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.

 

[SteveC]

I tend to find it is ubiquitous. Like when I started a thread on advice for new "story now" GMs, and had posters come to the thread to argue why "story now" is bad RPGing.

It may be that I have some of these folks on Ignore, which wouldn't surprise me. Even though Story Now isn't really how I do things, I do find it really interesting to discuss, so I'd be happy to do that. And I find that with a lot of other game styles: they may not be for me, but they also end up giving ideas, which is all we can hope for. I hope that in discussions on those issues, I can be a positive force for keeping the threads moving.

 

[SteveC]

My point is, publishing products from other publishers on D&D Beyond seems really close to what WOTC described when they talked about how the OGL 1.1 was going to work.

I think you're making a really good point. When the whole issue dropped, I thought that they could just have done this with D&D Beyond and not had any issues at all. In fact, people would have been happy about it.

 

[mearls]

Ghostfire Gaming just ran a near-million-dollar Kickstarter for Grim Hollow Transformed not only advertising it as compatible with D&D 2024 but even their D&D Beyond integration (which is pretty wild). This is pretty much exactly what WOTC said they wanted with the OGL 1.1 – the only difference being that Ghostfire doesn't have to pay for an OGL license but WOTC does get a cut of Grim Hollow Transformed sold on D&D Beyond.

Right now there's no clear indication how WOTC chooses partners for publishing to D&D Beyond but it's pretty clear they choose products that already proved themselves as high-dollar projects. That makes sense, of course. It costs them money to do the conversions and they're spending their own marketing efforts to market other peoples' products.

My point is, publishing products from other publishers on D&D Beyond seems really close to what WOTC described when they talked about how the OGL 1.1 was going to work.

I guess I don't see that as "winning" per se, because a win for them is a world where D&D Beyond is the only place where you can publish material.

I think the Grim Hollow Kickstarter is a good example of the issues publishers face. Crunching some numbers:

• 52% of backers picked a tier that included D&D Beyond support
• Their 5.5 project had 36% of the backers compared to the monster book, which I believe is one of the conversions they offered
• Their 5.5 project had 61% of the backers compared to their player's guide, which is another book that the KS converted

Bigger picture, why wouldn't Ghostfire also produce a core rulebook with everything you need, along with this material, rather than make their product dependent on owning a PHB? That's the part I don't get as a third party publisher. You can be a first party and third party at the same time.

 

[Parmandur]

I guess I don't see that as "winning" per se, because a win for them is a world where D&D Beyond is the only place where you can publish material.

I mean, all the companies of note producing their own new alternative D&D games are also selling stuff on Beyond now: Kobold Press, MCDM, Free League, Darlington Press, etc.

 

[mearls]

I mean, all the companies of note producing their own new alternative D&D games are also selling stuff on Beyond now: Kobold Press, MCDM, Free League, Darlington Press, etc.

Great point! I think that's also a clear win from the OGL. I think any platform owner would prefer that your customers don't have an easy off ramp.

If anything, it can be a win-win if you have the product lineup that D&D Beyond customers can move into. D&D Beyond get more content and different ways to play D&D, third parties get access to customers they otherwise can't reach.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I guess I don't see that as "winning" per se, because a win for them is a world where D&D Beyond is the only place where you can publish material.

I think it could become the dominant platform where high-dollar 5e content is sold and it becomes more dominant the more stuff they sell there, including their own. This is what makes D&D Beyond different than any other platform – they are the number one producer of the material they sell on D&D Beyond by like two orders of magnitude. It's so much more that they aren't even considered a competitor when comparing a book like Tome of Beasts to Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse – but they are a competitor to the other publishers on their own platform.

Yes, absolutely publishers can sell the same material on other platforms like Amazon, DTRPG, local game shops, their own store, and others. That's really great. But we've seen with Amazon what happens when a single platform becomes so big you can't ignore it – you have to play ball with them at some level. I've seen and heard from several sources that about half of D&D players use D&D Beyond. That's not everyone, but if more publishers feel like they can't reach their audience without being on D&D Beyond, that feels like a problem to me.

The big thing I worry about with the growth of D&D Beyond is the centralization of the hobby around a single company we can't trust to benefit the hobby over their own drive for profits. My feeling is that D&D Beyond getting bigger, both in the products it licenses and the customers who use it, makes our hobby less resilient to future corporate shenanigans.

 

[Parmandur]

Great point! I think that's also a clear win from the OGL. I think any platform owner would prefer that your customers don't have an easy off ramp.

If anything, it can be a win-win if you have the product lineup that D&D Beyond customers can move into. D&D Beyond get more content and different ways to play D&D, third parties get access to customers they otherwise can't reach.

My main takeaway from the Late Unpleasantness was that instead of coming after the OGL, WotC should have revived something like the STL in combo with Beyond.

 

[mearls]

The big thing I worry about with the growth of D&D Beyond is the centralization of the hobby around a single company we can't trust to benefit the hobby over their own drive for profits. My feeling is that D&D Beyond getting bigger, both in the products it licenses and the customers who use it, makes our hobby less resilient to future corporate shenanigans.

I think that's something that you have to consider with any platform. Does DTRPG or Roll20 have an agenda other than their own growth? There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure D&D Beyond is unique in wanting to maximize itself potentially at the cost of its users.

I do agree that publishers need to think of that and keep their options open. It's good practice in general to build your own audience and keep them happy.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I think that's something that you have to consider with any platform. Does DTRPG or Roll20 have an agenda other than their own growth? There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure D&D Beyond is unique in wanting to maximize itself potentially at the cost of its users.

The difference is that DTRPG doesn't also make and advertise the number one RPG in the world on their own platform alongside yours. That makes publishing on D&D Beyond a unique situation. They're marketing their own products next to other publishers. They sell products at a much better margin than others. They choose who to market and why. They're so big selling D&D products on D&D Beyond isn't even considered competition, but it is. Someone has the ability to buy Flee Mortals or Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes on D&D Beyond and D&D Beyond has a clear interest in selling the latter over the former. It's not an even playing field by a long shot.

I don't think this is something nefarious WOTC is doing. Business is business. But I think publishers should be aware of the unfair advantage WOTC has with their own material on their own platform compared to another publisher. It's still almost certainly worth it for a publisher to publish on D&D Beyond (at least for now) – I can't imagine any publisher turning down the opportunity. But I don't consider D&D Beyond selling material from other publishers a benefit to the larger 5e or RPG hobby.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The difference is that DTRPG doesn't also make and advertise the number one RPG in the world on their own platform alongside yours. That makes publishing on D&D Beyond a unique situation. They're marketing their own products next to other publishers. They sell products at a much better margin than others. They choose who to market and why. They're so big selling D&D products on D&D Beyond isn't even considered competition, but it is. Someone has the ability to buy Flee Mortals or Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes on D&D Beyond and D&D Beyond has a clear interest in selling the latter over the former. It's not an even playing field by a long shot.

I don't think this is something nefarious WOTC is doing. Business is business. But I think publishers should be aware of the unfair advantage WOTC has with their own material on their own platform compared to another publisher. It's still almost certainly worth it for a publisher to publish on D&D Beyond (at least for now) – I can't imagine any publisher turning down the opportunity. But I don't consider D&D Beyond selling material from other publishers a benefit to the larger 5e or RPG hobby.

Agreed. Frankly, I just see D&DB as at best a slight negative on the hobby.