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coldgaming wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
But ... we are playing with toys ...

If people within the hobby want to call it that I have no problem with it, but I can't stand people outside the hobby thinking of it that way. If put a hell of a lot of time into an artistic endeavor I don't want someone who's never put brush to model writing it off as playing with toys.

Who cares what other people think of it? This is something I might have been concerned about as a teenager, but in the adult world I think most people, if not understanding other people's hobbies, respect that they find them valuable.

We care what other people think because the number of people that are playing AOS is rapidly dwindling. People have been jumping ship since its release and have moved onto other games. As the number of players decrease, GW has to increase prices to see the same returns from die hard fans until they decide to scrap the universe entirely. If we want this hobby to survive, it needs new blood, lots of it.

 Boss Salvage wrote:
I know this is tangential to the original post, but I am continually bothered by haters whose answer to these rules is "I just ignore them".

It's a great goalpost-moving feat though. Very useful for the people extolling the virtues of AoS.

Joke rules are silly and immersion breaking? Just ignore them.
Measuring from any part of the model is a headache? Just ignore that and measure from the base.


By that standard no rule system ever has any faults what so ever, since you can just ignore what ever rule you like and come up with your own.

40K is a perfectly balanced game, since you can just ignore the point values in the codexes and write in your own.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't know if the AoS "funny" rules are the designers critiquing the way the players use the rules. It's not a work of art, it's a free, basic skirmish game. Why would the designers get all up in themselves about how people are playing the rules?

As we know, a lot of players loathe the "funny" rules, they are obviously aimed at a rather junior audience, so it's an example of the designers completely misreading their public. Of course perhaps it increased the appeal of the game to very young players, and thereby compensated for the older players it just annoyed.

At any rate, you don't have to play them if you don't want.

GW sees 40k and AOS / WFB as a sort of roleplay. They have been pretty consistent since the beginning that you are synonymous with the Army General. It's not "funny", it's roleplaying your general as such. A skirmish game can be a work of art. Certainly AOS is more an art than the unfun rules clusterfeth that was WFB 8E.

That's because the players aren't playing the game correctly. Being all straightlaced with a stick up one's arse isn't how GW intends their games to be played at all, junior or elder. It's a fething game, so why so serious?

If you want to play Settra, I would absolutely demand the player concede if he knelt while playing Settra. If you want the option to kneel, then you don't get to play Settra. Otherwise, conduct yourself with unbended knee. Simple as that. Failure to concede upon touching your knee to the ground is poor sportsmanship at best, outright intent to cheat at worst. That rule is black and white, and not up for negotiation.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW sees 40k and AOS / WFB as a sort of roleplay.

I stumbled across this blog post during lunch, which seems altogether serendipitous: http://tibbsforge.com/every-game-is-roleplaying/

- Salvage

I find it strange that, in a single post, we go from:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

That's because the players aren't playing the game correctly. Being all straightlaced with a stick up one's arse isn't how GW intends their games to be played at all, junior or elder. It's a fething game, so why so serious?

To:

If you want to play Settra, I would absolutely demand the player concede if he knelt while playing Settra. If you want the option to kneel, then you don't get to play Settra. Otherwise, conduct yourself with unbended knee. Simple as that. Failure to concede upon touching your knee to the ground is poor sportsmanship at best, outright intent to cheat at worst. That rule is black and white, and not up for negotiation.

I do have a problem with the "every game is roleplaying" argument. I do think it's true, but there's overt, active roleplaying, and then there's passive roleplaying. Wargames are passive - most of the time, players are going to be viewing the game from the "eyes of God" and interacting with the game in an abstract way - while what AoS seemingly demands is active roleplaying more akin to games like DnD.

One of the games that I've finally gotten around to picking up is Muskets & Tomahawks, and it has some fantastic thematic mechanics that makes it play out more like "The Last of the Mohicans" than just a FIW skirmish game. For example, random Officer traits, sideplots for additional victory conditions, and scenarios that change depending on what your force is made up of (an all-Indian force will get a different scenario objective than a Highlander force, for example), make for games that can be, as much as I hate the term, "cinematic." And I don't have to scream at my troops in a French accent or suck on hardtack to get that immersion.

