Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Haight wrote:

 Evil Lamp 6 wrote:
@Solo: For a near perfect ruleset, I'd direct your attention to MTG or WM/H to a lesser extent. For the conflicts in GW's rules, see the YMDC Forum.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To deny their existence is silly IMO.

Warmachine and Hordes is NOT a near perfect ruleset. It's a good ruleset, it has never been near perfect.

Or are we forgetting the old days of what happens when a berserk shadowshifting bane knight kills a model with the effect that lets it attack before dying (forget its name at the moment)? If you don't recall that, or didn't play at the time, essentially it was unresolvable timing sequence wise. Completely f'ing unresolvable. The Infernals and Devs basically had to say "Look we know this is unresolvable logically according to timing sequence, but this is the way it was meant to resolve, so resolve it this way". There have been many rulings in WM/H FAQ (which btw in both editions is many, many pages long) that "worked because we say so (we meaning the infernals and the games rules development team)".

And?

It was from Mk1 (IIRC), so is now completely irrelevant to the current ruleset. Also, PP are light years ahead of GW in actually resolving these corner case scenarios. GW prefer to let them stew for months or even years at a time before even bothering to address them (if at all). To compare the rules issues that arise from WMH to 40k is just asinine, the evidence is right there in their respective YMDC forums. Look at how many issues have arisen from the SM codex that more than likely would have been caught very easily with more thorough proofreading and/or playtesting. Missing out the option for special weapons in Command Squads? That's a fething schoolboy error right there. Something a company that is supposedly at the top of its industry should be ashamed of.

Grimtuff - show me one place where i defend GW's ruleset. I get that you utterly hate the rule of 4+ based upon the plethora of posts stating just that, i do too, honestly, while i see the elegance in using it, the game designer in me hates hates hates that with a passion.

You mentioned "comparining them is asinine". Show me where i compared them please ?

All i set out to say in my post was to illustrate that design wise, WM/H and M;tG are not, cannot be, considered "perfect or near perfect" rule sets.

You can't have a ruleset that is near perfect / perfect, when the ruleset by it's very nature is open-ended and escalating in perpetuity. You can't. There is not one mini's game on the market right now that doesn't have at least a handful of glaring, unresolvable rules issues somewhere. Don't interpret this as me giving the rule of 4+ a pass. It's not. I'd love to see a tighter ruleset. However, the PP model, and the collectible card game models have their own sets of headaches too.


Also the special weapons omission in command squads technically isn't a rules issue. That's an editing / proofreading issues. The editor that missed that should be scolded, as should the proofreaders.

That said, proof reading issues happen. I remember when Warmachine: Superiority was delayed minorly because of a placeholder page accidentally going to the printer instead of a full page of fluff - every last in house proof-reader missed it (note: i was out of house, thank god, that could not have been a fun meeting!) - and they had to put full page gloss stickers over the placeholder page for the entirety of the first run.

It happens.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Chris_P wrote:
The gamers are also at fault as well, sometimes we tend to make the rules more complicated in order to possibly gain an advantage by the way we "interpret" them. Additionally, some of us should try to get a job at GW and help innovate the rules or even talk GW up enough to where they completely rewrite the rules.

Absolutely this. Most rules questions are not born out of a lack of clarity - they are mostly born out of advantage gleaning (sounds pejorative, i do not mean it that way).

... and i don't recommend a job in the gaming industry to anyone.

Ugh, Magic is not a perfect ruleset, or even close to it. If it was, they wouldn't have to ban and restrict cards due to OP combos, and "unbreakable" crap like the garbage in Mirrodin would never have been created. I realize that when you print as many different cards as you do, busted combos will happen-that's not exactly the fault of the creators, as competitive gamers like to break things like that. But calling it a perfect, or even near perfect, ruleset is ignorant. If it was perfect, I couldn't get a 7/7 lifelink out on turn 1. And that's NOT broken compared to other things you can do-that's the scary part.

 Haight wrote:
Absolutely this. Most rules questions are not born out of a lack of clarity - they are mostly born out of advantage gleaning (sounds pejorative, i do not mean it that way).

