Joe Manganiello Compares Baldur’s Gate 3 to Early Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition

Joe Manganiello loves Baldur’s Gate 3 and sees the game as keeping in the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons than current material released by Wizards of the Coast. Speaking to ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview, Manganiello compared the Game of the Year Award-winner to other Dungeons & Dragons products and spoke about the direction of Dungeons & Dragons as a whole. “This is what I love about the game, is that everyone has a completely different experience,” Manganiello said of Baldur’s Gate 3. “Baldur’s Gate 3 is like what D&D is in my mind, not necessarily what it’s been for the last five years.” 

In fact, Manganiello said that Dungeons & Dragons has departed from what the creators of the popular Fifth Edition ruleset envisioned when they first set out to revise the game’s ruleset over a decade ago. “I think that the actual books and gameplay have gone in a completely different direction than what Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson and Peter Lee and Rob Schwab [envisioned],” Manganiello said. 

The actor explained to ComicBook.com the origins of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, with Mearls and other designers part of a “crack team” who helped to resurrect the game from a low point due to divisive nature of Fourth Edition. “They thought [Dungeons & Dragons] was going to be over,” Manganiello said. “Judging by the [sales] numbers of Fourth Edition, the vitriol towards that edition, they decided that it was over and that everyone left the game. So Mike Mearls was put in charge of this team to try to figure out what to do next. And they started polling some of the fans who were left. But whoever was left from Fourth Edition were really diehard lovers of the game. And so when you reach out and ask a really concentrated fanbase about what to do next, you’re going to get good answers because these are people who have been there since the jump and say what is wrong. And so the feedback was really fantastic for Fifth Edition and Mearls was smart enough, he listened to it all and created this edition that was the most popular tabletop gaming system of all time.” 

Mearls is listed as one of the lead designers of D&D in the 2014 Player’s Handbook alongside Jeremy Crawford, with Crawford acting as the lead of the Player’s Handbook, Additionally, Crawford, Christopher Perkins, and James Wyatt were the leads for the 2014 Dungeon’s Master Guide and Perkins served as the Lead Designer of the Monster Manual. 

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.”

Manganiello also stated that he got officially involved with Dungeons & Dragons in hopes of making a Dragonlance adaptation, which resulted in him becoming a brand ambassador and paid consultant. While Manganiello worked on a live-action Dragonlance project (which he now says has been cancelled), his other efforts with Dungeons & Dragons eventually led to his celebrity-laden D&D game at his home and multiple other projects. Still, Manganiello noted that his efforts with Dungeons & Dragons were all born out of a single goal – to get a live action Dragonlance project made. More details about that project and where it stands can be found here.