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 BaconCatBug wrote:
And who gets to decide what is and isn't common sense?

This is why we require a consensus to actually play the game.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Lack of errata is proof the rule is intended to be the way it is written.

This is not even remotely true, no matter how many times you claim it to be.


If I intend to spray a model green, and accidentally grab the blue spray, the fact that the model winds up blue is an accident. It's intended to be green.
If I leave it sitting on the bench for three and a half years before I get around to respraying it, it's still intended to be green.
If I spray a whole bunch of other models before I get around to respraying it, it's still intended to be green.
If I fix another model that I similarly sprayed incorrectly, and don't fix this one, it's still intended to be green.
If I never get around to fixing it, and archaeologists find it in my dark and dusty workroom in a thousand years time, it's still intended to be green.


The rules are no different.

This is not even remotely true, no matter how many times you claim it to be.

If you intend it for be green and don't change it, how am I supposed to know what your intent is, especially if you've already changed your models colour in the past?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:
Yes, it has become very clear from the tone of errata that GW expect common sense to be applied to the rules.

And who gets to decide what is and isn't common sense?

If the majority of the playerbase agrees on something then its quite obvious that this should be treated as the intended way to play. its called Common sense for a reason.

GW does not "fix" the assault rules because they work just right

text removed.
Reds8n

I am interested in starting a related topic later this evening. I wonder if Dakka could create a process for determining the raw. How to prioritize information, what information is valid, that sort of thing.

Defining how we arrive at a RAW interpretation could help to eliminate some of the heat we generate.

I think the main problem here is the differing opinions on what RAW means.

It seems like a common occurrence where people freely interchange RAW to mean 1. THE actual, literal text and 2. literal interpretation of the text.

According to the poll I think most of us here agree that RAW is nonetheless a form of an interpretation made within a certain boundaries/rules of its own.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

If you intend it for be green and don't change it, how am I supposed to know what your intent is, especially if you've already changed your models colour in the past?

That would depend on the situation. But ultimately, unless I actually tell you my intention was for it to be green, you're not going to know. You can be fairly sure if there are indications that it would be likely, like, say, if it's a Dark Angels tactical squad model, and the other 9 models are green...)


Which, again, is exactly the same for rules.


The problem you keep running into is that you expect there to be a 'correct way to play' written in stone, and that's just not how the game actually works. You're absolutely correct that we generally can't say with 100% certainty what the writer intended. What we can do, as players, is look at the fact that the rules as written lead somewhere absurd and decide for ourselves what we think was intended, and decide from there how to actually play it based on what makes sense to us and our opponents.

Because, ultimately, the rules are a 'democracy'. We play the game with other people, and so we have to agree with them how to play. And that quite often results in not playing strictly by the written rules, for various reasons.

 insaniak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

If you intend it for be green and don't change it, how am I supposed to know what your intent is, especially if you've already changed your models colour in the past?

That would depend on the situation. But ultimately, unless I actually tell you my intention was for it to be green, you're not going to know. You can be fairly sure if there are indications that it would be likely, like, say, if it's a Dark Angels tactical squad model, and the other 9 models are green...)


Which, again, is exactly the same for rules.


The problem you keep running into is that you expect there to be a 'correct way to play' written in stone, and that's just not how the game actually works. You're absolutely correct that we generally can't say with 100% certainty what the writer intended. What we can do, as players, is look at the fact that the rules as written lead somewhere absurd and decide for ourselves what we think was intended, and decide from there how to actually play it based on what makes sense to us and our opponents.

Because, ultimately, the rules are a 'democracy'. We play the game with other people, and so we have to agree with them how to play. And that quite often results in not playing strictly by the written rules, for various reasons.

And that is where I disagree. If you want to make up house rules, fair enough, but don't try and claim that your house rules are what the authors "intended". A game that cannot be played without ignoring the rules is a poorly written game, and by any metric (reasonable or otherwise), 40k 8th edition is a poorly written game.

It's either ok to ignore all the rules, or none of them. There is no middle ground that can remain logically consistent.

I also appreciate BCBs litteral reading of the rules and the consequences there of.

I think he is a blunt tactless donkey-cave about it. But i am also a blunt tactless ass hole about things so i appreciate his position.

Arguing your interpretation of rai is great, but its only that and raw will always be raw.

If you intend it for be green and don't change it, how am I supposed to know what your intent is, especially if you've already changed your models colour in the past?

