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.

 

[HobbitFan]

If Twitter is their microphone for lack of a better word, then perhaps they should be more cognizant of what they say when they step up to the mike.

 

[Lwaxy]

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Everyone in my on my other forums, my gaming groups, the FLGS, even in some off topic chat rooms knew about the delay a few hours after it was posted, including those who don't play any sort of D&D - which is actually most of them. So the Twitter communication did just what it was supposed to do.

EN World was the only place I frequent more often where there was any sort of complaint beyond a few curses in karma's general direction.

 

[Morrus]

If Twitter is their microphone for lack of a better word, then perhaps they should be more cognizant of what they say when they step up to the mike.

Or perhaps talking casually to fans like they were real people and fellow gamers rather than PR targets is a wonderful social media strategy which reaps benefits, aside from the odd one tweet in a thousand which gets torn apart by ravenous dogs.

I like that the people who make the games I love are free to engage in casual conversation about them. We are *so* lucky - when I was playing D&D at college, that was not an option. This oppressive desire to limit and control that normal human interaction is, frankly, depressing.

So they might misphrase something occasionally. So what? Who cares? They're writing leisure gaming products, not negotiating the end of the Cold War.

 

[HobbitFan]

Or perhaps talking casually to fans like they were real people and fellow gamers rather than PR targets is a wonderful social media strategy which reaps benefits, aside from the odd one tweet in a thousand which gets torn apart by ravenous dogs.

I like that the people who make the games I love are free to engage in casual conversation about them. We are *so* lucky - when I was playing D&D at college, that was not an option. This oppressive desire to limit and control that normal human interaction is, frankly, depressing.

So they might misphrase something occasionally. So what? Who cares? They're writing leisure gaming products, not negotiating the end of the Cold War.

I think you might have misintrepreted me or I wasn't clear myself. I wasn't meaning to say that I wanted WOTC to disavow honesty or clarity in pursuit of santitized PR responses.
What I was trying to say was that WOTC should consider what they say and the audience they're addressing, just as we should talking to people everyday.

There's a difference between saying (as I thought I was trying to) "they should think about what they say.." and your take away from what I wrote. At least in my mind, there seems to be a disconnect between the two.

We're responsible for what we say. WOTC is responsible for what they say, as individuals and as an organization.
And we are all responsible for how we react to what others say.

Why go on about this? I wanted to see the open communication, honesty and good will continue from the playtest period into 5E.
Instead, communication and information has largely dried up, with responses now coming largely as responses to specific narrow questions on social media like twitter.
They're not talking about their products or their plans.
That, in part, is why people over-analyze what they (WOTC) do say to the fans.
If you speak very little, people tend to pick apart what you say.
Can the audience do better? Possible...we can certainly try. And despite the negativity on some threads say on this forum, I think people are hopeful for 5E and rooting for WOTc to succeed. I am, but I am also a little cynical because of the way 4E went down.
Could they do better? I think so but I don't know what's going n behind the scenes with them.

 

[travathian]

That rather redefines the entire concept of microblogging. You may well do that when you tweet, but the world doesn't.

College student posting about how drunk they got at a party last night? No.

Companies making an announcement? Uh, yeah?
Sony, Microsoft, CNN, ESPN, Google, Home Depot, Sears, The White House. Check em, many of their posts have links to their parent homepage for more detailed info. They just used URL shrinking websites to create a link that will fit in the character limits of twitter.

Sorry Morrus, but he could have easily said "4 month delay in Conversion Docs. <insert link>" and fit within the concept and real world use of microblogging.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sorry Morrus, but he could have easily said "4 month delay in Conversion Docs. <insert link>" and fit within the concept and real world use of microblogging.

And said link would lead to something along the lines of "product awaiting final approval by person who is unavailable due to jury duty."

Instead, they just skipped that step; saved everyone the time & hassle of following a link that provided the info they contained in a single tweet.



Or do you think there's more to it? What more would you have them say?

 

[Mark CMG]

Or do you think there's more to it?

