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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Questing Beast posted a one hour interview with Mike Mearls. What's interesting is that very early on Mearls elaborates a bit more a bit on the 4e and WoW connection. It was not about making WoW as a TTRPG. It was not about aggro mechanics or anything like that. He says that it was more about being a game that would be super easy to get into and focus on the "fun" of the game, which was "fighting monsters, getting treasure, and speaking in funny voices."
 

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Jeez, yet another video of Mike and 5e doomsday….getting tiring to say the least of the multiple interviews of it failing or dying. In that regard Mike if you’re still on this thread, I’ve dropped my patreon with you for now cause I’m tired of hearing it in such a negative light.
Only say good things about 5.5e, Mearls! Validate my life choices by praising my preferred game more! 😜

Edit: To be clear, I don't think that Mearls is saying that D&D is failing or dying in this video. The tone, IMHO, is not "doomsday." He is critical of it but I also think that is because he would have preferred that the game went a different direction that was more GM and new-player friendly when it comes to onboarding and support for running the game.
 
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Only say good things about 5.5e, Mearls! Validate my life choices by praising my preferred game more! 😜
No, I’m in the camp of….tell me why your game you are creating is a better fit for my gaming group play style. Not the campy joke you mentioned, jokingly it may try to seem.

Edit after your edit :). Thanks for the additional info about the videos as I don’t plan on watching it.
 




Mearls does not believe that D&D is doomed. He states that it will remain firmly in the number one spot. He does say that other games are growing, while D&D is shrinking a little, and that this is not normal. Usually the fortunes of other games rise and shrink with D&D.
Crowd funding and direct to consumer sales account for this, as well as some unhappiness with the game and Hasbro/WotC.

Mearls is critical of 5.5 because it is not giving GMs, especially beginners, the tools they need to homebrew, and there is a growing distance between the company and their fans. Mearls also believes the game is losing 5e's original ease of play philosophy. He also believes that as a large company they are slow to pivot.

It's a good discussion and Mearls has a lot to say, but there's no indication that he's looking forward to dancing on WotC's grave. And his own game is just something he's going to crowdfund because he's making the D&D he wants to play, and would love it to be in a physical form with nice art.
 

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