Like I said in the post right above yours, if the system is well written, you can't try to read the "intent" of a rule to gain an advantage. You check the rulebook to see how it works, the rulebook says "Like This", so you must apply the rule Like This. There isn't a metagame of trying to talk your opponent into believing a rule means something favourable to you, because the rule says exactly what it means.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Ugh, Magic is not a perfect ruleset, or even close to it. If it was, they wouldn't have to ban and restrict cards due to OP combos, and "unbreakable" crap like the garbage in Mirrodin would never have been created. I realize that when you print as many different cards as you do, busted combos will happen-that's not exactly the fault of the creators, as competitive gamers like to break things like that. But calling it a perfect, or even near perfect, ruleset is ignorant. If it was perfect, I couldn't get a 7/7 lifelink out on turn 1. And that's NOT broken compared to other things you can do-that's the scary part.

You're confusing game balance and rule clarity. The fact that you can get a 7/7 lifelink out on turn 1 (really a pretty weak play in any format where it can happen) doesn't mean that the rules aren't clear. In that case the rules function exactly the way they should, with no ambiguity at all over whether you can play that 7/7. And if you have any doubts about whether the 7/7 play works all you have to do is consult the rulebook and you will get a single indisputable answer. The fact that you prefer a slower-paced game is an entirely different subject.

Also, when you look at the banned list for MTG as a percentage of the total cards printed you realize that their balancing work is actually pretty good. A similar banned and restricted list for 40k would contain a much higher percentage of the total units in the game. And of course if you consider only the past few years (remember that Mirrodin was ten years ago) banning hardly even exists at all. Criticizing MTG over Mirrodin makes about as much sense as criticizing 6th edition 40k for some game-breaking thing back in 2nd edition.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Ugh, Magic is not a perfect ruleset, or even close to it. If it was, they wouldn't have to ban and restrict cards due to OP combos, and "unbreakable" crap like the garbage in Mirrodin would never have been created. I realize that when you print as many different cards as you do, busted combos will happen-that's not exactly the fault of the creators, as competitive gamers like to break things like that. But calling it a perfect, or even near perfect, ruleset is ignorant. If it was perfect, I couldn't get a 7/7 lifelink out on turn 1. And that's NOT broken compared to other things you can do-that's the scary part.

You do realize that the balance of cards has little to nothing to do with how well the rules are written, right?

rigeld2 wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Ugh, Magic is not a perfect ruleset, or even close to it. If it was, they wouldn't have to ban and restrict cards due to OP combos, and "unbreakable" crap like the garbage in Mirrodin would never have been created. I realize that when you print as many different cards as you do, busted combos will happen-that's not exactly the fault of the creators, as competitive gamers like to break things like that. But calling it a perfect, or even near perfect, ruleset is ignorant. If it was perfect, I couldn't get a 7/7 lifelink out on turn 1. And that's NOT broken compared to other things you can do-that's the scary part.

You do realize that the balance of cards has little to nothing to do with how well the rules are written, right?

I would tend to disagree with this. A ruleset is not good just because it's crystal clear.

Let's look at Stratego, a game with a pretty crystal clear and very good ruleset - being a beginner strategy game for kids, and a more or less Chess derivative

If you were playing Stratego, for instance, and Blue had a special rule that said "When Blue's Spy Moves, Blue Wins the game", but Red does not have this rule - the rules are crystal clear, but the game's ruleset because of this one clause is ultimately a trainwreck.

Balance has just as much to do with the quality of a ruleset as clarity.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elemental wrote:

 Haight wrote:
Absolutely this. Most rules questions are not born out of a lack of clarity - they are mostly born out of advantage gleaning (sounds pejorative, i do not mean it that way).

Like I said in the post right above yours, if the system is well written, you can't try to read the "intent" of a rule to gain an advantage. You check the rulebook to see how it works, the rulebook says "Like This", so you must apply the rule Like This. There isn't a metagame of trying to talk your opponent into believing a rule means something favourable to you, because the rule says exactly what it means.

I think rules are intended this way, i do. In practice its much more complex. Rule books would be ginormous if you gave a handful of common sense examples on how a rule works.

