WotC Mike Mearls: "D&D Is Uncool Again"

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.

 

[TiQuinn]

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?

Haven’t a clue on Twitter as I don’t post there - kind of my point. It’s received notice elsewhere though.

 

[Mercurius]

It may apply, but not equally.

One's responsibility to use one's rights well increases with the scope that exercise implies. He, somewhat influential in the hobby, has more responsibility to use his words well than some 14 year old playing the game with is friends after school.

Well, it depends upon how you look at it. When you compare them one to one, obviously Mearls' responsibilities outweighs that lone 14-year old. But we're not talking about a lone 14-year old, but--at least in terms of online spaces--thousands of gamers, many 30+ years old, who are all a bit too normalized towards freaking out about every little statement that isn't 100% to our liking. If nothing else, we could all be a bit more mindful of to what degree our response is proportional to what we're responding to.

 

[Mercurius]

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.

Yup. The odd thing is that he is actually saying that young people do want the sense of risk, so it seems his rant is more directed at designers who think they don't.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well, it depends upon how you look at it. When you compare them one to one, obviously Mearls' responsibilities outweighs that lone 14-year old. But we're not talking about a lone 14-year old, but--at least in terms of online spaces--thousands of gamers, many 30+ years old, who are all a bit too normalized towards freaking out about every little statement that isn't 100% to our liking. If nothing else, we could all be a bit more mindful of to what degree our response is proportional to what we're responding to.

I would argue that online discourse hasn't helped.

You need to be able to communicate clearly and online talk tends to obfuscate things.

Normal people also don't communicate like that irl. Mearls is essentially using everyday language.

 

[Umbran]

It's relevant to Mearls comments and content.

No, it actually isn't.

He isn't really being criticized for feeling 5e is "easy mode". He isn't even being criticized for liking games that are harder to survive than 5e. So, neither of those are the point.

He's being criticized for stating what should be recognized as a preference as an absolute truth instead. That's the root of the issue.

 

[Imaro]

He's being blunt. With how things gave been turning out world probably needs more of that.

What people want to hear vs what they need to hear is twi different things. First parthasnt worked out so well.

What people "need" to hear? Ok, ill bite... please elaborate on what people "need" to hear about the way they choose to play ttrpg's...

 

[Mercurius]

But Twitter and Bluesky exist, and they do carry with them distinct audiences, and I expect anyone participating in those places to know that.

But this isn't entirely true. I mean, it is largely true of Bluesky in that it was leftish types immigrating from X, but X still has a widish range of perspectives and lots of lefties still there. It has become a lot more rightish, but from what I can tell, still has a much more diverse array of political ideologies represented than Bluesky. It is also still far more a main avenue of communication and news than Bluesky, afaict.

That said, not saying there isn't something to him only posting on X. Not reading into it either way, though.

But I think the larger problem is the "two-sideism," as if his use of "safe" is automatically expressing adherence to one faction. I think we have two very vocal groups fighting two-sideism (be it RPGs or other cultural domains) and everything else gets drowned out. Each of those two sides seems to interpret anything and everything that isn't lock-step as being of the other side. So around and around we go...

 

[Dire Bare]

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

Come on man, you know better.

Are Mearls opinions, and how he expresses them, reflective of his design/artistic quality? No, of course not.

We are discussing separating the art from the artist, or the design from the designer. Some folks do that easily, others do not. It's that simple. Mearls views, as he is expressing them, do not sit well with me. This causes me to lose interest in his work as a designer. It's got nothing to do with the quality of his design work, which overall, has been high quality over the years.

If how Mearls expresses himself doesn't bother you, or if you prefer to separate art from artist . . . great! I don't. Okay, moving on . . .

 

[AlViking]

It's a fairly common complaint about 5E.
I play multiple editions an had an stinker encounter for 5.5.

Exploding zombies, multiple casters (5) with level 3+ spells prepared battlefield glyphs of warding, spellbuffed BBEG appearing mid combat vs fully rested PCs at level 8.

They won. All the buffed healing, bonus action healing, misty steps to hide, 4/5 PCs being primary caster.

In official content you can do the equivalent of roll your face across the keyboard and win. Level 6 PCs cleared a level 9 dungeon.

5E easy mode. 5.5 even worse. I don't think that's particularly controversial take.

I've had 2 players deaths since 2019. One of those was essentially suicide/idiot and that's with DM special type encounters, throwing out encounter building guidelines (haven't used them since 2015).

I've been running Castles and Crusades and will be starting 2E on Thursday. Some players are in both games so it's not nostalgia or whatever or drastic differences in pkayer skill.

There's not much risk via instant death a nasty poison is just buckets of damage and healing word exists.

Subjective what you like or prefer objectively see roll face across keyboard comment. DM has to design stink encounters or strike PCs while they're down to really threaten them imho.

In my most recent game I had two people grappled, restrained, unconscious and being taken off to be eaten in quiet at a rate of speed nobody in the party could match. When we left off after a different encounter, I had two characters that were a saving throw away from being turned into statues. The game is what you make of it.

 

[Umbran]

But we're not talking about a lone 14-year old, but--at least in terms of online spaces--thousands of gamers, many 30+ years old, who are all a bit too normalized towards freaking out about every little statement that isn't 100% to our liking. If nothing else, we could all be a bit more mindful of to what degree our response is proportional to what we're responding to.

Sarcasm on:
Oh, I see. So, games should be hard. But real life? Folks should not face consequences there!
Sarcasm off.

Without the sarcasm - the nature of social media is well known. You cannot get its benefits without also risking its detriments. With power comes a cost, and all that.