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sourclams wrote:So just out of curiosity, what is preventing GW from posting a living FAQ ala Magic or any other number of gaming systems that update more regularly?

It would more or less do away with all of the arguments and cries of "cheese!" that we see on this forum and in our local stores (Vulkan/Sisters, Deffrollas being two obvious and dead horse issues). It obviously wouldn't take more effort than the process you've currently got in place beyond simply typing it up and loading the pdf onto the website.

This is such a small and minimally costed change that would benefit literally everyone in the hobby. I don't just have knockdown dragout rules slugfests on Dakka; it regularly occurs in my store as well and although d6-ing for a single game is well and good, many would like to simply know the rules as they're intended to be played (since what is written often doesn't work when dealing with contentious issues).

I'm not "TFG" either; almost every Big Question has about half of the group going "well, yes" and the other "well, no".

Time, more than anything. We barely have time to do all the things we have to in a week, and we can't be nearly as thorough as we'd like. Add in vacations, sick days, meetings...I think you get the point.

We hope to get to living FAQ eventually(at least in the US office), but who knows when/if we'll get time

olympia wrote:
Hmm...so you mean to say that you don't view the rules merely as an answer to a mathematical question?

Definitely not. This is a game, for fun. We subscribe to the most important rule and often(but not always) RAW can get in the way.

RAW is great for a quick ruling when playing a game, but any thought out answer should be RAI, in our opinion.

So John,

Would it be possible to get a copy of everything you guys have ruled on? I was thinking (as it was suggested to me anyhow) that we could create an topic on it and keep in the Dakka articles section? I'd be willing to sort through it and put it in a nice presentable format ;-)

Sazzlefrats wrote:So John,

Would it be possible to get a copy of everything you guys have ruled on? I was thinking (as it was suggested to me anyhow) that we could create an topic on it and keep in the Dakka articles section? I'd be willing to sort through it and put it in a nice presentable format ;-)

that would be super helpful, and any time you reply to an email John, you could BCC it to someone to put into the Dakka FAQ

that would be super helpful, and any time you reply to an email John, you could BCC it to someone to put into the Dakka FAQ

That would be fantastic!

He would have to be careful about doing that I would think. Because at that point Dakka would become GW's unofficial outlet for rules queries and subsequent answers from their staff.

Posting what you get in a reply to your personal E-mail is fine. But some companies wouldnt agree with a staff member, while on company time, sending information to a seperate outlet outside of the requesting party.

Dakka would esentially though the actions of GW staff, be being given a form of endorcement. While I have no problem with it, who knows what they as a company might say about that direct practice and relation with Dakka Mods.

Lastly, as Mr. Spencers answers are no more official then others come to on here (in no way discrediting him and his co-workers who help). I think Yak and Cent99 and others do a pretty good job for this site answering things as best as they are able.

By having 2 ongoing positngs of rules querries and suggested answers, it may present a conflict for the site. There are always generally 2 sides to any argument as we all know. If Yak and others are on one side of it, and you dont agree, you dont need Mr. Spencers (if he and his group was on the other side) answer to have validity to how YOU want to play YOUR games.

Actually most people that I know want to play GW's game the way GW intends the game to be played. With all respect to the work put in by Yakface and company and the 'Your Game, Your Rules' mindset, Spencer's opinion is far, far more useful for settling rules disputes at my store.

Me, you, and Yakface are just guys on the internet. Spencer is "legit" so to speak.

sourclams wrote:Actually most people that I know want to play GW's game the way GW intends the game to be played. With all respect to the work put in by Yakface and company and the 'Your Game, Your Rules' mindset, Spencer's opinion is far, far more useful for settling rules disputes at my store.

Me, you, and Yakface are just guys on the internet. Spencer is "legit" so to speak.

Spencer is a customer service rep at a sales organization. He's got no real immediate connection to the Games Dev studio.

Not to knock what he's doing, but he's hardly the all-knowing arbiter of rules that you seem to make him up to be.

I'm under no illusion that Spencer is some rules-writing-GW-guru.

But, working for GW, and having been put into a rules arbitration capacity, even nominally, provides him with a better basis for making those 'RAI' judgment calls that create so much contention.

What I, Yakface, the INAT ruling council, Nurglitch, or anyone else on these forums think is 99% worthless at the game store because we're all just faceless internet avatars. We have the exact same resources, the rulebook, and that makes us 0% more qualified than the next guy for making a contentious ruling call.