The more to it seems to be that just about everyone is focused on whether it is reasonable to expect them to leave it sit four to six months while someone is off at jury duty rather than why the conversion docs weren't developed prior to release with the help of legions of playtesters then released with the Basic rules or in the Fall like they first suggested they would be or in early 2015 like they next suggested they would be. I can't help but wonder why the focus is on why a fumbled attempt to share information on Twitter seems to be what people find the major problem regarding the conversion document(s).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True, and I'll get to that.

My question really was more along the lines of why are people focusing on the fact that the reason for the delay was given in a tweet and saying the explanation should have been more fleshed out...when- if the product actually is being delayed for that reason- there really is nothing more to be said. In fact, they might not have any more info to share than that. The tweet is sufficient, accurate, and efficient.

Returning to the issue of why conversion documents weren't released as part of the rollout, well...companies are entitled to alter the release dates of their products as need be, and sometimes, they do so for very good reasons. And they may have had some.

However, I'm one of those who really appreciated the 2Ed=>3Ed conversion document- I have a few, and got good use of them- and thought that one of the major flaws of the 4Ed rollout was the lack of conversion documents.* So even if they had good reasons for not including such documents in the initial release, I can't help but see that lack as a flaw in the rollout. They didn't learn the lesson, and have repeated it.

I suspect that the rage over the former is merely venting of frustration based on the facts of the latter.





* That lack, along with the oft-noted directive to simply "start new campaigns" led to some hard feelings and a definite mass of anecdotal evidence that it delayed many players from trying 4Ed out for a long time...for some, ever.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, I have a question here. For those who have criticised WOTC in this thread for any of the following: dishonesty, incompetence, or disingenuousness.

What do you hope to accomplish?

I'm serious. If you honestly believe, and I have no reason to doubt you, that WOTC is being dishonest when it says that the reason that the conversions docs will be 4 months later is because of jury duty, then what do you hope to accomplish by talking about it? Do you think they're going to suddenly reverse policy and start saying something else? What are your expectations?

When a company did something that I felt was dishonest and bothered me, I voted with my feet. I stopped buying their products and stopped frequenting their websites and stopped talking about them. I went from someone who would regularly cheer the company to someone who rarely, if ever, actually directly talks about their products. I am no longer their customer and fair enough.

If you think WOTC is being dishonest, why on earth would you not simply vote with your feet? It's not like it's 1985 anymore. There are half a dozen very well supported D&D games out there that are D&D in everything except name. Pathfinder, 3e, OSR games, you name it. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from enjoying D&D and having nothing to do with WOTC.

So, with that in mind, what's the point here? You think (whoever you happen to be) that WOTC is either dishonest or incompetent. Thing is, nothing has really changed from WOTC in years. It's been like this for darn near a decade now. WOTC has become increasingly tight lipped with fans, never less. Back in the early Oughts, you'd see all sorts of WOTC people over here talking about the game. Then that dropped to Scott Rouse. Now, seeing a WOTC rep over here is like seeing Bigfoot. Considering these criticisms of dishonestly and incompetence have been coming around and around, generally by the same group of posters, again and again, year after year, at what point do you give it up for a bad idea?

So, again, what exactly do you hope to accomplish by constant kvetching on the honesty of WOTC announcements?

 

[billd91]

True, and I'll get to that.

My question really was more along the lines of why are people focusing on the fact that the reason for the delay was given in a tweet and saying the explanation should have been more fleshed out...when- if the product actually is being delayed for that reason- there really is nothing more to be said. In fact, they might not have any more info to share than that. The tweet is sufficient, accurate, and efficient.

Except that, I think, there should be more to be said. Are there other products they're planning on selling that are also delayed? What are they doing to alleviate the bottleneck? Are they alleviating the bottleneck on products they'll be selling but leaving the free conversion guide to rest as a lower priority?

I know a lot of people have been saying that issues like jury duty have a pretty big impact on small companies. But the fact is WotC isn't a small company. The D&D team may be pretty small within WotC, but WotC should be able to marshal resources to work through most bottleneck issues. If the conversion guide isn't high enough priority to merit that treatment (and, being free, I can see why it might not), it would be nice to hear that it's an exception rather than fuel the idea that everything may be jammed up in the same bottleneck.