Great read there, thanks for sharing it.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't know if the AoS "funny" rules are the designers critiquing the way the players use the rules. It's not a work of art, it's a free, basic skirmish game. Why would the designers get all up in themselves about how people are playing the rules?

As we know, a lot of players loathe the "funny" rules, they are obviously aimed at a rather junior audience, so it's an example of the designers completely misreading their public. Of course perhaps it increased the appeal of the game to very young players, and thereby compensated for the older players it just annoyed.

At any rate, you don't have to play them if you don't want.

GW sees 40k and AOS / WFB as a sort of roleplay. They have been pretty consistent since the beginning that you are synonymous with the Army General. It's not "funny", it's roleplaying your general as such. A skirmish game can be a work of art. Certainly AOS is more an art than the unfun rules clusterfeth that was WFB 8E.

That's because the players aren't playing the game correctly. Being all straightlaced with a stick up one's arse isn't how GW intends their games to be played at all, junior or elder. It's a fething game, so why so serious?

If you want to play Settra, I would absolutely demand the player concede if he knelt while playing Settra. If you want the option to kneel, then you don't get to play Settra. Otherwise, conduct yourself with unbended knee. Simple as that. Failure to concede upon touching your knee to the ground is poor sportsmanship at best, outright intent to cheat at worst. That rule is black and white, and not up for negotiation.

Perhaps it's a good thing I will never play AoS. I don't think I can take the game seriously enough to actually seriously play the rules about not playing it seriously.

coldgaming wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
But ... we are playing with toys ...

If people within the hobby want to call it that I have no problem with it, but I can't stand people outside the hobby thinking of it that way. If put a hell of a lot of time into an artistic endeavor I don't want someone who's never put brush to model writing it off as playing with toys.

Who cares what other people think of it? This is something I might have been concerned about as a teenager, but in the adult world I think most people, if not understanding other people's hobbies, respect that they find them valuable.

Because people thinking highly of the hobby would lead to more people joining the hobby which would in turn lead to a stronger, healthier, community and market which is good for all of us already here.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Because people thinking highly of the hobby would lead to more people joining the hobby which would in turn lead to a stronger, healthier, community and market which is good for all of us already here.

As someone relatively new to the whole miniature scene, I think I can comfortably say that the image problem mini game players have with outsiders is not that they look like they are having too much fun. In fact, when I first came into this forum six months ago, eager to discuss my fabulous new AoS starter set, "these dudes don't take gaming seriously enough" wasn't my first impression.

Don't like the rules, don't use them. It has nothing to do with prancing around, it has to do with gamers being immersed in a game and it's setting. This was gws attempt at putting throwbacks to fantasy into aos.

As for the toys comment... let's be real. They are toys. My Trans Am is also a toy, so is my G8... most items used in hobbies are toys. The age groups may differ for various toys, but most wargaming miniatures are adult toys (most playing 40k and aos are not 12... not sure how most pre teens could afford these games without rich parents anyway

It is what it is, don't be ashamed of it if you like it. The folks at my job call wargaming miniatures dolls... when I am about to go home and play 40k they always ask if I am going to play dolls lol.

"toy soldiers," dammit "toy soldiers!"

 455_PWR wrote:
It is what it is, don't be ashamed of it if you like it.

I have engaged in pretty much every nerdy hobby known to man: computer programming, board games, video games, webcomics, heavy metal, roleplaying games, comic books, miniature games, atheism, fantasy novels, Star Wars, Star Trek, Hobbits, Doctor Who (the old stuff), LEGO, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, atheism, collectible card games, and so on - and the one thing that is absolutely universal to every single one of them is that the people who engage in them are absolutely obsessed with what other people think of them. It's not that they want to be liked or anything. No, they want something more important than acceptance. They crave legitimacy.

I understand it too, but after going through the same pattern in every. single. hobby. I. do, I just don't have the patience anymore. Legitimacy eventually comes, in one way or another. Personally, the last thing on my resume is a game called "DeathSpank", so I've pretty given up on being taken seriously.

Yet more veiled insults and baffling arguments from Sqorgar. Is it possible for you to make a point without trying to offend another group of people lol?

How about everyone gets back to the topic, which is actually quite interesting and perhaps of relevance to game design in general.

