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."

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Are those Dungeoncraft articles available anywhere? Under proper copyright that is.

I don’t think so. They were posted as articles on the WotC website several iterations ago, so maybe if you use the Wayback Machine you might find them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

3) It's full of rules errors. We went over this at the time.

To be fair, that was a general theme of 4e in its beginnings and only stopped at essentials, when it was just too late. If 4e had been like essentials, It wouldn´t have seperated the community that hard. Not that I can prove it, but it got way better then. Still, even at that point, even when the adventure was reading well, playing it as an rpg was a bad experience. When you advance only 1 or two rooms in a full 8 hour session, something is off.

To the topic. I am curious how DnD5e will go on under a new boss.
I am sad to see Mike Mearls leave so quietly because he had to. I was curious about that incident and digged a bit. Even though there may be victims, Mike´s role in that incident is not as clear as some people try to state as fact and he is harassed whenever he is making an appearance. And no matter what you have done, that is not how you are doing it in a democracy.

 

[Charlaquin]

KotSF

...I kinda liked Keep on the Shadowfell.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

...I kinda liked Keep on the Shadowfell.

I played in it and enjoyed it. And I don't think my DM did much moderation to it as he was a new DM and we were all new to 4e.

 

[Charlaquin]

I played in it and enjoyed it. And I don't think my DM did much moderation to it as he was a new DM and we were all new to 4e.

Pretty much the same. My DM at the time wasn’t new to DMing in general, but obviously we were all new to 4e. It certainly wasn’t a great adventure, but in my experience it was cromulent. And I was pretty skeptical going in, but by the end I was sold on 4e.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Pretty much the same. My DM at the time wasn’t new to DMing in general, but obviously we were all new to 4e. It certainly wasn’t a great adventure, but in my experience it was cromulent. And I was pretty skeptical going in, but by the end I was sold on 4e.

The encounter design was basically fine. If you had a low bar for what constitutes a good adventure and a party that doesn't ask questions, or need good plots, or enjoys interacting with NPCs, it's fine. As a showcase for 4E combat, it works.

As anything else? Pffffft, not sure about that.

And whilst it was criminally boring, at least it wasn't as IQ-loweringly stupid as Thunderspire Labyrinth (featuring the world's most poorly-explained random Green Dragon).

Mike´s role in that incident is not as clear as some people try to state as fact and he is harassed whenever he is making an appearance.

What exactly he did will never be clear, but in the absolute best-case scenario for him, he was unprofessional in public, and unacceptably careless. And that's the best-case scenario. Anything else is a lot worse and he should have been fired, so we have to hope it is the best case.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Ray wrote part of the infamous Castle Greyhawk module. His ascension was foreshadowed with Xort's appearance in MToF. So obvious in retrospect. Wheels within wheels....

 

[qstor]

4e needed to go under the bus...

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The encounter design was basically fine. If you had a low bar for what constitutes a good adventure and a party that doesn't ask questions, or need good plots, or enjoys interacting with NPCs, it's fine. As a showcase for 4E combat, it works.

As anything else? Pffffft, not sure about that.

And whilst it was criminally boring, at least it wasn't as IQ-loweringly stupid as Thunderspire Labyrinth (featuring the world's most poorly-explained random Green Dragon).



What exactly he did will never be clear, but in the absolute best-case scenario for him, he was unprofessional in public, and unacceptably careless. And that's the best-case scenario. Anything else is a lot worse and he should have been fired, so we have to hope it is the best case.

When the incident and Mike's connection/statement, and then WotC's statement came out, it was discussed at length on this site, til the threads, of course, got to the point where they had to be locked. But since I do not think locked threads are also deleted, they should still be archived here from about the time this all happened last year.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I wish I could find something that Ray Winninger has worked on. I'd like to get a better sense of his style of play.

I remember reading Dungeoncraft and enjoying it, but (a) the game was very different then, (b) the industry was very different then, and (c) I was very different then. It sounds like he might be a more experienced brand manager who has some game design experience rather than a game designer who's been forced into a management role.