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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Why does whether the rulebook is bought in print or digital format matter?
It matters because if it's bought through D&D Beyond, it isn't really bought. Anything happens to D&D Beyond, it's ... gone. If you have it as a PDF you don't care about WotC after the sale, but nor do you with a book but in this format, if they shut down you're out of luck. If I remember correctly, you can't access them through the website if you're not connected to the Internet. They do have an app, but I haven't investigated if that means you need to use a phone or if there's a dedicated windows app.

So without a book (or, hint hint, a PDF) the game can just vanish.
 


It's also possible that Mearls legitimately feels the way he posted, and was thus expressing himself.
I have no doubt he is being honest about his feelings towards D&D 2024.

No one here is accusing him of being dishonest or misleading about anything. And no one is saying he is wrong about his feelings towards D&D 2024, or shouldn't express his opinions about it. At least that I'm seeing.

But several of us are bothered by HOW Mearls is expressing himself. That's it. If Mearls tone doesn't bother you, well YAY!

I'm a big fan of his work back during the 3E era when he was freelancing for Malhavoc Press. I'm also a fan of his design video blogs when he was on the D&D team at WotC. I'm not a fan of how he handled the Zak S mess before moving to the Magic team at WotC, and I'm not a fan of his discourse on the game currently. But that's me, I'm not expecting anyone else to feel the same way or to stop following Mearls as a designer of interest. He's certainly a talented game designer.
 

Scratching my head a bit here. Every so often I stumble upon one of these mega-threads and set myself the task of trying to figure out the gist of it by reading the most recent page or two. I saw lots of upset about something Mike Mearls said, so dug back to see what the kerfuffle was about and found the tweets from a few pages back:

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My head-scratching is because I can't but think, what's the big deal here? He is saying that he thinks its a myth that younger gamers want a "safe" game, without risk, that intrinsic to roleplaying is some kind of (fictionalized) risk, the possibility of "loss and defat without enduring tangible harm."

Why is this controversial, at all?

I suppose some who prefer a "safer" approach in which there's no real, or very little, risk might take issue with his phrase "time-wasting slop," but he prefaced the string of tweets by saying he's "feeling salty," which implies a hyperbolic tone, more on the persuasive than argumentative side of the spectrum.
 

It matters because if it's bought through D&D Beyond, it isn't really bought. Anything happens to D&D Beyond, it's ... gone. If you have it as a PDF you don't care about WotC after the sale, but nor do you with a book but in this format, if they shut down you're out of luck. If I remember correctly, you can't access them through the website if you're not connected to the Internet. They do have an app, but I haven't investigated if that means you need to use a phone or if there's a dedicated windows app.

So without a book (or, hint hint, a PDF) the game can just vanish.
Based upon the number of times I've played AD&D, 2E, 3E, 3.5E, and 4E following the release of the next game... my books might as well have "disappeared" for all the times I've opened them, LOL!

It's like the 4E Character Builder... it's disappeared on me, but I have not felt any loss from it. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel the same thing for the books I've bought only through DDB if and when DDB ever goes away... I will have moved on to some other game and never think about those books I've lost ever again. :)
 

It matters because if it's bought through D&D Beyond, it isn't really bought. Anything happens to D&D Beyond, it's ... gone. If you have it as a PDF you don't care about WotC after the sale, but nor do you with a book but in this format, if they shut down you're out of luck. If I remember correctly, you can't access them through the website if you're not connected to the Internet. They do have an app, but I haven't investigated if that means you need to use a phone or if there's a dedicated windows app.

So without a book (or, hint hint, a PDF) the game can just vanish.
Not what we're talking about mate. We're just talking sales, success, or popularity of D&D 2024. Digital, print, whatever the format.

Do you "own" a book on D&D Beyond? Nope, you are licensing content. It's still a sale if you make the purchase, which is what we are talking about.
 

no, death is not the only risk, as I clearly mentioned


does he usually post everything on both? Otherwise I would not read too much into it

Death may not be the only risk but according to Mearls it has to be significant and meaningful. Death is the easiest example of meaningful. I don't see that it really matters, if people don't like playing a high stakes game I don't see why it matters to anyone but the other than the people at the table. I don't follow X or Bluesky, I was going by what @TiQuinn mentioned, that they typically cross post.
 

It matters because if it's bought through D&D Beyond, it isn't really bought. Anything happens to D&D Beyond, it's ... gone. If you have it as a PDF you don't care about WotC after the sale, but nor do you with a book but in this format, if they shut down you're out of luck. If I remember correctly, you can't access them through the website if you're not connected to the Internet. They do have an app, but I haven't investigated if that means you need to use a phone or if there's a dedicated windows app.

So without a book (or, hint hint, a PDF) the game can just vanish.

I've lost several books over the years just due to somehow misplacing them and there are plenty of other hazards to physical books. I would have to repurchase books if I wanted to play some versions of the game. Nothing is permanent and I don't personally see a significantly higher risk to purchasing things on DndBeyond.
 

I have no doubt he is being honest about his feelings towards D&D 2024.

No one here is accusing him of being dishonest or misleading about anything. And no one is saying he is wrong about his feelings towards D&D 2024, or shouldn't express his opinions about it. At least that I'm seeing.

But several of us are bothered by HOW Mearls is expressing himself. That's it. If Mearls tone doesn't bother you, well YAY!

I'm a big fan of his work back during the 3E era when he was freelancing for Malhavoc Press. I'm also a fan of his design video blogs when he was on the D&D team at WotC. I'm not a fan of how he handled the Zak S mess before moving to the Magic team at WotC, and I'm not a fan of his discourse on the game currently. But that's me, I'm not expecting anyone else to feel the same way or to stop following Mearls as a designer of interest. He's certainly a talented game designer.
Summed up my thoughts almost exactly.

I don’t mind his discussions and criticism on D&D; most people can discuss their opinions openly but as an employee, he had to be circumspect. I don’t think he’s been resoundingly negative and he’s largely discussing stuff that happened under his tenure.

But, things can shift quickly. His post on Twitter was poorly thought out, and if I’m being charitable, extremely tone deaf. If I’m not being charitable, I’d say he knew exactly who his audience was with that post. Enough mistakes like that will make me tune out of any and all projects he wants to get into.
 

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