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Other terms I'd like to see defined:

NORMAL. (in the context of; normal movement, shoot normally, normal close combat weapon. If I'm allowed to shoot one more weapon than normal per turn... i'm normally allowed to shoot 0 weapons in my opponent's turn...)
PHASE/TURN. In fact they did define TURN, but most rules when applied with a little common sense go directly against their definition.


I really wish we didn't HAVE to define such terms, but really, a lot of people just fail at logic/grammar/comprehension. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be douches that claim Wraithguard don't have eyes (I know you posted that thread just to make a point, but I can actually see someone claiming that same thing).

Overall though I think you really need to take context into account, which 'RAW' sometimes does not.

You know... every single word, phrase or expression can be misunderstood by anyone, hence the You Make Da Call forum I believe.
Asking people what they think about undefined terms in the rules and how they should be played in certain situations is pretty vague.
We should keep to specific questions on specific rules here, otherwise it can only end up as a pointless and endless debate.
Frankly, I wasn't sure at first if this was even a serious thread.

Nurglitch wrote:Where have I made an ad hominem?

Here:

Nurglitch wrote:On a lighter note, I thought it might be something to point out that there are people that read the Bible literally. They're called "Fundamentalists"... Just, you know, pointing that out.

Anyhow, I think I've said about as much as necessary, so I'll leave you gentlemen to your project of scriptural exegesis. Good luck.

"Fundamentalist" is an insult in my neck of the woods. I stopped saying "Nurg" when you told me you found it offensive. I had assumed I would get the same kind of respect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Trasvi wrote:
I really wish we didn't HAVE to define such terms, but really, a lot of people just fail at logic/grammar/comprehension. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be douches that claim Wraithguard don't have eyes (I know you posted that thread just to make a point, but I can actually see someone claiming that same thing).

Overall though I think you really need to take context into account, which 'RAW' sometimes does not.

In person I'm really really a nice guy. True story: I once won one of my many sportsmanship awards at a RT tournament even though I had laryngitis and couldn't speak a word (I had to use gestures and flashcards).

If the question came up in an actual tournament, I'd be like, "Here's a fun fact, did you know wraithlords can't shoot because they don't have eyes?" Then I'd continue to let the wraithlord shoot.

Of course I use context in the game. The YMDC forum is not the game. Here we can say stuff we'd never actually try to play.

Flavius Infernus wrote:In person I'm really really a nice guy. True story: I once won one of my many sportsmanship awards at a RT tournament even though I had laryngitis and couldn't speak a word (I had to use gestures and flashcards).

I have a feeling the laryngitis may have had something to do with that award, Flavius

But seriously, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said about YMDC. The only time people start truly yapping at each other is when one or the other brings up the "I would NEVER play that way in a real game!" statement six pages after most people came to a consensus about how to play and are now discussing any and every strange interpretation that could possibly come up for fun.

No pun intended, but it really helps to be on the same page in situations like these. Especially online when people can be so easily misunderstood without tone of voice and body language to go by.

DoW

Flavius Infernus:

I'm sorry, but I wasn't calling you a fundamentalist. I was pointing out that what you're attempting to do with the 40k rules is what religious fundamentalists do with their holy texts. I apologize for any offense that comment might have caused, but I would like you to consider the comparison despite it not being a welcome one.

Cool, Nurglitch, I'll agree not to be offended.

I perceived that the comparison was an attempt to impugn the authority of my arguments by associating me personally with a group of people whose arguments are widely considered stereotypically weak and illogical.

Actually in my experience--and I have plenty--Bible "literalists" are the most ready of anyone to make appeals to "context" when it appears that the text might be saying something that they don't like.

chromedog wrote:People who play RAW to this level are the reason boxes of toothpicks have safety instructions.

Because they need things to tell them what they can and can't do with them. What, you mean I'm not supposed to inhale them?

What's common sense to some is outside the realms of interpretation to others.

One reason why I refuse to be drawn into these type of games - it's 40k, not rocket science. It's closer to tiddlywinks.

This really needs to be addressed. It might surprise you Chromedog, and perhaps some others, but Flavius and Nurglitch and the others are not in fact in the middle of a game. It's true! They are not trying to do these things because "the rules don't say I can't!" or even "The rules say your wraithlord can't shoot!" They are pointing out weaknesses in the rule system.