I don't like the rules. People who are silly will be silly without you having to give them instructions on how to be silly.People who don't want it will just have a bad taste in their mouth when they encounter such rules. I'm not even going to call them "funny" rules, because IMO they aren't.

I'm sure there's some people who like them but I think the group of people annoyed by them is going to be larger and more significant.

The rules might be to appeal to children but I don't really think they do a good job of that and there's a lot of people who don't like the game coming across as childish.

Sure, they're just toys, the same way as my hobby car is a toy. But the car isn't a childish toy and I don't think wargames have to be either.

Wargames certainly don't have to be childish. They aren't used in officer training for nothing.

At the same time, there are plenty of games that are light-hearted and funny, such as Charades, Dixit, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The difference between these and the AoS "fun" rules is that the concept is built into the game rather than having been added as an after-thought. The "fun" rules in AoS feel forced and clumsy. To me, at any rate.

 Bottle wrote:
Yet more veiled insults and baffling arguments from Sqorgar. Is it possible for you to make a point without trying to offend another group of people lol?

Who the feth did I try to insult? I just got back from a ban for a perceived insult, and you think the first thing I'm going to do is come back and intentionally insult someone else? Are you purposefully reading my posts with Darth Vader's voice or something?

The whole silly rule argument is, essentially, about embarrassment, or at least the fear of it. It's not about being childish; it's about appearing childish. At some point, someone is going to have to sit down for a little bit of introspection and figure out why the prospect of talking to their toy soldiers in public makes them uneasy. It has much farther reaching consequences that it might initially appear, and it is by no means a problem unique to tabletop wargaming. But I think these things have to be pointed out, even though it might hit a bit close to home for some people. I'm sure Bottle will say it's one big veiled insult, but it absolutely isn't.

The fear of appearing childish/need for legitmacy may be the single most important behavior which affects the popularity and acceptance of miniature games to outsiders - you think potential mini gamers out there seeing the vitriol passed around with AoS's launch are thinking, wow, there's a group of hoopy froods who really know where their towels are? If I had discovered Dakka or Warseer before I bought my copy of AoS's starter set, I would not be a miniature gamer right now. That's not an insult. That was the reality of coming into miniature games, having chosen THAT game at THAT point in time. Maybe it would be different now, or six months before AoS launched, but I doubt it.

And half of that vitriol comes from that obsession with legitimacy that I spoke about. Most of the complaints against AoS, which were far more public and damaging to the field than any of you actually realize, were about how childish it was. It is simple, so it must be for children. It looks like a Saturday morning cartoon. The silly rules were designed for juveniles. Just about every complaint against the game were efforts to de-legitimize it by appealing to wargamers' innate fear of looking childish. It was cartoonish peer pressure, like an Afterschool Special episode: "You want to be cool, man? Here, smoke this Kings of Wars. Don't let anybody see you with that Sigmar game. It's for babies." The entire wargaming field is filled with such absurdly heavy handed attempts at peer pressure, it is a miracle you guys still have any players left. I'm not just talking about about AoS either.

The problem is that wargaming hasn't gotten out of its clique phase yet. It is still small enough that small scale ostracizing can have a devastating effect on the group as a whole. As such, everybody becomes obsessed with justifying every behavior they do, both consciously and subconsciously. And that's where the discussion of these silly rules come in. Here, you have a group of rules which create behavior outside the norm (fear of ostracizing), appearing childish (fear of legitimacy). And if you think I'm full of crap, here's a handful of quotes from this short, two paged thread - see if you can spot any themes (and not all of these quotes are attacking the silly rules, some of them are defending the rules by downplaying the importance of not being childish):

As we know, a lot of players loathe the "funny" rules, they are obviously aimed at a rather junior audience, so it's an example of the designers completely misreading their public. Of course perhaps it increased the appeal of the game to very young players, and thereby compensated for the older players it just annoyed.

I've never played a fantasy game in my life, but from an outside observer (19 years old) who chanced on them, I would find them annoying and childish...

Then it would still be super, mind achingly lame, but so easy to ignore that they'd hardly be noticed.

