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 mean, to me it seems to be relevant, in making sense of Mearls's comments, that he's now a commercial competitor to WotC. But that seems to be a minority perspective, judging from this thread.

Alot of ot is Mearls opinion vs someone elses.

Depending on what he's talking about ones a lot more valid.
 

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And the same thing can happen with physical books, 1 person buying more than 1 copy... correct or is there a limit of 1 per customer?
sure, but if you think that people are just as likely to buy 2 or 3 books as they are to have the physical book, the DDB version and / or a VTT version, you are way off

And, at least in tthe earnings call... they said books, right? So it's settled, at least at that point its clarified as books ..right?
sure, whether intentional or not, and to get one thing straight, anything but the new PHB being the fastest selling book would be a huge disappointment as far as sales go, given how much D&D grew since 2014

You're not accounting for the ginormous totally unprecedented bump they got from Goty BG3.
that bump helped them in 2024 too, licensing and digital is all that grew…

The fact that revenue didn't dip drastically and stayed relatively flat is probably at least in part due to sales of the new corebooks.
not really, according to the Q4 report Wizards analog is down 2%, digital is up 1% and licensing is up 5% compared to 2023
 

Oh good lord. Sure, let's focus on what's really important here . . . print books vs digital books.
not what my point was

What exactly is the point you are trying to make here? WotC is being dishonest or misleading? Digital books don't count? They're not really books?
misleading, probably, more relevant that they cannot call it the fastest selling book when it should easily have been that by a wide margin. Let’s get real, the PHB of a new edition / version not being the fastest selling book in D&D history is a feat not even 4e managed to accomplish.

The PHB is obviously the best selling book, a new version sells fast initially when released. This is basically why we got new editions in the past. So this not being the case this time is interesting in and of itself to me. As I said, whether this is a general slump or due to a move to digital is unclear, 2025 will probably / hopefully bring some clarity
 

I like "salty" and "bitter" and "angry". I even like opinionated though I do admit that sometimes some opinions make me bounce of a product like it's a jumping castle. Apart from that I find that many times its the passioned opinions of an artist that tend to bring something extra to the products they produce.

Regarding Mearls tweet I'd say that, while I don't agree with his stance on participation trophies, I do respect his view on games. As far as stating his intent for game design it really meshes well with my own personal experiences playing ttrpgs. Having a clear design philosophy is important when working on any project and I hope his serve him well.

What I do find interesting is that he says ""safe" game" and everybody assumes he's attacking D&D specifically when the history of safety tools and a more curated and comfortable game environment didn't come from D&D originally.
 



What I do find interesting is that he says ""safe" game" and everybody assumes he's attacking D&D specifically when the history of safety tools and a more curated and comfortable game environment didn't come from D&D originally.
I haven't followed the full thread... was the safe game not in relation to the in-game fiction?
I totally misread that!
 

Didn't say that Mearls being irritated towards WotC makes me less interested in his work.

What I did say, is that Mearls being salty towards D&D . . . D&D 5E 2024 specifically . . . turns me off. "Salty" is different from "dislikes" and it feels (to me) like his attitude is more emotional than a more subjective dislike of the changes to the game.

And the participation trophy dog whistle, that drains my interest in his work even moreso.

Life is short and there are an overwhelming number of artists and designers out there to give attention to. Mearls is free to design what he wants and express himself as he wants, but his choices are making him less interesting to me and I'm moving on. I've got no problem with him finding success in his endeavors, or with fans who remain interested in his design work.
It's not like Mike is the first person to do this though. All manner of designers who go on to design new games that aren't WotC D&D invariably talks about the issues with the game while propping up their own games. Matt Colville denigrates a lot of D&D now that he's making Draw Steel! that he didn't do when he first started his channel and making 5E content... Monte Cook went over all the problems he had towards the ultimate design of 3E when he left WotC and started Malhavoc Press. And I'm willing to bet that Chris Perkins will have all kinds of things to say about all the different editions of D&D if/when he finally gets let go or leaves. After all... he was there through the design processes of 3E, 4E & 5E-- all of which had substantially different foci and gameplay states-- so he (like all of us) probably didn't like all those versions equally and will have definite opinions on where each of those went wrong.

At the end of the day... the same way we can't take current employees' (like Jeremy / Chris / et. al.) propping up of the current D&D game with sunlight and flowers as anything more than proper promotion... we also can't take the denigration of the game by former employees who are making their own games as nothing more than promoting why their games will be better & different than what is currently available (to those members of the gaming audience who care.)
 
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I haven't followed the full thread... was the safe game not in relation to the in-game fiction?
I totally misread that!
Nope, I'm like you... I thought he was talking about how hard it is for characters to not get hurt within the game-- not about safety tools for players outside of the game.

He very much has a bunch of old-school mentalities towards certain aspects of D&D... one of which seems to be wargamer thought that the only really worthwhile failstate is PC death. If characters can't and don't die then there's no risk. Which is fine for the wargamer / 70s early 80s D&D fans... but for the more modern players for whom its the narrative that is driving force for play... we all know that it's the failstates and downturns our characters go through emotionally that are the dips we want-- because it means we get to still play those characters that allow us to hopefully build ourselves back up from the depths. Whereas dying just ends the story right there and then.
 
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Oh good lord. Sure, let's focus on what's really important here . . . print books vs digital books.

What exactly is the point you are trying to make here? WotC is being dishonest or misleading? Digital books don't count? They're not really books?

The lengths fans go to sometimes to make a point, a point tangential to anything with meaning or sense.

2024 D&D is selling well. Print, digital, both . . . splitting hairs over digital vs print is very silly, IMO. Especially since NONE OF US KNOW, as WotC doesn't share that kind of data.

Sheesh.

I would definitely consider all those novels I read on my kindle as books even if no trees were sacrificed to make them. The world of publication has been changing for quite a while now, trying to make a big deal out of physical vs digital vs rules licensed to a VTT is a great example of what I mentioned a while back. No matter what news comes out of Wizards, no matter if it's good bad or indifferent, some people feel compelled to put a negative spin on it. The old grognard that has decided that had already decided that the game isn't for them has to repeatedly proclaim that they no longer buy the books as if us old timers sustain and grow the market instead of teenagers and college students.

We don't really know how well the books are selling because neither company that sells the product have been particularly transparent on sales numbers. It's not about whether or not we're trying to read the tea leaves, it's that everyone that is trying to read the tea leaves has to use guesswork to somehow indicate that the product is failing and that the 2024 release was a terrible mistake. Any speck of evidence to the contrary somehow gets turned into evidence that the company is being purposely misleading because after all we know that the product is failing. It's quite the circular argument. Meanwhile people who enjoy the game eventually tune out and just give up the pointless argument that never ceases while enjoying playing the game with their friends.
 

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