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.

 

[Jester David]

Maybe...but it especially sucks when one is being told to convert stuff from DnD classics as a solution to not a lot of product coming out...

Yes, yes it does suck. But it's hard to get mad when it's because someone got stuck on jury duty for five months.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Yes, yes it does suck. But it's hard to get mad when it's because someone got stuck on jury duty for five months.

Well, it should be, but apparently...

 

[Colmarr]

Yes, yes it does suck. But it's hard to get mad when it's because someone got stuck on jury duty for five months.

I disagree.

I don't think any business in the world would have the chutzpah to tell their customers/potential customers, "Sorry, Mr X is on jury duty for four months. No one else in our organisation has the skills or time to look at that product you want until he's back, so just hang tight, ok?"

Even if the product in question is free, it's something you've promised your customers. Advertise that your team and/or budget is so small that you can't work around the unavailability of one person is, to be frank, somewhat mind-blowing to me.

 

[Jester David]

I disagree.

I don't think any business in the world would have the chutzpah to tell their customers/potential customers, "Sorry, Mr X is on jury duty for four months. No one else in our organisation has the skills or time to look at that product you want until he's back, so just hang tight, ok?"

Even if the product in question is free, it's something you've promised your customers. Advertise that your team and/or budget is so small that you can't work around the unavailability of one person is, to be frank, somewhat mind-blowing to me.

It could be a micro-managing individual who likes that they're needed. Or the redundancy in the department could have been laid off so there's no one who knows the details.
Either way, I doubt the D&D team has any control and would really like not to rely on that one person.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

I disagree.

I don't think any business in the world would have the chutzpah to tell their customers/potential customers, "Sorry, Mr X is on jury duty for four months. No one else in our organisation has the skills or time to look at that product you want until he's back, so just hang tight, ok?"

Even if the product in question is free, it's something you've promised your customers. Advertise that your team and/or budget is so small that you can't work around the unavailability of one person is, to be frank, somewhat mind-blowing to me.

Are you for real? Businesses break promises all the time, and far bigger ones than a free conversion guide for a D&D edition at that. Wizards doesn't have to put out a conversion guide. No one's pre-ordered them, no one's Kickstartered them. No money has changed hands. Wizards could decide tomorrow that they don't think putting out conversion guides would make good business sense, or would eat up employee time that could be better spent on other products, or Mearls and co. could just announce they didn't feel the project creatively and axe it.

There's eight folks working on the D&D rpg right now - seven, if one of them is out for jury duty for the next few months. If none of the seven others can handle the conversion docs, it's probably because they're working on other stuff!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I disagree.

I don't think any business in the world would have the chutzpah to tell their customers/potential customers, "Sorry, Mr X is on jury duty for four months. No one else in our organisation has the skills or time to look at that product you want until he's back, so just hang tight, ok?"

Happens every day.

If your business is centered around the skills of a key person, and that person is unavailable, nothing can be done. I'm a solo practice lawyer. If I can't do X task, X task won't get done. The last time I got called for jury duty, it set me back more than a week.

My father is a solo practice doctor. He nearly wound up getting called for jury duty on a capital murder case. That cost him a day. He had a health scare that hospitalized him for most of a week. His patients had to wait or make other arrangements.

And when he got called up for Desert Storm for several months, it nearly bankrupted him.

My Mom handles his books. She went on a trip for a week in 2013, leaving him to do his own accounting. He screwed it up so badly, the staff was lucky to get paid- we're still cleaning up some of his mistakes.

One of my computer jockey buddies was a member of a 3 man team. Over time, that team was whittled down to him. They refused a reasonable salary increase request, and he opted to look for another job. They hired another guy, but it turned out the replacement wasn't as proficient at the job as my buddy. He got hired back a "consultant" to train his replacement for a few months...at a higher salary. In the time between his quitting and their realization of how badly screwed they were, the company was stymied.

 

[Colmarr]

Are you for real? Businesses break promises all the time, and far bigger ones than a free conversion guide for a D&D edition at that.

And how many of them advertise the fact that the promise is broken because they can't handle one guy being absent? I'm not a 5e player so the delay doesn't bother me at all but the PR stuns me.

I didn't know there were only eight people working on the brand. I can understand that losing access to 1/8 of your workforce is a problem. Perhaps not as much of a problem as the fact that the workforce is only 8 to begin with...

 

[bogmad]

Since Mearls said "approve" not write, it's probably someone in a managerial or legal role and not really part of the (small) D&D team.

I had the same thought. Then I thought it was just amazing if they were from legal and actually got selected to the jury! How rarely do both sides let an actual lawyer slip through selection?
Don't get me wrong though: Sucks for the delay, but really, life happens sometimes. Let's not protest the moon landing just yet.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It is rare but it happens.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

And how many of them advertise the fact that the promise is broken because they can't handle one guy being absent? I'm not a 5e player so the delay doesn't bother me at all but the PR stuns me.

I didn't know there were only eight people working on the brand. I can understand that losing access to 1/8 of your workforce is a problem. Perhaps not as much of a problem as the fact that the workforce is only 8 to begin with...

Eh, it's only a problem if you're expecting to see a lot of 5E product come down the pipeline. Keeping the D&D staff small means less expenses means more profit for the division. I believe the actual size of the D&D division is ~16 (not sure if that's the number from before or after recent layoffs), but only half of it is working on the RPG side of things. The other half is working on licensing and branding side of things - stuff like D&D board games, video games and movies. Tabletop games are not a very large market, and Wizards is looking to expand D&D beyond it. The tabletop game will still exist but it'll only be receiving minimal support to keep the name alive, now that the core books have sold the real profits will come from the other half of the team that have nothing to do with the game itself.