D&D 5E Mike Mearls' five tweets on the jury duty hold-up

Just so people are properly informed, Mike Mearls had made five tweets about an important Wizards staff-member being on jury duty. I've posted those tweets below.

GamerZack7: "@mikemearls Any word on when we can expect new articles such as #UnearthedArcana? Any info would be much appreciated. Thanks! ^_^"
Mike Mearls: Jan 20, 2015: "@GamerZack7 a key person on staff is on jury duty, so our schedule has been pushed back. We should hit January, though."

Barantor: "@mikemearls Folks on twitter keep talking about Warforged and Kinder a lot lately, weren't these supposed to be in an article eventually?"
Mike Mearls:, Jan 22, 2015: "@Barantor Yes, warforged will be up first - jury duty has messed with our plans, but stuff is moving along"

iRonin: "@mikemearls When can we look forward to those new columns you outlined over a month and a half ago?"
Mike Mearls: Jan 21, 2015: "@iRonin Near the end of the month - we tried to avoid a specific date because things (in this case, jury duty) have messed with schedule"

pukunui81: "@mikemearls Whatever happened to the conversion guides coming out last fall? Are they still a thing, or have you given up on the idea?"
Mike Mearls: Mar 15, 2015: "@pukunui81 person who handles final approval is on a jury for a fairly intense trial - out for six months"

WolfHunter83:@mikemearls Hi! There's a chance you can update us about the writing of the D&D 5e conversion documents?
Mike Mearls, Mar 17, 2015: [MENTION=32418]Wolfhunter[/MENTION]83 the person who needs to do the final approvals on them is serving on a jury that will take another 4 or so months. Sorry!

Cheers!

Interesting.

Looks like they found some workaround, since the first couple articles went out.

I just assumed that there were two different people on jury duty, and the article hold up ended because that person got back. I know it feels like our office gets hit in clusters (probably just coincidence). But who knows, maybe it was only one individual.

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As much as I understand the reasons for cutting the staff down - this is an unfortunate side effect of that. When one person becomes a bottleneck, they should consider having another person around who can fill in in a pinch.

Hmmm... That might explain why we're getting trickles rather than steady stream.

I hope the trial ends sooner rather than later. Maybe we'll have an awesome 2nd half of the year? /hopespringseternal

Sounds like the conversio guides - like the Eberron thing - were part of UA. They've managed to shift some of the UA burden over to someone else in the meantime, but not all of it. So we have Eberron, but not conversions yet.

5E, the jury is still out.

lkj said:

I just assumed that there were two different people on jury duty, and the article hold up ended because that person got back. I know it feels like our office gets hit in clusters (probably just coincidence). But who knows, maybe it was only one individual.

Click to expand...

That's what I've been wondering too. Is there ever a gap between being selected for jury duty and the trial actually starting? I'm just wondering if it's possible that the guy might have been called up back in December or January - and so there was an initial delay while he was going through the selection / vetting process - but he was then able to get back to work for a short while before having to go do the trial, which would explain why we've had a few UA articles and such since the initial jury duty hold-up tweet.

lkj said:

I just assumed that there were two different people on jury duty, and the article hold up ended because that person got back. I know it feels like our office gets hit in clusters (probably just coincidence). But who knows, maybe it was only one individual.

Click to expand...

Looks like one individual based on the timeline presented. Stuff got messed up at the end of January due to someone being on jury duty. Two months later, Mike's tweets say that somebody is on jury duty for 6 months and has 4 more months to go.

So they've been cut down to the manpower of a small company, but still have the bureaucratic sclerosis of a much larger one. Isn't that just the worst of both worlds.