A game like WM/H has literally several hundred special rules (it may well be over a thousand now, honestly, since i left the game) - above their core ruleset. You mean you want a rulebook to have an anecdote about how each one interacts with each other one ? Impossible. The rulebook would be encyclopedia Britannica in size.

Also, remember that the first day a rule hits the live streets, it gets an order of magnitude more eyes on it than it can possibly get in development or playtest. People find ways to twist things, or just simply come up with innovative uses for the rule that devs and PT never even thought of.

I say this because the number of conversations i had with other infernals and devs that went like this "gak ... this guy brings up XYZ interaction ... it's supposed to work ABC, but if we say it's ABC, then what impact does that have on WRT, FTZ, and MCF.... "

At which point many, many times you end up with a result that is not design as intended, but design based on precedent as much as intent (so past similar rulings for "like" situations influencing a current situation - otherwise if rule like situations differently, you're hurting not only the integrity of the ruleset, but also you're own ruling precedence). This is where the dreaded "It works this way because we say so" hammer comes down, but that's something you want to avoid like the plague if possible. I can remember i think, all told, 3 total times it was used during my tenure.

It totally happens. There were a handful of rules in WM/H that i flat out came to hate - not because they were bad rules, but because of the ripple effect they had on other portions of the game creating interactions that i thought were bad / op / or flat out wrong.

 Goliath wrote:

 Evil Lamp 6 wrote:
@Solo: For a near perfect ruleset, I'd direct your attention to MTG or WM/H to a lesser extent. For the conflicts in GW's rules, see the YMDC Forum.

To deny their existence is silly IMO.

Ah! So satisfy my craving for battling miniatures, is should start playing a card game! How did I not see that? He wasn't saying that GWs flaws don't exist, but that these "perfect rules sets" that people go on about aren't as common as people insist.

Battletech; Star Fleet Battles (granted, an extreme case); most RPGs; Mongoose's Star Trek and Bab5 games; Firestorm Armada et al...

It's not hard to make a rule set that hangs together with minimal conflicts. GW just goes out of their way to not bother doing so.

Let's take Primal Fighter from the new Lizardman book. How hard would it have been to put one more sentence in - either "This rule does allow a supporting attack to generate another attack" or "This rule does not allow a supporting attack to generate another attack."?

I ended up dropping a... discussion... about rules with an opponent at a recent tournament.

He'd been fielding a combined marine / Deathwing list, with marines being his main detachment and allied Deathwing. Belial was his warlord.

I, and previous opponents, politely pointed out to him that this wasn't allowed. He counters with 'page 111.' After checking up, I drop the point, because I don't want to end up being a jerk.

Of course, after the game and results are in, this is really bugging me so I start properly reading through the section, with the statement clearly on the previous pages (109). The guy ended up winning the tournament.

 Compel wrote:
I ended up dropping a... discussion... about rules with an opponent at a recent tournament.

He'd been fielding a combined marine / Deathwing list, with marines being his main detachment and allied Deathwing. Belial was his warlord.

I, and previous opponents, politely pointed out to him that this wasn't allowed. He counters with 'page 111.' After checking up, I drop the point, because I don't want to end up being a jerk.

Of course, after the game and results are in, this is really bugging me so I start properly reading through the section, with the statement clearly on the previous pages (109). The guy ended up winning the tournament.

Why not inform the Judge/TO?

After the tournament is too late.

Because a bunch of us were visitors to their local tournament and didn't want to be those guys.

In any case, the moral of the story is, don't be passive, trust yourself a bit more or you may end up influencing the outcome of not just your games by a whole bunch of other peoples.

 Compel wrote:
Because a bunch of us were visitors to their local tournament and didn't want to be those guys.

In any case, the moral of the story is, don't be passive, trust yourself a bit more or you may end up influencing the outcome of not just your games by a whole bunch of other peoples.

Would asking have affected you negatively? i.e. Is there some form
of sportsmanship scoring that calling a judge over would have tanked
you?

If it's something like that, I hate that stuff.

