WotC Mike Mearls: "D&D Is Uncool Again"

In Mike Mearls' recent interview with Ben Riggs, he talks about how he feels that Dungeons & Dragons has had its moment, and is now uncool again. Mearls was one of the lead designers of D&D 5E and became the franchise's Creative Director in 2018. He worked at WotC until he was laid off in 2023. He is now EP of roleplaying games at Chaosium, the publisher of Call of Chulhu.

My theory is that when you look back at the OGL, the real impact of it is that it made D&D uncool again. D&D was cool, right? You had Joe Manganiello and people like that openly talking about playing D&D. D&D was something that was interesting, creative, fun, and different. And I think what the OGL did was take that concept—that Wizards and this idea of creativity that is inherent in the D&D brand because it's a roleplaying game, and I think those two things were sundered. And I don’t know if you can ever put them back together.

I think, essentially, it’s like that phrase: The Mandate of Heaven. I think fundamentally what happened was that Wizards has lost the Mandate of Heaven—and I don’t see them even trying to get it back.

What I find fascinating is that it was Charlie Hall who wrote that article. This is the same Charlie Hall who wrote glowing reviews of the 5.5 rulebooks. And then, at the same time, he’s now writing, "This is your chance because D&D seems to be stumbling." How do you square that? How do I go out and say, "Here are the two new Star Wars movies. They’re the best, the most amazing, the greatest Star Wars movies ever made. By the way, Star Wars has never been weaker. Now is the time for other sci-fi properties", like, to me that doesn’t make any sense! To me, it’s a context thing again.

Maybe this is the best Player’s Handbook ever written—but the vibes, the audience, the people playing these games—they don’t seem excited about it. We’re not seeing a groundswell of support and excitement. Where are the third-party products? That’s what I'd ask. Because that's what you’d think, "oh, there’s a gap", I mean remember before the OGL even came up, back when 3.0 launched, White Wolf had a monster book. There were multiple adventures at Gen Con. The license wasn’t even official yet, and there were already adventures showing up in stores. We're not seeing that, what’s ostensibly the new standard going forward? If anything, we’re seeing the opposite—creators are running in the opposite direction. I mean, that’s where I’m going.

And hey—to plug my Patreon—patreon.com/mikemearls (one word). This time last year, when I was looking at my post-Wizards options, I thought, "Well, maybe I could start doing 5E-compatible stuff." And now what I’m finding is…I just don’t want to. Like—it just seems boring. It’s like trying to start a hair metal band in 1992. Like—No, no, no. Everyone’s mopey and we're wearing flannel. It's Seattle and rain. It’s Nirvana now, man. It’s not like Poison. And that’s the vibe I get right now, yeah, Poison was still releasing albums in the ’90s. They were still selling hundreds of thousands or a million copies. But they didn’t have any of the energy. It's moved on. But what’s interesting to me is that roleplaying game culture is still there. And that’s what I find fascinating about gaming in general—especially TTRPGs. I don’t think we’ve ever had a period where TTRPGs were flourishing, and had a lot of energy and excitement around them, and D&D wasn’t on the upswing. Because I do think that’s what’s happening now. We’re in very strange waters where I think D&D is now uncool.

 

[Maxperson]

Which changes nothing. In any case I can't think of nothing to say that hasn't already been said. Ta ta.

Then you are pretty blatantly ignoring the context, which makes the claim that you are taking that sentence out of context correct.

 

[Clint_L]

I don’t think we have to take every word Mearls wrote completely literally, and then allow them to supersede everything else he has ever written or said.

From a story perspective, you do want it to feel like the protagonist’s dilemma really is life or death, at least metaphorically and in context. But not every battle - just at key moments in their character arc. And if you can make it so that the character has to make a choice - change or die/lose the thing most important to them - you can get pretty powerful stories. This is why I ask that every character have a meaningful flaw: so there’s something to test in a crisis.

I just thought Mearls meant something similar: good stories have to have meaningful stakes. As a DM, that’s my aspiration.

 

[AlViking]

He meant it, and in the context that it was written, all it means is that the DM has the job of putting challenges into the game world to challenge the players, and that the DM should do so in relation to the players' goals, which is correct. He did not say that the DM should be adversarial, despite that one poorly worded sentence that makes it seem that way if you ignore the context surrounding it.

The context is that he's discussing what he believes is important to game design and what makes them worth playing. I also think his post on X saying that anything else was time-wasting slop was a very poor choice of words, but I also saw no clarification or correction to what he wrote. We aren't discussing a book long treatise here, assumptions about what he really meant, or anything else. I'm talking about what he wrote.

I don't get why people think we can't just discuss the words he wrote without fabricating apologies for what he really meant. I don't see anything else new to discuss.

 

[AlViking]

Then you are pretty blatantly ignoring the context, which makes the claim that you are taking that sentence out of context correct.

What "context" changes anything?

 

[KYRON45]

What "context" changes anything?

The context that he was discussing HIS play experience and how that motivated him to make his own game.

He was not discussing YOUR play experience because it's not likely that he has, is or ever will experience YOUR play experience.

 

[AlViking]

The context that he was discussing HIS play experience and how that motivated him to make his own game.

He was not discussing YOUR play experience because it's not likely that he has, is or ever will experience YOUR play experience.

He's talking about philosophy playing and designing games that I happen to disagree with, in part because of his phrasing and in part because it focuses on only 1 aspect of play. What started this whole tangent was him calling something he didn't personally care for time-wasting slop which I think was a poor choice of words. He has some points I agree with but there is no qualification that he is only talking about one aspect of game design, based on what he wrote it's the only thing that matters. I'm not saying that the style of game he is talking about is bad, it's just not for me.

I'm tired of discussing this because there's nothing new.

 

[KYRON45]

I'm tired of discussing this because there's nothing new.

The rest of us came to that conclusion 1300 posts ago.
He likes what he likes and you like what you like.
Myself, i like ice cream with little peanut butter cups in it.

 

[Maxperson]

He's talking about philosophy playing and designing games that I happen to disagree with, in part because of his phrasing and in part because it focuses on only 1 aspect of play. What started this whole tangent was him calling something he didn't personally care for time-wasting slop which I think was a poor choice of words. He has some points I agree with but there is no qualification that he is only talking about one aspect of game design, based on what he wrote it's the only thing that matters. I'm not saying that the style of game he is talking about is bad, it's just not for me.

I'm tired of discussing this because there's nothing new.

There is the context already mentioned, as well as the context that he is not talking about adversarial DMing. Then there's the context from his first paragraph that everything that follows is only in regard to being a safe game, which means it doesn't touch on the other aspects of the game. That's different from saying that there are no other aspects of the game which is ridiculous. He knows that there are other aspects of the game and isn't excluding them from design.

Those other things were just not a part of his safe game focus at the time, so were not talked about. There's nothing to indicate that he is advocating for a game to only have death and failure. It's just that things like roleplaying aren't a part of the death and failure portion of the game he discussing.

So sure, if you ignore the context you can think that 1) He's not talking about his personal preference for game design, 2) that he is advocating for adversarial DMing, and 3) that he is advocating that games only include death and failure or that those are the only two important parts of an RPG.

 

[ezo]

Wait a minute! When was D&D ever "cool" to begin with?

At best, we're looking straight into the face of acceptance at this point.

"Cool"??? Yeah, right.

 

[Faolyn]

Where did I use the "appeal to athority" fallacy?

I wasn't taking about you.