I’m gonna call it “Cy-bud: The Movie: The Tournament”
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What’s done is done, no point in keeping discussing this ad infinitum.
For me, the main takeaway from this incident is FFGOP apparently literally answering:[quote=“zwobot, post:47, topic:8039”]
rulings must only reference official FFG documents and no ruling can be based on ANCUR, Damon twitter or anything else.
[/quote]
instead of just going around the corner in their freaking office and just talk to Damon himself and his opinion on the matter. I mean, what the hell?
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The only reason there is even an unofficial ruling is that at GenCon Josh went and harassed Damon to get an answer, and even then it was the next day before he got one. If it wasn’t for a player deciding to go hassle someone there probably wouldn’t even be that much. Its hardly the gold standard.
Official FAQ go through several pairs of eyes and sense checks to make sure they’re okay.
Why would you go with what one human being said at a convention after being hassled by a player?
The core theme several people seem to be carrying is “but Damon said it”. Id argue there is a lot more to the official game and FFG in general than the unofficial word of one man.
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I can answer that question since I’m sometimes in those shoes.
You’re a judge and/or a TO. People come at your tournaments, they prepared their decks based on an interpretation of the CtM/Slum interaction (based on a consensus among them). The reason they interpret it that way could be one @evilgaz listed.
During the tournament, one player come with another interpretation of the interaction, Backed by the lead designer of the game. You have two choices :
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Keep the rules as they were understood / played by the large majority of the players in the tournament and disappoint one or two outsiders (and they have every rights to be disappointed).
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Change the way an interaction was played in the middle of the swiss rounds for the large majority of the players in the tournament.
From a TO perspective, option 2 makes no sense at all. Falko did what was right for the majority of his players imo.
After talking with @Dragar I’m all on the side of CtM can be countered by Slum. I also made an annoucement on the Belgian National event page because it’s important that all players are on the same page. If someone came to me during the day showing me a tweet of God himself stating that it doesn’t work that way, I wouldn’t change it before the next tournament.
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That isn’t how the UFAQ is formed. But let’s assume it is; why would you ignore that in favor of a stance that is no more valid, and doesn’t have that.
This reasoning is fair, though I’d argue it would require the player base as a whole to be relatively ignorant to what’s happening on ANCUR and otherwise unofficially (or simply not caring).
It was outlined earlier in this discussion that several players thought the ruling was incorrect as well, so I’m uncertain this was actually the case. But that’s purely based on word of mouth/keyboard.
They maybe thought it was incorrect but still prepared their deck and played according to this interpretation. At least this is how I understand the situation.
Firstly, it’s not ignored, it was considered and then an official clarification was sought.
Based on the state of the UFAQ at the time, there was nothing to indicate Damon’s views on this matter for CtM or Salsette (that I recall, could be wrong).
If I’m TO and my player base understands the rules in a certain way, I’m more likely to follow that than change it based on one unofficial source, or what happened at another tournament.
Given several unofficial sources, I’m likely to base my rulings on what’s commonly accepted in my area and any official guidance.
Why would TOs scour the internet for potential rulings that may have changed at any minute due to the nature of social media or other ad-hoc sources of a word from the lead designer?
You are right; I was working under the assumption that this was UFAQ, but I can’t find any mention the UFAQ. So it’s highly possible this came from a source as you mentioned.
However, I think looking at this as a cultural thing (IE: my players feel like this is how the interaction goes so this is how I rule it) shows a cultural problem more so than anything.
Sure, if the ruling was made unofficially day of, completely understandable. This interaction had been defined for quite some time though; is it unreasonable to expect a TO to remain somewhat current with the ongoing in the Netrunner community, and propagate that onto his local community?
I’d say yes it is, if we’re talking about a National level event. I got to different towns in the UK and they have funny ideas about how things might work. Last year I played The Foundry at like eight Store Champs or something and had to explain the combination of triggering ABT and The Foundry’s ability to more than one person at each event. Expecting a TO to be abreast of this, and have briefed out to the community (along with all the other unofficial rulings) is probably a bit much.
I would expect the TO to be aware though, and if he was going to rule in a different way (before official clarification) that this should be announced before the event starts.
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So I mean, where do you draw the line on that? Lets consider that I’m running a National’s event. I know what my local community goes by, but damned if I know what’s happening across Canada (big place). I’m almost certainly going to be making rules that contradict how someone feels the game should be played, based on ambiguities in the official rules giving us alternative interpretations.
How do you provide the most consistent experience to all players given the ambiguous nature of the official rules, if not to follow some well-established unofficial standards (IE: stimhack rules, ANCUR)?
Because when specifically asked, FFG OP said that what the lead designer of the game says in an off-the-cuff Twitter exchange (or indeed anything beyond an official document) has no bearing on the lameness or otherwise of any horse-argument. The TO in this case went a long way beyond what they needed to as far as I can see. If the way that rulings are made and enforced is not enough of a serious business for you (“Hey, we’re playing a fantastical card game here. Stop being so flippant and irresponsible!”), take it up with FFG. Do not castigate the wonderful human beings who go out of their way and spend their own time (and often money) to enable other people to play serious business at fantastical card games.
Depends of the free time available to the Judge/TO. I had to look through the Twitter feed of Damon until 11 of Aug. to Find a tweet stating that the general rules apply and suffice to resolve that case. Then I came here to find out and we went back an forth with @Dragar (thanks for the time he took for me) until I understood that case completely. It demands time, and it’s not something people have a lot those days.
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You need to keep calm chief, and re-evaluate who is castigating who here.
I obviously feel differently than the TO felt on this point, and I’ve used some hyperbole to make my stance clear, but I’m not personally attacking him (or, at least, not trying to). Rather, I’m trying to understand why the ruling was made as such.
You seemed to be laying the responsibility at their door. They specifically went out of their way to e-mail FFG OP to get the most official way of ruling on it. Whatever you think of that most official way, it is entirely the responsibility of FFG. The TO didn’t go with their feeling, they went with what they were told to do.
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I was under the impression that the TO reached their own conclusion, and FFGOP gave it the go ahead.
I don’t disagree with your point at all though; the fact that so much effort goes into trying to understand the rules unofficially, and then gets ignored because it’s unofficial, is not a core failure of any individual TO, but rather the system they operate within.
It just makes me sad to see that some people do put in some very serious effort to get and distribute these unofficial rulings, but it all seems like it’s wasted when you see things like this.
No worries. If you re-read what was said, it seems they specifically asked for the official way of ruling it as they thought it might be an issue. The response was that the official way of ruling was to make their own decision, and to ignore all non-official sources in that ruling.
That is to say that FFG themselves have determined that subjective (and no doubt locally differing) rulings are more tolerable than any alternative requirement to rely on disparate unofficial sources where possible.
It seems to me that any flak this TO is unfairly copping is because they went out of their way to be more official than most, not less!
This stance is fair and holds weight. I suppose I can’t fault a man for not dedicating personal time to stay on top of the latest unofficial news with Netrunner, and further to ensure that all event attendees are made aware of such news.
I guess i just spend so much time browsing the rules thread, and I was imposing my situation on others.
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I do still feel for the amount of effort that goes into making all of these unofficial rulings happen though. I wish we’d see these efforts translated into official sources more often than they do.
Amen to that !
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