been wondering where Mike Mearls has gone for quite some time. It seems that he has not been working on the D&D tabletop RPG since some time last year, and the new head of the team and Executive Producer is Ray Winninger.

Winninger is an RPG industry veteran. Amongst other things, he was co-designer of DC Heroes and Torg, and wrote the Dungeoncraft column for Dragon Magazine. He has worked at a number of RPG companies including TSR, Mayfair Games, West End Games, and more.

Ray_Winninger_at_MIX08_2_crop.jpg



Winninger is Chris Perkins' and Jeremy Crawford's boss. And in further comments, Chris Perkins says that Mike Mearls has not been part of the tabletop RPG team since some time last year.


That explains why Mearls' Twitch shows, like Happy Fun Hour, have disappeared. Although he's made a couple of retweets since, his last tweet on Twitter was February 13th, 2019. He still works at WotC on the D&D brand in some capacity, but not the tabletop RPG itself (he did an interview about Baldur's Gate 3 on Polygon last year).

Ray Winninger introduces himself in the latest issue of Dragon+, WotC's online magazine. "My name is Ray Winninger and I’m the new Executive Producer in charge of the Dungeons & Dragons studio at Wizards of the Coast. In just a few months on the job, I’ve already been impressed by the skills and the passion of the designers, artists, editors, and production staff who bring you our terrific D&D products. They are a uniquely talented group, and it is an honor to work alongside them."
 

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I wish I could find something that Ray Winninger has worked on. I'd like to get a better sense of his style of play.

I remember reading Dungeoncraft and enjoying it, but (a) the game was very different then, (b) the industry was very different then, and (c) I was very different then. It sounds like he might be a more experienced brand manager who has some game design experience rather than a game designer who's been forced into a management role.
Here you go.

 

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Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
The problem with the Gunn and Hart issue is that these things were dug up by conservative pundits because they know how to work these toxic elements of twitter and Facebook into a frenzy, especially after certain elements were elected to offices. Gunn had even already, when the original GotG film came out, addressed the tweets and apologized and it was good enough then for Disney and the community.
If you give someone a stick to beat you with, you are partly complicit in the resultant beating.
 

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
I don't blame people for not realizing just how large and how diverse their audience is, nor how exceedingly interested that audience is in everything that they post... so if at some point they "get caught" saying something that angers people (and they come to the conclusion that perhaps social media just isn't worth the time or effort) I don't think it's any wonder they just choose to walk away or no longer engage, nor do I blame them for it.
Sure, but my original point still stands: If you are out there, whether it's at a trade show, the front counter of your store, on television, or on social media, in a professional capacity, behave like it.

It's that easy.

Everyone on this thread knows how to behave professionally, whether they're slinging yogurt at TCBY's or speaking at a press conference.

Anyone with a verification checkmark, for better or worse -- and all the people we're talking about here have them -- is a "brand," as gross as that is to type. Every bit of public communication is part of that brand and they're out there to promote that brand.

So I don't have a lot of sympathy when they decide that all the tweets promoting their movie or comedy special or reelection campaign "count," but that joke about the handicapped or fat women or whatever somehow doesn't.
 





Here you go.


Oh, thanks. I guess I saw that posted earlier, I think, and I just assumed it was related to something else.

Hrm. Unfortunately it's even older than Dungeoncraft. And giants-as-PCs brings back some particularly poor memories of some early campaigns, so the topic isn't really appealing to me at all.

The other thing I found was the old Underground RPG, which is even older still and reads exactly like an early 90s superhero RPG might. It looks like Rob Liefeld the RPG, which was absolutely in style at the time but completely outside my wheelhouse now.

Oh, well. I guess he had been out of the industry for awhile.
 


teitan

Legend
Oh, thanks. I guess I saw that posted earlier, I think, and I just assumed it was related to something else.

Hrm. Unfortunately it's even older than Dungeoncraft. And giants-as-PCs brings back some particularly poor memories of some early campaigns, so the topic isn't really appealing to me at all.

The other thing I found was the old Underground RPG, which is even older still and reads exactly like an early 90s superhero RPG might. It looks like Rob Liefeld the RPG, which was absolutely in style at the time but completely outside my wheelhouse now.

Oh, well. I guess he had been out of the industry for awhile.

Underground was a very tongue in cheek game. It was meant to be that way.
 

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