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.

 

[Yaarel]

I feel Mearls is correct. He views the attempted OGL manipulation as devastating. We are still seeing the consequences of its harm play out. He notes.

"
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.

"

The previous hostility to OGL in a way that showed hostility (disrespect) toward players (including indies) harmed the trust and relationship with players.

Hasbro/WotC probably did lose the Mandate of Heaven. But I feel by ultimately placing the OGL into the safety of the CC, Hasbro/WotC has paid a tithing to Heaven. Lets see if they can earn their mandate back.

Like other human relationships, it takes several amazingly good things to repair the damage of one amazingly bad thing.


This relates to an other point that Mearls notes. Unlike in other businesses where the business leaders can focus on a product, in D&D (and roleplaying generally) the business leaders must focus on the customers, the players. There can be no distance away, no delegation to a PR team. The business leaders themselves must be in contact with the players, to understand the needs and sensibilities of their players. The reason is, the players themselves are experts in roleplaying. The players value D&D products but arent dependent on them. The D&D leaders need to always understand exactly what players want and need at all times.

 

[Belen]

Why?

Collector.

I have the alt covers and normals just in case I am ever in a place where I get to play and someone wants to run 5.5.

 

[Belen]

YEAH! That'll.....show.....them?

I own A5E and all of EN Publishing content and do not use it.

I collect RPGs and print books. I am not trying to ‘show up’ or prove anything.

None of my players have purchased 5.5 because they only buy stuff I run.

 

[Steampunkette]

Very true.

But as we learned during the OGL debacle, in practice, where the rubber meets the road; not so much.

Everyone told WotC you can't revoke the OGL, it says so right there. But before they blinked for PR and shareholder reasons they were just betting that nobody would fight them over it legally because they have a legal department with the backing of a multi billion dollar corporation.

Not being able to copyright rules doesn't mean they can't bankrupt you through years of court proceedings, motions etc.

I maintain that this has never been tested in a way that sees rules as systems rather than line items. I doubt it ever will be.

17 U.S. Code § 102 - Subject matter of copyright: In general

www.law.cornell.edu

While it has never been tested in court for TTRPGs... but it has been tested for games.

Atari v. Amusement World - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Meteor was practically the same game as Asteroids, though the individual rocks were differently shaped, and ultimately it was decided that no copyright infringement had occurred because a game about a spaceship shooting asteroids is going to look like a spaceship shooting asteroids. Two different videogames about Baseball couldn't sue each other for using the same sort of graphics for the ball, itself, for example.

There is the Substantial Similarity test which was show in 1982's Atari vs Philips. Where if you do an exact copy and then tack on a few new things it doesn't suddenly become not-plagiarism. However, writing out your rules from scratch means it's not going to bear substantial similarity, just due to word choice. Note: I'm not referring to "Changing names" I'm referring to re-writing every rule individually. Your own expression of the same concept.

There's also the Subtractive Approach test from Nichols vs Universal. Really useful for public domain works being produced by multiple companies but also for stuff with "scènes à faire" (Scenes to be made) which is basically things like generic elements that are essential to a fictional setting and can't be protected. Like Dragons in Fantasy or Swords and Sorcery in... well. Swords and Sorcery. Basically you take out everything that can't be copyrighted and compare what's left. For a TTRPG that's practically nothing.

But here's the big one:

There's also the fact that it was all released under the Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can use it at any time and they no longer have a legal leg to stand on.

Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons

creativecommons.org

So the point is also kinda moot since you can just make 5e compatible content under the CC-BY-4.0 and WotC can't do anything about it unless you use something specifically infringing (like Mind Flayers).

 

[eyeheartawk]

17 U.S. Code § 102 - Subject matter of copyright: In general

www.law.cornell.edu

While it has never been tested in court for TTRPGs... but it has been tested for games.

Atari v. Amusement World - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Meteor was practically the same game as Asteroids, though the individual rocks were differently shaped, and ultimately it was decided that no copyright infringement had occurred because a game about a spaceship shooting asteroids is going to look like a spaceship shooting asteroids. Two different videogames about Baseball couldn't sue each other for using the same sort of graphics for the ball, itself, for example.

There is the Substantial Similarity test which was show in 1982's Atari vs Philips. Where if you do an exact copy and then tack on a few new things it doesn't suddenly become not-plagiarism. However, writing out your rules from scratch means it's not going to bear substantial similarity, just due to word choice. Note: I'm not referring to "Changing names" I'm referring to re-writing every rule individually. Your own expression of the same concept.

There's also the Subtractive Approach test from Nichols vs Universal. Really useful for public domain works being produced by multiple companies but also for stuff with "scènes à faire" (Scenes to be made) which is basically things like generic elements that are essential to a fictional setting and can't be protected. Like Dragons in Fantasy or Swords and Sorcery in... well. Swords and Sorcery. Basically you take out everything that can't be copyrighted and compare what's left. For a TTRPG that's practically nothing.

But here's the big one:

There's also the fact that it was all released under the Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can use it at any time and they no longer have a legal leg to stand on.

Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons

creativecommons.org

So the point is also kinda moot since you can just make 5e compatible content under the CC-BY-4.0 and WotC can't do anything about it unless you use something specifically infringing (like Mind Flayers).

I agree with everything you've said here. But it doesn't stop them from bankrupting you if they want to. It's not zero risk is all I'm saying.

 

[TarionzCousin]

"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."

It seems to me that Mike has finally realized that every rose has its thorn.

