The tournament regulations speak of outside material and outside information and the corresponding floor rules part is called āoutside assistanceā.
So does FFG consider in-game notes as outside? And yes note taking is not part of Netrunner, as dice are not part of the game, but I have seen enough people using dice as credit counters.
If they had left in the āno memory aidā notes passage I would never have seen the issue here at all.
āIn addition, a player cannot refer to notes or other physical/digital information during a
matchā found in the floor rules seems pretty cut and dry.
But the title of that passage is called āoutside assistanceā.
That leaves the question if they make a difference between outside and in-game notes or not. (Take a look at the article I linked earlier)
Also the floor rules are only an explanation of the tournament regulations and the regulations must work on their own.
Also I read the whole regulations again and came to the following conclusion:
(Unsporting Conduct) Players cannot reference outside material or information during a match.
(Player Materials) Players are responsible for bringing all of the game components they need to play a game of Android: Netrunner. This includes all cards, sleeves, and tokens.
(Legal products) Players may use only official Android: Netrunner components in tournament play.Determining the legality of third-party tokens is the marshalās responsibility.
So if notes are forbidden, because they are outside material and not part of the game and no longer because there is a specific passage in the rules about memory aids, then the only conclusion is that using dice to track credits are now officially prohibited, too. Because dice are no component of Netrunner.
Your credit pool is a part of Netrunner. So if you use your dice to represent your credit pool, go ahead.
But if you use the dice to track the number of cards the number of cards the Corp has drawn since you indexed them? Thatās not a part of Netrunner game state.
Likewise, if you have a notepad and paper, feel free to keep track of your credit pool or tags or whatever on paper. Record the game state. But donāt write notes.
Thatās a lot of stretching. It doesnāt sound like youāre going to be happy with any answer contradicting your own until youāve heard it from the man himself, I think Damonās pretty good about getting back to people on twitter.
Until then, Iād say again its probably best not to assume a complete 180 in their in game note taking policy.
Is it note taking if i put a little skull and crossbones counter on my Femme when the corp overinstalls the ICE the Femme was targeting and the Femme now has no target? Or am I tracking the game state because the skull and crossbones is supposed to signify that Femmeās āchosen piece of ICEā referred to by its trigger is no longer installed? When my turn begins and the skull and crossbones helps me remember that that Femme would be a smart thing to sell to Aesopās, did the skull and crossbones give me an unfair memory aid advantage or just help me track the game state?
Errā¦ You can use the gameās tokens at your convenience including running tokens made with whatever tag, bp or clic track token but I fail to understand how thatās not OT ?
Using tokens as memory aids, when notes as memory aids are forbidden, falls probably under the same category.
If you are not allowed to write down the current game state, make notes to aid memory, why would you be allowed to use tokens to aid your memory?
Btw the FF text:
When you install Femme Fatale, choose an installed piece of ice. When you encounter that ice, you may spend 1 per subroutine on that ice to bypass it.
Outside Assistance philosophy :
Tournaments challenge players to win using their own skill and their interpretation of the game state. As soon as outside assistance is provided, whether correct or not, a player can no longer win or lose solely of their own merit.
If in-game notes are outside assistance, then using tokens to aid memory must be outside assistance, too.
But if you ask me, calling those instances āoutsideā assistance is a bit harsh.
Or is there any rule I didnāt see that allows you to mark cards if you have chosen them for something?
Traditionally weāve tracked some aspects of the game (what ice is chosen by Femme Fetale; what server is marked with Security Testing, etc.) and not others (what is chosen by Targeted Marketing).
Thereās certainly an argument to be made that we should have to memorise all those things. From a practical standpoint, I donāt think itās sensible. Weāll just end up with āhe said, she saidā situations about who chose what, or end up with a million game errors or mistakes ("Oh, I forgot that was your Femme targetā¦). I was on the verge of carrying around a notepad to write down Targeted Marketing choices to avoid that situation, for instance.
If you ask me they should have made the rules more clear like:
You are not allowed to take notes or use memory aids unless:
Both players have to remember a chosen card or card text.
Both players have to remember a decisionā¦
ā¦
Or something like that.
I am pretty sure the FF ruling would be: No tokens allowed.
But I actually donāt think that is feasible and both players wouldnāt agree to use it anyway.
Failing to remember the cards you chooses like sec testing conduct to an illegal board state. Like failing to count clicks.