 Haight wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elemental wrote:

 Haight wrote:
Absolutely this. Most rules questions are not born out of a lack of clarity - they are mostly born out of advantage gleaning (sounds pejorative, i do not mean it that way).

Like I said in the post right above yours, if the system is well written, you can't try to read the "intent" of a rule to gain an advantage. You check the rulebook to see how it works, the rulebook says "Like This", so you must apply the rule Like This. There isn't a metagame of trying to talk your opponent into believing a rule means something favourable to you, because the rule says exactly what it means.

I think rules are intended this way, i do. In practice its much more complex. Rule books would be ginormous if you gave a handful of common sense examples on how a rule works.

A game like WM/H has literally several hundred special rules (it may well be over a thousand now, honestly, since i left the game) - above their core ruleset. You mean you want a rulebook to have an anecdote about how each one interacts with each other one ? Impossible. The rulebook would be encyclopedia Britannica in size.

You don't need to do that. What the WM/H ruleset provides is a clear framework on which rules can be hung.

For example, the procedure for hitting, damaging and destroying a model. For example, a dire troll hits and reduces to 0 damage a Steelhead Halberdier, while Alexia Ciannor is nearby. Does Alexia get a corpse token from the dead guy? Checking the rules, I can see that the model is "disabled" by the damage (nothing triggers there), then "boxed" at which point the troll's Snacking ability triggers. This means the model is considered "removed from play" instead of "destroyed". Since Alexia's Raise Dead ability specifies she gets corpse tokens from destroyed models only, she doesn't get anything.

Most of the time you won't need to consider all of that--typically, you hit and damage a model, it gets taken off the table, simple. But because that procedure is there, it can be referred to when there's a situation when multiple special rules interact to determine what would happen--you don't need a "What to do with Snacking vs Raise Dead" sidebar. Each special case can refer to an established baseline set of rules, allowing for great variety while minimising the number of cases that can't be solved by simply checking the rules.

If it spoils the game.

Flinging dice or pulling a knife, as other have suggested, is further than too far.

 Elemental wrote:

 Haight wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elemental wrote:

 Haight wrote:
Absolutely this. Most rules questions are not born out of a lack of clarity - they are mostly born out of advantage gleaning (sounds pejorative, i do not mean it that way).

Like I said in the post right above yours, if the system is well written, you can't try to read the "intent" of a rule to gain an advantage. You check the rulebook to see how it works, the rulebook says "Like This", so you must apply the rule Like This. There isn't a metagame of trying to talk your opponent into believing a rule means something favourable to you, because the rule says exactly what it means.

I think rules are intended this way, i do. In practice its much more complex. Rule books would be ginormous if you gave a handful of common sense examples on how a rule works.

A game like WM/H has literally several hundred special rules (it may well be over a thousand now, honestly, since i left the game) - above their core ruleset. You mean you want a rulebook to have an anecdote about how each one interacts with each other one ? Impossible. The rulebook would be encyclopedia Britannica in size.

You don't need to do that. What the WM/H ruleset provides is a clear framework on which rules can be hung.

For example, the procedure for hitting, damaging and destroying a model. For example, a dire troll hits and reduces to 0 damage a Steelhead Halberdier, while Alexia Ciannor is nearby. Does Alexia get a corpse token from the dead guy? Checking the rules, I can see that the model is "disabled" by the damage (nothing triggers there), then "boxed" at which point the troll's Snacking ability triggers. This means the model is considered "removed from play" instead of "destroyed". Since Alexia's Raise Dead ability specifies she gets corpse tokens from destroyed models only, she doesn't get anything.

Most of the time you won't need to consider all of that--typically, you hit and damage a model, it gets taken off the table, simple. But because that procedure is there, it can be referred to when there's a situation when multiple special rules interact to determine what would happen--you don't need a "What to do with Snacking vs Raise Dead" sidebar. Each special case can refer to an established baseline set of rules, allowing for great variety while minimising the number of cases that can't be solved by simply checking the rules.

I see what you're getting at, however, you're ignoring the veritable library of special rules. Many of which have very complex timing interactions, some of which actually resolve counter-intuitively if the very letter of the rules are followed. There is a reason Privateer's rules question sectino is huge and very active : it's a complex game. This is actually the very reason that they started putting in "tactical tips" in the model entries of new books - to pre-empt those questions devs and PT thought would be commonly asked and already figured out.