This is a very important distinction. Common sense always seems common until it is someone else's common sense leading them to a different conclusion. Then they are stupid, or rules lawyers or whatever. These sorts of things cause arguments in games, or at best lead to "Ok, 4+ you are right and we play that way." That isn't fun, that is merely getting the issue out of the way to get back to the fun that would have continued unabated had the sloppy rules not necessitated rolling a freaking dice.

Yes, you will always be able to find someone with the reading comprehension of a sheep with fetal alcohol syndrome, and they will always make stupid rules arguments. But just because something makes a fair amount of sense based on fluff and common sense rules interpretation doesn't mean there is not a perfectly sensible alternate interpretation, and disparaging those who wish to figure out such issues after discovering them and attempting to disect them is all manner of wrong.

Wehrkind wrote:Yes, you will always be able to find someone with the reading comprehension of a sheep with fetal alcohol syndrome, and they will always make stupid rules arguments.

The whole post was well put, but that part made some folks in my office look at me funny.

*L* Glad I could help I do need to credit Something Positive with that though; the fetal alcohol bit is from an old comic from long back.

Flavius Infernus:

Context is like logic in that everyone appeals to it, but rarely treats is correctly. Saying "Well, logically A follows from B" is useless without citing a valid logical rule that justifies the move from A to B, and just devolves into another rhetorical move that people make when they want to seem smart (see: Star Trek, Mr. Spock).

The fact that Fundamentalist attempt to read holy texts literally, for example, should not put people off literal reading entirely, but it should put them off trying to read texts expressed in colloquial or natural languages literally. Only formal languages have the capacity to be read literally because they have been regimented for the task of being purely denotative.

That Fundamentalists appeal to context, usually incorrectly, while otherwise going for a literal or RAW reading is because they're not interested in what the text says, they're only interested in winning the argument and persuading people that they're right. Literalism and context, for them, are rhetorical moves rather than critical moves.

So context is handy for determining properties of a colloquial text, including meaning, how items of information relate and terms refer, not the specific meaning of sentences. The layout and diagrams in the rules, for example, are contextual. One paragraph labeled with a sub-heading of the previous paragraph, for example, suggests that the scope of information in the paragraph is within that of the previous paragraph, and that information of the previous paragraph carries over unless specified otherwise. But only if you log that contextual information in your semantic model.

Timmah wrote:

kirsanth wrote:Perhaps you should specify "40k Game Terms" then.

His response was valid, and yours was pretty close to insulting.

Sorry I figured that being in a 40k rules forum would clarify that.

You figured wrong then.) And his response is valid, pointing out that you can't start defining terms, 40k or otherwise, without defining the basic terms below them.

Pointless anyway. You're still arguing most things in a vacuum, where the context is important. Taking one sentence, or one word, from a GW rules set and trying to define it absent it's context isn't going to work.

mikhaila wrote:

You figured wrong then.) And his response is valid, pointing out that you can't start defining terms, 40k or otherwise, without defining the basic terms below them.

Pointless anyway. You're still arguing most things in a vacuum, where the context is important. Taking one sentence, or one word, from a GW rules set and trying to define it absent it's context isn't going to work.

But see, reading stuff in context leads to forming opinions on how rules work which in turn leads to RAI and many different interpretations.

Most game rules work as worded. You don't have to try and define context, which is why a lot (most) other games don't have tons of rule arguments.

For instance, when was the last time you had an argument over a game of chess/monopoly/scrabble?
Your rook can move in any one direction any amount of spaces. I don't need to take this in context, the rule itself tells me what to do without me needing to ascertain the meaning.

Nurglitch wrote:
So context is handy for determining properties of a colloquial text, including meaning, how items of information relate and terms refer, not the specific meaning of sentences. The layout and diagrams in the rules, for example, are contextual. One paragraph labeled with a sub-heading of the previous paragraph, for example, suggests that the scope of information in the paragraph is within that of the previous paragraph, and that information of the previous paragraph carries over unless specified otherwise. But only if you log that contextual information in your semantic model.

Well I agree, and even to do my version of RAW reading with classical dialectic you have to make these very assumptions about how text is positioned within documents and under headings and the information that carries about the relationships between statements.

But suppose you want to make an exception to a group of general rules within a larger group of paragraphs or section-with-a-heading that only applies to one specific instance of that category? How would you do that? By referring to your exception using a more-specific term that excludes the members of your larger category so that you can show that these particular statements refer only to this exceptional case.

For example, if you were writing a bunch of rules about models in terminator armor and you wanted to specify a single rule within those rules that applies to a particular unit type, you might say "models in terminator armor" everywhere that you mean the larger group and "terminators" in the section where you're referring to the exception for the specific sub-group.

