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

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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.
 

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he wrote 'Whether it's a dead character or failure in whatever context the session presents', his example was not about death (unless you talk about his recent post, not the tweets that started this). Death can be rare, I prefer that personally, but there are still stakes
I previously referenced his bit in the post he made here about the three PCs dying in one round from a vorpal sword. You can find it upthread, but basically, the threat of death "rallied" the players.
 

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given that most people who will switch will probably do so in year one, this is definitely expected. The real question will be whether once the 'upgrade cycle' is over the sales are around the level that 5e had in 2023 and if it can keep the momentum going for another 6 to 8 years the way 2014 did

I'm not expecting a 10 year cycle this time around.

More like 5 or 6. If it's 3 or 4 well you know.

Either way time wil tell. 5.6 design isn't newbie friendly like 5.0 was imho. I suspect it's aimed at experienced players and Beyond use.
 

I can't think of any game that has no ability to be lost.
It's fairly common for adventure games (e.g. the Secret of Monkey Island) to not have a definite fail state. You may or may not come to a place where you can't figure out how to proceed, but that doesn't mean the path does not exist.

(Technically, The Secret of Monkey Island does have the possibility of character death, but that actually takes some doing by the player. Or rather, not doing for 10 minutes at a particular point in the game.)
 

I got to be honest, you are giving whoever wrote that way too much credit for being clever:
maybe, but I expect them to be deliberate in their wording

Besides which, we already know your theory doesn't hold water, because the PHB sales after a month or ao were compared to the first full 3 years of the 2014 PHB...which means it has overall outsold Tasha's, even of Tasha's had a quick initial burst of sales.
I do not claim that Tasha's is still ahead, the question is really more was it ever, and if so for how long. There is no way it still is ahead, for that 2024 would have to be a gigantic failure, heck 2014 would have sold more than that in the time 2024 has been around
 

I would say we are not calling a novel a game as the outcome (one of many) is already fixed regardless of what choice you make.
In the context of an RPG the outcome isn't fixed unless that's the type of GM you are dealing with. That's a whole other conversation.
If people sit around a campfire telling a story in sequence as they go the outcome isn't fixed either. Is that a game? I really don't think so personally.
 

I previously referenced his bit in the post he made here about the three PCs dying in one round from a vorpal sword. You can find it upthread, but basically, the threat of death "rallied" the players.

Technically it wasn't the threat of death. The death happened. What was threatened at that point was defeat, a fail state, and so a desire to come out the victor was promoted.
 




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