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 Elemental wrote:
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

This isn't an equitable comparison.

YMDC is a rules section on a fan site for both games. A popluar fan site, but a fan site of gaming.

40K has an faq, and no official rules discussion forum.

WM/H has an faq and a huge official rules discussion forum, with no less than 6 people (the infernals) that monitor it to answer questions, an another at least 2 (DC, Jason soles) staff members who are high level designers that give input and clarify / final decisions.

This is actually a really good, smart thing that WM/H does.


But if i have a rules question on WM/H, or Malifaux, or any game - i'm hitting their official rules section on their official site first. This way i can get *official* and binding answers to questions that will affect tourney play, and will be added to the faq once ruled on by a dev or an infernal.


So that's why comparing dakka's YMDC for these two games isn't really the best comparison. YMDC might be the best resource to go for 40k. It is not for WM/H, simply because another outlet gives you interface directly with development and their team of rules judges. It's obvious which one is superior from a rules perspective. A bunch of fans, or the people who made the game, and the staff they recruited to handle rules issues ?


http://privateerpressforums.com/forumdisplay.php?39-WARMACHINE-amp-HORDES-Rules-Questions

978 pages of threads. Granted that goes back to 2009 (again, good to have an archive), but still. There's 2 pages of threads in the last 24 hours. This is probably a better example, although i still personally wouldn't compare the two, simply because of the differences.


We all have our opinions, but it's important to maintain a perspective of objectivity ... otherwise, what's the point, we're just throwing words at one another.

Nitpick; where are you getting "two pages in the last 24 hours" from? Right now, I'm seeing about 2/3rds of the front page with posts in the last day.

But yes, the official forum is a better equivalent, you're right. But with the official PP forums....my point still stands. Here's the big difference, look at the length of the individual in the PP forum; a grand total of three that have ten posts or above are currently on the first page. Like the equivalent forum here, most of them are on these lines:

"How does X work?"
"Like this, according to these rules."
"Thanks."

But in the 40K threads I linked to, it's not that it takes the posters a long time to come to the answer, because they don't come to the answer. The threads go round and round and round with people arguing codex vs rulebook vs obvious author intent vs digital codex vs FAQ vs precedent in more up-to-date codexes vs what the definition of "upgrade" is vs the definition of "friendly" vs RAI vs RAW vs the proper usage of English words vs Alien vs Predator....

I'm not slamming the posters in those threads; they almost all come across as people sincerely interested in solving the problem and giving their reading of the situation. But because the rules are so vague, it's not actually possible to come to an inarguable conclusion on those questions. Good luck if you run a list based on one reading of one of those rules at a tournament, and the TO disagrees with you.

Whether you're comparing with the official PP forums, or the YMDC forum here, the difference is clear, and the conclusion I draw is that one rules set is better than the other (NOT perfect, just better).

I'm a MTG and Pokemon Judge (I happily judge MTG. Pokemon, however, is a requirement of my job) and going to far for me is when you start to either raise your voice, get attention from those who would normally be ignoring you, when you start to use language you normally wouldn't, or when your issue has been solved according to staff but it's being argued to the point that the event is delayed.

I once had a 25 year old Jersey meat head at a Pokemon event get all tough because he mis-registered his deck list (He didn't put half of his cards and they got replaced by basic energy, rendering his deck unplayable). I was team lead so I had assessed the penalty and he immediately began causing a MASSIVE scene. He threw a fit for over an hour, threatening me, screaming, saying it was our fault for not fixing his mistake for him, and cursing in front of incredibly young children just to give us a hard time. He's the worst case scenario I've ever come across, but I can imagine worse... We had solved the issue exactly as Pokemon said we should and this guy just wouldn't let go. For some reason this 25 year old thought he was going to be babysat at this Pokemon tournament...

Playing at MtG tournaments a few years back, here is how we amicably solve rules questions: if a certain question arises, I would tell my opponent politely that I need to call a judge to ask some rules clarification. Then I'll call the judge, explain what happened and ask the rules question. Then it'll be resolved with no hard feelings.