This is the problem with a lack of adjudicable authority. We don't know.

The problem arises when a large consensus develops on what something means. Others who don't interpret it that way, conflict, and thus we get the social downside of TFG or "rules lawyer" applied. Sure, they are, but that doesn't mean they are wrong or have a reasonable claim to make. After all, there are rarely "gamer's notes" on what the intent was when written.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
GW does not "fix" the assault rules because they work just right and fixing them would make right internet slugboys like BCB

Again, we are discussing philosophy here and mod warning shave already occurred. Lets ixnay on the personal comments eh?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
When dealing with RAW in contracts, in the real world, intent means nothing. If you put something in writing then that is how the contract is interpreted. If there are contradictions and/or ambiguities then they are interpreted in favor of the person who did not write the contract.

Not true. Intentions matter, the words do not. Signing the contract shows *intent* to be bound by the terms.

The intent of the actors in a case can't really be known. The courts use a "reasonable person" standard - what would a reasonable person considering the events and documents believe the intent to be.

It's hard to argue that you didn't intend to be bound by the terms of a contract that you signed. Very hard. The terms carry much more weight than your claim of your intent. But it's still the court's understanding of the intent (of both parties) that matters, not the wording.

Wikipedia has a decent writeup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreting_contracts_in_English_law

Do I expect GW, or any game manufacturer, to use lawyer level proof readers and editors? No. But that doesn't mean that the mind set of the reader shouldn't be set at that level. When someone says, "it's obvious that..." and another person says that it's something different then it's not obvious. Some of the things that BCB points out could easily be fixed by GW just adding or changing a few words.

What are lawyers if not experts in haggling and finagling a complex rulesset?

Technically BCB is correct in that since GW has posted numerous FAQs and Errata if GW is silent on something then they meant what they wrote. Thus if you are insisting on RAW games then you should be aware of his signature and talk out the resolutions to the game (at that point you may or may not be playing the game RAW but you will be playing some version of 40K).

This is great evidence that, by Voice of God, Guardsmen are intended to be 4ppm. It's not so great to show that GW intended Assault weapons to be unable to firing after Advancing.

If anything, the tone and nature of their FAQs support RAI-heavy interpretations.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

If you intend it for be green and don't change it, how am I supposed to know what your intent is, especially if you've already changed your models colour in the past?

That would depend on the situation. But ultimately, unless I actually tell you my intention was for it to be green, you're not going to know. You can be fairly sure if there are indications that it would be likely, like, say, if it's a Dark Angels tactical squad model, and the other 9 models are green...)


Which, again, is exactly the same for rules.


The problem you keep running into is that you expect there to be a 'correct way to play' written in stone, and that's just not how the game actually works. You're absolutely correct that we generally can't say with 100% certainty what the writer intended. What we can do, as players, is look at the fact that the rules as written lead somewhere absurd and decide for ourselves what we think was intended, and decide from there how to actually play it based on what makes sense to us and our opponents.

Because, ultimately, the rules are a 'democracy'. We play the game with other people, and so we have to agree with them how to play. And that quite often results in not playing strictly by the written rules, for various reasons.

And that is where I disagree. If you want to make up house rules, fair enough, but don't try and claim that your house rules are what the authors "intended". A game that cannot be played without ignoring the rules is a poorly written game, and by any metric (reasonable or otherwise), 40k 8th edition is a poorly written game.

It's either ok to ignore all the rules, or none of them. There is no middle ground that can remain logically consistent.

The practical difficulty with this is twofold:
1. Most interpretations are not "this doesn't work, lets do this." They are realistic interpretations of what the rule means., Players are not ignoring rules, but using the rules as they believe the rule is correct.
2. Sometimes #1 is wrong, and you really do have to play a rule in a certain manner to make the game playable.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Stux wrote:
Yes, it has become very clear from the tone of errata that GW expect common sense to be applied to the rules.

And who gets to decide what is and isn't common sense?

The people playing the game at that time.

I know you want some absolute baseline, and see that in RAW. But you don't have it. There countless instances of the RAW being inconsistent and still requiring a common sense judgement to actually play the game. You collect such inconsistencies. This kind of collaboration is a necessity of the game, not something to be afraid of.

I agree with the article for the most part. I have to say though: The title of this post should have been: Let's poke BCB with a stick and see what happens. This whole thing just feels like an excuse to continue an argument from several locked threads.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
And that is where I disagree. If you want to make up house rules, fair enough, but don't try and claim that your house rules are what the authors "intended".

