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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I'm not sure what point of connection you are trying to make. By all accounts, superhero movies did not particularly help comics sales. Mainstream cultural popularity certainly helped D&D sales.
My point there is just like D&D, superhero fandom is still present, and will still be present even as mainstream love for them may be waning.
 

Doesn't "expansion" imply "new markets" in business? Or at least new customers in existing markets? My impression was that the CR/Stranger Things spike had to do with some nostalgia for the early days of gaming where a lot of people said, "Oh, yeah, remember when we played D&D?" And a lot of those people had kids of gaming age, so that created a new customer base with disposable income. I remember dads in my neighborhood playing with their kids...for a few months. Then they went back to their other hobbies and interests.

If WotC winds up finding ways to penetrate digital markets or create an app for cell phones, they could certainly see an upswing in interest. But it seems unlikely to me that they are going to really grow just through repeat business in the markets they already exploited with the 2014 spike.
 

that is 5e stuff though, not specifically 5.5, it’s just that GH was opened up because of 5.5
Because of the 2024 dmg. Some of it is updating Greyhawk material to 2024 too.

But I’m not sure I’d call it a boom.

I’m not sure the DMSGuild is that place for most things anymore.
 


you can use the existing SRD, it’s not like there are drastic changes that make this impossible

What do you need a 5.5 OGL for? What even is a '5.5 OGL'? The current OGL doesn't say "5.0" on it. It's the OGL v1.0a. and it hasn't changed in 20 years.
Yep. Which is exactly what I'm doing for two projects I'm working on now. They are pretty much using the existing OGL. I'm just waiting for the new OGL to see if there's any clean up needed. I.e., use the new OGL and incorporate any 5.5e terms within it, or just keep using the existing OGL. But I don't see an issue using the current OGL or CC license to make 5.5e compatible products--the rules changes between the two are pretty minor.
 

Which is odd to me. How else do you say a book does well close after its release?
IIRC, he was noting that they were saying "fastest-selling" rather than "biggest-selling." The original 5E PHB was a much smaller deal, so it probably took a few months to build up steam.
 

I think he’s basically right that D&D is past its peak, and the OGL fiasco coupled with a wishy-washy sort-of-but-not-quite edition change exacerbated the market’s already waning interest. But I think he’s over-stating the case a bit. While D&D’s market dominance may not be as overbearing as it was a couple years ago, I think it will remain the clear frontrunner, just by a lesser degree. And to those thinking the market will shrink along with WotC… I mean, probably a little, but knowing that a big part of the explosive growth was a demographic shift with more women getting into the hobby, I don’t think that’s going away.
 


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.
This is factually wrong. There were two adventures at GenCon with the 3.0 launch. It took a bit for other things to be out.
 

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