I think it's received so badly because they're really insulting lame, ... and also makes people uncomfortable... consider it ridiculous at worst and annoyingly inconvenient at best... Or are you just going to think it's so stupid it's almost embarrassing to have even read it and push the book away, while berating it with your friend... I don't think its poor reception is due to social anxiety. I think it's a lame idea, super lame execution, and will be judged as such by the community until GW stops.

I wonder. I think it is the audience between junior and, er, senior, that seems to have the most trouble with games involving some tomfoolery. But of course there are deadly SRS gamers of all ages. To my mind, AoS (and 40k FWIW) is a Saturday morning cartoon kind of game so tomfoolery is totally appropriate.

It is hard enough to get people outside the hobby to see what we do as anything more than playing with toys and going 'pewpewpew' as it is. These rules are bad and diminish the hobby as a whole.

But ... we are playing with toys ...

If people within the hobby want to call it that I have no problem with it, but I can't stand people outside the hobby thinking of it that way. If put a hell of a lot of time into an artistic endeavor I don't want someone who's never put brush to model writing it off as playing with toys.

And, to be honest, the more people inside the hobby perpetuate this idea, the worse people outside the hobby will think.

Let me tell you, as a 12-year old I'd be mortified to prance around, engage in staring contests, or hurl insults at models in front of my peers. Teens don't want to be considered excitable children, they want to act like adults.

Infantile behavior is the last thing this hobby needs, IMO. Self-deprecating statements in the vein of "we play with toys" don't help the image either.

Who cares what other people think of it? This is something I might have been concerned about as a teenager, but in the adult world I think most people, if not understanding other people's hobbies, respect that they find them valuable.

We care what other people think because the number of people that are playing AOS is rapidly dwindling. People have been jumping ship since its release and have moved onto other games. As the number of players decrease, GW has to increase prices to see the same returns from die hard fans until they decide to scrap the universe entirely. If we want this hobby to survive, it needs new blood, lots of it.

Because people thinking highly of the hobby would lead to more people joining the hobby which would in turn lead to a stronger, healthier, community and market which is good for all of us already here.

It is what it is, don't be ashamed of it if you like it. The folks at my job call wargaming miniatures dolls... when I am about to go home and play 40k they always ask if I am going to play dolls lol.

I'm sure there's some people who like them but I think the group of people annoyed by them is going to be larger and more significant.

The rules might be to appeal to children but I don't really think they do a good job of that and there's a lot of people who don't like the game coming across as childish.

Sure, they're just toys, the same way as my hobby car is a toy. But the car isn't a childish toy and I don't think wargames have to be either.

Wargames certainly don't have to be childish. They aren't used in officer training for nothing.

It's not about appearing childish. It's about being made to be childish because "fun".

Frankly I don't class the Fyreslayers' "funny" ability as "funny". Because I spend most of my games informing my opponent's units that they are a PITA or are about to become worm food...

It's all (for me) part of the expected banter in gaming.

And I use the word banter in its' true sense, not the slightly upsetting phenomenon of " bantz" where some zirconium'd bumsplash posts about a "cheeky Nando's" on Facebook...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's not about appearing childish. It's about being made to be childish because "fun".

Rolling plenty of dice is the true fun. That's why GW games have so much randomness.

And everyone knows that rolling dice is actually a serious business...of fun.


Back to the topic; to me, AoS is more criticized because of the way to build armies than its rules. The "staring contest like special rules" are somewhat anecdotic, 'cause it only concerns few game profiles.

But yeah, it's kinda forced and I don't think that was necessary to write this. I'm pretty sure the GW Studio thinks it's fun in itself to do that...well, not all players feel that way, obviously.

On the other hand, who really cares that much about AoS rules? All is made from the postulate you and your opponent(s) agree to play a fun game together. So, as long as you all agree on what you want to play...rules are just a pointless detail.

Miniatures, on the other hand, are not.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Yet more veiled insults and baffling arguments from Sqorgar. Is it possible for you to make a point without trying to offend another group of people lol?

Who the feth did I try to insult? I just got back from a ban for a perceived insult, and you think the first thing I'm going to do is come back and intentionally insult someone else? Are you purposefully reading my posts with Darth Vader's voice or something?

Every post you make is riddled with insults against almost everyone. If you're getting banned for it and don't know why maybe get an independent party to read over your posts before you submit them.

