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]

I agree.

 

[SteveC]

that is not what he wrote, at all, maybe you need to reread the posts. All he said is that there needs to be a certain level of risk of failure, not death, that there needs to be a threat for the game to have meaning for the players

For the record, I've no problem with anything that Mike wrote. I don't tend to play the way he's talking about but it's no problem that he does, or other OSR people do. I was simplifying things and I think you represented it better. So take half a mea-culpa point from my description .

 

[Bedrockgames]

On the risk thing, I definitely find for myself, the game has lost a sense of risk over the years. But I think this even started with 3E. I like the possibility of death in play, and genuine level drain. It feels like it incrementally got less risky over the years. But I also think that evolution is understandable (during the 90s even though the mechanics were still risky, there was a growing trend of ‘only killing PCs when they do something stupid’). Personally I have more fun when there is more random death in the game. A lot of that is mechanics but it also has to do with how the culture of play changed

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, seriously, Mearls is younger than I am and I grew up with "participation trophies" as did every other Gen Xer and younger. His X post couldn't be more old man if it was wearing a jacket and smoking a pipe.

Look, it's fine to not like something. But, good grief, repeatedly banging the drum so you can try to pull a Paizo is pretty transparent.

I didn't, but then I'm on the older side of Gen X and I grew up in rural Michigan, so maybe that area just didn't participate in participation trophies.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope, I'm like you... I thought he was talking about how hard it is for characters to not get hurt within the game-- not about safety tools for players outside of the game.

That's how I interpreted it as well. Has it been clarified by him to be something else?

 

[Belen]

I didn't, but them I'm on the older side of Gen X and I grew up in rural Michigan, so maybe that area just didn't participate in participation trophies.

I am a younger Gen X and I remember the first time they introduced participation trophies after we had a disaster of a season and were ranked last in the league. No one wanted them and it just made everyone feel worse. I remember a few kids pitched them in the trash. There was no sense of accomplishment.

I do not think it is wrong to have a participation memento though. Of course, I am more sentimental now that I am older and I can see that my time ahead is shorter than my time before and how you want to cling to memories of those you've lost.

I do agree that a level of risk and threat is key to a successful D&D game. Players who are worried that they may not make it seem to feel a higher sense of accomplishment when they succeed.

My encounters are always tuned to be more difficult unless I am slowly eating their resources to make the final boss a much harder encounter. I have not had an actual death in years but numerous close calls that players still talk about years after a campaign closed.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am a younger Gen X and I remember the first time they introduced participation trophies after we had a disaster of a season and were ranked last in the league. No one wanted them and it just made everyone feel worse. I remember a few kids pitched them in the trash. There was no sense of accomplishment.

I do not think it is wrong to have a participation memento though. Of course, I am more sentimental now that I am older and I can see that my time ahead is shorter than my time before and how you want to cling to memories of those you've lost.

I do agree that a level of risk and threat is key to a successful D&D game. Players who are worried that they may not make it seem to feel a higher sense of accomplishment when they succeed.

My encounters are always tuned to be more difficult unless I am slowly eating their resources to make the final boss a much harder encounter. I have not had an actual death in years but numerous close calls that players still talk about years after a campaign closed.

Yeah participation trophies aren't really what people think. First off, I don't think generations sniping at one another ever really solves anything. My view is generations need to learn how to reconcile their differences. But the participation trophy thing gets held up as the dividing line between generations and I think that is a vast oversimplification. I was born in the mid-70s so I am younger Gen X. But I have way more in common with Gen Xers born in the 60s than people born in the 80s. As early as 1983, I remember participation trophies. They actually made fun of these in Meet the Faulkers and Ben Stiller is obviously Gen X (his character had them in his house from when he was a kid). All they were were ribbons going up to like 13th place. I don't know whose bright idea these were, but they simply told you how badly you did lol. I think later they starting giving more diplomatic trophies. But the point is, I doubt these had much impact on anyone culturally.

I was born in the mid-70s but my youngest sister was born in the mid-80s and the difference between how she and I were raised was night and day. There are just massive differences in how we were raised that go well beyond participation trophies (and it isn't like the differences produces all positive or all negative results, they are each balanced out by advantages and disadvantages). So there are definitely sharp generational differences if you were raised the way kids were in the 70s and 80s, versus the 90s. But that is pretty normal. Generational differences are a thing. It doesn't have to be a source of conflict though

All that said, I don't think mearls was saying "these crazy kids and their aversion to risk!" I think he was just observing that risk has softened in D&D over the years and we might want to examine if the game loses any excitement as a result. I don't see the old man yelling at clouds angle here

 

[jayoungr]

It comes across as "old man shaking fist at clouds"

Sounds to me more like "The lurkers support me in email."

I didn't, but them I'm on the older side of Gen X and I grew up in rural Michigan, so maybe that area just didn't participate in participation trophies.

Same here, also grew up in the midwest, didn't hear people ranting about participation trophies until the 90s, after I was out of college. Maybe it started on the coasts and worked its way inland?

 

[Dire Bare]

I didn't, but them I'm on the older side of Gen X and I grew up in rural Michigan, so maybe that area just didn't participate in participation trophies.

"Participation trophies" go back long before Gen X. Back to the dawn of humanity.

It's simply recognition for participation rather than "winning". They can be used well and they can be used poorly. And whether they are being used well or poorly is subjective.

In the 80s, I used to get ribbons every time I went to a swim meet as a kid. I don't think I ever won a race. Because of the recognition, I loved swim team and was motivated to continue participation. The kids who actually won the races got cooler ribbons to recognize their achievements. I think they even won plastic trophies for the bigger meets. I've never understood the misplaced kvetching from some corners about "participation trophies".

 

[SteveC]

I am a younger Gen X and I remember the first time they introduced participation trophies after we had a disaster of a season and were ranked last in the league. No one wanted them and it just made everyone feel worse. I remember a few kids pitched them in the trash. There was no sense of accomplishment.

Fellow Gen X here, and I remember working as a coach for debate in the 90s. They had participation trophies here and my team thought they were a joke. What they liked was that I followed up with each team member after each debate and we talked about what they did and how they could improve. That human contact an encouragement over the course of the season were a key ingredient in what made us successful. I still talk to a couple of those team members decades later.

And when I was just a kid, I ran D&D at my library and taught people how to play the game. Even though I was really young, I would often play with kids even younger than me. No matter what happened in the session, especially if some characters died (and this was 1E so that happened) I made sure to talk to the players to do my best to make sure they were having fun. It was one of the most awesome times I ever had over the course of a couple of years.

Did those people keep playing? Some did, but most of them I lost track of. I just was striving to make sure everyone had fun. And I never had a thought about losing characters, nor did they.