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

Monster_Manual_Traditional_Cover_Art_copy.webp


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.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

"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".

I think they have become a symbol more than anything. The ribbons literally went from like 1st to 13th place. No-one in their right mind got an 11th place ribbon and felt like they were winning something. So I think the idea of them is kind of lame (I've competed in sports where you just have 3 categories of winning: gold, silver and bronze, and that definitely feels like it means something, but getting a trophy for coming in 5th or 6th, not only feels like nothing, it kind of adds insult to injury because it shows just how badly you lost). But I doubt these trophies had much impact on anything. They were always regarded as a bit of a joke if you were anything past third place anyways
 

log in or register to remove this ad

"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".
I think it depends on what they say and how close to the actual winning trophies are. I've seen them where they are about the same size and say something like, "You're a winner, too." What's the point of working hard to win if everyone who loses is going to be a winner, too? If just a smaller, "Good job!" or something, that's fine.
 

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.
I am the same way about talking with people and getting feedback to make sure they are having fun.

I have people who are not happy over losing a character but usually most people have some many concepts in their head that they just roll up something new to try.
 




That's how I interpreted it as well. Has it been clarified by him to be something else?
No idea. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't care too much about responding to what randos on the internet say about him. Which should be true of pretty much everyone. It's a waste of time and doesn't solve anything because people who want to complain will do so regardless of how incorrect they are in their complaints. ;)
 




Remove ads

Remove ads

Top