Since we can't know the authors' intentions, my argument again boils down to the fact that because it is *possible* that they meant "terminators" when they wrote that--and did not necessarily mean "models in terminator armor" for that specific rule about sweeps--we cannot assume that they meant "models in terminator armor." Because then if they meant "terminators," we'd be breaking a rule when we applied it to all "models in terminator armor" unless we can show somewhere that they are actually the same thing.

I'm still waiting to see that evidence.

Okay, about RAI and RAW.

These are gamer terms. They have no equivalent in any modern philosophy of language. Trying to explain these things to linguists will earn you their undying contempt.

RAW is basically literalism, such that every rule must be explicitly stated by the text. It ignores the fact that not every rule is stated by the text, and that most of the rules of the game need to be inferred from combinations of the rules stated in the text. Moreover it leads to proponents of the RAW claiming a literal interpretation of the text to mean whatever the hell they want it to.

This failing, and the clumsy application of bivalent logic, leads people to suppose that you need to read what the text was intended to state.

RAI is essentially literary criticism. The problem is that if the rules are not explicitly stated by the text, the intentions of the authors are not either. I'm sure we're all acquainted with the horror of the room full of students giving their learned opinions of what some character in a novel really symbolizes. Worse still, you get people speculating on a library of of apocryphal comments made by authors, snippets from White Dwarf, the GW website, background text, and usually whatever the hell the proponent wishes the text to say and how they imagine it should be. Even if you stick with the rules-bearing part of the text, the problem arises that the only source from which to divine the intentions of the authors is the text as it is written!

The difference between RAW and RAI is thus both stupid hair-splitting, since the intentions of the authors have been expressed as the text, and the text as written expresses the rules intended by the authors, and a red herring insofar as literacy goes.

Outside of Warhammer 40k circles, and perhaps gaming circles in general, no one would seriously think that textual fundamentalism and artsy criticism are the only ways of reading what is essentially an instruction manual. Well, actually there are people who would, but generally speaking fundamentalists and literary critics are idiots.

Indeed, technical writing outside of the gaming world has evolved to combating the ever-improving idiot. Formal languages evolved to remove the fallacy of appeal to authority from logic, from math and science, and simplified versions of colloquial languages have been developed for use in instruction manuals for engineers, doctors, and programmers, disciplines for whom clarity and specificity are greatly desired.

This has not occurred with GW, and the reason for doing so is clear: games like 40k require good will and co-operation to be successful play experiences. Writing a manual in a formally regimented language will distract players from the co-operative aspects of 40k, something that many tournament players (and casual players...) sometimes lose sight of in their zeal to compete and win. But not all rules disputes arise from people clawing for advantage and scoring places in tournaments.

From a play perspective, most rules disputes discussed in forums never arise: people play however they want to play and if there's a confusion about the rules it's either bypassed via agreement prior to play, or randomized during play.

Of the rules disputes that get logged, I would categorize them as:

1. People requesting rules.
Some people, for whatever reason, are incapable of researching their own rules and require other people to tell them where to find them in the texts.

2. People misreading rules.
This is by far the greatest source of rules disputes, although there are certainly many situation where all you have to do is point out that someone has forgotten another relevant rule that would change the implications of a rule, confused a rule with a rule from a previous edition, or confuse the background material for rules material. However, these confusions are usually honest, which accounts for the vehemence of the arguments that they provoke: no one is more stalwart than in their defense of what they think is right.

3. Rules Lawyers
Unlike honest mistakes, these disgusting parasites prey on the fact that many Warhammer 40k players treat the rules as gaming accessories to be perched on gaming tables for ambience, rather than resources to be consulted and learned. They try to use other player's unfamiliarity with the rules, or the prevailing meme that the rules are somehow unclear, to try and force a ruling that changes a rule to their own advantage. These are the Win At All Costs type who would rather make the people they're playing with miserable than risk losing fair and square.

Of course, Rules Lawyers get confused with honest gamers who wisely seek to learn and tactically exploit the actual rules to their fullest, and who may make honest mistakes in their zeal to unlock the next super-combination.

4. Rules Forum Debate Teamsters
Some people want to be the expert that everyone goes, the authority to which people appeal when they play their games. Or they simply regard debate to be a fun way to pass the time. The problem is that their status in rules discussion forums, winning debates and being acclaimed as having the right opinion, interferes with their judgment, and they are quick to label dissenters as trolls, pedants, and whatever else will serve as an ad hominem to batter an opponent down in the court of public opinion and to raise their own status as a result.