The whole silly rule argument is, essentially, about embarrassment, or at least the fear of it. It's not about being childish; it's about appearing childish.

No. Not in the slightest. It's about immersion, and how these rules break it.

At some point, someone is going to have to sit down for a little bit of introspection and figure out why the prospect of talking to their toy soldiers in public makes them uneasy. It has much farther reaching consequences that it might initially appear, and it is by no means a problem unique to tabletop wargaming. But I think these things have to be pointed out, even though it might hit a bit close to home for some people. I'm sure Bottle will say it's one big veiled insult, but it absolutely isn't.

Lol you've already just stipulated that each individual who dislikes these rules has some deep underlying emotional issues he/she is not addressing. I'm done with this.

Kilkrazy already asked people to get back on topic in this thread.

Saying you are not insulting groups of people before making sweeping generalizations about those groups is absolutely not OK on Dakka Dakka. Anything further like that in this thread (or honestly, any other) will result in further suspensions. We only have one primary rule on Dakka Dakka, and that is "Be Polite".

If you can't post on this topic without insulting others, then simply do not post here.

Along the lines of KK's "importance of NOT being earnest comment," I think we wargamers have more to fear from being ostracized as po-faced pedants (we have even invented any number of terms to describe ourselves as such) rather than for being whimsical. And I think a tendency to the former does play some role in the criticism of AoS. That said, you don't have to be self-conscious to find rules like the one in question unfunny and uninteresting.

 Manchu wrote:
That said, you don't have to be self-conscious to find rules like the one in question unfunny and uninteresting.

Yeah, that's the point really - in discussions like this, we're going to get a lot further if we focus on the merit of the rules themselves (why it is or isn't a good idea to introduce a bit of roleplay into what might otherwise be a bit of a stuffy wargame, for instance which is definitely something I could consider, and in fact do!) rather than on the nature of the people themselves who do or don't like the rules.

The first is both on topic and polite, the second can go downhill really fast. We've mostly gotten this section back from that brink so let's try to keep it that way . Cheers all

Something to consider here is, what is meant by "immersion"?

This term comes up all the time in roleplaying crowds. It is often defined as when the players are so emotionally involved in "the moment" that they are no longer thinking about the game mechanics.

That sense is probably inapplicable to a miniatures wargame, where the players are constantly fiddling with the playing pieces, not all of which (e.g., rulers and dice) stand in for objects in the setting of the game, as the miniatures themselves (albeit sometimes abstractly) stand in for soldiers or tanks or dragons, etc. Furthermore, miniatures games rarely ask us to assume the limitations of an "in-setting" perspective. The players hover over the "world" of the game from a godlike perspective. The "fourth wall" analogy therefore makes no sense to me.

The "fifth wall" makes even less sense to me, except inasmuch as designers telling people how to use rules or, more commonly, players telling one another how they are supposed to use the rules is always controversial, generating fights between the alleged "WAACers" and the "Casual Mafia." Even ITT we have had someone say, if you don't do the silly dance but still take the bonus then you are a cheater.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The whole silly rule argument is, essentially, about embarrassment, or at least the fear of it. It's not about being childish; it's about appearing childish.

No, that's not "essentially" it, it's simply one small facet of a larger discussion that you seemed to have latched on to.

When I say the rules are "silly" I mean they are absurd, foolish, witless. I call them "silly" to distinguish them from "funny" because I don't think the rules are "funny" or "fun".

Not wanting something to be childish isn't simply a fear of appearing childish. Have you ever played with little kids? I'll do a whole heap of stuff with my preschool aged nieces and nephews that if I did them by myself or with an adult friend they simply would not be fun, they're fun for the kids and I have fun because I enjoy it when the kids are having fun, but once they leave the room I don't continue playing. Not because I've suddenly become afraid of appearing childish, it's because I grew out of being entertained by that stuff around 25 years ago... now I'm being entertained by the kids themselves.

As you grow up your interests change, your mind develops, you gain a greater understanding of things, the responsibilities of the world start to weigh you down... what you find entertaining changes. If I still found it entertaining to do the things I did as a 10 year old, I'd still do them. In fact I do still do a lot of that stuff, though even there my focuses have changed and it's different facets that interest me now.