OK, I won't do that in any game I play against you.

For the rest of the time, from 25 years of playing this game, it's been my experience that most players are happy to entertain the idea that the rules don't always say what they were supposed to say.

A game that cannot be played without ignoring the rules is a poorly written game, and by any metric (reasonable or otherwise), 40k 8th edition is a poorly written game.

Sure. So you don't play the game, and the game is poor. Remind us again why you're even here?


At the end of the day, sure, it would be great if the rules were written to be air-tight (preferably without also being 17 volumes)... but that's not what we have. The very fact that the rules are written rather loosely is what requires us to apply our own interpretation and go with what we think the writer intended where the written rule makes sense.

Your hardline RAW stance would make a lot more sense if 40K was the game you want it to be. It's not.

.

Take the top 50 video games ever.

How many of them had 0 mistakes in their rules?

I'm entirely confident in saying none of them.

Writing nontrivial rulessets perfectly is virtually impossible.

 MattKing wrote:
I agree with the article for the most part. I have to say though: The title of this post should have been: Let's poke BCB with a stick and see what happens. This whole thing just feels like an excuse to continue an argument from several locked threads.

No the thread absolutely is not meant to be a continuation of a locked thread nor is it anti-BCB parade.

Its meant to address the fundamental disagreement that pervades and infests the posts at YMDC because this is an issue at a philosophical level. What IS RAW? And is there a common ground where we can agree upon without every post BCB is involved (sorry mate) turning into a slugfest of the absolutes and relatives?

The truth of the matter is RAW =! actual written text. RAW is nevertheless an interpretation that is literal to a fault - it is biasedly non-partisan. It serves as a basis for a rules debate, and while it CAN be sometimes absolute (as in there is only 1 possible interpretation), but more often than not there are multiple valid interpretation of a given text.

To argue that RAW is absolute law is absurd as is claiming RAI is RAW.

 skchsan wrote:

 MattKing wrote:
I agree with the article for the most part. I have to say though: The title of this post should have been: Let's poke BCB with a stick and see what happens. This whole thing just feels like an excuse to continue an argument from several locked threads.

No the thread absolutely is not meant to be a continuation of a locked thread nor is it anti-BCB parade.

Its meant to address the fundamental disagreement that pervades and infests the posts at YMDC because this is an issue at a philosophical level. What IS RAW? And is there a common ground where we can agree upon without every post BCB is involved (sorry mate) turning into a slugfest of the absolutes and relatives?

The truth of the matter is RAW =! actual written text. RAW is nevertheless an interpretation that is literal to a fault - it is biasedly non-partisan. It serves as a basis for a rules debate, and while it CAN be sometimes absolute (as in there is only 1 possible interpretation), but more often than not there are multiple valid interpretation of a given text.

What this guy said.

The 40k rules writing has sucked since I have started I remeber SM had a bunch of fun feth up's in 7th like catparaci terminator armor on a motorcyle captains and Shrike being a broken mess. Sure it is easy to tell how the rules were meant to work their but the rules were pretty clearly saying something else. 8th due to having way less rules has less interactions like these but still has alot more then other big company's rules books like pathfinder witch is annoying when they are charging an arm and a leg for them.

Stux wrote:Yes, it has become very clear from the tone of errata that GW expect common sense to be applied to the rules.

wait, common sense, what is this sense and why is it so common?
rather uncommon.

BCB is a rules lawyer, you can hire them to make all of your RAW/RAI decisions for you.

They may not be the correct ones or even ones that you wanted, but you'll get something all right.

 Octopoid wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
And who gets to decide what is and isn't common sense?

This is why we require a consensus to actually play the game.

That is nice. We have two version of the same saying here, one says that when there are two people there are three opinions , and another is where you have two people you have 3 politicial parties. Consensus is somehing unachivable in practical sense. At best you can force people to play the game a certain way, which mean forcing a specific type of interpretation. Plus there are always going to be regional differences. In british and kin law and rules systems, everything that is not forbiden is okey. In eastern europe the closer you get to Russia the only thing that is not forbiden is the thing law says it is not. This makes people approech any rule or a rule query in a different way. Then there is stuff like what is the source of rules and law. In the west it seems possible for a rule or law to be created by people for themselfs . Here rules and laws are things that come from the outside. Meaning that changing the rules on a game to game basis is very hard to impossible.

