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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(Having an irrevocable license didn't matter last time -- some MBA who never heard about Creative Commons in college could well try it again in future, as ill-conceived as that might be.)
While I think this will be true in the coming years, I don't think it will be WotC who tries to crack the CC. They may benefit from it if it breaks, but I suspect there are going to be far more powerful media companies that try that first.
 


While I think this will be true in the coming years, I don't think it will be WotC who tries to crack the CC. They may benefit from it if it breaks, but I suspect there are going to be far more powerful media companies that try that first.
Oh, we are definitely in an era of "I'm too rich for the laws to apply to me."

But if your oligarch or megacorp of choice doesn't get there first, I can see WotC 2028 banging their collective forehead against Creative Commons until it's bloody and being confused at why their fans and the larger RPG industry are screaming at them to stop.
 

81,000 backers. And it was $10M not $1M.

I was talking about what I expect a million dollar kickstarter to have. Around 10-20k backers.

10 million at 80k is similar ratio. People see the 10 million and get excited but in perspective WotC has been getting 100+ million year in year out for a while now.

Great numbers for not D&D well done to whoever pulls it off.
 

WWE is kinda cool again. The crowds are enthusiastic and large just like Stone Colds era. Royal Rumble this year 70k, gate was 3rd highest ever (beaten by 2 wrestlemanias). 70k crowd for a rumble not Wrestlemania.

They were making money hand over fist say 5 years ago but weren't cool.

I watched the rumble first time in 5 years hit crowd. Winner had them doing his feet thing. Very Rock/Cena/Austin type reaction.
It's funny... I certainly agree with you to a certain extent, but feel as though their one roadblock facing them to skyrocketing in the public sector like things did in the Stone Cold era is that the thing that is most responsible for their current rise was the removal of Vince McMahon as the person in charge. It's hard to really wave the flag of positivity and "Yay us! Rah rah rah!" in this new era of WWE with Triple H in charge of creative... when it's only due to the horrendous actions of VKM and his removal from power.

Cutting out the cancer was absolutely the right thing to do... but you just can't act as though everything now is sunshine and roses when everyone knows the only reason why things are the way they are was that excision.
 


I wonder how many people are buying the new core but not using them.
I sometimes wonder how many 5e books in general are actually getting used, as opposed to existing to look good on a coffee table and allow time-poor cash-rich execs to let their geek flag fly.
 

The name is okay, I guess, but the reason is terrible.
I really like the names, can't pin down exactly why, other than that I like there being a "everyday folk call them devils, their proper name for themselves and from sages etc. is baatezu."

Regardless of the minutia of the ups and downs, I think it's important to note that fluctuations like this are why it's good that D&D is part of Hasbro.

There's a group of players that have been arguing that ever since D&D got popular, WotC should break from Hasbro. If what Mearls says is even remotely true, how bad of a position would D&D be in right now if they were solo? Layoffs, restructuring, or even looking for another buyer? Changes like this show the short sightedness of the "we're the big dog, let's drop those Hasbro financial losers" mentality.

Hasbro brings a level of financial stability to help weather contractions and expansions like this. Without stability and long term planning, very minor market changes can cause huge problems that make smaller companies struggle.

At this point I don't care either way, but WotC has been the lion's share of Hasbro's worth for some time now, over 70%- it's not just players that have suggested WotC splitting off from Hasbro, it's been significant shareholders. That's just fact. Also, layoffs and restructurings have been happening under Hasbro's ownership anyway.

Moving from fact to speculation: one of the things that panicked Hasbro in the first place and made them start taking a bigger active role in WotC's management in the late 2010's: someone with a couple percent ownership in the company was vocal about splitting WotC off from Hasbro in the stock exchange, which would've tanked Hasbro's worth.

Hasbro is the one that needs WotC, not the other way around.
 

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