Slitherine

"The spirit of the rules" (SOTR) has been mentioned several times recently, usually in the context of one of the design team replying to the discovery of potential cheese by playtesters. The implication being that the cheese is contrary to the SOTR and therefore a change in the rules to address it is not necessary.

I find this disturbing.

The rules should be written to the highest standards, and glitches that are discovered in this pre-publication stage can and should be addressed. Phil Barker, bless him, attacks "competition gamers" as the source of all evil. Everone else quietly admits that they help make a set of rules better by discovering loopholes and unintended consequences. It is all well and good to say something like "I would never allow that in an event that I umpired" but if the letter of the rules allows it to be played that way . . . .

It has been mentioned that one goal of the designers is to make the game accessible to newbies, and that too much cheese-cleaning will somehow reduce accessibility. This is a grand and glorious goal. Cleaning up the rules will make them more, not less, accessible to newbies. Imagine the new guy who read the rule book and enjoyed the game he played with his chum; then he decides to go to his first tournament, where he finds that everyone else is playing based on a errata sheet that he did not know to download. Or perhaps someone drops a piece of cheese on him and he looks it up in the rulebook only to discover that--the way the rules are written--the cheese appears to be legal. Later, he tries to play it the same way, only have the umpire slap him upside his head for cheesiness.

I hope this commentary is taken in the light it is intended; that is, as a constructive criticism. I like FoG so far, and want it to be good enough to replace DBM as the international tournament standard. Cheese, by its nature, can never be removed entirely; but everyone--players and publishers alike--will benefit if the rules are as tight as can be from the get go.

Marc

My feeling is that if such silliness can be easily written out of the rules it should be but if removing an obscure bit of cheese significantly increases the compexity of a rule it can very easily put new players off as they try to fathom ou the point of a rule excluding a move they haven't even considered.

One issue with the current playtest version of the rules is the lack of diagrams. There will be a lot of diagrams in the final product and I expect that a goodly number of percieved issues will be resolved by them. I had the advantage of being in on the testing when there were still a few diagrams and some of the more recent confusion never occured to me or anyone in my testing group.

Hammy

I have to stand with Marc here.

I am fine with certain things being fixed on a web page.

But said politely, I don't remember many of the rules authors or playtesters arguing in other rule sets we didn't need clarification when the SOTR was less than crytal clear.

I hear you .... and would by means of re-assurance add the following.....

For competition players the detailed clarries are important and we apprecaite this very much ........ for newbies who never plan on play in a competition they are however largely irrelevant as these people woul ratehr approxiamte soemthing inthe right spirit that delve through legalise interps

So Marc and Dan you are in my persoanl camp as competition-oriented and wanting precision, but I have many friends who are club players who do not want the rules cluttered with such specifics just to appease those keen to abuse the ruiles spirit. Wouldn't it be great if we can bring together many club players, 40k players and the current comp circuit as a larger group.

Therefore we believe there is a "cake and eat it" solution:

1. Keep the rules general enough that they are readily accessible to the larger audience;

2. Provide a responsive and thorough website with official Q&As and interps that the competition player can rely on to resolve areas of uncertain or ambiguity when pressure tested to its limits

The issue in the past is that 2 has not really been done and therefore others - and I speak form having invested a good 100 hours in the BHGS clarries over the years myself - had to pick up the mantle. We will not be leaving others to do this.

So in essence...

1. We hear you;

2. Anything that can be readily improved in the rules we will do if at all possible;

3. Anything else that isn't clear will be covered on ther website by the time of launch for competition market and in reality we have to accept that there are bound to be a gradual stream of such issues to deal with as the rules bed in;

4. We will remain responsive in supporting the product - as we are indeed here on the various forums.

I hope that helps. Clearly as authors we have to juggle the desires of several market places, and the realities of an internatinal production timeline complete with a high grade prodcution.

Si