See https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/joe-manganiello-compares-baldurs-gate-3-to-early-dungeons-dragons-fifth-edition/

This important bit from the interview isn't in the edited video, and may well get scrubbed I suspect:

While Manganiello had high praise for Mearls, who was recently laid off at Wizards of the Coast as part of a wider set of layoffs, he was critical of how Mearls was removed from his role as the steward of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. Mearls was pushed out of his position as creative director of Dungeons & Dragons in 2019, at least partially due to a controversy surrounding designer Zak Smith, who Mearls brought on as a playtester and consultant during the early development of Fifth Edition. Smith was accused of sexual abuse in 2019 and Wizards of the Coast subsequently removed his name from the credits of the D&D Core Rulebooks.

Manganiello said that the controversy led to Mearls getting pushed out of the 'drivers' seat' for Dungeons & Dragons. "And then the Twitter mob rises up with the pitchforks and the torches and it was right in that kind of weird spot when all of that was at its height and everyone was listening to the mob in that way," Manganiello said. "There are some people within [Wizards of the Coast] that saw their opportunity to try to go for Mike's head and get him out of the driver's seat and they were successful and in the end they were allowed to do it. I told Mike at one point, it was like Jimmy Johnson winning back to back Super Bowls with the Cowboys and kicking him out and replacing him with Barry Switzer and then just dismantling the team. There were a bunch of people that saw the opportunity to take credit for what Mike did, to try to launch and alter the game into a new edition and it just has gone downhill since."

For the record - and I found the audio archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyDyRDYSpv0

Archived for posterity: https://archive.is/HvaCo

Fingers crossed for Kyle Brink being the next shining example of the change that he advocates for! 

Quote from: RNGm on February 10, 2024, 11:20:08 AM
Fingers crossed for Kyle Brink being the next shining example of the change that he advocates for!

WoTC seem to be heading full steam ahead into the iceburg in 2024. OTOH Hasbro tend to reward failure and punish success, so who knows.

5e owes a lot of its success to Mearls, and their demotion of him in the middle of the edition was an easy sign that the remainder of the edition was going to be generally worse. Plenty of actual players run core-only, or core plus a couple books, and are likely running 5.0 more or less as intended, and will never experience the preaching about races and ability scores and the scammy adventure books where they can't stop boasting about which birth groups they excluded from the group project and such.

I think 5.5 will sell plenty of PHB because it will buff the classes and have default rules banning the build options from 5.0 that were more powerful than the 5.5 ones.  Like classes they have refused to fix have the "official fix" saved for 5.5 or whatever.

But I don't think 5.5 is gonna have the total playerbase than 5.0 enjoyed.

Quote from: S'mon on February 10, 2024, 09:56:44 AM
See https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/joe-manganiello-compares-baldurs-gate-3-to-early-dungeons-dragons-fifth-edition/

This important bit from the interview isn't in the edited video, and may well get scrubbed I suspect:

While Manganiello had high praise for Mearls, who was recently laid off at Wizards of the Coast as part of a wider set of layoffs, he was critical of how Mearls was removed from his role as the steward of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. Mearls was pushed out of his position as creative director of Dungeons & Dragons in 2019, at least partially due to a controversy surrounding designer Zak Smith, who Mearls brought on as a playtester and consultant during the early development of Fifth Edition. Smith was accused of sexual abuse in 2019 and Wizards of the Coast subsequently removed his name from the credits of the D&D Core Rulebooks.

Manganiello said that the controversy led to Mearls getting pushed out of the 'drivers' seat' for Dungeons & Dragons. "And then the Twitter mob rises up with the pitchforks and the torches and it was right in that kind of weird spot when all of that was at its height and everyone was listening to the mob in that way," Manganiello said. "There are some people within [Wizards of the Coast] that saw their opportunity to try to go for Mike's head and get him out of the driver's seat and they were successful and in the end they were allowed to do it. I told Mike at one point, it was like Jimmy Johnson winning back to back Super Bowls with the Cowboys and kicking him out and replacing him with Barry Switzer and then just dismantling the team. There were a bunch of people that saw the opportunity to take credit for what Mike did, to try to launch and alter the game into a new edition and it just has gone downhill since."

I watched the video interview in its entirety.  This is accurate information.

Quote from: S'mon on February 10, 2024, 11:26:51 AM

Quote from: RNGm on February 10, 2024, 11:20:08 AM
Fingers crossed for Kyle Brink being the next shining example of the change that he advocates for!

WoTC seem to be heading full steam ahead into the iceburg in 2024. OTOH Hasbro tend to reward failure and punish success, so who knows.

Hasborg was the perfect match for wotc whos ideals are "Failure is the only option." and "If it aint broke. Break it!"