Spencer isn't the Red Shirt Rule Boy that gets it mixed up or wrong half the time, he's consistent, reasonable, replicable, and the GW guy in charge of answering questions. Is he official? No, not really, but he's better than our herd of schmucks.

Eh to each their own. I dont see working for GW as making it any more official, while still being totally unofficial, then what we do here.

Of all those things you mentioned as a benifit of his, we are all too. Save of course, not working for GW. So if I go and get a job with GW do I suddenly carry more weight to my decisions? I dont think so.

For those of us on the Council, we are more then faceless internet avatars, as you describe. Rather then someone just going on a forum like this and saying (enter online handle here) "says soooo".. we actually have a painstakenly created document put forth for the community to use as they wish.

Its something you can go back to and reference consistantly, should you choose to use it. And as anyone who chooses to use it will know, every member of the council, while not infallable, is every bit as deticated to a accurate and fair ruling as Mr. Spencer, or anyone else who cares enough to take on such a time consuming task.

At the end of the day, when a person can toss out what we came up with as easliy as what Mr. Spencer and his group comes up with, we are on a even field.

Marius Xerxes wrote:Eh to each their own. .....

At the end of the day, when a person can toss out what we came up with as easliy as what Mr. Spencer and his group comes up with, we are on a even field.

Mr. Spencer seems to favor RAI more than the INAT people. You are on an even field except you do not work for GW in the capacity of a customer service representative tasked with answering rules queries.

olympia wrote:

Marius Xerxes wrote:Eh to each their own. .....

At the end of the day, when a person can toss out what we came up with as easliy as what Mr. Spencer and his group comes up with, we are on a even field.

You are on an even field except you do not work for GW in the capacity of a customer service representative tasked with answering rules queries.

Perhaps. But Yakface & the FAQ council are cited in more GW FAQs than Mr. Spencer.

I think collecting Mr. Spencer's rulings would be a very useful tool for many people, and using our wiki system would be ideal. However there are a few potential serious pitfalls.


1) Mr. Spencer's rulings are unofficial. What I mean by that is when GW eventually comes out with a FAQ there is absolutely no guarantee that they will rule the same way that Mr. Spencer has. If the past has been any indication even if they told him that they were going to rule one way, there is still a very real possibility that a different ruling may surface when it is finally printed. Right now it seems as though several people are working under the misguided assumption that his rulings *are* official, but all it will take is for one of his rulings to then be contradicted by an official FAQ for this whole perception to shatter.

By collating all of his answers into a single place it only helps to strengthen the illusion that it is some sort of de-facto semi-official FAQ, which of course it will not actually be. I'm a little hesitant about helping to perpetrate that myth.


2) Normally the beauty of the wiki is that anyone can add to it, and it seems like that would be ideal for people to add the rulings they get from Mr. Spencer into a master article of his answers. However, the problem with this is that the validity of anything posted as having 'come from' Mr. Spencer can only be verified by contacting him. That means ultimately this collection of rulings from Mr. Spencer would need to be collected by one person (or a small group of people) in order to have any chance of remaining truthful.

Now, our wiki articles can be set so that they can only be edited by the user who started them, so this is a possibility if one person wanted to step up and make this their mission, then by all means they should.



So even though I have a couple reservations about it, obviously if someone wants to become the champion of this and maintain and verify all of his rulings (unless, of course we can get Mr. Spencer himself to look over the article every now and then and make sure there aren't any erroneous rulings), let me know and I can help you get started. Anyone want to take this on? Nurglitch? Someone else?

sourclams wrote:Actually most people that I know want to play GW's game the way GW intends the game to be played.

You mean, using the rules as a basic framework and resolving any issues that arise however they personally see fit? (Rulebook, page 2 )


On that basis, the opinion of Yakface and the rules council, Mr Spencer, and some kid pulled off the street who has never heard of the game before are all equally valid for finding rules answers... All that matters is that the players have a resolution that they're happy to play on with.

To put it another way, playing the game the way GW 'intend' the game to be played, the validity of a given rules clarification is completely irrelevant. Whether or not Mr Spencer, Yakface, Jervis, or my cat says that Ork Deffrollas work against vehicles is completely secondary to whether or not the people actually playing the game want them to work against vehicles.

Centurian99 wrote:

sourclams wrote:Actually most people that I know want to play GW's game the way GW intends the game to be played. With all respect to the work put in by Yakface and company and the 'Your Game, Your Rules' mindset, Spencer's opinion is far, far more useful for settling rules disputes at my store.

