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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yeah, with the first one living off borrowed / bought fame, and you can see the drop right there. From 900M for the first part of the trilogy to 600M for the second and 500M for the third to 200M for Solo.

The starting point was Lucas’ Star Wars, the end point was Disney’s doing. That is exactly what I am referring to, they did not manage the business / brand well
You seem to be making an argument about preferences and pretending it is about money. The fact is that Disney has made a boat load of money with Star Wars and one of its most recent works (Andor) is among the most beloved. I don't like everything Disney does with Star Wars either, but $15B is hard to ignore.
 

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Nope. Fiction writing is alive and well.

But someday the last game of Dungeons and Dragons will have been played, and that will happen in less than a hundred years from today.
Doubtful.

I think you'll end up seeing it move to VR D&D. It may not be dice rolls etc but you'll have that group of friends playing a session cooperatively.

You may even have a DM working with AI to craft a story or sandbox.
 

whatever edge 1e was supposed to have over 2e, I could easily do without

Never cared for devils or demons all that much and if renaming those is enough to fool the satanic panicers, then that is fine by me
For me, it's the art. 1ea over 2e (especially the reprints) every day of the week.
 


"I was never a fan of 5e" and also I don't like all these 5e things sums up the reaction to 2024.

The vast majority of the people I've seen who don't like 2024 also don't like 2014.

It's fine to not like 5e of course but it is a bit disingenuous to speak specifically to certain products as though they like 5e otherwise.

I'm just pointing out this post because it is one of the few times I've seen them say they don't like the specific thing and also don't like 5e within the same post. But only because the take is that they may have actually liked 5e except 'thing.'
I was planning on giving 2024 a shot despite my reservations, to the point where I had a bunch of homebrew stuff written up that I was going to try to put out on Drive Thru. Over 13,000 words written up before the OGL thing hit.

Now I'm just done with the franchise.
 

I’m interested in why people are so down on the recent WotC products?
maybe because they are not very good, maybe because they have no broad appeal (people have a tendency to lump ‘I am not interested in this’ into ‘this is bad’)

Planescape seems like a really solid set. I’m a massive fan of Golden Vault having run several of the adventures in it. I’m a player in Vecna now and we’re having a great time with the nostalgia appeal.
Do not care for the D&D planes in general, so SJ and PS are of no interest to me. PS got decent reviews at least, SJ less so.

For every Golden Vault you do have a Shattered Obelisk however, and Vecna also did not get good reviews, even if it hits your nostalgia spot.

I have not bought much of their new stuff, but I certainly see a downward trend both in the reviews and in my interest in the material itself (the latter being why I bought less, and when I did I was not impressed, see Shattered Obelisk)

Why does someone making products that aren’t to a particular taste make them trash?
it doesn’t, why do you assume this is the only reason WotC products could get bad reviews?
 

I guess there is a deeper question beneath all of this which possibly goes a long way to informing how people feel about WotC.

Is it fair that WotC try to increase monetization the D&D brand?

Pro’s

  • WotC bailed out TSR when they were at their lowest ebb saving the game from obscurity.
  • They paid $25m for ownership of the brand
  • They put all the R&D into development the game (whether you like the developments or not)
  • It has been openly admitted that Ryan Dancy got the OGL out before Hasbro knew what was going on. This strongly implies that it was not in the best interests of the company - but rather the hobby.
  • The hobby matters but it only exists at the scale that it does because of the investment by WotC
  • Scale matters because it means a supported system and lots of players for our games.
  • It’s going to cost a fortune to develop the tools to take online gaming into the future and WotC deserves some return on that investment.
  • If you want to play D&D for free you can in multiple ways. Most people don’t pay anything to play D&D because they borrow books or do it through a VTT with a compendium.
  • 3pp got access to the OGL for free they should stop complaining and be a bit more grateful.
  • The OGL was approved on the basis it would support the game not become its main competition.
  • Even the worst of Licences proposed by WotC are still better than the Lawfare under TSR.
  • Nobody has to buy these products. Get them if you like them, ignore them if you don’t.

Con’s

  • It’s the community that makes the game special not the company that owns it.
  • Ryan Dancy was future proofing the game by saving it from its owners.
  • Some 3pp work is of better quality than some official D&D products.
  • WotC gave out the Licence, people took risks on the back of it, they have a right to benefit from those risks unhindered. The fact that it was a good deal isn’t the 3pp’s fault.
  • D&D wouldn’t have been successful without 3pp building up the hype around the system.
  • Any money WotC makes ultimately is paid for by fans. It should be as cheap as possible.
  • WotC is rich, they can afford not to increase monetization of the brand.
  • WotC can’t be trusted, they don’t deserve the brand, better it fail and get picked up for cheap by an independent.

I think it’s possible to agree with some arguments on both sides here but I definitely see more posted on the cons on these boards and very rarely anything about the pro’s. I get that there is a whole Robin Hood vibe, David and Goliath, up the underdog etc but for me I just want WotC to keep making products to inspire me to play D&D I think they’ve invested enough money over the years to be entitled to make good money off that and if they do, they’re likely to make a few more products.

There’s multiple ways to increase monetization. I don’t think that’s okay to do at the expense of your customers or your original value proposition (outside of things like risk of bankruptcy, etc).

Increased monetization doesn’t have to mean customers paying more for less, but that’s usually how big companies try to implement it.
 


the sequel trilogy is 3 of the 4 top slots for box office revenue (plus Rogue 1).
Total revenue versus the final profit after expenses are different. They only got 60% of the cash from the first week of release and then the theaters got ever more percentage of the take. Additionally, they took out a loan to buy the property and owed interest on it so that added expense to the sale.

I think they made only 400 mil on TFA with 2 billion in tickets. The rest of the films made much lower net revenue.

They also failed to add the expenses of the TV shows against the property (fancy accounting).

The reality is that they may not have made enough yet to pay off the initial loan. They had to make X profit by a certain date before extra interest kicked in.

It has been interesting to watch it all but the finances are a migraine.

Anyway, I think it is off topic, so back to our favorite discussion, World of Dungeons.
 


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