The Gaming Den

https://www.enworld.org/threads/ray-win ... pg.671785/

Mike Mearls has apparently no longer been working on DnD since some time last year, and has instead been replaced by Ray Winninger, someone I've never heard of but apparently worked on some 2nd edition products way back when. Any thoughts?

Interesting. If Mearls was out in early 2019, as suggested by the early date of his final relevant tweet, that would suggest that all the D&D books that were cross-promotion with other media were the new guy's idea. Acquisitions Incorporated, the Wildemount (read: Critical Role) book, Rick and Morty, the Stranger Things starter set, all started happening around May of 2019, which is also when they mostly stopped doing stuff like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes where once a year they'd dust off some obscure D&D character from the 80s and name a bunch of recycled UA content after them. I wonder if that change in direction is related?

I love how D&D official output has been so slow that they could legit fire the head of the department and have nobody even notice for six months.

Winninger is a weird choice. As far as I recall, he's just a replacement level TSR era author. Like, from the nineties. You can read his Dungeon Magazine columns Here. They are generally fine, if rather dated by their close association with 2nd edition AD&D. Maybe we should do an OSSR of Underground or TORG.

I thought he quit RPGs altogether like twenty years ago. So it's odd to see him as anyone's boss.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I love how D&D official output has been so slow that they could legit fire the head of the department and have nobody even notice for six months.

LOL

I think that the BG3 video game might also fit in with what Chamomile stated. Apparently Winninger was a senior platform strategist for a while at Microsoft? It seems likely they wanted someone with at least a basic understanding of the brand, and some actual business sense instead of allowing D&D to languish being lumped in with chutes&ladders in Hasbro's quarterly earnings calls. On top of that, he's probably less likely to lash out against his customer base on twitter every few months. Of course the comments are just gold. "But it's the most popular edition ever!" No. Critical Role is popular, that's got nothing to do with Mike Mearls, his UA napkin note garbage, his big books of idiotic tables, and the inane drivel he was known for spewing on twitter.

How are decisions made for the overall direction of D&D anyways

Dartboard.

I associate the name Ray Winninger with superhero games. Specifically the DC Heroes RPG from the '80s.

hogarth wrote:I associate the name Ray Winninger with superhero games. Specifically the DC Heroes RPG from the '80s.

Also FASA Doctor WHO in the 80s.

But to the best of my knowledge he hasn't written anything in the industry this century.

-Username17

So out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at Winninger's twitter. It was basically dead right up until mid Feb 2019, which is about the time that incident with Mearls and Zak(I'm not familiar with the details) seems to have come to a head, and not too long after that

WinningerR
@WinningerR
·
Mar 13, 2019
Promised my WotC team I’d run D&D to thank them for kicking so much butt. 5E should work okay with a party of 12, right? #dnd #wotc

So they've had him onboard for quite a while, probably dealing with any necessary re-organization, kicking off some of the above mentioned projects and cross brand marketing, and what seems like a gigantic internal HR mess.

D&D being like Monopoly where the mechanics don't change but you have a Pokemon Monopoly or Animal Crossing Monopoly sounds like a steady strategy

The rise of streaming and youtube means the main engagement is people watching professional actors have a Good Time, buying some books, and then watching youtube together... instead of going to forums where you can type a long analysis of lvl X class disparity or charop races.

OgreBattle wrote:D&D being like Monopoly where the mechanics don't change but you have a Pokemon Monopoly or Animal Crossing Monopoly sounds like a steady strategy

The rise of streaming and youtube means the main engagement is people watching professional actors have a Good Time, buying some books, and then watching youtube together... instead of going to forums where you can type a long analysis of lvl X class disparity or charop races.

I doubt they'd attempt to rely on that long term. However considering the current edition of D&D is honestly just a basic ruleset anyway, it makes sense to slap another label on it and cross promote. Even Old Spice and Wendy's have done it to an extent, WotC not doing so themselves is just idiotic. As far as the AI and CR stuff, they're a perfectly reasonable source for setting material these days as well.

Really the fact that there's only been 2 main setting books(ravnica, which likely came down as a demand from upon high, and then eberron) otherwise with no other material to support things players and DMs want to do in their games is why Matt Colville got $2.1 million for his kickstarter... which anyone with any business sense at WotC would see as dollars pissed away by doing nothing when there is a clear demand for product.

Hopefully in the long term this means whatever plans Mearls had for a 5.5 or 6e(lol, as if he was actually going to do anything), have been tossed into a shredder.

What's the content of that 2 mil kickstarter

OgreBattle wrote:What's the content of that 2 mil kickstarter

New features for every class, different types of strongholds for classes and their abilities and retainer types, bestiary, warfare rules, a little adventure, and so on. They only wanted $30 for the hardcover too compared to WotC wanting $50 for their books half full of random name generation tables.

I guess DnD is just going to have to find a way to survive without rapping dwarves.

K wrote:I guess DnD is just going to have to find a way to survive without rapping dwarves.

That video is unfortunately burned in my brain, I will never not think of that when I see the name "Mearls". I...STILL can't believe that video

I have to say, that table of contents definitely piques my interest. If I DMed a 5e game I would probably try and pick it up. God, I really want a good domain level D&D game that’s not written by a far right asshole.

FrankTrollman wrote:I thought he quit RPGs altogether like twenty years ago.

He did. According to his LinkedIn he started working for Microsoft in 2001 and stayed there for 10 years before doing product development work for a string of tech companies (including and most recently Amazon) until August 2018 when he came to WotC. I wonder why Winninger came back to RPGs. Maybe he just already has a shitzillion dollars and is ready and able to work on his hobby full time.

Incidentally, Mearls' LinkedIn does not show any job title changes since December 2017, so if Mearls is out it's entirely unofficial and he's still employed at WotC in some capacity. People over on that other site have alluded to Mearls somehow aiding and abetting Shitmuffin in his shittiness right around February 2019, when Mearls apparently ceased any public-facing activity representing the D&D brand. Something about Mearls exposing Shitmuffin's accusers' info to him? But no one over there is actually providing details; does anyone here know the actual story?

Mord wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:I thought he quit RPGs altogether like twenty years ago.

He did. According to his LinkedIn he started working for Microsoft in 2001 and stayed there for 10 years before doing product development work for a string of tech companies (including and most recently Amazon) until August 2018 when he came to WotC. I wonder why Winninger came back to RPGs. Maybe he just already has a shitzillion dollars and is ready and able to work on his hobby full time.

Well, he's listed as a manager rather than a writer, so my guess is that this job isn't all that different from the product manager jobs he did in the past.

saithorthepyro wrote:Mike Mearls has apparently no longer been working on DnD since 2014

Fixed that for you.

So in general, how should making a tabletop RPG and publishing content be organized?

Any companies good at it?

Awesome, maybe he'll do a good job of the all three books the company publishes in the next six years.

I don't know, it seems like he's ramping up book production if we consider Eberron, Wildemount, Rick and Morty vs D&D, and the Stranger Things set as all happening under him. We might be looking at two to four books per year.

Seemingly, Mearls is back at the dnd division (hopefully not at the lead, even if that'd be just par for the course for 2020)

https://twitter.com/CHofferCBus/status/ ... 7583656962