WotC Ray Winninger Is Head of D&D RPG Team; Mike Mearls No Longer Works on RPG

People have been wondering where Mike Mearls has gone for quite some time. It seems that he has not been working on the D&D tabletop RPG since some time last year, and the new head of the team and Executive Producer is Ray Winninger.

Winninger is an RPG industry veteran. Amongst other things, he was co-designer of DC Heroes and Torg, and wrote the Dungeoncraft column for Dragon Magazine. He has worked at a number of RPG companies including TSR, Mayfair Games, West End Games, and more.

Winninger is Chris Perkins' and Jeremy Crawford's boss. And in further comments, Chris Perkins says that Mike Mearls has not been part of the tabletop RPG team since some time last year.


That explains why Mearls' Twitch shows, like Happy Fun Hour, have disappeared. Although he's made a couple of retweets since, his last tweet on Twitter was February 13th, 2019. He still works at WotC on the D&D brand in some capacity, but not the tabletop RPG itself (he did an interview about Baldur's Gate 3 on Polygon last year).

Ray Winninger introduces himself in the latest issue of Dragon+, WotC's online magazine. "My name is Ray Winninger and I’m the new Executive Producer in charge of the Dungeons & Dragons studio at Wizards of the Coast. In just a few months on the job, I’ve already been impressed by the skills and the passion of the designers, artists, editors, and production staff who bring you our terrific D&D products. They are a uniquely talented group, and it is an honor to work alongside them."

 

[Lanefan]

...I kinda liked Keep on the Shadowfell.

I converted it and ran it in my game not long after it came out.

As an adventure: in terms of design, layout (i.e. floorplan), monsters, etc. for a low-level dungeon I've seen far better and I've also seen far, far worse.

As a publication: in terms of writing, content, editing, layout (i.e. what's on the page), etc. it varied between OK and nonsensical. Some of that, I learned later, was due to 4e's weird ways of doing stuff; but some of it was simply a case of very obviously running out of space before running out of things that needed to be detailed (final boss encounter, I'm looking right at you as I say this).

 

[TerraDave]

Mearls new position is probably a promotion.

Not payback for the early days of 4E.

 

[Dethangels Shadow]

So what you're saying is that sometime last year Mearls successfully made his Hide and Move Silently checks and crept quietly out of the room...

Nope... they got rid of those back before 4e... he made his "Stealth" check.... don't you know that already, you neanderthal?

 

[Zardnaar]

Sunless Citadel is fun -- Meepo forever! -- although there are theme park rides that are less on rails. But it's not even in the same league as Phandalin.

Lost Mines pretty much copied Pathfinder format.

Go grab part I of a lot of Pathfinder APs going back to Rise of the Runelords and the Savage Tide.

WotC figured it out. Paizo copied WotC so it's all good

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I've looked, and while I find a screencap of an email Mearls sent to Zak which people don't like, it does not reveal the names of accusers. And Zak later said Mearls did not reveal the names of accusers to him. So, is there actual evidence Mearls revealed the names of accusers, or is that just one of those rumors which grew into a belief that's what happened over time?

Ok, not what I'd call hard proof, but so far my searching has turned up this Twitter thread where several people replying to Mearls tweet accusing Mearls directly of sharing their emails detailing Zak S's harassment of them with Zak S himself -

 

[polyhedral man]

I really appreciated Ray's work back from the Dungeoncraft days. Good advice was hard to find in those days, and this column was consistently excellent. It's someone who knows their craft.

So is Mearls. He will be missed. In my mind he is a true professional. His design style, overall approach, and also the big impact he had in course-correcting D&D will not be forgotten by the fans. (And i have to say that reading some of the comments with ill willed "speculation" was nauseating. Please don't cast aspersions like that, it's very bad).

Conclusion: Welcome Ray. Thank you for everything Mike - we appreciated it and wish you the best in your new role.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I think it's time that someone starts asking the hard questions: What does Ray Winninger think about Bonus Actions?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Lost Mines pretty much copied Pathfinder format.

Go grab part I of a lot of Pathfinder APs going back to Rise of the Runelords and the Savage Tide.

WotC figured it out. Paizo copied WotC so it's all good

To be fair the "Adventure Path"-type format had been evolving since at least the very early '90s, both in D&D, and in other RPGs (you can make a case for further back, but I think it's a weaker one, because the adventure series of the 1980s tend to be less connected, and have a lot less story). It's not like Paizo plucked it out of thin air, they just gave it a specific name.

 

[Morrus]

To be fair the "Adventure Path"-type format had been evolving since at least the very early '90s, both in D&D, and in other RPGs (you can make a case for further back, but I think it's a weaker one, because the adventure series of the 1980s tend to be less connected, and have a lot less story).

The Dragonlance AP was, what, mid-80s?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I converted it and ran it in my game not long after it came out.

As an adventure: in terms of design, layout (i.e. floorplan), monsters, etc. for a low-level dungeon I've seen far better and I've also seen far, far worse.

As a publication: in terms of writing, content, editing, layout (i.e. what's on the page), etc. it varied between OK and nonsensical. Some of that, I learned later, was due to 4e's weird ways of doing stuff; but some of it was simply a case of very obviously running out of space before running out of things that needed to be detailed (final boss encounter, I'm looking right at you as I say this).

It must have been weird to write the adventure, because Mike had six battle maps either given to him or that he had to find from WotC's collection to then somehow incorporate into the module. So I'm sure the narrative had to be twisted around to give reasons why the PCs were at these locations, and story that came out of them would not necessarily flow from one to another. It was almost like individual adventure pieces a la each chapter of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Not necessarily cohesive as a whole and the threads pulling you from one to the next were fairly taut and didn't players or DM much flexibility (aka "felt like railroading").

It's a situation that I think many dungeon designers would actually find intriguing to try and do "Here are six battle maps, use all of them plus one map you can design yourself and create an adventure!", but trying to do that plus all the other design work I'm sure Mike was doing at the time to help get 4E finalized and out the door probably didn't give him much time to massage its form into a better place.