Me, you, and Yakface are just guys on the internet. Spencer is "legit" so to speak.

Spencer is a customer service rep at a sales organization. He's got no real immediate connection to the Games Dev studio.

Not to knock what he's doing, but he's hardly the all-knowing arbiter of rules that you seem to make him up to be.

Nor are you, or Yakface, or anyone not in the Dev Studio.

However, I do believe that John has a bit more access to the Studio then you think. I don't think he can just email them willy nilly, but if something major came up, he could always find out the right info.

KeithGatchalian wrote:

Nor are you, or Yakface, or anyone not in the Dev Studio.

However, I do believe that John has a bit more access to the Studio then you think. I don't think he can just email them willy nilly, but if something major came up, he could always find out the right info.

You are spot on, however the important thing to remember here is that even emails from the design studio aren't even official.

We have to remember that the design studio is not some giant machine that always spits out the same answer. It is filled with people with varying opinions and when asked about a particular ruling the answer they give isn't necessarily going to be the answer that gets put down in the official FAQ after they think about it further (or even someone else becomes tasked with writing the FAQ). I do believe that one person is now tasked with handling all the FAQs (Alessio) and I'll do my best to talk to him at Adepticon and find out what I can about their FAQ process, but even then you never know when GW will change their mind and assign that task to someone else (or that person leaves the company).

So while emails from the design studio and therefore Mr. Spencer's rulings are certainly good 'sign posts' on how their FAQs may rule, taking them as gospel before the official FAQ is released is a recipe for heartache.

The other thing about Mr. Spencer's rulings is that you don't always know which ones are just his opinion on the matter and which ones he has gotten guidance from the studio on, although he does definitely seem to include that information sometimes (which is great).

Yak, if people are interested in starting this Wiki of his rulings on here, id be happy to maintain it.

I just need everyone to forward the messages to me, and with him now being on here, i could ask him when i add enough to look through if he had time and yay or nay certain ones as having come fom him and his group.

Here's the really big problem about trying to use the "intent" of the games designers (aside from the obvious one of nobody I know being telepathic).

They're British.

Anyone here ever studied British constitutional law?

Seriously though...

Mr. Spencer seems to favor RAI more than the INAT people. You are on an even field except you do not work for GW in the capacity of a customer service representative tasked with answering rules queries.

Again, I'll bet if you ask John what he does for GW US, the answer is not, "answering rules questions." He's a customer service rep in a sales organization. GW US has nothing to do with games design - its a sales organization that also does manufacturing, with some event planning thrown in (since GW US is vertically integrated). The don't even do WD anymore...that's done almost entirely in the UK, with a couple of pages set aside for US specific stuff.

While a somewhat nebulous term, usually customer service reps handle things like order fulfillment, general problem-solving, and answering phones/emails related to sales and orders.

I salute the progress of GW US (the move from having any CSR put on a Rulezboy hat as emails came in to a single person is a good step towards consistency) as is the internal wiki they're using to record answers, but the fact remains that any answers they give are Not Official Rules, by any stretch of the imagination. Their goal is to allow their customers to play games instead of discussing rules. But actually getting the "right" answers is not necessarily their first priority.

Centurian99 wrote:Again, I'll bet if you ask John what he does for GW US, the answer is not, "answering rules questions." He's a customer service rep in a sales organization. GW US has nothing to do with games design - its a sales organization that also does manufacturing, with some event planning thrown in (since GW US is vertically integrated). The don't even do WD anymore...that's done almost entirely in the UK, with a couple of pages set aside for US specific stuff.

You act like because his primary role is to operate in a sales capacity he has no competitive advantage or additional credibility. I've shown people the INAT FAQ before to settle an argument and gotten the "That's nice, but who cares about this guy" response. Then Spencer showed up and I was jadedly pessimistic that he'd be any more useful, but when I email him and get an answer with a GW email address stamped on it, and then other local people can email him and get the exact same answer, it's much more effective for conflict resolution.

I mean, it's not like the opinions of those here are perfect. I remember an early version of this year's INAT that said Dark Angel land speeders couldn't score... even though this was the exact opposite of what was stated in the codex. Looks like it was fixed but the credibility of the document is less than ironclad.

INAT isn't worthless, but for the outside world, Spencer's emails work. Nobody cares that his primary job is to find out why somebbody's truck didn't deliver 50 Black Reach sets on time as long as his rulings are reasonable and consistent and mirror how GW "plays the game".