What you describe in your sequence of operations exists in GW as well - a model rolls its BS for an attack, you reference score, you resolve a hit, check for wound, if wound, check for armor save, if failed, check for remaining wounds, if no extenuating circumstances (say, FNP, just as an example), remove model.


These are very simple frameworks of games, in fact they're basically mandatory for even the facsimile of mechanical operation. It's the somewhat more layered, complex, and multi-tiered interactions which are more tricky. That said, with a library of hundreds of special rules, even just reference interactions between special rules would be ridiculously cumbersome to put into a book.


In short, on a long enough timeline, with new rules introduced in each release, or existing rules introduced in new combinations, rule bloat is going to happen. There's absolutely no way in a complex mechanical environment such as the WM/H ruleset that you can clearly define every interaction in a rulebook. At some point you're going to have to an FAQ / rules section online. It's going to be necessary.


I will say this, the WM/H ruleset handles complexity much more elegantly than the GW ruleset, but what drew this whole entire spiel is the comment that its a perfect or near perfect ruleset.

Can we just call Warmachine / Hordes and Magic:The Gathering
far more functional rulesets even with their larger sets of rules?

It's not like the original poster asked about rules comparisons
or anything. They were just asking about best social practices in
regards to discussing rules, not whether or not a rules system
was robust or not.

Is the enemy still standing?

Then I have not argued hard enough!

Seriously... the number one reason that I favor Kings of War over Warhammer is that we have had no arguments over the rules.

None.

The only things that have caused even minor disagreement is whether a unit has 50% cover. (Most often, we have started just saying 'yeah, it does' - if it is close enough to question then it is close enough to have cover, and our folks are pretty good at eying things.)

The Auld Grump

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd think something has gone wrong when a dice roll can't fix you rules problem.

Why should it need that at all? These problems only seem to stem from GW's rulesets, that all come with their "On a 4+ I get to cheat" clause that GW feel is their get outta jail free card for not making professional well written rules and just churning out the same hippy-dippy rubbish.

With properly written rules these ever escalating nerdfights would not nearly come up as often.

Back to this facile argument? Show us where all of these perfect rulesets are, where there are combinations of rules that fall into conflict. Please, show us how bad GW rules are?

For how long as Chess been getting it right?

 Haight wrote:
There's absolutely no way in a complex mechanical environment such as the WM/H ruleset that you can clearly define every interaction in a rulebook.

That's why you don't attempt to do it. Instead you provide a system for deciding the outcome of a particular action. For example, in MTG there are lots of potential timing conflicts between various "if X happens do Y" effects attempting to happen simultaneously. But instead of trying to give a special-case ruling for each of them WOTC made a nice simple rule that all simultaneous triggered abilities go on the stack in an order decided by the player whose turn they happen in. That way no matter what cards WOTC prints in the future with triggered abilities they'll all be resolved according to the standard system and there will never be any ambiguity over which event takes priority.

GW just makes the problem worse by refusing to use consistent definitions. That WM/H example is resolved nicely because things like "dies" are defined consistently and unambiguously so all you need to do is see which triggered events are happening. GW, on the other hand, refuses to have that consistency so you get things like the argument about whether Necrons get their reanimation roll against JotWW because GW uses terms like "removed from play" and "removed as a casualty" interchangeably even when they describe different effects.

 Desubot wrote:
I have a player in my store that tends to mix 5th with 6th rules and doesn't bother to check at all. leading to a im right your wrong gak chucking fest.

Also if your 3" initiative pile in isn't enough to move you into base contact i believe you are no longer locked but il look at that rule later

Edit: forgot to answer the actual question lol: its when objects start flying be it dice or landraiders

You are no longer locked, but you dont get to break away for free. Instead, the combat is treated as finished. Leadership checks happen as normal, and a sweeping advance can be made.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobaram wrote:
then done a second end of combat pile-in, on both sides, so another 6.