For 40k tournaments I've done the same, although at times i felt like it was weird that the rules are somewhat vague but what the judge said goes, the end. For casual games in 40k, I guess "too far" is when someone gets upset over it, which happens from time to time due to the nature of the rules of 40k. But it comes with playing the game, sadly.

 Elemental wrote:
Like the equivalent forum here, most of them are on these lines:

"How does X work?"
"Like this, according to these rules."
"Thanks."

This. Pretty much any game with a decent number of players is going to have people asking questions about the rules. The difference between a well-written game and an unprofessional mess is that when you have questions about the rules the answer is always a straightforward quote of what the rules say. For example, in MTG every single rule question can be answered this way*, even if the person asking has a hard time understanding the explanation right away there's no room for debate about what the answer is. Contrast this with an unprofessional mess like 40k where you can have long arguments about what the answer is where each side has a legitimate point.


*And if you somehow manage to find one that can't you can safely bet it will be fixed very soon.

 Elemental wrote:
Nitpick; where are you getting "two pages in the last 24 hours" from? Right now, I'm seeing about 2/3rds of the front page with posts in the last day.

But yes, the official forum is a better equivalent, you're right. But with the official PP forums....my point still stands. Here's the big difference, look at the length of the individual in the PP forum; a grand total of three that have ten posts or above are currently on the first page. Like the equivalent forum here, most of them are on these lines:

"How does X work?"
"Like this, according to these rules."
"Thanks."

But in the 40K threads I linked to, it's not that it takes the posters a long time to come to the answer, because they don't come to the answer. The threads go round and round and round with people arguing codex vs rulebook vs obvious author intent vs digital codex vs FAQ vs precedent in more up-to-date codexes vs what the definition of "upgrade" is vs the definition of "friendly" vs RAI vs RAW vs the proper usage of English words vs Alien vs Predator....

I'm not slamming the posters in those threads; they almost all come across as people sincerely interested in solving the problem and giving their reading of the situation. But because the rules are so vague, it's not actually possible to come to an inarguable conclusion on those questions. Good luck if you run a list based on one reading of one of those rules at a tournament, and the TO disagrees with you.

Whether you're comparing with the official PP forums, or the YMDC forum here, the difference is clear, and the conclusion I draw is that one rules set is better than the other (NOT perfect, just better).

No worries, hey i'm not here to bash on anyone, i'm here for discourse. The conversation is interesting.

RE the nitpick: In fairness, when i looked, it was really late, and about 1.657 of the first two pages were within 24 hours from when i posted. Might be less or more now as time ebbs and flows.

Fair enough and I would feel comfortable saying i mostly concur, but i'm objective nearly to a fault, so i felt it important to pick out the disparity between an unofficial source with no official source, and an unofficial source with an official source.

There's no question that the WM/H ruleset is far more thorough (nor will i use the term "better", lol). Hell MK1 was almost thorough to the point of being a goddamn fault. I think GW could take a page from PPs book on this front. By contrast, i think both Wyrd and PP could trim down their complexity levels, but that's just me.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Elemental wrote:
Like the equivalent forum here, most of them are on these lines:

"How does X work?"
"Like this, according to these rules."
"Thanks."

This. Pretty much any game with a decent number of players is going to have people asking questions about the rules. The difference between a well-written game and an unprofessional mess is that when you have questions about the rules the answer is always a straightforward quote of what the rules say. For example, in MTG every single rule question can be answered this way*, even if the person asking has a hard time understanding the explanation right away there's no room for debate about what the answer is. Contrast this with an unprofessional mess like 40k where you can have long arguments about what the answer is where each side has a legitimate point.


*And if you somehow manage to find one that can't you can safely bet it will be fixed very soon.

The majority are, but there are glaring ones that aren't. I've given the bane thrall example from long ago. There was also the early MK2 issue with three version of the mechanic "hellfire", across 7 different models. Trust me, there are headbangingly frustrating terribad things from MK1 and MK2 in the WM/H ruleset. It's a good ruleset, but when it trainwrecks, it does so spectacularly. Thankfully the trainwrecks are pretty few and far between.

But again, i can mostly see the point here, which is ultimately "GW could benefit from a tighter ruleset, and an official rules-solving arbiter platform".

That i can get on board with. Probably a'int going to happen, but i can get on board with that.

-- Haight