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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Part of it is that it's not even new school versus old school. I'm probably one of the handful of people that played some of the original TSR versions of the product but I've never really cared much for treating characters as disposable. I'm just about as old school as you can get. Yet I would never tell people they're playing the game wrong if they want permanent character death to be rare and I know I'm far from alone. There are many ways for characters to fail and removing any chance to continue playing a character is one of the most boring options there is. I've never cared for high lethality games in any edition.

That last post of his "Whether it's a dead character or failure in whatever context the session presents, the bigger the threat, the more meaning the play has to us emotionally and spiritually. Removing it from the game turns it into time-wasting slop." Is just one WTF after another for me. It's just so holier than thou "I know the way the game should be played and if you don't play it that way it's crap." Give me a break. More spiritual meaning? Time-wasting slop? Really? It's. A. Game. Get over yourself.

It's great that different people have different expectations and want different things out of the game. If I don't want the same things, cool. I'll play at a different table. There's no reason to denigrate anyone else's preferences while trying to elevate your particular style of gaming to some sort of existential purity. Some people can learn and grow from the game and role playing in a safe context but there are plenty of ways of doing that without having the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Occasionally people even play the game for fun, but according to Mearls that apparently is just a waste of time.
Well, I will say this...

Mike Mearls has accounts on Twitter and Bluesky, and he has cross posted and been active on both sites.

He chose to post that on Twitter, and neglected to cross-post or air that POV on Bluesky. I can't help but feel that's due to reception/perception of the post.

So to my mind, he kind of deserved to eat some crap on this one.
 
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Tearing down other people is terribly easy after all.

I prefer Piratecat's old approach - I double-dog dare them to tell us what's to awesome about their own games WITHOUT comparing to any other game.
That's something I try to live by and judge other people on frankly. I was trying to remember where I first heard it and know you just confirmed that it was HERE all those years ago from Piratecat, a name that I havent seen in ages...
 

But then again... Mike a just a guy. Just like everyone else. The only reason people seem to put more stock into what he says is because he has "fame" in the RPG gaming space. So people take his views more seriously or more to heart than some other rando out there (like say myself) who just rants occasionally on the internet.

But it's not like most of us are ever going to meet the man, let alone play the game with him... so for all intents and purposes he is just a fictional character in our lives. Just some name whose views don't actually impact us in any tangible way. And if we don't care what a character in a tv show might say because it's not "real"... there's no reason to treat this guy's opinions as anything differently.
 

But then again... Mike a just a guy. Just like everyone else. The only reason people seem to put more stock into what he says is because he has "fame" in the RPG gaming space. So people take his views more seriously or more to heart than some other rando out there (like say myself) who just rants occasionally on the internet.

But it's not like most of us are ever going to meet the man, let alone play the game with him... so for all intents and purposes he is just a fictional character in our lives. Just some name whose views don't actually impact us in any tangible way. And if we don't care what a character in a tv show might say because it's not "real"... there's no reason to treat this guy's opinions as anything differently.

I don't have to worry about what fictional characters might say or how they might impact games because they are fictional. Real people do have the ability to influence others with their words. There's a whole 1100 page thread about NuTSR and how someone's fame can be used negatively in a small community like the OSR space.
 

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.)
I do tend to take former employees more seriously than current ones, because they are no longer legally bound to say only good things. They may have other bindings, but they're not going to get sued for telling us what they really think, and I think that matters.
 

I don't have to worry about what fictional characters might say or how they might impact games because they are fictional. Real people do have the ability to influence others with the words. There's a whole 1100 page thread about NuTSR and how someone's fame can be used negatively in a small community like the OSR space.
But they don't influence you. So whatever other people do at their tables has no impact at what happens to yours. And even if some friend of yours suddenly starts spouting things they've heard from randos online that you don't care for... you can just stop inviting them to your games.
 

Tearing down other people is terribly easy after all.

I prefer Piratecat's old approach - I double-dog dare them to tell us what's to awesome about their own games WITHOUT comparing to any other game.
It's also possible that Mearls legitimately feels the way he posted, and was thus expressing himself.
 

But they don't influence you. So whatever other people do at their tables has no impact at what happens to yours. And even if some friend of yours suddenly starts spouting things they've heard from randos online that you don't care for... you can just stop inviting them to your games.

I'm not influenced by bigots, but I'd like a lot fewer bigots in the OSR space. Like, I don't have to be happy about what he said, the way he said it, and where he chose to say it.

Also, I disagree with your comment. If someone shows up at my table spouting some bigoted remark they've heard, they've already had a negative impact on my table. I don't have to be influenced by them, but they've now made it to my table in some form. I'd rather not have that, frankly.
 
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I do tend to take former employees more seriously than current ones, because they are no longer legally bound to say only good things. They may have other bindings, but they're not going to get sued for telling us what they really think, and I think that matters.
Why would you need to take current employees views on things at all? One needn't listen to any of them (current or former) if one doesn't want to. So there's no need to take either one "more seriously" than the other. They are just people talking... and one hears what they say and then goes on with their day.
 

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