Breaking News! Exchange of Information occurs on internet. No need for a Hostile Takeover, all involved declare Beach Party.
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Have you met Dinosaurus?
I have an idea. Stop using tournaments to make some kind of stand against the way FFG handles rules. Play the game how it’s supposed to be played. I have disappointed many a player at my tournaments by teaching them the correct way to play cards that they did not realize was the case - this is literally your job as the judge, so don’t hide behind “well a lot of people play it incorrectly so we’re just going to go with that” bullshit.
Instead, try to make the rules situation better outside of tournaments. I’ve also had to upkeep rulings that I didn’t like or agree with, but then took to FFG afterward to see if they couldn’t be fixed. Again, this is literally your job as the TO - to uphold how the game is intended to be played, regardless of whether or not you agree.
This is how we even got the UFAQ in the first place. I talked to the designers and OP at FFG outside of tournaments without staging some kind of protest. I was told Netrunner will never have a better rules system, so the UFAQ is the compromise we agreed to. Now, “never” is obviously a big word, and already changes are happening. I consult on the new updates to the official FAQs too now so that I can help guide it toward completeness. But again, you have to realize that what we have is what we’re going to get from FFG. Stop demanding more from them. They’re not going to give it to you. If you’re really, honestly, and truly interested in making more consistent tournament experiences (A) follow understood guidelines instead of your own made up ones, and (B) reach out to the people who can help. FFG OP, Damon, and I are all an easy email away. Trying to force the issue by making up your own way to play the game is not helping.
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I guess I don’t understand why the TO though his “unofficial” ruling was better than everyone’s “unofficial” but slightly more official ruling. FFG just said use whats in the faq and the official faq doesn’t have a ruling. So rather than go with what 95% of the player base has been used to, (which I’m sure he’s probably aware of) he decides at the event that he doesn’t like it that way and makes up his own ruling on the spot. I guess I’m really confused by his choice there.
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This implies you think someone else was staging a protest?
Understood by who? Do you think the guidelines are universally known and accepted? Spoilers: they’re not.
I like this bit though! 
Part of the problem here is that a TO did email FFG OP and did get an answer. See the dilema?
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Making up one’s own ruling, and then using that controversy to claim FFG should have better rules management and try to demand as such is what I’m talking about.
You’re right, they’re not. But there are resources out there for people who want to know what the generally accepted understanding is.
They emailed OP to go over the lead designer’s head for a tournament they were running, and then used the answer received to justify making up an even less official answer than the one people already have. I’m saying those who are honestly interested in a conversation about more consistent tournament experiences, as the TO and some other’s have claimed, should not do that and instead reach out to FFG OP, Damon, and I outside the context of a tournament in order to discuss new solutions.
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It’s really unfortunate because the closest thing to an Official answer on this is the FAQ entry on Slums vs Hostile Infrastructure:
“No, using Slums doesn’t cause Hostile Infrastructure to trigger.”
Which is actually mildly mis-worded, based on my (newfound) understanding. It should actually say that Hostile Infrastructure doesn’t resolve. It still triggers, but doesn’t resolve. Based on this, the only Official source for rulings, you can extrapolate that Slums doesn’t cause CtM to trigger.
That’s wrong, as the designer and testers had been playing that Slums does cause CtM to trigger, and then never resolve. I cannot fault the TO for this discrepancy. The blame lies with 1) Official materials being imprecise. 2) FFGOP stating that you can only use Official materials.
Both of those causes can be well-understood, and I think everyone here truly appreciates ANCUR and all the work @jakodrako puts into it. Without FFG endorsing ANCUR into becoming ANCOR, this situation will happen again. We have to take a deep breath and realize that this is not the TO’s fault, it’s just how the system is set up.
We do need to work on changing how the system is set up, though. And @jakodrako is doing just that. 
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Okay, I’m not really seeing that happening. I personally think that we should have better rules management regardless though.
