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.

 

[Saracenus]

I'm highly confident we'll see it this year and pretty confident we'll see it by mid-summer (I'll say July 1st). Keep this in mind if you want to tell me "I told you so" on July 2nd.

I am 100% in if you are going to do the "I told you so" dance. Then again you did put a stake in the ground and nothing is ever a sure thing. Maybe a 99.9999% thing, but never a "sure" thing (waiting for the probability math nerds to come out).

 

[Fifth Element]

Most other RPGs aren't bad idk most of them. They're pointless buying though as you'll struggle with getting players.

Essentially they're an expensive book end.

Unless you enjoy reading RPG books by themselves, which many people do. And you never know when you're going to come across some idea what could be useful in whatever game you are playing.

 

[Zardnaar]

Unless you enjoy reading RPG books by themselves, which many people do. And you never know when you're going to come across some idea what could be useful in whatever game you are playing.

They're kinda pricey here. No deep Amazon discounts. Think 50-100% more in real terms.

2Ephb was a weeks rent when I started.

 

[pemerton]

Most other RPGs aren't bad idk most of them. They're pointless buying though as you'll struggle with getting players.

Essentially they're an expensive book end.

I've got plenty of play out of non-D&D RPGs. I think you might be generalising from your own experience a bit too much in this post.

 

[mamba]

I am pretty confident we will. It's really in WOTC's best interest to do so.

I always maintained that, but we still had the OGL crisis, so I am not so sure what WotC is actually thinking... I am not saying we won't see one, in fact I do expect to see one, but I am less confident in that than I would have been say 5 years ago.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've got plenty of play out of non-D&D RPGs. I think you might be generalising from your own experience a bit too much in this post.

Not American books are a lot more expensive here is main point.

Unless you have your own group willing to play whatever it's going to be really hard finding players for not D&D.
I've bought some eg Numenera.

Not claiming it's universal but it's what it's like locally (small city 130k).

 

[Kromanjon]

One thing I think many people miss is that WOTC won the whole OGL catastrophe.

But we won it too... Right?

 

[pemerton]

Not American books are a lot more expensive here is main point.

Unless you have your own group willing to play whatever it's going to be really hard finding players for not D&D.
I've bought some eg Numenera.

Not claiming it's universal but it's what it's like locally (small city 130k).

I paid $87 US (so at a guess, back the, $110-ish AU) for my Torchbearer books via Kickstarter. I can't remember and haven't gone back to check what I paid for Prince Valiant. I bought Agon at a shop for (from memory) $60-ish AU.

I bought half of my Burning Wheel in a shop, and more recently have ordered online either via Kickstarter or direct from Luke's site.

These books have done more than serve as expensive book ends.

 

[Zardnaar]

I paid $87 US (so at a guess, back the, $110-ish AU) for my Torchbearer books via Kickstarter. I can't remember and haven't gone back to check what I paid for Prince Valiant. I bought Agon at a shop for (from memory) $60-ish AU.

I bought half of my Burning Wheel in a shop, and more recently have ordered online either via Kickstarter or direct from Luke's site.

These books have done more than serve as expensive book ends.

If you can find the players sure. IDK your financial situation either.

I bought 3 3pp hardcovers from Kobold press. $200 usd to get them here. They got used no regrets.

Spending $200 on book that probably won't get used is a different value proposition.

When I started pkaying the nearest gamestore was 115km away the next one was 300km.

Not saying that's typical but $200 on not D&D is probably wasted here. Pathfinder counts as D&D. That's pretty much your options.

We don't even have a lot here available to buy even if you wanted to.

 

[Aldarc]

Not American books are a lot more expensive here is main point.

Unless you have your own group willing to play whatever it's going to be really hard finding players for not D&D.
I've bought some eg Numenera.

Not claiming it's universal but it's what it's like locally (small city 130k).

That said, my last game of 5e D&D was about half a year before the pandemic when my partner bounced hard off of playing 5e D&D. Since that time, the two of us have played multiple games of Fantasy AGE, Dungeon World, Avatar Legends, Numenera, Fabula Ultima, and now Dragonbane. They have also expressed interest in playing some of the other books on the shelf, including CoC, Fate, and MotW. I like playing TTRPGs with my partner, but they have zero interest in 5e D&D, so as of now, my 5e 2014 books are the ones looking like expensive book ends. That's not me hating on 5e D&D. It's simply about playing games that gets my partner to the game table.

If you can find the players sure. IDK your financial situation either.

I bought 3 3pp hardcovers from Kobold press. $200 usd to get them here. They got used no regrets.

Spending $200 on book that probably won't get used is a different value proposition.

When I started pkaying the nearest gamestore was 115km away the next one was 300km.

Not saying that's typical but $200 on not D&D is probably wasted here. Pathfinder counts as D&D. That's pretty much your options.

We don't even have a lot here available to buy even if you wanted to.

Which again sounds like a you problem in New Zealand that one that can be safely generalized from. That said, there are a lot of Kiwis and Aussies regularly playing online in (mostly) non-D&D games of another online TTRPG community where I am a member.

Moreover, digital copies of books exist. Maybe not for D&D 5e, but legal PDF copies do exist for many non-D&D games on DriveThruRPG and Itch.io. This sort of easy access kind of makes a lot of excuses about not being able to find books for running games pretty flimsy. And that has been true for about +15 years. Even when I have access to hard copies of books, I mostly use digital books on my laptop for running games anyway, as it's easier to search and reference while also saving table space.