At the end of the day, sure, it would be great if the rules were written to be air-tight (preferably without also being 17 volumes)... but that's not what we have. The very fact that the rules are written rather loosely is what requires us to apply our own interpretation and go with what we think the writer intended where the written rule makes sense.

And we are back to cultural differences then. Because I am guessing in some places people, when faced with a problem in a game, change the rule in a such a way that it makes fun for both people. Now for me this is hard to imagine, because the natural instinct here is to screw the other person over, as it is not just worth to deal with the other person idea of fun, considering how long people play the game and how much it costs. For example in my situation, the people at my school that made me join w40k mostly are no longer playing , or play other games by now. All the time they did play, someone else fun was never a concern. IMO they got a lot more out of their game time, then someone here who would try making games fun, what ever that means, for everyone.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

Racerguy180 wrote:

Stux wrote:Yes, it has become very clear from the tone of errata that GW expect common sense to be applied to the rules.

wait, common sense, what is this sense and why is it so common?
rather uncommon.

BCB is a rules lawyer, you can hire them to make all of your RAW/RAI decisions for you.

They may not be the correct ones or even ones that you wanted, but you'll get something all right.

The problem though is when common sense for certain areas are direct opposits. For example what are the advice to someone who plays an unfun, be it too good or too bad, army in the US? Wait and see, buy in to something new, start playing a new game, try out ally to change things up.

Now imagine a place where switching armies is too costly. Then all the advice drop to L2P level and aren't very helpful. Same works the other way around as someone pointed out to me here. When an avarge army has a higher cost then an avarge monthly salary in your area, the idea what is playable, played and what is a casual meta are very different. yet both places would be running under same set of rules. And if those rules are ambiguous, or require type of interactions that are common only to one area, then someone is going to be unhappy.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
If you want to make up house rules, fair enough, but don't try and claim that your house rules are what the authors "intended".

...

It's either ok to ignore all the rules, or none of them. There is no middle ground that can remain logically consistent.

Of course you should play RAI when there's an obvious textual mistake in RAW. Show me one gaming club, GW store or tournament that plays your RAW interpretation of the assault weapons rule. This is literally only an argument that exists on the internet and not IRL.

Karol wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
And who gets to decide what is and isn't common sense?

This is why we require a consensus to actually play the game.

That is nice. We have two version of the same saying here, one says that when there are two people there are three opinions , and another is where you have two people you have 3 politicial parties. Consensus is somehing unachivable in practical sense. At best you can force people to play the game a certain way, which mean forcing a specific type of interpretation. Plus there are always going to be regional differences. In british and kin law and rules systems, everything that is not forbiden is okey. In eastern europe the closer you get to Russia the only thing that is not forbiden is the thing law says it is not. This makes people approech any rule or a rule query in a different way. Then there is stuff like what is the source of rules and law. In the west it seems possible for a rule or law to be created by people for themselfs . Here rules and laws are things that come from the outside. Meaning that changing the rules on a game to game basis is very hard to impossible.

At the end of the day, sure, it would be great if the rules were written to be air-tight (preferably without also being 17 volumes)... but that's not what we have. The very fact that the rules are written rather loosely is what requires us to apply our own interpretation and go with what we think the writer intended where the written rule makes sense.

And we are back to cultural differences then. Because I am guessing in some places people, when faced with a problem in a game, change the rule in a such a way that it makes fun for both people. Now for me this is hard to imagine, because the natural instinct here is to screw the other person over, as it is not just worth to deal with the other person idea of fun, considering how long people play the game and how much it costs. For example in my situation, the people at my school that made me join w40k mostly are no longer playing , or play other games by now. All the time they did play, someone else fun was never a concern. IMO they got a lot more out of their game time, then someone here who would try making games fun, what ever that means, for everyone.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

Racerguy180 wrote:

Stux wrote:Yes, it has become very clear from the tone of errata that GW expect common sense to be applied to the rules.

wait, common sense, what is this sense and why is it so common?
rather uncommon.

BCB is a rules lawyer, you can hire them to make all of your RAW/RAI decisions for you.

They may not be the correct ones or even ones that you wanted, but you'll get something all right.

The problem though is when common sense for certain areas are direct opposits. For example what are the advice to someone who plays an unfun, be it too good or too bad, army in the US? Wait and see, buy in to something new, start playing a new game, try out ally to change things up.