Yeah - and I think it’s fine for individuals to get to grips with what the generally accepted stance is - but it’s that wooliness of “generally accepted” that allows room for people to make different decisions.[quote=“jakodrako, post:109, topic:8039”]
They emailed OP to go over the lead designer’s head for a tournament they were running
[/quote]
I’m going to call shenanigans on this. My view is they emailed FFG OP (as you yourself mentioned, they’re a resource and only an email away) to get clarity and an official ruling. I don’t understand how you’re taking this a deliberate attempt to subvert the lead designer. There’s only one person that knows their true intentions though, and making out like they’re doing this with malice, seems at best uncharitable.
I think people can still reach out. I’m not getting why you’re making it a “these people did a bad wrong thing, they should have done this” conversation, instead of a “okay, there was some confusion here, myself, FFG OP and Damon are open to chat about how to make it better” conversation.
You might not be on board with the decisions as made, but I can’t see any benefit in trying to vilify them and make assumptions on motivations. No one (that I know of) is making as protest, making decisions as a TO to force a change, deliberately being an arse or otherwise performing with bad intent.
It might be worth reminding ourselves that this whole thread was started by my report on German Nationals, and despite my reservations about the way a couple of things were ruled, it was a very well run event. There’s no political platform here, aside from me opening up the debate to how we can get more clarity and consistency in future.
Looking backwards isn’t going to help, let’s look forwards to how we can make things better.
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I hope that’s not how I’m coming off. But, on that note, you must admit that most controversy would be completely circumvented if ANCUR and other unofficial resources were taken in official context. Not necessarily saying “FFG should do this” as much as “it would be nice if they did.”
At this point I’m a little torn. I do see the points being made by @MrMint about not expecting a TO to treat this like their job and dedicate time to staying on top of rulings from several different unofficial resources. But, honestly, if this happened in my meta, I would probably be pretty mad (hell, it happened half way across the world and I’m still disappointed).
I don’t have a good way to resolve this. I want to say I agree with @jakodrako and, if you’re going to step up and take a TO position, you should act upon how the game is intended to be played (including both official and unofficial sources). But maybe that’s asking too much?
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Ehh… I think it’s fine to ask this for Nationals and above. TO’ing a GNK up to a Regionals? I’d expect you to be up to date on the FAQ, but checking Unofficial sources… Nah.
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Officialness is a binary characteristic: it has no magnitude. At least according to the Organised Play response in question.
“Meets its trigger condition” is maybe better than triggers.
Sorry guys but this whole topic and the attacks on zwobot are a shame for the netrunner community.
I don’t understand the emotion and the insults.
It happened and aslong as ancur stays ancur and is not turned into ancor it will happen again
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Disagree.
If you can’t understand the emotion… @jakodrako spends a lot of time trying to make sure there’s a consistent set of rulings for this game. For someone to appear to ignore all of his work, yeah, that’s a lot of emotion. @zwobot clarified that he didn’t ignore it, just that FFG OP specifically told him not to use it.
As for the insult (singular, as far as I see? Lots of potentially implied things, or infer-able things, but only one definite…) I’m pretty sure it got flagged very quickly, by the community and in fact the next post is a moderator saying ‘Don’t do that’. I’m pretty proud of the community for doing that.
(I do agree about the ANCUR vs ANCOR point, though. )
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It’s pretty frustrating to hear that there are incorrect rulings being made at such high level events. The CTM/Slums ruling is based on the official rules, Damon/ANCUR just clarified how it’s derived from the rules and did not invent an interpretation. It’s not an errata, simply a clarification of how the official rules work. Not following it is not following how the official rules of the game work. I don’t see how ANCUR not being ANCOR applies.
Also, other threads on Stimhack (don’t remember which) said there were other mistakes with rulings–Mumbad Virtual Tour was not allowed to be removed from game by Slums, and Slums was ruled as mandatory and not optional. Just read this in other threads so maybe these didn’t happen (maybe someone can confirm the hearsay?), but these two seem like really simple spots and therefore pretty egregious judging mistakes for a nationals event. Just feels like something that “shouldn’t happen” and so when it does it obviously elicits emotion and complaints.
