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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I really wish there wasn't a standard at this point. WotC 5e IMO is hanging on beyond the point of relevance to their "big dog" status. They're no better on any metric other than profit than anyone else.

Size, profit, reach, influence, acceptance, standardization.

They are the Kleenex of RPGs.
 

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I’m interested in why people are so down on the recent WotC products?

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.

Is there an expectation that every single book lands well with everyone? I complained that I disliked Strixhaven and Witchlight but I recognize that other folks think Witchlight is one of the best campaign books. Why does someone making products that aren’t to a particular taste make them trash?

I would argue the game peaked quality wise around 2016-19.

Post tashas quality broke down. There's no equivalent of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, Xanathars or Eberron. Hell even Theros is better than anything post Tashas imho.

It's best post Tashas products eg Golden Vault are maybe B+ and it's worst products meh.

Tashas itself may as well be called Tasha Cauldron of Powercreep.

Worse none of the products are particularly interesting ymmv of course.
 
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This is going to sound crazy and not to everybody’s taste but I actually find that some of the campaigns that don’t come across so well in D&D would work brilliantly in other systems. Some of which aren’t blessed with lots of adventures. Rime of the Frost Maiden in a grittier system like WFRP 4e.

I look at most campaign products and think I can get good stuff out of that.

Aside from that I personally think both Golden Vault and Planescape is A+ and if either product had come out at the same time as Curse of Strahd it would have blown our socks off.
 

Do you not think the books stand on their own merit? If you hadn’t played D&D before and were buying for the first time would you not think the books were worth their price tag?
Oh, the value of the books was never questioned! Once we agreed to update to the new rules, we didn't want to go halfway, and we each bought a PHB so we wouldn't have to fight over one book. We knew there would be a lot of rule referencing, more so even than if it was a new system altogether because we anticipated having to update things we already knew. We're all at an age where the price of a book is negligible on our yearly income. The general consensus is indeed that (most of) these rule updates are superior to the old ones, which triggered the change.

But I feel we should have been excited about it. We should have done so in anticipation. It should have been Christmas in July (or whenever it happened...) but it wasn't. The buzz wasn't there. Thus the statement that despite being good consumers for D&D, we were unexcited about it.
 

Oh, the value of the books was never questioned! Once we agreed to update to the new rules, we didn't want to go halfway, and we each bought a PHB so we wouldn't have to fight over one book. We knew there would be a lot of rule referencing, more so even than if it was a new system altogether because we anticipated having to update things we already knew. We're all at an age where the price of a book is negligible on our yearly income. The general consensus is indeed that (most of) these rule updates are superior to the old ones, which triggered the change.

But I feel we should have been excited about it. We should have done so in anticipation. It should have been Christmas in July (or whenever it happened...) but it wasn't. The buzz wasn't there. Thus the statement that despite being good consumers for D&D, we were unexcited about it.
I think there has been a bad energy towards D&D for the last two years which has gone quite some way to sucking the joy out of the things I like. When the community is full of folks dogpiling discussion of any new product with WotC hate it’s harder to get excited.
 


What I find funny there's been sone saying the baked a few years ago (there's always boomers saying sky is falling).

But you got shouted down.

Someone with perceived authority says the something and everone pulls a 180 apart from the usual 3-4 WotC cheer leaders.

I'm not a sooner but tge book scan data showed a general trend downwards on newer product. Alot of newer product is particularly well regarded either.

After witchlight I stopped buying the big adventures and waited for sales on anthology types.
 

This is going to sound crazy and not to everybody’s taste but I actually find that some of the campaigns that don’t come across so well in D&D would work brilliantly in other systems. Some of which aren’t blessed with lots of adventures. Rime of the Frost Maiden in a grittier system like WFRP 4e.
possibly, personally I wish D&D itself were grittier. To me that would also work better for a lot of their campaigns (and worse for a few, admittedly)

I also wish they were more cohesive however instead of disjointed chapters, since you mentioned Rime
 

I think there has been a bad energy towards D&D for the last two years which has gone quite some way to sucking the joy out of the things I like. When the community is full of folks dogpiling discussion of any new product with WotC hate it’s harder to get excited.
I get plenty of joy out of D&D when I'm not dealing with WotC (which is all my play and prep time). But I also like to talk about the hobby, and I can't do that without dealing with WotC's doings. That's mostly all anyone talks about, and it seeps into every discussion.
 

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