D&D 5E Mike Mearls is back on the D&D RPG Team

Three weeks ago, WotC's Jeremy Crawford told us that Mike Mearls was no longer working on the tabletop RPG, and hadn't since some time in 2019. Today, the (newish) D&D head Ray Winninger said on the company's Twitch livestream that Mearls is now back full-time on the tabletop game.

Mike Mearls is back full time on the RPG again. He was splitting his time working on some computer game stuff for us, but he’s back.

He still doesn't appear to be back on social media since his final tweet back in 2019.

 

[GrahamWills]

For me, it’s pretty obvious Zak S is a bad person. The defense of him by people who say “nothing has been proved in court” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence; it’s the usual defense of evil we see all the time. Much evil is simply not provable in court, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. The evidence against Zak S is from multiple people, is consistent and, to me, believable.

Which is why last year I canceled my ongoing campaign using materials created by him. I cannot have fun playing a game where the creator was abusing people and is unrepentant about it. Which was very annoying because the materials were excellent and everyone was having a great time playing. Sigh.

For the same reason, knowing that 5E is now embracing Mearls, who as far as I know has not apologized for supporting Zak S (please correct me if I am missing some info and being unfair to him) makes it hard for me to play 5E. It‘s more degrees of separation, but with so many good games I could play, why would I play one where the creators tolerate abusers?

 

[Parmandur]

For me, it’s pretty obvious Zak S is a bad person. The defense of him by people who say “nothing has been proved in court” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence; it’s the usual defense of evil we see all the time. Much evil is simply not provable in court, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. The evidence against Zak S is from multiple people, is consistent and, to me, believable.

Which is why last year I canceled my ongoing campaign using materials created by him. I cannot have fun playing a game where the creator was abusing people and is unrepentant about it. Which was very annoying because the materials were excellent and everyone was having a great time playing. Sigh.

For the same reason, knowing that 5E is now embracing Mearls, who as far as I know has not apologized for supporting Zak S (please correct me if I am missing some info and being unfair to him) makes it hard for me to play 5E. It‘s more degrees of separation, but with so many good games I could play, why would I play one where the creators tolerate abusers?

He did apologize, but it wasn't the most satisfactory apology to Zak's victims. Zak was removed from the PHB credits, along with all other consultants, due to the problems there, which is a fairly potent apology and what people had been asking for before the fiasco.

 

[Charlaquin]

And there is the issue - being a fan of someone's work and/or almost working with them isn't knowing them. You know of them. People reading things other people post on the internet gives them a false sense of familiarity.

First of all, you’re assuming that me being a fan of her work is the extent of my relationship with her. It’s not. Second of all, I’m under no illusions about the extent of my relationship with her. That’s why I said I don’t know her well. I don’t. We’ve talked a few times, I think she’s pretty cool, she liked my work and wanted to hire me before circumstances changed. We’re not friends, but this is not a case of some fan thinking she knows a creator because she reads said creators twitter.

Unless it involved stuff done in the context of doing business with WoTC, why would you send evidence to them? Is WotC involved in this or were they an unfortunate third party? It's like two drunks fighting in a Waffle House.

It’s clear you really don’t know the situation at all.

Ok. Zak S. does a fair bit of RPG work, usually on a freelance basis. He also engages in a lot of online harassment against people in the RPG industry. Years back, a lot of this harassment started coming to light. Some publishers stopped hiring him, others didn’t. During the development of 5e (after all this stuff came to light), Zak S. did some work for WotC (I think playtesting, but I’m not sure) and credited him. They got a lot of critique for that. They claimed they hadn’t been aware of the allegations against Zak when they hired him. Mike Mearls did some digging to try to get to the bottom of the situation - I don’t know if it was in an official capacity or something he was doing personally. A bunch of Zak’s victims confidentially sent Mearls evidence of that harassment. Mike Mearls emailed Zak about all this with his oppinion (the snippet of which was in Olivia’s tweet.) One or more of the victims who came forward to Mike including the one we’ve been vaguely referring to received harassing Emails from Zak S. As Paramandur pointed out, most likely Mearls didn’t scrub the metadata of the emails he sent to Zak S.

 

[Parmandur]

Zak didn't even do that much work, from my understanding. Mearls approached a number of indie designers who were social media influencers, and asked them to do in-depth analysis of the at-the-time most current playtest rules, well beyond the five-scale survey input. Zak was one of those. He didn't actually make anything for the game itself, even.

 

[Charlaquin]

For me, it’s pretty obvious Zak S is a bad person. The defense of him by people who say “nothing has been proved in court” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence; it’s the usual defense of evil we see all the time. Much evil is simply not provable in court, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. The evidence against Zak S is from multiple people, is consistent and, to me, believable.