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That’s a pure assumption from your side. 95℅? Cmon, its near to 50:50 atm if you follow this or any other discussion.
And still, its the right and the duty of a TO /Judge to clarify unclear rules, at best before a tournament starts.
Which happened at the German Nats.
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Get yourself grounded please.
Let’s stick to facts instead of playing a polemic fongerpointing game, shall we not?
Fact 1: The only reasonable source for rulings, cause its the only official one, is the rules book and the FAQs.
Fact 2: FFGOP is responsible for the official tournaments, as well as the FAQ.
Fact 3: A Judge of an official tournament asked the responsible people at the FFGOP for a solution to the unsolved rules question about Slums and CTM,.
Fact 4: FFGOP, responsible for this question, didn’t ask Daimon for it, didn’t say that a ruling Daimon made on spot is the official solution, but said make your own ruling, there is no official one.
Fact 5: The lead designer is no official source for TO /Judges to ask about rules. They are told to ask FFGOP.
That is the only facts i see here.
I can understand that you feel your hard work on Ancur not beeing appreciated, which i can assure you is not the case, at least for me.
I really appreciate your work on Ancur and did in fact tell a lot of people to use it as its a great source for Netrunner players.
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Yes and no. Do you agree that the official rules are not comprehensive, or no?
This is incorrect. FFGOP is only responsible for the tournament guidelines. The FAQ is written and owned entirely by the head designer, currently Damon…
… and as such he’s the one the TO should have asked for a rules clarification.
I’ll have to have a word with the OP team, who clearly dropped the ball here.
I’m not sure where this one is coming from. The lead designer is the only person at FFG who is in charge of the rules, so there’s literally no one else to ask. OP has no ownership of rules of any of FFG’s games.
As I have already said, it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the integrity of the tournament and the fact that the head designer is the one being ignored, not me.
@coffeeyay put it best:
It’s beginning to sound like maybe there are people out there who just don’t know how FFG operates (which is understandable, it’s not like they’re particularly transparent). Just to be clear, the OP department is not in charge of rules. The designer is. It sounds like maybe there might have also been a break down of communication at FFG. Whether or not that’s due to the way the original email was written, or because OP’s message is being tightly controlled by marketing, internal company power struggles, or whatever, who knows. I’ve already been discussing this issue with Damon, I’ll reach out to OP too.
I do want to be clear as well: I apologize if I came off as rude or dismissive. I admit my language was a bit too strong, and I’m sorry that I declared the whole situation shameful, disrespectful, etc. @evilgaz @Axul and @zwobot to you I especially apologize. I take the rules management for Netrunner very seriously. It’s how I got to be where I am as a consultant on the rules and the card text. I take it seriously because I care a lot about this game, and when I see FFG not taking their game as seriously as they could and should I want to help the global community where the company is failing. And sometimes I let that bleed out in my communications, no matter how well-intended they may be. I promise I did not mean any offense; even though I may feel there’s no reason this type of problem should occur at this point in the game’s life, it’s clear a lot of work is still left to be done, and after a couple days I feel a little more clear-headed about the situation and wanted to make sure I apologize.
As I reach out to the various departments at FFG, I hope those interested will join the conversation with me. You can always reach me on slack, here on stimhack, on twitter, or via projectancur @ gmail . com
Cheers
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Thanks for the post. Zwobot is a pillar for the german community, who is really trying to do the best for the german community. While your points where fair, the tone was not. Maybe ffgop could tell to’s/judges that while unofficial ancur is a potential guideline to issue rulings in case something is not covered in the official faq.
Thanks for all your work
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I’m always happy to give my thoughts on opinions, whether people want them or not. 
Thanks for the response @jakodrako, of you want a voice from the community to input to FFG, let me know who to talk to!
I’m sure everyone appreciates your efforts.
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