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

Monster_Manual_Traditional_Cover_Art_copy.webp


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.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Yeah, and I think at least based on my own experience, there's a huge swathe of activity which can't be tracked by things like looking at Roll20, because the games involved are simple enough that most people just wouldn't use a VTT for them, even if playing online. Mothership, for example, or Spire. A few people will, but it was disproportionately lower relative to the total number of people playing those games.

But I'm not seeing RPG activity decreasing among people I know - just shifting a bit - mostly away from D&D. I feel like D&D might see some people shift back in like, 2-4 years, if they put out good stuff and it seems cool, but D&D itself doesn't have the halo it once did as a system.
That is also true. There's tons of games out there played over the internet without a VTT. Sometimes that's because it's a less map-intensive game, as you noted, and sometimes it's because an extra webcam is SO cheap and works with your battlemap and minis.


Yup. It's a thing people do.

I just used Roll20 as an example because it's got quantifiable numbers and a clear trend. The fact is we'll never truly be able to track how many people play D&D, or any other game system. Just looking for indicators.
I thought that was the point though wasn't it?

Like, if they worked together, they'd be unstoppable, but because they embody Evil, they're all petty selfish wankers who can't fathom the idea of NOT murdering each other eternally until the end of time.

I genuinely, even at like, 13, thought that was the idea. Like, supernatural Evil is shortsighted and malicious and willing to do bad things for the sake of doing bad things, even if it's kind of self-destructive.
Kinda! But also they're fighting over a finitely infinite resource. (Weird thing to say, but it's accurate!)

Souls. Devils and Demons both use souls, somehow, in D&D. Whether it's as Soul Coin currency in Hell or as writhing maggots with people faces, or as an infinitely tormentable subject upon which the demon or devil in question can heap their hatred and violence!

There's only so many souls in existence at one time and both demons and devils want them. So the devils try to make deals for souls while demons just kick down the walls of the afterlife to try and steal them. And both do raids on each other.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

There are a lot of people who just buy and collect RPGs. I used to get emails from collectors all the time. Not saying that is the case here but it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of these kickstarter sales are people who just want to read the book for inspiration
This.

I have entire shelves of things I think are cool that I may not be able to run before I die.
 

Here's an interesting data point... The Grimhollow Transformed kickstarter is labeled as 5e 2024 and has funded with close to a million dollars... I know it's just one kickstarter but it seems to go in the opposite direction of the doom and gloom predictions around 2024 D&D...

Yea. I think this is a good point. Excitement may be depressed. But.

Actual sales are probably good to great. Are there any credible reports of a large failure of sales? I don’t think so.

Even if sales have slowed it’s more sales than almost any other time in the hobby except for 5e, probably by a magnitude.

And slowed doesn’t mean reduced or crashing.

It also doesn’t mean fewer people playing. Anecdotally I see plenty of 5e games.

so I think doom and gloom isn’t warranted.

Finally there are a TON of 2014 PHBs out there. Anyone see them being dumped? It seems to me they are still selling. So add those sales. Amazons rank for it, for an RPG is still really good, ten freaking years later, with a new PHB on the very same page.

@mearls
 

First, thanks to @mearls for coming and talking!

Second, is be shocked if DnD hasn't stumbled a bit from it's high. How much? No idea. But I trust Mike's thoughts over our thoughts.

Third, and I say this as politely as possible, and as someone with an MBA in marketing, the 50th anniversary has been terribly marketed, IMO. That plays a part in what is happening right now.
 


First, thanks to @mearls for coming and talking!

Second, is be shocked if DnD hasn't stumbled a bit from it's high. How much? No idea. But I trust Mike's thoughts over our thoughts.

Third, and I say this as politely as possible, and as someone with an MBA in marketing, the 50th anniversary has been terribly marketed, IMO. That plays a part in what is happening right now.
Well, Hasbro seems to want to get out of the toy business and just license properties and handle tech. This may apply to D&D creation too.

Hasbro, in general, is also awful with marketing. Look at the Transformers One movie that they partially funded. Great movies, terrible marketing.

The previous anniversary had some really nice products but the 50th swag has been bad.
 

I think the OGL was the single biggest event on that slide however
Oh sure, it was. I just think (and this is just my feel for things), wind was coming out of the sails before that. And this is not about overall D&D sales or anything like that, but general enthusiasm for WotC D&D itself.
 

First, thanks to @mearls for coming and talking!

Second, is be shocked if DnD hasn't stumbled a bit from it's high. How much? No idea. But I trust Mike's thoughts over our thoughts.

Third, and I say this as politely as possible, and as someone with an MBA in marketing, the 50th anniversary has been terribly marketed, IMO. That plays a part in what is happening right now.

I just don't think 'stumbled' is the right framing.

I think D&D is still doing well and people are still playing it.

No doubt the rate of sales has declined but, to use the analogy, that seems like a runner slowing out of their sprint rather than stumbling.
 

i think the impact of the OGL on regular gamers was larger than people realize (I know I was hearing about it from gamers who aren't online much).
Yeah, even my coworkers who got into D&D through Critical Role and had no reason to have even known what the OGL was were upset about it. They didn’t fully understand what was going on with it, but they got that WotC was trying to change their licensing structure in a way that was very anti-consumer, and they were ready to move to a new system over it.
 

I look at the BG3 cast and the popularity of their live games and I think for the first time Critical Role has series competition.

I think its more that CRs new projects increasingly don't have the popularity of their former projects.

So I'm in a wait and see mode to see if D&D 5.5e is popular or not, I just don't have any hard data on that to say yeah or nay.
 

Remove ads

Remove ads

Top