KeithGatchalian wrote:

However, I do believe that John has a bit more access to the Studio then you think. I don't think he can just email them willy nilly, but if something major came up, he could always find out the right info.

Exactly.
Water-cooler talk at my job: "I heard that Bob messed up his TPS reports again."
Water-cooler talk at John Spencer's job: "How was your weekend Bill? Calgar is subject to the No Retreat! rule."

Must be watercooler-YELLING as John Spencer is in the US.

Centurian99 wrote
Here's the really big problem about trying to use the "intent" of the games designers (aside from the obvious one of nobody I know being telepathic).

They're British.

Anyone here ever studied British constitutional law?

Yes!! It makes perfect sense, dammit... Its not our fault you colonials decided to write things down instead of just trusting to a bunch of old blokes saying "well, we've always done it like that..."


On topic, the only thing I find strange is that John Spencer has been chosen as the 'point man' for rules questions.
Now this is not to denigrate John in any way. As has been pointed out his rulings seem fair and consistent, the database of answers is a fine idea and the fact that he can contact the design studio lends him credibility.

But, he is a member of the US sales team. GW have obviously selected him as the guy who answers rules e-mails globally (the e-mail address is a .com, not a .co.uk or other suffix) and must therefore trust him to fulfill that task - but would it not be more sensible to have picked someone at Nottingham to do this job? Someone at head office would have easy(er) access to the developers and if Alessio is in charge of FAQ's surely someone who works with him would be better placed to answer questions?

Chimera_Calvin wrote:


On topic, the only thing I find strange is that John Spencer has been chosen as the 'point man' for rules questions.
Now this is not to denigrate John in any way. As has been pointed out his rulings seem fair and consistent, the database of answers is a fine idea and the fact that he can contact the design studio lends him credibility.

But, he is a member of the US sales team. GW have obviously selected him as the guy who answers rules e-mails globally (the e-mail address is a .com, not a .co.uk or other suffix) and must therefore trust him to fulfill that task - but would it not be more sensible to have picked someone at Nottingham to do this job? Someone at head office would have easy(er) access to the developers and if Alessio is in charge of FAQ's surely someone who works with him would be better placed to answer questions?

I think what this indicates is that rules questions and indeed FAQs are a very low priority for GW. It's almost as if they believe that creating a formal, dedicated position for this would somehow taint their craft--make them less creative or something. The absolute piss-poor quality of the FAQs and their infrequent release and updates supports this.

I also think that GW would contend the rules questions do not bother 99% of the people who play the game and hence the emphasis on fluff etc. over rules is justified.

olympia wrote:

I think what this indicates is that rules questions and indeed FAQs are a very low priority for GW.

As a corollary to this, it also reflects that GW feels rules are "self evident" and that people should simply "know" how to play the game based on how the author intended. Identifying this intent is where I find Spencer's opinion most useful.

But, he is a member of the US sales team. GW have obviously selected him as the guy who answers rules e-mails globally (the e-mail address is a .com, not a .co.uk or other suffix) and must therefore trust him to fulfill that task - but would it not be more sensible to have picked someone at Nottingham to do this job? Someone at head office would have easy(er) access to the developers and if Alessio is in charge of FAQ's surely someone who works with him would be better placed to answer questions?

This is actually a very good point. I´ve been scrathing my head over this same question ever since this whole "Spencer question" first surfaced.

I think what this indicates is that rules questions and indeed FAQs are a very low priority for GW. It's almost as if they believe that creating a formal, dedicated position for this would somehow taint their craft--make them less creative or something. The absolute piss-poor quality of the FAQs and their infrequent release and updates supports this.

I also think that GW would contend the rules questions do not bother 99% of the people who play the game and hence the emphasis on fluff etc. over rules is justified.

QFT. The cold fact is that you don´t have to be a mythical "power gamer" or a "tournament player" to want clear and concise rules. House rules should be the voluntary exception. But when the same problems surface again and again, the house rules become mandatory and de facto basic rules. Negotiating patches for unclear rules with each opponent is most definitly not fun. According to GW the whole purpose of this hobby is to have "fun". Well, using a minimum of 10 minutes extra ( for some codexes )before games just for settling rules questions is really frustrating.

The biggest problem with rules issues, is they get argued.

I have not agreed with all of John's decisions, but none of them seem way off base. Same with Yak, INAT, etc.

What I would *really* like, is for GW to just state "What John says is official"
Tada... now we have answers we can use.