Not true, the combat ends at the end of an initiative step where base to base was not made. There's no second pile in for the end of a phase.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Haight wrote:
There's absolutely no way in a complex mechanical environment such as the WM/H ruleset that you can clearly define every interaction in a rulebook.

That's why you don't attempt to do it. Instead you provide a system for deciding the outcome of a particular action. For example, in MTG there are lots of potential timing conflicts between various "if X happens do Y" effects attempting to happen simultaneously. But instead of trying to give a special-case ruling for each of them WOTC made a nice simple rule that all simultaneous triggered abilities go on the stack in an order decided by the player whose turn they happen in. That way no matter what cards WOTC prints in the future with triggered abilities they'll all be resolved according to the standard system and there will never be any ambiguity over which event takes priority.

GW just makes the problem worse by refusing to use consistent definitions. That WM/H example is resolved nicely because things like "dies" are defined consistently and unambiguously so all you need to do is see which triggered events are happening. GW, on the other hand, refuses to have that consistency so you get things like the argument about whether Necrons get their reanimation roll against JotWW because GW uses terms like "removed from play" and "removed as a casualty" interchangeably even when they describe different effects.

Totally agree, though my post was in counterpoint to what another poster said, which was along the lines of (though not exactly) "In good rule sets if you have a question you just look it up, and you're done". Which isn't the case in most games, in most rules calls.


I do agree with you though, a general cleaning of the rules is probably in order for GW systems. I don't think they are going to do it, but i'm kind of hopeful that codex / army book acceleration is a positive step in the right direction, and the rumors of more consolidated WHFB army mega-books also looks promising (so instead of 13 or however many codexes which is just a slog to keep updated logisitically, each edition you'd have a forces of order, forces of darkness mega army book the size of the BRB - wham. You update everything at once for the current edition instead of having this persistent codex creep. This has been a successful model for other companies - PP, Wyrd, etc. I'm kind of shocked it's taken them this long to possibly go that route.

It's lazy design to have multiple definitions for the same effect, and that effect itself isn't even officially defined. What i find ironic about this is that so much of the design of 40k is a static block of existing rules / modifiers, with very very little exception based design (meaning, this "thing" is the only thing with "this rule" in the game - even most of GW's "special" rules are just mild changes to existing rules, or collections of existing rules. Malifaux MK1 is an example of design in the other direction - most abilties were fairly unique to each master, and the collection of "mechanics in common" was relatively small).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 malfred wrote:
Can we just call Warmachine / Hordes and Magic:The Gathering
far more functional rulesets even with their larger sets of rules?

Depends on what you consider functional. I think as far as i'd go is "more thorough mechanically", but that's just me.

All three systems have ups and downs. One of the pretty good things about 40k is you can read the rules to "game playing" clarity in about 45 minutes - sure there's subtle nuanced rules, but you can get moving models in 45 minutes with a reasonably clear understanding of what to do.

WM/H's, i'd argue take longer (and fair being fair, the rules section is longer in each respective book, and warmachine is a game with a lot more abstracts that require explaining - i.e. movement is a lot more complex in WM than it is in 40k).

Magic is kind of elegant in both vectors - you can get rolling with magic pretty quickly to a "game playing" standard of clarity, yet there's lots of layers of nuance as well.

I guess i'll leave it alone after this. My big bitch though about any system is when, whether a fan or a foe, the strengths or weaknesses of a game system can't be acknowledged. I like 40k and Fantasy. I am perfectly capable of admitting they are flawed in various ways. Neither are games i would ever play competitively, whereas when i was interested in competitive gaming, i played a gak ton of competitive WM/H.

By contrast, though, saying that any mini's game on the market today is a perfect or near perfect is just not true. When MK1 came to a close, the game was collapsing under the weight of its own complexity. There's every reason to believe that in a couple to a few years, they are going to have to reboot into MK3. Look at Malifaux - WM/H is like checkers when you look at the pace that Malifaux became an over-complex, rules bloated hot mess that needed a reboot.

It's not like the original poster asked about rules comparisons
or anything. They were just asking about best social practices in
regards to discussing rules, not whether or not a rules system
was robust or not.

