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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Does anyone see anyone playing that 50 million ks game?

I’ve seen people playing Draw Steel and Daggerheart, but not that.

Edit: 15 million.
I'm sure someone will, especially if $15 million was gained during the ks. There is probably a good overlap of people that read Sanderson's books and RPG players. Is the game even out?

From what I've seen, DnD might be shrinking but a lot of people are playing non-dnd rpgs, this might be one of those that gains some traction (or it'll just sit on someone's shelf like so many RPGs I've bought in the past).
 

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What in the world? I'm not my own market research firm, but based on my normal life and hearing people talk in retail establishment, restaurants, bars, other random places -- D&D has never been more cool and widespread.
He seems to be conflating the real world with what third party publishers and highly online fans are saying. The latter two groups definitely do care, but they shouldn't be the main benchmark about how cool or popular something is.
 


Cool is cyclical, and it is pretty inevitable that when you are on top, there's no place to go but down. I've been predicting the decline of D&D's popularity for a few years now, and one day I have to be right.

I suspect it'll resemble what happened with the 1e generation: we'll see a lull as the young 5e demographic gets into other things in their lives, and then a few decades from now they'll all start getting their kids into D&D, and finding time for it again themselves. And it'll see another boom.

The difference is that the base is much wider now, so there's a deep base to support it during lean times.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong and new technologies and contexts will upend the cycle. I'm wrong fairly often.
 



The interviewee (Riggs) is the same person who told us last year that the Golden Age of RPGs is over, because apparently D&D specifically is only making a bazillion dollars instead of trazillionquillion dollars. And as we all know, the entirely of the RPG milieu and its Golden Age-y-ness, depends on D&D's sales.

I mean. Sure, that's, a factor. But anecdotally? There has never been a better time to be an RPG player (not specifically D&D, but not excluding it either) than right now.
 

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.

Triple H has been building a reputation as a good booker for a while now. NXT comes to mind.

I haven't watched in years but Netflix and a soft spot for rumbles.
I knew WWE was getting popular again. Wrestlemania 39 was playing in the gamestore and one guy was getting nuclear heat crowd reaction ala Shawn Michael's in Canada.

Reading about it and seeing it two different things. Good riddance to Vince.
 



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