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 am trying to understand why a person's stated opinions in this matter make a difference in whether or not you appreciate the content they create. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know if I would even buy his game, but the principle I'm running into baffles me logically.
I never stated I was or wasn't going to buy his product... yet you quoted me so I'm confused on how we got here.
 

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Honest answer: He either didn't realize that his language could be seized upon by members of the TTRPG community who seek to exclude others for their own selfish purposes, or he absolutely knew that was who was going to see that post, and was careful to post it on Twitter which has a larger number of those people versus Bluesky, where he also posts but decided not to post there.

Hey, I'm not going to dance around this. I'm about as liberal as it gets, and I think bigotry and people who like to use dogwhistles that call out to bigots suck. And that's about all I can say because anything further gets even more political from here on out, but hopefully I've made myself clear.
Or he said what he felt like saying, and didn't care about the social consequences. Is he getting this kind of pushback on the site upon which he posted?
 

TLDR: I think what Mearls is saying is perfectly valid and true for what could loosely be called "traditional D&D" (or RPGing in general), for which a "sense of risk" is an intrinsic part of the adventuring experience.

I'm not a real fan of making assumptions of what he really meant - if he meant it only for this "traditional" form of RPG, he could/should have said so.

That aside, I think there's probably some truth in what you note here.

But, even within it, there's an issue - it then assumes there's only one valid way to generate the "sense of risk" the style requires.

To which the same basic answer applies - Dude, chill out. Let people play what they want, accept it as valid, and stop dragging on it just because it isn't your personal favorite.
 

But sometimes it is about that and it should be called out...

Edit: it's one discussion among a multitude on the forum... I'd argue that hardly qualifies as everything being funneled.
I would say rather that sometimes someone believes it is about that and feels that should be called out. It is entirely possible to believe something differently.
 



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.

People have become very used to echo chambers.

In terns of dying and risk 5E is easy mode so Mearls isn't wrong.

All he's saying is not everyone likes that. DM pretty much has to go out of the their way to players in 5Esnd new ones even easier.
 

I would say rather that sometimes someone believes it is about that and feels that should be called out. It is entirely possible to believe something differently.
Ok.... point? You don't believe it should be called out... don't. What you don't get to do is decide for everyone. The same way wr can't just decide you shouldn't get to complain about D&D whenever you want.
 

I'm not a real fan of making assumptions of what he really meant - if he meant it only for this "traditional" form of RPG, he could/should have said so.

That aside, I think there's probably some truth in what you note here.

But, even within it, there's an issue - it then assumes there's only one valid way to generate the "sense of risk" the style requires.

To which the same basic answer applies - Dude, chill out. Let people play what they want, accept it as valid, and stop dragging on it just because it isn't your personal favorite.
Yeah, I didn't mean to say that is what he really meant. I was only saying that what he said applies well to "traditional RPGs." As I said in the post you quoted, I think he misses the mark by applying it RPGs wholesale. In the same sense that I agree with you about the error in assuming there's only one valid way to generate risk, or play RPGs as a whole (actually, it could be an interesting topic: about different approaches to "sense of risk").

As for his tone, I mean, I just don't see the big deal. As I said up-thread, he's taking a more persuasive tone than forming an argument, so it comes across as emotive. I can see why people would feel irked by that, but I think your "Dude, chill out" applies equally not only to Mearls but to those making more of it than necessary.
 

In terns of dying and risk 5E is easy mode so Mearls isn't wrong.

All he's saying is not everyone likes that.

Well, that's the problem - that's isn't what is present in the words he's writing. One only gets that if one includes some fairly major assumptions.

If that is what he intended, he could have been several hundred percent more clear about it with three or four words.
 

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