True, but that's kinda where the conversation has swung.

In the end, have a look at the Warmachine YMDC forum, and then the 40K YMDC forum.

In the former, there are two threads on the first page that have more than one page; one of those is a subjective questions on conversions, the other is mainly about discussing the ramifications of a certain rules interaction, not questioning if it works or not. You'll notice nearly every thread is resolved with "The rules say this, so it works like this."

In the 40K YMDC forum, we have these threads on page 1 at the time of posting:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/551189.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552984.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/550940.page

Reading this thread, I feel much better about my gaming group. For all of our vaunted bilingualism, my friends and I often puzzle over the wording of GW rules. Some in our group have been reading them wrong for months, built a list around a perceived advantage, and then come down hard when their reading comprehension is called into question.

And sadly, the French version of the rules is hardly any help, as the syntax is often English, but with French words, so it makes it really hard to read. Or it's French-French, and it's not a level of reading most of us are used to anymore. Sad but true.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Why should it need that at all? These problems only seem to stem from GW's rulesets, that all come with their "On a 4+ I get to cheat" clause that GW feel is their get outta jail free card for not making professional well written rules and just churning out the same hippy-dippy rubbish.

With properly written rules these ever escalating nerdfights would not nearly come up as often.

This. The problem of "how far is too far" only exists with GW games. With games that are made by professional game designers the answer to every rule question is to read the rules again and do what they say.

No, such incidents can occur in any game, it's all in the mindset of the players involved:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd think something has gone wrong when a dice roll can't fix you rules problem.

Why should it need that at all? These problems only seem to stem from GW's rulesets, that all come with their "On a 4+ I get to cheat" clause that GW feel is their get outta jail free card for not making professional well written rules and just churning out the same hippy-dippy rubbish.

With properly written rules these ever escalating nerdfights would not nearly come up as often.

Back to this facile argument? Show us where all of these perfect rulesets are, where there are combinations of rules that fall into conflict. Please, show us how bad GW rules are?

For how long as Chess been getting it right?

How long has it been since Chess was a living ruleset that went through editions, expansions and changes?

Boards games are not the same as wargames. I mean Snakes and Ladders is a simple, clear cut ruleset and I don't see anyone trumpeting as the height of perfection (likely because the game is won solely on luck, but the point remains).

It is too far if it is interrupting your enjoyment of the game.

I look at it sort of like the line when something becomes a proper fetish or a neurosis. If the behavior is interrupting normal activity or enjoyment of one's life, then it is officially a problem to be dealt with.

One of the reasons I stopped tournament play was because I always folded on rules issues. It just was never important enough for me to get into an argument about it. If you think your guys have a cover save, fine, whatever. Take your save and let's us get on with the game.

I don't like arguing about rules during a game. Arguing about rules between games, fine. During a game, no, let's just not go there. Clarification? Fine. Confirmation? Fine. But if we have a fundamental disagreement, have it your way and let's have us a game.

I don't like the dice off unless it is a subjective opinion, like a TLOS issue, and both parties are vacillating. If one person feels strongly, go ahead and play it your way. It just isn't worth the negativity.

Even when I'm GMing a game, I tend to go soft on rules disputes. I vastly prefer the let's-play-it-this-way-for-now-and-figure-out-the-proper-way-later approach, even if I think a rule works a certain way.

For example, last time I ran a game (with rules of my own design mind), the players had a question about whether two parry weapons provide +2 defense or +1 defense with a re-roll (Mordheim style). I wrote it +1 D w/ re-roll. The players had read it as +2 D. The mistake was mine in not writing an unambiguous rule, so rather than make someone annoyed in the moment getting less of a bonus than they had thought they were getting, I said we'll play it as +2 D for today and work it out between games.

For me, it wasn't even worth someone else's disappointment in interpreting a rule incorrectly. Let's just have fun. Because at the end of the day, wtf does it really matter?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Why should it need that at all? These problems only seem to stem from GW's rulesets, that all come with their "On a 4+ I get to cheat" clause that GW feel is their get outta jail free card for not making professional well written rules and just churning out the same hippy-dippy rubbish.