Which is why last year I canceled my ongoing campaign using materials created by him. I cannot have fun playing a game where the creator was abusing people and is unrepentant about it. Which was very annoying because the materials were excellent and everyone was having a great time playing. Sigh.

For the same reason, knowing that 5E is now embracing Mearls, who as far as I know has not apologized for supporting Zak S (please correct me if I am missing some info and being unfair to him) makes it hard for me to play 5E. It‘s more degrees of separation, but with so many good games I could play, why would I play one where the creators tolerate abusers?

Unfortunately, most of the big-name RPG companies have similar stories. Zak S. is all over the industry, he’s worked with White Wolf, WotC, Paizo, and plenty of others. Most large developers are content to claim ignorance until directly confronted, conduct a cursory investigation, and try to sweep it under the rug with noncommittal statements like Mearls’ tweet, though internally pretty much everyone agrees Zak’s a horrible piece of work. At this point a lot of companies have finally cut ties with Zak thanks to the business with his ex-wife making it impossible to keep feigning ignorance. But he’s a symptom of a bigger problem in the industry as a whole.

 

[Parmandur]

First of all, you’re assuming that me being a fan of her work is the extent of my relationship with her. It’s not. Second of all, I’m under no illusions about the extent of my relationship with her. That’s why I said I don’t know her well. I don’t. We’ve talked a few times, I think she’s pretty cool, she liked my work and wanted to hire me before circumstances changed. We’re not friends, but this is not a case of some fan thinking she knows a creator because she reads said creators twitter.


It’s clear you really don’t know the situation at all.

Ok. Zak S. does a fair bit of RPG work, usually on a freelance basis. He also engages in a lot of online harassment against people in the RPG industry. Years back, a lot of this harassment started coming to light. Some publishers stopped hiring him, others didn’t. During the development of 5e (after all this stuff came to light), Zak S. did some work for WotC (I think playtesting, but I’m not sure) and credited him. They got a lot of critique for that. They claimed they hadn’t been aware of the allegations against Zak when they hired him. Mike Mearls did some digging to try to get to the bottom of the situation - I don’t know if it was in an official capacity or something he was doing personally. A bunch of Zak’s victims confidentially sent Mearls evidence of that harassment. Mike Mearls emailed Zak about all this with his oppinion (the snippet of which was in Olivia’s tweet.) One or more of the victims who came forward to Mike including the one we’ve been vaguely referring to received harassing Emails from Zak S. As Paramandur pointed out, most likely Mearls didn’t scrub the metadata of the emails he sent to Zak S.

Part of the context, from my memory of following the Twitter conversation at the time, was that there was a concerted effort to raise awareness of Zak's issues with people like Mearls, and Mearls then asked for more info. Zak seems to have parlayed the fact that his victims had organized this awareness campaign as part of his own victimhood narrative, which from his social media at the time was volumnious and detailed. A pretty strong sign if a dumpster-fire sociopath, really.

 

[Charlaquin]

Zak didn't even do that much work, from my understanding. Mearls approached a number of indie designers who were social media influencers, and asked them to do in-depth analysis of the at-the-time most current playtest rules, well beyond the five-scale survey input. Zak was one of those. He didn't actually make anything for the game itself, even.

On 5e? Yeah, he was barely involved. He’s done a fair bit of work around the industry in general though. I mean his main source of income is porn, but he does a lot of RPG work on the side.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

But he’s a symptom of a bigger problem in the industry as a whole.

You mean he's a symptom of a bigger problem in the human race as a whole. This kind of stuff is in every industry and in politics and religion and schools, even the Press, which is supposed to be unbiased and impartial in their reporting.

 

[Charlaquin]

You mean he's a symptom of a bigger problem in the human race as a whole. This kind of stuff is in every industry and in politics and religion and schools, even the Press, which is supposed to be unbiased and impartial in their reporting.

He’s a symptom of a bigger problem in something alright, but I’m not going to get into that because we’re supposed to steer clear of talking politics.

 

[Rygar]

Given the corporate environment he was working in, I think it's entirely understandable if he forwarded it up the managerial chain. Neither of the principals involved worked at WotC, so it's not really an HR issue (who I would absolutely expect to be involved if either of the principals was), but what would anybody expect Mearls to do with a complaint about someone given a credit on D&D as a consultant? To sit on it? What's the point of notifying Mearls if they don't want something done? And what would a reasonable person expect Mearls to do with the accusation?

The better question is, why did this person not lodge a complaint with a lawyer (For a civil suit) or Law Enforcement if it met the legal definition of harasssment. Emailing WOTC is fairly pointless, unless the goal was to bank on outrage culture.

I'm also intensely interested, is there one or more court filings documenting what happened, or did we learn nothing from the "Harassment at Paizocon" incident about taking RPG news sources at face value? Because based on this thread and the last one, it looks like we didn't learn that RPG news sources aren't terribly interested in reporting full stories.