At Least 4 Months For Conversion Documents

Those waiting for official conversion documents from earlier editions of D&D to 5th edition are going to have to wait a bit longer. WotC's Mike Mearls says that "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!" So it looks like we're talking July/August at the earliest. Thanks to Adrian for the scoop.

 

[lyle.spade]

Hey now - the Kickstarter to get this going was pretty successful. People love their ponies.

Pardon me while I go find a place to lay on my side and rock.

"Make the bad man stop...."

 

[mlund]

Eh, nobody should be surprised. This is how you adapt when throwing temporary help at a problem isn't a viable resolution (you can't afford it or the ramp-up takes too long, for two examples). If you lose a lynch-pin you redistribute the work however possible and reprioritize it.

The simplest example in this:

Cycle 1:
Employee A is responsible for: A1, B1, C1, D1
Employee B is responsible for: A2, A3, B2, and D2

Employee B is suddenly gone for the cycle.
Employee A is now responsible for: A1, A2, A3, and B1 while B2, C1, D1, and D2 are moved back into the backlog.

It's safe to assume that the "A" and "B" tasks / stories / projects are revenue drivers or blockers for revenue drivers. "D" rank projects are things like free give-aways. When the bottleneck hits the nice-to-haves and give-aways get tossed into the backlog first because otherwise you don't meet your revenue guidelines to the extent that you could have and you ignored the business's prioritization. The latter is a fast-track to getting fired.

The kanban giveth; the kanban taketh away.

Marty Lund

 

[DaveMage]

Alternately it's much more likely more than "final approval" is needed on this document, and Mearls is bending the truth, and I really don't like that from him at all.

I may be naive, but I've always seen mearls as a straight shooter. (I haven't always *liked* what he's said, but I've never found him to be dishonest or deceptive.)

 

[DaveDash]

I may be naive, but I've always seen mearls as a straight shooter. (I haven't always *liked* what he's said, but I've never found him to be dishonest or deceptive.)

I haven't really paid enough attention to determine whether he is a straight shooter or not, however my gut instinct tells me when dealing with the public at large straight shooters don't last too long in positions of PR.

I know for a fact that it would be a huge embarrassment to tell our customers "Hey, that enhancement that we said was coming out last year? It's in final approval but we have a guy on Jury duty so it won't be out for the next four months". They would seriously be wondering wtf kind of micky mouse outfit we are running if we couldn't get approval for something while one guy was away. It doesn't matter if it's free, paid for, or beta (play test), you just don't say things like that.
Companies also don't work like that, I highly doubt WoTC is any different. If this guy was in charge of getting out something that WoTC considered important, you could bet your bottom dollar that it WOULD be approved, whether after hours or otherwise.

It's all about expectation management. Mearls knows he set the "expectation" that something would be released and now he is trying to stick to that expectation and pass the blame off onto something else. Some people won't care, but to me to comes across as sly. Sure this stuff happens all the time, but don't think your customers are fools.

 

[Mirtek]

Well, WotC had the idea first unfortunately for them only as an april joke. If they had gone along with this, I predict that it would have outsold real D&D by a huge margin. We likely would not have seen 4e or 5e, but WotC concentratig solely on MLP D20, since this is were the money is.

 

[bmfrosty]

They should totally go for it. Equestria should be the next new campaign setting.

 

[Dire Bare]

People aren't annoyed because it's late. People are annoyed because Mearls seems to be pulling the wool over our eyes.

And I'm annoyed at the folks calling Mearls a liar. Especially over such a low priority product. You people amaze me. It's just mean-spirited conspiracy minded thinking that anyone at WotC would bother lying to you about something so trivial. Or even something actually meaningful. You have absolutely NO basis for that whatsoever. It says more about you than it does about Mearls or WotC.

Argh. I think I need to get away from this thread, it's getting toxic. AND we're discussing Ponyfinder . . . .

 

[Kramodlog]

People distrusting Mearls' message does not come out of no where. If the message about jury duty happened in a vacuum, you would be right. It is not the case however. WotC as a lot of problems credibility when it comes to announcements. Mearls' "You can't cancel what you haven't announce" is part of that problem. Going a few years back, WotC saying 4e's Fortune Cards were not a CCG, even if they clearly were, is another example.

WotC has a long way to go to win back trust when it comes to its communications.

 

[JeffB]

They should totally go for it. Equestria should be the next new campaign setting.

My little girl is 3 & a half and has started watching MLP on Discovery Family or whatever. I gotta admit there is some great stuff to steal for D&D games.

 

[Wicht]

My little girl is 3 & a half and has started watching MLP on Discovery Family or whatever. I gotta admit there is some great stuff to steal for D&D games.

Yeah, I'm not a brony by any stretch, but its a surprisingly good show, all things considered. I came pretty close to backing that Kickstarter when it started. For my daughters.