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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Even though I’ve been on Mikes patreon for over a year, the constant negatively about sales feels like a sport figure with a record (5e PHB sales record) is about to be eclipsed (2024 PHB sales) and downplays it constantly on ESPN or other sport talk shows.

Enough with the negativity, got enough of that in the real world right now, I don’t need it in the hobby I enjoy.
 

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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.
God that book was such tryhard, edgelord BS.
 

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.
Yje terminally online set the narrative, dontcha know.
 

People in the industry, and people who spend time here, are not representative of the market as a whole.
No, but their influence on the industry is much larger. They're the people buying the new stuff, hanging out at the game store, running the games, starting the game clubs, the ones at the game club who know all the stuff, the ones posting about it on YouTube and TikTok.

And make no mistake, most people run across their interests online, sometime deliberately, sometimes by accident (hell, even my grandma did!), and WotC says that 50% of its customer base uses DDB now, so it's not like they're not online and looking at D&D stuff; and it's those peoples' opinions that they'll see. The word 'influencer' wasn't created out of nowhere; it's a genuine thing.

It's not 2001 any more. People can't hold a five minute conversation without googling it on their phones. So yeah, when the bulk of the in-crowd influencers like or sour on something, that does trickle down to the larger customer base. That's how marketing works these days.
 

Firstly - and I don’t think this can be overstated - guys in their mid to late forties are not in a position to say whether anything is cool or not in society. And that’s me speaking as a guy in my mid forties.
People in their mid forties and older have nearly always been the people that make and define what's cool. Why? Not because that age is especially cool,but because that is the age that folks manage to get into decision making positions. There is a reason why nostalgia is always such a strong force in entertainment: old people are remaking the stuff they loved from when they were young.

Influencer culture has upended that a little bit,but only by a few years to a decade. People driving D&D outside of WotC aren't much under 40, and the guys making it are OLD.

It's actually kind of funny that you called out Mearls for his age but not the people literally in charge of making D&D.
 

I keep seeing people state that OGL had no effect on people, but…
-The D&D movie tanked
-People where canceling their D&D Beyond accounts so fast that the unsubscribe page was taken down

The D&D movie didn't do as well as hoped but was also not a bomb. Its performance likely had a lot more to do with general theatre fatigue and poor timing.

The number of D&D Beyond accounts went up after, just as they had been. They probably would have gone up a tiny bit more, but even if 1000 accounts were cancelled that is not even likely to be noticeable.

But those 1000 people spending a lot of time yelling on the internet where we also spend time on the internet? Yeah, that's going to make a noise to us.
 

I must say I’m confused about the take.

Firstly - and I don’t think this can be overstated - guys in their mid to late forties are not in a position to say whether anything is cool or not in society. And that’s me speaking as a guy in my mid forties.
Of course they can. They can look at the evidence. If all the kids are all over it, it's cool. If they're avoiding it like the plague, it's not. You don't have to be cool to have eyes.
 


Anecdotally, Mike's thesis is supported by my experience with my own three gaming groups and their wider circle.

Nobody (and I mean nobody) is excited for 5.5e , although quite a few of us have already bought the PHB and DMG. In fact it's more being treated as a matter of resignation ("oh well I suppose I better see what they've messed around with") than any anticipation. That's because 5e isn't broken. It's not perfect, but it hit the bullseye in terms of feeling like D&D whilst playing faster than spreadsheet edition (3e) and having more rational choices and streamlined systems than old faithful (1/2e). After 4e, it was exactly what the old crowd wanted and was able to pull in massive new crowds as well.

Where I think WOTC dropped the ball is that they've simply not produced any new material that my groups are interested in playing. They got all the mileage I think they can get out of retreads and reissues (Quests from the Infinite Staircase was just lazy at that point in 5E's lifecycle IMO, Keys from the Golden Vault only highlighted how ill-suited 5E is for Heists compared with other rule systems, Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Spelljammer were both lazy re-use of IP and just plain bad. Vecna's a too-late tie in and they missed the boat completely with tie-ins for Baldur's Gate 3 and the D&D movie).

Launching 5.5E with a focus on yet another dusty old setting is a major mistake, I think. In all honesty, who is going to be excited by playing a game in something called "the Flanaess on Oerik on Oerth"? Any 5E player interested in Greyhawk has probably already investigated it and it completely fails the tie in test with Baldur's Gate 3 - again, couldn't be less interesting if they tried. There was a chance to tie in with domains and bastions and so forth and hook into a streamlined version of Birthright, which might have been interesting, but nope.

What adventure am I going to pull off the shelf to entice my players to try the new rulebook? The last decent adventure they published was The Wild Beyond The Witchlight (which even if it wasn't to your taste at least was trying something new). I gather they're trying a new setting at some point next year, and more bits-and-bobs scenario books before those. They may be useful for DM's to split apart but they hardly make for a compelling splash launch for 5.5E.

Our groups are doing what the long-established ones have done cyclically over the decades - dropping 5E because there's nothing much compelling to play, in favour of other RPGs for a bit (Savage Worlds is a big hit, along with the various Free League games). The group composed of 5E-era D&D recruits is going down this path for the first time for them, and having a whale of a time discovering bennies and adventure cards and rules for chases and bases that actually make sense and are fun to play.

I'm sure we'll be back, but right now there's nothing tempting me to pick up any 5E or 5.5E D&D material to run or to find a group online to play. In short - yes, the cool has gone.

I actually think this is completely within their goals.

They know people love 5e and I don't think they wanted to make an update that was so different from it that people would feel pressured to update it. They really do want it to be backwards compatible and for people to keep playing 2014 5e if they want to. They just want people playing D&D.

A major part of their plan with 5e was slowing down releases too and they have stuck to that. I think they're fine with people going to 3pp if they want more books than WotC are putting out. For the first few years of 5e I saw lots of posts about how bad of an idea it was to do this slow release pace and how much money they are leaving on the table because the poster wants to keep buying books. But that isn't most of their audience.

They were put into a weird position. 5e is designed to be evergreen but after 10 years an update just makes sense. So what to do? I think this design and release pace fits with their goals and I don't think they're upset that everyone isn't throwing away their 2014 books.
 


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