Not much for notes.
Just for the sake of the exemple, notes in poker are forbidden. This is just saying āno, you canāt be rainmaning pokerā. Exploring R&D with makerās eye, and check back notes would be like asking the corp to review cards known from a previous run. As a corp, in a tournament, nobody would allow this.
Plus, you could be giving your notes to futur opponents. I guess TO donāt want to monitor that.
This is not directed specially against you : I really really really dislike comments stating āthis is the same thingā when 2 things are similar but quite different.
Lacks of finesse makes a lot of damage in subjects like politics, game rules or science.
I guess this is the curse of our times. Thank you for remembering me Iām an old 40yo chap
The game framework does not provide you specific tokens or rules to mark chosen cards.
If you mark a card with a tokens (not the purpose of the token) or take a note about chosen card, it is to me the same thing of aiding your memory.
And I only mean notes for this specific case. Would you really argue that using a token to select a server for Security Testing or writing the server on a piece of paper is a different case, especially if your opponent would be allowed to look the note any time?
Also I didnāt know Lukas made the following comment some time ago:
Players are free to use the game components to aid in the upkeep of the game state (recurring credits, Femme Fatale, Security Testing, etc.) but should practice restraint when using them for things not tied directly to any card effect.
I wished those rules would not come from third party sourcesā¦
The way you mark things is not the important issue. What you are marking is the point.
Some things are required to be remembered to maintain the legal game state by the players. Some things youād like to remember for tactical advantage. Things like Patron or Femme Fatale need remembering, even if theyāre optional abilities: if one player says āI use this ability nowā you need to be sure that they have the legal option on that ICE/server!
If you want, write down what you want on your notepad that is necessary to maintain the game state. Tell your opponent, and place your notepad so that your opponent can always refer to it too (it only has commonly-known things on that you both use between you to maintain the game state). Donāt write anything else on your notepad. If your opponent or a judge is worried that you could use any of the information for tactical purposes rather than game maintenance then switch to using counters.
Depends on the note, are you simultaneously tracking turns by writing which server youāre picking this turn down in a list? Because that is a completely different case. Or are you just writing HQ on a post it note and sticking it in front of HQ? The game wouldnāt fall apart like a house of cards if players were able to write āI pick HQ for security testingā on a sheet of paper and slap in the middle of the table, but someone made the decision that no notes are allowed to prevent people from also tracking meaningful things they are not allowed to.
Players are free to use the game components to aid in the upkeep of the game state (recurring credits, Femme Fatale, Security Testing, etc.) but should practice restraint when using them for things not tied directly to any card effect. In the situations you describe, I would not allow players to use tokens to track that information, as it is not necessary to maintain the state of the game and is an alternate way of taking notes. I agree that memory is part of the skill of the game.
(Memory part of the skill of the game, unlike Magic, from where I beleive those writing notes requests comes from)
Totally aware of that.
Even that FFG considers memory to be part of the skill of their games.(in general)
And I donāt request notes being legal, I just want to have a clear set of rules.
The rule to use tokens as aids is nowhere near to be found in the official documents, or am I mistaken?
Third party rule sources are not good practice at all.
My whole point in this whole discussion was that they deleted this crucial part in their rules:
Players are not allowed to take notes to aid memory or gameplay, whether physically or digitally, during a tournament match.
So using notes to count credits would have been a case of aided gameplay, right?
With that sentence gone, are we allowed to use notes for cards like Targeted Marketing? Before we clearly were not allowed to.
This is the part that prohibits notes in the current tournament regulations: (Most probably)
Players cannot reference outside material or information during a match.
Whether this means that you are not to look at third party online rules or if it even prohibit the use of dice as credit counter is up interpretation. (dice are clearly outside material and not part of the game)
If the conclusion would be that notes are now allowed to keep track of cards like āTarget Marketingā, as a legal game aid, we all would have won. But the rules are quite unclear to me in that regard.
Iām sorry this isnāt good enough for you. But itās all weāve got. Netrunner is woefully lacking in a great many aspects of its competitive play - its rules clarity is yet another of those aspects.
In the meantime, everyone is basically going to go on what Lukas has said previously, and you should feel free to use tokens to mark cards that Femme has chosen.
Edit: As Syntax says, ask your TO if youāre in any doubt.
