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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The first Creature Catalogue or whatever it was called came out before the 3.0 PH.

EDIT: At least, I am pretty sure it did.

My memory is only of the Atlas and Green Ronin adventures which were ridiculously rushed to print.

An archived page on Amazon has this:
Code:
This is a hardcover book with over 200 brand new monsters that add unique challenges to your 3rd edition campaign. This is a 224 page hardcover core rulebook AVAILABLE as soon as October 6, 2000!
My very scrambled brain thinks the PHB was at GenCon, but I could not find a release month on a quick search to verify.

I think this is splitting hairs?
 

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ROFL

Not this Wizards of the Coast, in the year of our Lord 2025. :LOL:
Yeah, I don’t see it either. How times have changed.

Strange to think there was a time under WotC when players could drain the souls of a few children for XP and healing, while having a fulfilling conversation with your cancerous tumor and sticking pins through your genitals for an AC boost.

The things you have to do to be Cool.
 


Yea. So maybe it lends to Mikes point.
Mike has mentioned that the number of products on the DMs Guild overall has been dropping off.

(Seriously, we're in a VERY flooded market at present).

It's still a bit early for a LOT of Greyhawk products, but even so - I don't know how many there will be. Just give me a few quality ones and I'll be happy. :)

Cheers!
 

Secondly. Have I been asleep or did we not just see a well received D&D movie (90+ Rotten Tomato’s for critics and audience). What about the AAA CRPG that is unashamedly and successfully D&D. What about Massive 2024 books sales. All in the last 2 years. Post OGL.
all of this started way before the OGL, the movie got into the cinemas right after it, the game was in early access before it even happened

2024 was always bound to sell better than any prior edition, that is a given with at least 10x the user base

None of this tells me anything about how D&D is being received / trending (including the movie that Hasbro wrote off 25M on).

I definitely think it has lost its sheen, whether it just has been around too long or WotC’s moves have rubbed off on its reputation is up for you to decide

I feel like people don’t appreciate backwards compatibility
I certainly do not when it comes with a decided lack of innovation / improvement. 2024 lost me halfway through the playtest when everything remotely interesting was thrown out

Now if you want to see something really Cool - as in keeping your… - see the skill in WFRP 4e which represents your ability to concentrate under fire, resist the horrors of the warhammer world and mental corruption. 😜
didn’t you just say you are in no position to decide what is cool ;)
 

There were four Greyhawk products in January.

A mere four. I'm reading through them at the moment - and the first couple weren't good.

I know there was a good number of Spelljammer products made for DMsGuild when I looked on there for my own campaign. Not certain about Planescape.
 


It’s possible for growth to slow without declining. 3% growth is less than 25% but it’s still growth.

I wasn’t talking about the commercial success of the film. I don’t worry about such things post Covid. I was talking about how well received it was and 90%+ RT scores for audience and critics tell me it was well received.

See the thing is, for the most part I think the recent products are better and less derivative than what came out at release - Tyranny of Dragons, Rise of Tiamat, Princes of the Apocalypse, Storm Kings Thunder.

If D&D shrinks I’ll still keep on playing. It wasn’t Cool when I played as a teenager. That wouldn’t stop me playing it now.

To be clear bu decline I mean whatever the 2014 phb told I expect them to sell less than that.

As I said I'm not to fanatic about that. I expect them short term to outperform early 2014.
 

I know there was a good number of Spelljammer products made for DMsGuild when I looked on there for my own campaign. Not certain about Planescape.

Planescape is helped by the Dungeoncraft DDAL adventures providing content. Looks like there were 3 Planescape products released in January, all DC adventures.

Four Spelljammer products in January! (I think, the tagging is odd on this one).

Two Ravenloft. (Only 2? Weird).

No Eberron!

January was dead for releases!

(Just a note: I'm searching by setting, and removing releases that are generic and just have people clicking every setting to tag them with).

Lots and lots of Forgotten Realms products. Probably (20+, but some tagging is hard to work out).

Cheers!
 

Ironically I think Mearls is too far inside the industry to analyze it. Attributing anything significant to the OGL issue is silly. The attitude of an average D&D player to the OGL is "what's an OGL?"

People in the industry, and people who spend time here, are not representative of the market as a whole.
I'm starting to question this, not only is social media use a lot more common now-- (let's say: reddit) the market as a whole is talking about groups of 3-8 people, a lot of groups likely do have a member or too who is 'hardcore' enough to know whats happening and push a switch.

I can tell you that I have players who are more casual than I am and know about what's going on, or who are trying new games because the more hardcore members of their groups have strong opinions on the matter.
 

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