 

[Cergorach]

Honestly, what I read in the OP article sounds 'fake' from Mike Mearls, and quite honestly, a bit dishonest. Like the D&D fanboy that got disillusioned by his obsession, especially when he now works for Chaosium (which doesn't do D&D 5e compatible products at all as far as I can tell). What I remember from Mike Mearls, pre-WotC, left a far better impression. On the other hand, the interview format is something else from forum posts, so maybe Mike Mearls and live interviews don't jive.

D&D is still the biggest monster on the block in pnp RPG land. Even if you look at the Cosmere KS ($15 million), that's like 6 books, a GM screen, dice, minis, multiple VTTs, map packs, decks, digital sales, all at the retail/direct level sales. And that's going to take a year+ to deliver. What does D&D make in a year, most of which isn't at the retail/direct sales level (but through wholesale channels and licensing)...

The only time D&D wasn't the biggest monster on the block was D&D 4e. And who designed that... And while D&D 4e was mechanically very strong, it showed us that theme is very important, that's where D&D 4e failed and Paizo/Pathfinder (an OGL publisher at the time) succeeded. But WotC took back the crown with D&D 5e, and continues to do so with D&D 5e (2024/2025).

And while the publisher side has far more choice and is way more fragmented, 'blaming' that on the OGL also feels dishonest. WotC bought a dysfunctional company/IP (TSR/D&D) in 1997 and launched D&D 3E in 2000 with the OGL, that's 25 years ago! Do I need to remind people about how the Internet looked back in 1997-2000? In 1997 Amazon was around for 2 years and also the year it went public. The online pdf industry for game books was virtually non-existent and most publishers avoided that like the plague. Self publishing was very costly, as online resources were very sparse. Fastforward 25 years and online sales are pretty much the standard, whether physical or digital, self publishing is easy, with many, many resources availiable and multiple sales channels for global distribution. It isn't strange that everyone and their grandmother is now publishing pnp RPG material for whomever small niche they sell to. You can even produce pdfs with free or very cheap tools. Back in the day it was QuarkExpress or InDesign.

While the pie is now far bigger then 25+ years ago, WotC/D&D still dominate a relatively large portion of it. There isn't a larger publisher as far as I know, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. And while the most recent OGL disaster gave many of the larger 5E publishers the oppertunity to shed the OGL and make their own 'D&D' like Paizo did 14 years earlier. Even Paizo shed the OGL when they could without backlash. But making complete games from the OGL goes back much further AEG was doing it with SpyCraft and there are dozens of attempts, and besides Pathfinder, none stuck around for a very long time or became very popular. I understand when you see many name cards for different slices of pie, you asume that the many must mean it's bigger then the one, they might be collectively, but not singularly.

As for publishers diving onto D&D 5e 2024/2025. Unless they have a working relationship with WotC and have access to the whole of the finished PHB/DMG/MM, they are going to develop an incomplete product. The chances to the MM are pretty drastic imho, so people waiting what they'll get is normal. There is no new SRD available either. The only company taht I know of that's doing a D&D 5e 2024/2025 product is the Foundry VTT team with their Ember KS last year. And that's not that strange as they are a WotC partner that's implementing the PHB/DMG/MM 2024/2025 on their platform at release. They raise $700k+ on their KS, which isn't bad for one campaign/adventure/sandbox for D&D 5e (and their own unfinished RPG system) on their VTT platform. It's going to be officially out in 2026, but Alpha 1 is starting in a week or two.

Is D&D (5e/5.5e) the best game ever? No! Of course not, the reason we (as in our group) play it is because of nostalgia. We've been roleplaying for ~35 years with virtually the same group. We've done Vampire, Shadowrun, and more recently Kids on Bikes, but we always return to D&D as our 'comfort' RPG (except for 4e). I suspect it's the same for many, many others. My own collection is far larger, it already was 25 years ago, but with digital pdfs and Humble Bundles/Bundles of Holding, my collection has taken on new insane sizes. There are quite a few games on my wishlist to play: Pathfinder 2e as a possible replacement for D&D, Mothership, Spire/Hearth, Blades in the Dark, Ars Magica, The Dark Eye (something else from Nostalgia Avenue), WFRP, etc.

What happend to many publishers during the OGL crisis reminds me of XKCD 927: Standards and I suspect those new 'standards' won't be around for long. Heck, look at all the backing the ORC license had during it's conception when everyone was shouting angrily, after the hype train died down, very few actually adopted the ORC license... The same is true with all the negative shouting about D&D (5e 2024/2025), most will eventually move over to it, most that leave will eventually come back. And especially online the shouting sounds very loud in an echochamber.

 

[mamba]

I am in a KS where the creators said they are going to switch the books to 5.5. They had to go back to 5.0 because the backers revolted.

if it is the one I am in, the stuff being late and the change adding additional delays on top has a lot to do with the revolt…

 

[MGibster]

Not really germane to the article, but I always found the whole Blood War conflict between, a like, really arbitrary distinction? Like they don't have more in common than they don't?

I remember getting into a discussion with someone over a political issue I won't expand on here. He was vehemently against it, I was mostly against, but at the end of the day we were both against it. He could not accept that I wasn't vehemently against it like he was or that my reasons for being against it were different from his. He wanted to argue about it. I'm like, "My man, we're on the same side, do we really need to fight about why?"

One thing I've learned through online discourse is that in-fighting over small difference when people are largely in agreement is very real.

 

[Belen]

if it is the one I am in, the stuff being late and the change adding additional delays on top has a lot to do with the revolt…

Unsure. It was the only one I backed to state that they were moving to 5.5 and then people stated they wanted the books in 5.0.

Looks like they ended up giving people a choice of 5e or 5.5 in print with a PDF of both versions.

I appreciated that they took that route. It was good CS.