It is these people, I think, that perpetuate the myth of RAI and RAW, and the rules being unclear, because there's nothing that perpetuates debate quite like the idea GW's rules writing somehow being unclear, so that if the court of public opinion decides for one side or another, that a return bout can be scheduled for some future date.

If the rules were popularly regarded as clear and possessed of a fixed meaning that could be established by a brief discussion, these people would have to get their fix from the Off-Topic or politics forum, where partisanism is de rigeour.

These people should be distinguished from those people on rules forums that just want to get a rules dispute settled correctly so that they don't have to keep dealing with it every time they settle down across the table from a Rules Lawyer, or simply a stranger from another area's gaming culture. The INAT FAQ is an example of heroic failure in the attempt to head off disagreements so popular on the YMDC forum, and explains why GW doesn't trouble itself too much about FAQs: if the rules aren't clear, how will adding FAQs to the mix clarify anything when all they do is provoke dissent and debate themselves?

It is said that where there's a will, there's a way. A caveat to that is that there's often a way despite a lack of will. The YMDC forum offers a fantastic opportunity for players to work together to solve genuine rules problems as they crop up, log them for posterity, and to do so using critical, fallibilistic, and objective methods. These methods are detailed for free on the internet, with dictionaries, grammars, logic primers, and so on freely available. But, for the motivations listed above, people seem to prefer a debating pit for internet dick-wagging, which is a pity for our hobby. It's strange that a hobby about carefully assembling and painting tiny models, carefully arranging beautiful terrain boards, and then co-operating with another person to implement a relatively complex set of rules would lack people willing to engage in the persnickety work of constructively solving rules disputes.

Nurglitch, you make two very strange points:

"From a play perspective, most rules disputes discussed in forums never arise: people play however they want to play and if there's a confusion about the rules it's either bypassed via agreement prior to play, or randomized during play."

Doesn't the fact that it has to be randomized during play mean that the dispute arose, and had to be dealt with (in this case in an unappealing manner)?
I mean, how many threads start with "This came up in a game last night..."

"They have no equivalent in any modern philosophy of language. Trying to explain these things [RAW and RAI] to linguists will earn you their undying contempt. "
Apparently you don't work in corporate. There are volumes of works devoted to helping people make certain that their "signal" matches their "message", in other words that the RAW matches the RAI. Much ink has been spilled over the methods and difficulties of making certain that what you convey is actually what you meant.

Come to think of it, I should collect some from around here and mail them to GW

Nurglitch:

Calling shenanigans on one strawman. RAW as traditionally exercised on YMDC doesn't require that every rule be explicitly stated: that would clearly create an unplayable game. Rather it requires that rules be either explicitly stated *or* derived in sound arguments from stated rules (or the conclusions of other sound arguments etc.)

Also, as a professional literary critic and technical writer, I'll try not to be insulted by your belittling of my professional domain. I've known many very nice philosophers and linguists and...I think I'll stop there.

[edit]
Actually now that I think about it, I used to have a good friend and 40K opponent who was a linguist at an elite university, and not only did he not laugh at the RAW/RAI thing, he was the most creative and infuriating extreme rules-lawyer you can imagine. One time he won a key battle against me in a big campaign by declaring that the "obstacles" he was allowed to place on the board could be any shape according to the scenario rules, so he made an "infintely deep" pit that surrounded the objective. I had to let him have it because his argument was sound. I think he landed a tenure track job somewhere in the south, last I heard.

Nurglitch wrote:4. Rules Forum Debate Teamsters
Some people want to be the expert that everyone goes, the authority to which people appeal when they play their games. Or they simply regard debate to be a fun way to pass the time. The problem is that their status in rules discussion forums, winning debates and being acclaimed as having the right opinion, interferes with their judgment, and they are quick to label dissenters as trolls, pedants, and whatever else will serve as an ad hominem to batter an opponent down in the court of public opinion and to raise their own status as a result.

Pot, meet Kettle.

DoW

Nurglitch wrote:
3. Rules Lawyers
Unlike honest mistakes, these disgusting parasites prey on the fact that many Warhammer 40k players treat the rules as gaming accessories to be perched on gaming tables for ambience, rather than resources to be consulted and learned.

