D&D 5E (2024) DnD 5e designer [Mike Mearls] explains how INDIE RPGs are taking over

Saracenus · Tuesday at 8:41 PM

Questing Beast has a talk with Mike Mearls about the health of the TTRPG space today.

We don't need D&D to grow the hobby.
We also don't need to kill D&D and WotC/Hasbro to grow the hobby.

Mike's basic take, concentrate on developing a cool game and stop worrying about D&D.

Scribe · Tuesday at 9:08 PM

Saracenus said:
Mike's basic take, concentrate on developing a cool game and stop worrying about D&D.

Yes, completely this.

Waller · Tuesday at 9:26 PM

Huh. Weird. Isn’t he making a D&D spinoff over on Patreon?

darjr · Tuesday at 9:39 PM

And crushing @limitthron at Magic! lol.

jayoungr · Tuesday at 9:39 PM

I mean. This cycle has happened multiple times already since the 1980s.

aco175 · Tuesday at 10:08 PM

Isn't Indie RPGs like 10% of the market? How does one grow that without killing D&D? Or, when he says, Grow the hobby, I'm missing something larger and more wishy-washy.

There seems to be a lot of new D&D-like or Not-D&D games coming out as clones. Does making more games just split the player base not playing the actual D&D, or do more games equal more bites being taken out of actual D&D?

Morrus · Tuesday at 10:14 PM

aco175 said:
Isn't Indie RPGs like 10% of the market?

Maybe 1%.

jayoungr · Tuesday at 10:18 PM

aco175 said:
Isn't Indie RPGs like 10% of the market? How does one grow that without killing D&D?

One grows the total size of the market.

Zardnaar · 2026-04-01T01:16:31+0100

Couple of things he said.

Indie RPG Kickstarters/ crowd funding over 100k got 50 million dollars.

Lead up to developing 5E they went from 50 million to 10 million.