The following is a video transcript

Todd Kenreck: D&D has never been more popular than it is right now, and that's why I talked to Mike Mearls about its place in pop culture. What makes it unique when you compare it to video games or films or comic books, that energy that exists around a table when you are sharing a story with your friends.

For the most part you must be very, very busy, working very hard to get books done, and doing with a very creative team, but you have to have a moment where you look in the mirror and you're like, "Oh my God, I work on D&D." This has to happen at some point.

Mike Mearls: I have those moments usually when I look in the mirror I think, "Oh my God I'm turning gray and I'm losing hair. I'm getting old."

There's a real sense, I think, then the D&D Team that we're having a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, but we're generally, and I hope this is reflected in the products that we are making, we have a lot of fun making these things because we get to ... It's part of our job, not the entirety of our job.

A lot of our job is doing the hard work of writing, creating, revising, polishing, refinishing, getting it done. But part of the job is this idea of sitting in the room then thinking, "What is the story of Halaster? What's this guy up to? Why is he here?" And combing through the Ken in the back archive and "What's been said before," and "What story is this telling?" and then, "What is interesting about this?" And then you start asking a lot of questions. You're brainstorming.

I think the really interesting thing to me about Dungeons and Dragons right now is I feel that ... I love to say this was all planned, but I mean, life is like half luck at least. I think D&D has hit ... Kind of it's having its moment again. It had its moment in the early '80s right? Well the other cartoon, this idea of a role playing game was completely new to people. But then I think with the video game crash of '83, I think we saw a similar decline in Dungeons and Dragons as fortunes.

Gaming as a hobby kind of took a hit when people saw the Atari 2600, the Intellevision as just like, whatever. This isn't something that ... It was a fad. It's going away. Arcades are going away. Games are for people who are nerdy enough to have a computer in their home, which 1985 was weird, right? Most homes did not have computers in them and you needed to have some basic level of technical competency to manage having a computer in your home. So I think D&D took a real hit then where it was starting to trend toward mainstream and a lot of factors pushed it back.

I think what we're seeing now is D&D is branching back out into the mainstream, and we live in an era now where it isn't weird to have a computer in your home. Everyone has a computer in their home. Everyone has a computer in the back pocket. Games are everywhere, they're ubiquitous.

Our gaming literacy as a culture in the western world at least, and in many cultures globally, is advancing to the point where the concept of a tabletop role playing game isn't really strange anymore. It might, to a lot of people, look like a natural outgrowth of the games they're already playing, whether it's an MMO or even just a mobile game they're playing like Claudio Clash of Clans, this idea of the storytelling game against the backdrop of a world where comic movies, fantasies, science fiction.

Science Fiction led the way in the 50s, kind of figuring out what it was, in the 60's getting kind of headier, more philosophical science fiction. Then the 70s, really starting to like as a cinematic force becoming more and more mainstream. Where going to see a science fiction movie in the 50s meant you're going to see some movie about some giant rubber headed space alien menacing some kids on the beach, right? It was whatever.

Then the 60s you started getting more like 2001 and Clockwork Orange like really heady, "Okay, now science fiction can tell serious stories."

Then kind of rebounding with Star Wars in the 70s to go ... Now we've kind of come full circle. We've got sort of the geeks interested in it and teenagers. Then we got college students and the intellectuals interested, and now we're getting mainstream American interested with Star Wars and Star Trek, and science fiction's everywhere.

Then I think comics and fantasy have followed a similar path of people. Now this is just mainstream entertainment. It's just accepted.

I think we have a world now where people are very gaming literate, much more than they used to be, so role playing isn't this incredibly daunting thing. It's still daunting, but nowhere near what it was.

Fantasy is ubiquitous and it's just part of our culture now.

Those two things coming together, and I think the third part being the social aspect of Dungeons and Dragons, that this is a game ... I remember doing this years ago. I went to Pax Prime or Pax West, whatever they call it these days up in Seattle, and I made a point of walking around the show floor. Instead of looking at the games ... All of the vendors, everybody has their giant screens up, but, "Here's the game. Here's our awesome new game." And the games are all really cool. They're some really good ones. Of course, I love video games, but I didn't pay any attention to the games. I watched the people playing the games. I made a point of going around and just watching, "What did people look like when they're playing the games?"

The interesting thing to me was I didn't see a single person smiling. I didn't see anyone laughing. Like here are the big games, whatever year it was, 2008, 2009, I can't remember, but no one was laughing, no one was smiling. Everyone just had this very like focused. You can tell. You know that. If you're a video game player, you know, that's like when you're in the zone, you're in that moment. But it was interesting to me that it was so demanding. It's fun. It's pleasurable, but it's very demanding.

When you watch people playing D&D you see something very different. You see people. It's social. It's funny, It's lighthearted. You're smiling. You're laughing.

I think as games have become more about PBP and more about, "Can you achieve this? Can you grind for this? Can you beat the super hard boss? Can you ... Here's the really cool loot chest you can get if you can accomplish all these things.

D&D really brings gaming back, I believe, to its roots. This is about relaxing. It's about being in a safe space in the sense of you're fighting a dragon, but there's no threat to you. Really just the question is "When will we beat the dragon?" It's funny. It's engaging. It's social. I like to compare it to if you play Overwatch ... I like playing Tracer and Overwatch. I'm not very good. In Overwatch, if I want to do something interesting I actually have to do it. If I make a little mistake, I'm ruined.

In D&D I just say, "Okay, I jump across the room, my gun's blazing and just before the guy turns and shoots me, I teleport back. I use my rewind ability and just do it." You roll the die and it just happens. The skill is more in the presentation.

So I think that's what is connecting with people. I think that's why we're having this, another cultural moment for a game that's 44 years old now. You don't get many of those. It's not often you get something that's 44 years old that's having its second, another moment, to really shine.

I think all those things coming together means this feels like an incredibly important, but fragile time to me, that D&D's prospering and why we're working so hard is because we want it to get even bigger and better and more people playing.

I genuinely feel when I walked around and saw all those people playing video games and like this very intense, but like stressed position, that people need role playing games in their lives. If you play a role playing game, you're just going to be happier. Just strictly happier. Unless you have awful people you're playing with and don't play the game with awful people. Go find your friends. Go find people you get along with.

If you play a role playing game once a week, I'm 100% convinced you will have a more enjoyable, happier, healthier life. They're just good for you. Socializing is good for you. Human beings, homo sapiens, we're a social creature. This is what we were made for. We're made to gather in tribes. We're made to gather around the fire and share stories. We're made to laugh. We're made to have there, those moments of drama.

Storytelliing is the entire foundation of our culture. Story is everything. Everything's a story. That's what we use to transfer information. That's how we preserve everything.

I think D&D is really tapping into something that I think is kind of for a lot of people has been neglected for a long time. That there's not a lot of things in their lives that give them this outlet, and what's been great about it is, it's now more accessible than ever.

I think that's really what is fueling everything we're doing is that kind of emotional need, but combined with the sense that, "Hey, I can do that. I don't need a gatekeeper to let me in. I can just grab my own starter set or grab the free rules off online. I just run it myself. I'll just find two, three, four other people who want to try this and we can just do it." I think that's really empowering.