Slitherine

The fact that a number of people have a different interpretation to what you intended, is sufficient to justify an FAQ or a digital update to ensure there is no confusion and deal to those nasty rules lawyers.

I would be happy with a clear statement from the authors with maybe an example to show intent. That is what this forum is about, imho.

From my reading of the sentence: "A battle group in the restricted area of an enemy even partly behind its rear can move straight forwards." I read this sentence to imply that enemy must have some part of at least 1 stand somewhere to the rear of the BG. Implications aren't always easy things to grasp. I think that RBS is confirming in this thread that indeed part of an enemy BG must be in the rear for this sentence to apply.

Hopefully, "REAR" is defined in the rules. (Still haven't decided to buy the format)

Sorry - I have not seen any definition of "Rear" in the rules.

Also despite best intentions, there will still be many that challenge an interpretation that is based solely on comments on the forum. They will insist the rules as written with official FAQs and ignore any discussions in forums.

there will still be many that challenge an interpretation

Thankfully, there aren't as many of those types as there used to be.

hoodlum wrote:Sorry - I have not seen any definition of "Rear" in the rules.

The bit about rear support?

My opinion is that this is getting a bit silly now. I have observed plenty of times in this forum (and others) that however rules are written it is always possible for somebody to manage to find alternative interpretations. Rewrite it a different way, and somebody will stil manage to misinterpret it if they try hard enough. And some people, either "rules layers" or those who seme to be overly worried about the possibility of having to deal with a "rules lawyer", are trying harder than most to find flaws.

Isn't this what umpires are supposed to be for? And aren't umpires supposed to fall back on something like common sense if the rules genuinely are unclear?

Isn't this what umpires are supposed to be for? And aren't umpires supposed to fall back on something like common sense if the rules genuinely are unclear?

Yes, and it would be nice if they had a public place to go to check on items in the rules that can be misinterpreted. So if we could get the authors to make definitive statements in this forum......

Maybe they could appoint one of the forum moderators to be the official spokesman. The spokesman would poll each author and when he had agreement, then he would post the "OFFICIAL RESPONSE" in the thread. Tournament organizers would have a place to go for rules clarifications they could publish for their tournament. And, if the authors felt strongly enough about a specific topic, they could publish official FAQs.

With an "OFFICIAL RESPONSE" you could just tell the rules lawyer that his interpretation is not what was intended and have something to back it up. We'd see a lot less arguing and the game would be even more fun.

On the forum we have a lot of discussions, sometimes we get an author's opinion. If necessary corrections can be made via the errata. I really don't want us to go back to the days of 7th edition when we had pages of "Official" clarifications because quite honestly we don't get the level of dispute that we did then and in a tournament people will defer to the umpire. If I'm umpiring and someone asks what their rear is I'll happily tell them that it's what they're talking from...

>Yes, and it would be nice if they had a public place to go to check on items in the rules that can be misinterpreted. So if we could get the authors to make definitive statements in this forum......

So it's ironic that in this case there was actually a prompt author's response, very clear-cut, some would say *ahem* forthright

Unfortunately you can't point somebody to a forum mid-game to convince them. You probably can't even point them at a FAQ or commentary which they don't have, and if you wave it under their nose they'll wonder why it should be treated as an authority. Truth be told, you often can't point them at an official rule book - the things that are unclear or easy to misunderstand will take too long to resolve to everybody's satisfaction by extensive and careful rule-reading and cross-referencing.

And the more stuff gets added to rules, commentary, FAQ etc. the more stuff there is to wade through...

I'm not saying genuinely unclear stuff shouldn't be addressed. But as Lawrence alluded to, be careful what you wish for.

I think Richard has overlooked the fact that there are many users of FOG out there whose first language is not English and if some of them do not fully understand something then it is perhaps an indication it needs to be written a little clearer.

How about letting them actually achieve an initial publication before demanding the whole thing be written in internationally acceptable, entirely non-idiomatic Esperantu?

ShrubMiK wrote:>Unfortunately you can't point somebody to a forum mid-game to convince them.

Once we are all playing the electronic version from out ipads etc you will be able to.


Personally I think the main problem is people reading what they are expecting to see, i.e. that they can do whatever thing it is they want to do, rather than what is actually there.

Authors can (and IMO should) do more to mitigate that than merely writing with correct syntax.