That seems like a huge change from "They'll follow the existing 5-year plan that the previous employees set up" which seemed to be your previous position, but okay.
I think you'll find that I didn't say anything that concrete, but okay.
I just don't think that what you're describing is a meaningful plan in most actual cases. It's usually a real plan for 1-2 years, and then suddenly 1-3 years in, there's another, different 5-year plan (which is also not being followed in the end lol).
Yeah, again.
That's where we differ. You think that a 5-year plan should be discounted as meaningless (and therefore should be defined as "not being followed" if it's flexible. I think that is simply
what a 5-year plan looks like.
Five years of that? Yes that is far, far, far too much of a plan, and further it is, by the accounting of Ray Winninger himself not how WotC operates. According to Winninger, who should know, they very regularly cancelled planned or possible books and added new ones to the line up and so on.
Wait - were you thinking that those "Book A, Book B" that (I don't even remember who suggested them) described were
defined? I saw that simply as a loose idea as to how many books they'd release (and approximately when) which is why I'd say that the plan would likely be
more developed than that. If you think that those books have titles and expected contents, then no - of course it's not that defined. It's very likely somewhere between.
With respect, it very much continues to look like you are, and that your entire position appears to be "Okay maybe this 'plan' is totally malleable and vague but it will nonetheless keep D&D on track for five years!". Is that not your position? Because to me expecting this plan to not be torn up and thrown away by early 2027 and replaced by different planning just seems completely unrealistic.
Nah. At this point I simply think that you have no idea what I'm talking about, and I'd rather just leave it alone. I don't think what we envision is all that far apart, but we're getting caught on something where it seems to me that you are making things very black-and-white where I see them as quite a bit more gray.
If it goes on for five years? Yes it is pretty excessively precise actually. It's kind of ludicrous to make a five-year plan at all in this sort of situation, unless you fully expect to ditch it and re-plan 1-2 years in - and then you still need to ask yourself why you're doing it and how realistic it is. To me that's some wank (and I don't direct that term at you at all, but at this kind of faux-planning time-wasting) that someone's exit plan required them to do, but that's completely and totally meaningless beyond the next 12-24 months.
You keep getting hung up on the word
meaningless. I think it's probably where our disconnect lies.
Let me ask you a question? Do you honestly believe this "5-year plan" (still very funny to use this term in this context as
@Nikosandros alluded to) will still be "in use" in, say 2028 or 2029? Because I just do not for one cold second believe that. It will have been chucked.
No, I simply think that if by 2029 they get to something that vaguely, maybe looks a little bit like the outline they made in 2024 then they basically followed it and it was a successful plan, not a meaningless one. It doesn't matter if Pet Project X didn't make the final cut.
It's not like this is a single, complex, time-consuming project they're slowly building up (like building an office block or something). It's just a publishing schedule.
That's MY point.