Yak, I understand your concern about new FAQs not agreeing with Johns rulings, but I don't see that as a big problem. Some of the FAQ rulings don't agree with previous FAQ rulings, or even with the rest of the rules. If John says "Spore Mines are KP" and 8 months later the FAQ says "Spore mines are not KP", no big deal. At least we had consistent reliable rules. Better than having a discussion before every game.

While I may have an opinion, I don't really care what the ruling is, I care that we have a ruling. I would gladly abide by the 2-3 'wrong' decisions** John makes, in order to have the other 25 down in black and white. (It is what makes the INAT faq useful.)

**



So John,

It doesn't have to be pretty, just a place where you can post the Q&A's that you deal with. It will probably *save* you time, since I am sure you get a ton of the same question.


Cent99,
I don't know what John's actual job title is, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think Yak/Marius/You are game designers for GW (or anywhere?), but you guys do a good job with the INAT.
And John does have the advantage that he deals with GW topics day in and day out, and does have some access to the design studio. (how much... who knows...) Off the top of my head, there is only one ruling he has made that I disagree with, and I can live with it. I just want GW to acknowledge it as 'official' (at least until it is changed), and to have a place to review what has been said.


gak,I may start writing GW now....

If this wiki gets going on dakka, will the answers affect the INAT FAQ, because, some of the answers I have gotten from John are different then what is in the INAT FAQ.

coredump wrote:I just want GW to acknowledge it as 'official' (at least until it is changed), and to have a place to review what has been said.

Never happen. Heck, we're having Alessio as a special guest this year at AdeptiCon, and getting feedback from him on the INAT FAQ was...somewhat delayed (although he did give us feedback that was helpful, especially with the Chaos Daemons questions). And this is with our people talking with him on a weekly basis to make his travel arrangements, etc so it wasn't that he didn't have time to talk about FAQs...he just didn't want to talk about FAQs.

The Studio has zero interest in comprehensive, up-to-date FAQs, for a variety of reasons. However, they're also extremely possessive about their IP and control of other related issues, and I can bet they'll Never give a GW US employee their "official stamp of approval."

sourclams wrote: I've shown people the INAT FAQ before to settle an argument and gotten the "That's nice, but who cares about this guy" response.

Well of course you did. It's an unofficial FAQ. It's only valid for resolving disputes if you and your opponent have actually agreed to use it.

I think the misconception that the FAQ should be something that you can just pull out of your bag and stop arguments with is a large part of the problem that certain people have with the INAT FAQ.

But that's simply not what it's for. Unless you're playing in one of the tournaments that uses it, it's a set of rules clarifications for those who choose to use it.

It's a way of not having to go through all of those rules issues with an opponent before the game. Instead of saying 'How do you play this? And what about that? And this other thing?' you're simply agreeing to the whole swag at once.

Then Spencer showed up and I was jadedly pessimistic that he'd be any more useful, but when I email him and get an answer with a GW email address stamped on it, and then other local people can email him and get the exact same answer, it's much more effective for conflict resolution.

It's more effective because you haven't chosen to resolve conflicts a different way. The group I game with tends to resolve conflicts simply by deciding how to play it amongst ourselves when the issue arises... and if an FAQ comes along that agrees with us, that's just gravy.

Looks like it was fixed but the credibility of the document is less than ironclad.

There's that idea again that the INAT is trying to be some sort of official document. It's not. It doesn't need 'credibility' to do its job. It just needs people to stop thinking that it's something that it has never been presented to be.

I just wanted to point out that my job is actually all Customer Service, the sales are just a facet of that. I don't have to upsell anyone, no minimum sales numbers to meet-just take the order for those who don't want to do place it online. I consider answer rules questions a very important part of my job and take it very seriously.

On to other points(i'll answer what I can and get the rest tonight, when I get home)
The only thing more official about my answers is the fact that I work for GW and answering rules questions is part of my job. They can be overrulled by any FAQ that is printed.
It's unlikely that my answers will ever be considered 'official', that's just not the way we work. The reason I am the the only email for rules questions is that the UK does not answer questions by email. They have an address for order issues, but nothing else. They prefer to work by phone.

On to the cataloging my answers and such:
I'll ask my boss to see what he thinks and let you guys know.

If I missed anything, let me know.

And you don't need to call me "Mr. Spencer". John or JOS(if it gets confusing) will do. I have a nickname, but it would take too long to explain and I rarely use it.