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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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.

I read it completely differently. That the only way to play the game the "right" way is to have the risk of significant loss or character death as a constant risk. That those darn young'uns are playing it wrong because they don't want that. I don't know how else you can interpret removing the threat of death or significant loss makes the game a "time-wasting slop". Saying he's "feeling salty" does not change or excuse what he says.
 

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.
Why? What do his opinions have to do with the quality of his work? It really makes no sense to me at all.
 

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.
Honest question: What do you mean by "tone deaf?" Maybe I mistake your usage, but this implies that he's oblivious to how his tone would effect a majority and/or intended audience, like previewing a Star Wars screening by saying "Trek is better!" It also implies that his tone should cater to a specific group, and presumably one that you feel aligned with (i.e. "tone deaf" = "not speaking in a tone that I like, or resonates with my view").

Or to put it another way, what tone (do you think) he should be employing? What if his tone is just an expression of how he feels and what he thinks about a subject? Should he employ a tone that is inauthentic?
 

My opinion, YMMV....

It sounds very judgy and gatekeepy. It sounds dismissive and not all that nice.

It was posted on X, and not bluesky, so he was aiming this at a certain demographic, which makes me believe more that this not good......
It also feels a little hypocritical since 5e 2014 wasn't exactly a game designed to put PC's through the meat grinder and he was one of the lead designers for it. It feels like he's salty his version isn't the main one anymore and so he's going to poop as much as possible on the revision.
 

It also feels a little hypocritical since 5e 2014 wasn't exactly a game designed to put PC's through the meat grinder and he was one of the lead designers for it. It feels like he's salty his version isn't the main one anymore and so he's going to poop as much as possible on the revision.
I don't agree with that last part, as he's very critical of how 5e design went from his time there....so I don't think he thinks everyone should be using 2014 rules at all.....
 

I’m happy to just say he’s speaking for himself and i don’t require him to speak for the entire hobby and so now i have to call him wrong wrong wrong for just saying his thoughts.

the “consequences” discussion makes me see this from a different perspective. If a new shadowdark character can be rolled in microseconds in the character builder, doesn’t that DIMINISH the stakes of character death considerably compared to a 5e build that took you hours to build and write a novella of a backstory?

Who’s got more to lose in a fight? Random-generated goblin with a random-table name? Or Bralwith the sage dragonborn Wild-magic sorcerer who dipped two levels into Ranger and is 7th of a named family line to be cursed with wild magic?

Oops the goblin died but the character has already been replaced by another rando. No harm no foul.

It’s an interesting question.

Perhaps the real stakes all along has been… commitment of our time?
 


It also feels a little hypocritical since 5e 2014 wasn't exactly a game designed to put PC's through the meat grinder and he was one of the lead designers for it. It feels like he's salty his version isn't the main one anymore and so he's going to poop as much as possible on the revision.
I think he could poop more if he was so inclined, and I see no problem with him expressing his feelings on the matter, and no reason why his content production should be judged on his expressed opinions. If you don't like what he makes, that's one thing. Why does it matter that he doesn't like what you like unless it affects his content in a way that matters to you?
 

I don't agree with that last part, as he's very critical of how 5e design went from his time there....so I don't think he thinks everyone should be using 2014 rules at all.....
Well no because he's got his own system to market now. So I agree with you. Though other comments he's made still give me the impression he's got a hater vibe going on.
 

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