Now certainly there is an aspect of social acceptance when talking about toy soldiers. BUT, don't get confused with the general social acceptance issue when someone calls these rules "silly" or "childish", they're often talking about something different.

I personally don't think these rules add anything to the game, people don't need instructions on how to have banter, either they'll banter or they won't banter. I don't have any problem with people talking in cockney accents while playing as Orcs and such things, but having silliness written in to the rules I think hurts them more than it helps them.

Intentionally breaking the 4th wall can work in intentionally funny games, like Paranoia. Deadpool does it all the time. But as others have said, it feels out of place in AOS. It's like the Star Wars prequels where they can't decide on a tone. It's slapstick one moment, dark temptation the next and then to wacky adventure. Aos can't decide what it wants to be. The stupid rules throw people out of the immersion of a wargame and makes a "narrative" gave difficult to form a narrative with.

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW sees 40k and AOS / WFB as a sort of roleplay.

I stumbled across this blog post during lunch, which seems altogether serendipitous: http://tibbsforge.com/every-game-is-roleplaying/

- Salvage

Thanks for the link! That really makes me think. I haven't been feeling Warmachine for a while now, and maybe some of that is because whenever I go to make a list the foremost thing in my mind is how I can make the list effective. With Age of Sigmar, the focus is on what would fit thematically, and I really like that. I'd probably enjoy other games more building lists that way, too, except then they'd most likely get massacred by optimised lists, which is even less fun when you made a list to a theme.

 Sqorgar wrote:
And half of that vitriol comes from that obsession with legitimacy that I spoke about. Most of the complaints against AoS, which were far more public and damaging to the field than any of you actually realize, were about how childish it was. It is simple, so it must be for children. It looks like a Saturday morning cartoon. The silly rules were designed for juveniles. Just about every complaint against the game were efforts to de-legitimize it by appealing to wargamers' innate fear of looking childish. It was cartoonish peer pressure, like an Afterschool Special episode: "You want to be cool, man? Here, smoke this Kings of Wars. Don't let anybody see you with that Sigmar game. It's for babies."

That's a fantastic quote. I'm not sure it's entirely correct, but it is funny.

Glib comment: maybe the intent of these rules is to put the "beer" into "beer & pretzels", because they can only truly be appreciated while under the influence!

Not-glib comment: I don't think the intent of the rules is to break the 4th wall. I think that the player themselves is situated within the game space, usually - either as the general character specifically or, in a broader sense, as all the characters they control. The rules are (again, I think) intended to evoke the spirit of a particular character, to transform that character into a little more than a game piece. The player is just the vehicle for doing that. And like in a roleplaying game, where people get really self-conscious about roleplaying, people get anxious about it, not because they're scared of being childish per se, but because they're scared of looking foolish.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
But ... we are playing with toys ...

If people within the hobby want to call it that I have no problem with it, but I can't stand people outside the hobby thinking of it that way. If put a hell of a lot of time into an artistic endeavor I don't want someone who's never put brush to model writing it off as playing with toys.

Exactly. Video games are also viewed as childplay. Still, I won't be cool with them trying to force me to act like a 6 years old , nor do I want every games to be kid friendly.

Not to mention the repetitive aspect of these rules. "Funny" rules are bad enough (I'm not the kind of guy that like forced humor. I'll crack jokes when I feel like it), but these rules mostly force you to repeat the same lame phrase (or doing the same lame action) again and agin. MAYBE you'll laugh the first time, but after the xth time, what kind of person will still be amused by that ?

Anyways, AOS is such a disaster sale wise that this discussion is rather moot. This thing will either be discontinued or have a complete makeover, in 2 years max.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Intentionally breaking the 4th wall can work in intentionally funny games, like Paranoia. Deadpool does it all the time. But as others have said, it feels out of place in AOS. It's like the Star Wars prequels where they can't decide on a tone. It's slapstick one moment, dark temptation the next and then to wacky adventure. Aos can't decide what it wants to be. The stupid rules throw people out of the immersion of a wargame and makes a "narrative" gave difficult to form a narrative with.

That is true. AoS feels like it's trying to be a narrative game more than anything and I don't think these sorts of rules help with the narrative (at least for most people).