3b. Nurgibberish
When one's opinion doesn't match up with the rules in their literal form, requiring an obfuscated circumlocution involving various and often invalid or misapplied theoretical constructions in an attempt to create an intellectual void that exudes an aura of expertise when viewed by the uninitiated. This void creates a malleable discourse in which what rules literally say can be bent to not say it anymore, thereby validating your opinion which, as it turns out, was correct all along, the rest of these stupid peons were just too unenlightened to grasp the concept.

sourclams wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
3. Rules Lawyers
Unlike honest mistakes, these disgusting parasites prey on the fact that many Warhammer 40k players treat the rules as gaming accessories to be perched on gaming tables for ambience, rather than resources to be consulted and learned.

3b. Nurgibberish
When one's opinion doesn't match up with the rules in their literal form, requiring an obfuscated circumlocution involving various and often invalid or misapplied theoretical constructions in an attempt to create an intellectual void that exudes an aura of expertise when viewed by the uninitiated. This void creates a malleable discourse in which what rules literally say can be bent to not say it anymore, thereby validating your opinion which, as it turns out, was correct all along, the rest of these stupid peons were just too unenlightened to grasp the concept.

sourclams you win 1 internets. Enjoy.

It's like you guys are using TI-9001 calculators to count your fingers; just count your damn fingers!

Where do rules disputes fit where the INTENT is clear, the RULES are clear, and they are OPPOSITE of each other?
Looking at banshee masks....

Trasvi wrote:Where do rules disputes fit where the INTENT is clear, the RULES are clear, and they are OPPOSITE of each other?
Looking at banshee masks....

Which RAI are you looking at? The old RAI of what the mask was originally created for? Or the new 5th edition RAI that says that they intentionally left wargear that was broken by the core 5th edition rule changes as broken, and that you must wait for a new codex for it to work?

Personally, I allow my Eldar opponents to use them to strike at I10 when assaulting through cover. That's my personal choice though to be a nice guy in the interest of both of us enjoying our game and our armies since that is the whole point of playing to me. As I understand it from the latest rulebook FAQ, the latest guidance we have from GW is that any broken wargear stays broken, so they should not currently be helping with assaulting through cover.

I think that FAQ is misinterpreted. It refers to an item (thornback) which affects a rule (outnumbering) that is no longer in game. There is no possible way to interpret Thornback to work with the current rules. It just doesn't affect anything.
On the other hand, other 'broken' wargear (Target Locks, Banshee Masks) have clear intention of how they should work, can still mostly be applied in that way, but have a few small restrictions relating to past editions of the rules. The situation is nowhere near the Thornback situation and should not be treated with the same general FAQ.

I don't get why they didn't just say Thorn Back made the carnifex or whatever count as having inflicted 1-3 more wounds for the purposes of combat resolution. Sort of like the various Banners the Imperial armies field.

Wehrkind wrote:I don't get why they didn't just say Thorn Back made the carnifex or whatever count as having inflicted 1-3 more wounds for the purposes of combat resolution. Sort of like the various Banners the Imperial armies field.

They answered that in the FAQ. They said they didn't want to go back and update things 5th broke in codexes, they would rather you just wait for a new codex where it gets a full update.

How many gamers carry around FAQs with them? Not many. I think that Space Wolves players do... but that's because they almost have to in order to be able to play their codex.

Given that, if GW said in an FAQ (it would have to be an errata, actually) that Thornback gave a -2 penalty to enemy morale checks in CC... well if someone told you that, and could not actually show you the rule, why should you believe them?

While I think that GW could do a better job of clarifying legitimately unclear things via their FAQs, I think their policy of keeping errata/faq rulings to a minimum is a good one.

willydstyle wrote:While I think that GW could do a better job of clarifying legitimately unclear things via their FAQs, I think their policy of keeping errata/faq rulings to a minimum is a good one.

I think I'm going to have to disagree on that one.

A wise man once said that it would quite literally only take a week or so for GW to compile all the questions on various forums, determine proper answers and release highly detailed and helpful Errata. It would definitely make YMDC a less interesting place, but the end result would be much clearer rulings and fewer arguments. They could even release them as paperback 'Codex Updates' and charge a reasonable amount for them (in addition to providing an online source, of course) so people wouldn't have to print them out if they didn't want to.

Maybe I'm missing the big picture, but to me it reeks of laziness more than anything else.

DoW

DogOfWar wrote:A wise man once said that it would quite literally only take a week or so for GW to compile all the questions on various forums, determine proper answers and release highly detailed and helpful Errata.

Oh dear, that 'wise man' wasn't you was it?

If so, I take it BACK!

DoW