Now imagine a place where switching armies is too costly. Then all the advice drop to L2P level and aren't very helpful. Same works the other way around as someone pointed out to me here. When an avarge army has a higher cost then an avarge monthly salary in your area, the idea what is playable, played and what is a casual meta are very different. yet both places would be running under same set of rules. And if those rules are ambiguous, or require type of interactions that are common only to one area, then someone is going to be unhappy.

Hey 14 year old polish kid. Your English language skills in both structure and forming an argument has come on leaps.and bounds.


Stay. In. Character

I can safely reassure you all that Raw and Rai doesn't exist
At least, not with in the usual sense.

It's an old and boring semiotic topic, but to summarize it, a "proper" Raw may exist only in specific symbolic language whose terms are completely and internally defined (for example: formal logic, math, a programming language).
Any natural language (English or any other) relies on a "circular" definition, where any words is explained by words whose are explained by other words and so on (like in a vocabulary).

So, in a formalized language any interpretation of symbols is based on Raw, and only Raw is possible.
In any natural language Rai, and only Rai, is possible.

This, for example, explain why laws are written the way they are. Or why it is so difficult for a computer to interact with natural language.

A fun consequence (since we are communicating by a natural language) is that the proper semiotic definition of Raw and Rai are free to be interpreted by anyone, hence we can explain why the term Raw is improperly used in those discussions

Finally, about the idea that there should be a "consensus" or those interpretation differences otherwise will be impossible to communicate at all...
You have to consider that language is an emergent structure. As a temperature is an average of movement, and does not change if a few molecule move in a direction or another, so a language doesn't stop working if here and there some interpretation or use differs.

It's pretty all semiotic 101, really.

P.S: want to have a "pure" Raw Warhammer (or any other game?) It's pretty easy: translate all the rules into a symbolical systems, one where you have preemptively defined any symbol you will ever use. With the USR they where on the only right path (probably without knowing it).
P.P.S: I also don't think authorial stance is needed for interpretation, since the semiotic space is oriented towards the reader and not the writer. But I don't think we should go down the rabbit hole of a pure semiotic discussion

 Galas wrote:
GW does not "fix" the assault rules because they work just right and fixing them would make right internet slugboys like BCB

I really feel that they do not put in their FAQ because it is not frequently asked. I have never met a player over a game who had the slightest problem with this so-called rule conundrum. I mean really, has anyone ever had a problem with this coming up in an actual game?

This brings me to my main point of contention with a certain attitude to RAW - which is that it gets very artificial and very detached from the actual playing of the game.

After the latest FAQ I was discussing something on another forum and someone was quite forcefully putting the point forward that the FAQ game me clear permission to use a special rule but it did not give me permission to declare the use of my special rule - so I could not actually use it because that would require me to declare it. When someone argues something like that they have gone deep down the rabbit hole of RAW into uselessness.

The context of the rules is to be used as a guide to playing a game, whenever any analysis of the rules loses sight of that context it rapidly drops in usefulness and quite possibly becomes actually harmful to the process of understanding how to play the game. Ultra-literal RAW is about textual analysis not about analysing how the game is played, this is a fundamentally flawed approach.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Stux wrote:
Yes, it has become very clear from the tone of errata that GW expect common sense to be applied to the rules.

And who gets to decide what is and isn't common sense?

The people who actually play the game. I've been playing wargames for over 20 years, with varying levels of quality in the rules writing, and one thing that I'm struck by is that in the real world I've never come across a situation where a game has just ground to a halt because of a rules argument. There have been discussions, and these have sometimes been over non-ambiguous rules that are nevertheless not being played strictly RAW because it simply doesn't make sense to do so. What's particularly striking is that the rules that tend to cause the most debate aren't ones like the current assault weapon rules which are technically not ambiguous but are also universally not played as written. The rules that cause debates are ones that are genuinely ambiguous, with multiple interpretations possible. Even in those cases the game continues to function because it's ultimately a democracy between the players and in situations like tournaments TOs exist to make final rulings where needed.

I don't think we can have a complete definition of RAW in the way the OP is asking for, certainly not as it pertains to GW games. We might be able to form some philosophical ur-RAW definition but in order for it to have any practical application the game in question would have to also subscribe to that definition, or a close approximation. The current 40k rules are simply not written in such a formalised and structured way to allow us to apply a strict definition of what is and isn't RAW. The thread in YMDC about whether reminder text is RAW is a perfect example. GW don't properly define which parts of a given text are rules and which parts aren't because they have no formal definition in place.