This. The problem of "how far is too far" only exists with GW games. With games that are made by professional game designers the answer to every rule question is to read the rules again and do what they say.

Yeah.... only in GW games.

I've had crap like this come up playing the cardgame Phase 10, arguably designed by a professional game designer. Oh yeah, and some people still think White always getting the first move in Chess is overpowered, and that has been a pretty much static game for decades/centuries.

OP: It has gone too far when you can't dice off anymore.

I must say that about this I'm glad to not be in the States.
I wouldn't want a gun pointed at me for something that petty ...

Ah, it's always guns. I could just as easily stab you. Or use my flail. Or a hammer. Or an axe. Or a cleaver. Or break some glass and use that. I think I have a blow torch around here somewhere, too. Or if I'm lacking creativity I could just beat you with my chair.

But I'm not a violent person.

 xole wrote:
Ah, it's always guns. I could just as easily stab you. Or use my flail. Or a hammer. Or an axe. Or a Beaver. Or break some glass and use that. I think I have a blow torch around here somewhere, too. Or if I'm lacking creativity I could just beat you with my chair.

But I'm not a violent person.

This is what I've read, so I'm giggling with everyone around giving me odd looks ...

I think all players present generally know when the arguing has gone too far. Flushed cheeks, big sighs, hands thrown in the air, cries of "Whatever let's just play", and so on.

As to the good vs bad ruleset argument a few posts ago, I'd say one game that isn't often mentioned is D&D 4th edition. The core turn is quite simple and easy for new players to understand. But there is a huge volume of various powers and abilities, all of which feel pretty unique, but they also work well and unambiguously. There might be issues with people finding Power X better than Power Y, but at least they aren't arguing about HOW the Powers work, or when they are used, or any of the zillion other petty arguments that crop up in games of 40k.

X-Wing Miniatures was already mentioned, but here's a +1 for that. Similarly Wings of War. Song of Blades and Heroes is a pretty simple-to-grasp-hard-to-master game that doesn't seem to have a ton of arguing over rules. Battletech is also often mentioned as an example of how a solid core can be revised over many, many years without introducing new problems and issues.

Boardgames are not hugely comparable, but there are plenty that achieve very tight gameplay without any stumbling through a 200 page rulebook. Pandemic for example. Card games are similar with products like Fluxx.

Lots of historical games like The Sword and The Flame would also apply. Small, elegant rulesets that still have enough tactical depth and variety to make for numerous fun games.

What's funny is a lot of GW's specialist games are much cleaner and better than their primary products. Space Hulk 1st edition is a great balanced game with plenty of edge-of-the-seat moments.

I've certainly never had the same maddening, infuriating arguments with any of the above mentioned rules as I have with 40k (even on the smallest point scale).

How far is too far? Easy: if you've talked about it for more than 30 seconds after reading the actual rule text then dice off and move on. If your opponent can't accept that and a TO is available, then to with whatever the TO days. If there is no TO and you two keep arguing then its time to call the game.

Building a ruleset with solid, easy to follow/discern rules is completely possible. I write software for a living, so writing rules is the definition of my job - only on a much bigger scale.

I run into other programmers on a constant basis that you know couldn't even write a list of driving directions.

It's the same thing for wargames rules. If they hired a few people that actually knew how to think logically and organize things then the rulesets would be both clear and unambiguous. However they haven't. IMHO, Jervis needs to retire.

Just picking up any codex you can see that a lot of those guys are more "stream of consciousness" rather than logical thinkers. A simple thing like ordering the unit lists... At least the last page has them alphabetically. The rest appears to be pretty random.

When building out a system that needs to plugin complex rules, your foundation has to be near perfect. That doesn't exist in 40k. ( don't play the other games mentioned in this thread, so no comment there). There are a lot of core rules that just feel like they were bolted on last minute whimsical thoughts. And others which feel like deadweight that no one has bothered to think about.

So, if I had to make a recommendation to a game designer: hire an engineer, architect or trial attorney to look over your rules. Make sure its someone who has been in the business 10 or 20 years. Throwing gak willy nilly into the pile and hoping the interactions work is a bad idea.