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

[Fildrigar]

King County does have three high profile death penalty murder cases that began in October/November. ( http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/...dashand-hugely-expensive/Content?oid=20991684 ) It's a huge deal, and if the jury he is sitting on is one of those, well, those can take a while. Often in these cases, the jury gets selected at one point in time ( and the legal wrangling over who's on the jury gets set then ) and then the trial actually starts sometime later.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And if the jury gets sequestered...

 

[Sunseeker]

Interesting.

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

There may also have been a gap in the trial, which is not uncommon.

 

[77IM]

Wild speculation: the "key person" but is out on jury duty is Mearls himself. Somehow the image of Mearls working evenings to keep things moving makes more sense to me, than him blaming delays on some other employee's jury duty. And who else would have final approval?

 

[pedr]

I have a vague recollection of one of D&D's tweeting R&D staff mentioning being on a jury a few months back. That's why I think this may be two different people - but it could be the same one, with an increased level of "don't tweet anything about being on this jury" directions from the judge.

I could be misremembering though.

 

[ExploderWizard]

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.

Yes. Cross training/redundancy is crucial when the staff is small.

 

[Queer Venger]

Ive served on jury duty, but fortunately never for a big months long case. If this staffer is sequestered, it makes it all the more an issue, because they are not allowed to communicate via phone/media/etc. Hopefully they reach a conclusion soon and this staffer can get back to work. Wizard's must pay for jury duty, because if they don't, this poor chap is out of his salary for 6 months.

 

[Zaran]

And if the jury gets sequestered...

I'm assuming the jury is sequestered or the Gozer the Article Master would be able to put their stamp of approval on things.

 

[thalmin]

I would assume that more than just a "stamp of approval" is needed, like maybe an expert check for accuracy or completeness or something..

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

It seems that (if it is only one person on jury duty) they thought the priority of the UA articles was high enough to shift them to someone else, while that isn't the case for the conversion stuff. Or, as has been suggested by others, the conversion rules needs some special attention, that can't easily be reassigned.

In any case, it was nice of Mearls to give us a heads-up.