In my opinion, the biggest difference between BCB-RAW and actual RAW is that BCB will claim RAW for things that objectively can never be a valid interpretation of a rule in question.
Best example of this is the assault weapon rule. There would not be such a rule written down if it did nothing. The only thing BCB has proven is that his way to interpret rules (he calls it "parsing") is the wrong way to do it.

Even before BCB joined dakka, there were plenty of RAW-purist, but the arguments usually revolved around ambiguous rules (often from different editions) providing multiple possible ways to play them, with RAW being used as a tool to find the correct way to play it (or to argue for the more/less powerful interpretation). No one argued that the game didn't actually work (except G.W.A.R. who might even be the same person as BCB).
For example, in 5th edition no one argued that Tyrant Guard or similar models couldn't shoot outside of silly anecdotes. BCB would have told everyone on every thread that their were actually not following the rules because their models didn't have any eyes (insert picture with googly eyed Tyranids here).

If there is objectively only one way to interpret a rule, that interpretation is RAW. BCB's way to "parse" rules is just another interpretation, no matter what he says.

In general I don't mind BCB's adding his view on what RAW is.
I do mind him intentionally confusing players seeking help with rules, lying about what RAW is despite his argument being disproven in earlier threats, making dishonest arguments just to be right and in general throwing false analogies, straw men and other logical fallacies at anyone disagreeing with him, rather than actually arguing the points those people make.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
Take the top 50 video games ever.

How many of them had 0 mistakes in their rules?

I'm entirely confident in saying none of them.

Writing nontrivial rulessets perfectly is virtually impossible.

Magic the Gathering has a rules set without any holes or ambiguity in it and has been that way for over a decade. Its complexity is pretty similar to that of Warhammer 40k.

Its sorta sad that Raw vs Rai Comes up so often :(

From my own view i always try and play games As close to Written as i can understand them.
I think over the years, it has just been shown that GW is as a whole really just not very good at organizing a good ruleset.
Its often confusing even without the Raw vs Rai debates, and there simplificaition of the system i think has made the system more complicated.
And i often wonder if there Raw vs Rai debate comes up more due to just poor written rules outside of what specific rules say.

 Octopoid wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
The rules are permissive. They tell you what you can do. You know this as well as I do.

Does the main rulebook specifically state this is a permissive ruleset? I'm genuinely asking, I don't have my book with me today.

There recently was a post by yakface about this on YMDC. Is basically boils down that every rule set for any tabletop game is permissive by definition, because you cannot define a game with a restrictive ruleset.

 Jidmah wrote:

I do mind him intentionally confusing players seeking help with rules, lying about what RAW is despite his argument being disproven in earlier threats, making dishonest arguments just to be right and in general throwing false analogies, straw men and other logical fallacies at anyone disagreeing with him, rather than actually arguing the points those people make.

This is my biggest problem with many of the threads on YMDC in general. I've had two fairly new players in my area tell me in the last month or so that they've been confused by that forum and found it unhelpful and I can understand why. To me YMDC should primarily be a resource to help players answer rules questions, but many threads turn into endless arguments over minutiae or points of principle that simply aren't important, or they're just downright confusing. It often fails to help people actually looking for help. RAW is important, but often as a starting point, not the end point of a discussion.

That's also why I argued earlier that some over-arching definition of RAW isn't what we should be aiming for. Given how GW write their rules I don't think it's possible to provide a workable definition for GW games anyway. We shouldn't be trying to define terms so we can indulge in some kind of formalised logic discussion detached from the reality of playing the game in YMDC, as that isn't what that forum should be for, despite how many recent threads have turned out.

Karol wrote:
And we are back to cultural differences then. Because I am guessing in some places people, when faced with a problem in a game, change the rule in a such a way that it makes fun for both people. Now for me this is hard to imagine, because the natural instinct here is to screw the other person over, as it is not just worth to deal with the other person idea of fun, considering how long people play the game and how much it costs. For example in my situation, the people at my school that made me join w40k mostly are no longer playing , or play other games by now. All the time they did play, someone else fun was never a concern. IMO they got a lot more out of their game time, then someone here who would try making games fun, what ever that means, for everyone.

Yeah, this sort of paragraph is why people say you play in a toxic meta - possibly the post toxic I've ever heard about, outside the ITC.

@Dai - Good point, but maybe spoiler some of such a long post?