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...

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.

Ray_Winninger_at_MIX08_2_crop.jpg



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."
 

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Mistwell

Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
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 -

I saw that Twitter feed and I don't think anyone in that feed made an accusation about Mearls sharing their emails to Zak. I saw a lot of random people making that assumption about what happened, not that it happened to them. If I missed something I'd like to see it. Though, I'd like to see their evidence that happened as opposed to just their accusation.
 

BenTheFerg

Explorer
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.
And the sandbox nature of Phandelver echoes earlier AD&D products such as Book/ Act 1 in the epic Night Below.
 


the Jester

Legend
I have mixed feelings about Mearls.

Clearly he effed up with the Zak S situation. He took Zak’s side and bad mouthed the people sharing their stories of problematic interactions with Zak. And shared their emails with Zak, allowing him to harass them in retaliation for speaking out against him.

Except, while all of that has been repeatedly bandied about, nobody has ever, to the best of my knowledge, provided even one scrap of actual evidence that it happened like that. There's lots of speculation, but every time this comes up and someone asks for evidence, the same not-evidence keeps being produced.

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 -

I didn't dig too far into that mess, but I couldn't find those replies. Can/would you link them directly? I am a fan of Mearls and am happy to defend him in this matter, but if I'm wrong, I'd like to see the evidence.
 

I saw that Twitter feed and I don't think anyone in that feed made an accusation about Mearls sharing their emails to Zak. I saw a lot of random people making that assumption about what happened, not that it happened to them. If I missed something I'd like to see it. Though, I'd like to see their evidence that happened as opposed to just their accusation.
Except, while all of that has been repeatedly bandied about, nobody has ever, to the best of my knowledge, provided even one scrap of actual evidence that it happened like that. There's lots of speculation, but every time this comes up and someone asks for evidence, the same not-evidence keeps being produced.
Game designer Olivia Hill was an outspoken critic of Zak and blamed him for harassment, and threats made against her and her children by Zak’s supporters.

In 2014, when Mearls asked the community for evidence of Zak’s harassment she shared her experiences with an anonymous burner email created for that purpose. After sharing her story, she was harassed by Zak at that email.
She has reported this multiple times on her Twitter feed over the last five years.
 





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