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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#591042
So it's Period of Review time, as you can see from Charlie's recent posts. There's no formal PoR for the Rules Committee specifically. If a committee member does a bad job, I'm supposed to fire her. If I do a bad job, Charlie's supposed to fire me. The PoR is when you have the chance to fire Charlie.

Nevertheless, feedback is valuable, and a PoR discussion of How Rules Is Doing might help Charlie decide whether to fire me this year.

Is Rules doing a good job? What is it doing well? What could it do better? Should Charlie fire me?

In the past 12 months, the Rules Committee has done the following:

RULE CHANGES

* Made face-up cards (including the discard pile) public information, in response to public demand

* Cleaned up how multiple persona replacements work

* Removed a restriction on counting the number of cards remaining in your draw deck

* Removed the "Zaldan Rule" (which said to ignore the conditions of a dilemma and discard it if valid targets with specifically targeted characteristics weren't present), which restores the 1990s version of the rule

* Removed Borg restrictions on the use of hand weapons (if Borg can acquire any)

* Numerous clarifications, from clarifying who counts as the controller of a shared mission when (both players, always) to clarifying that the "Blade of Black Hole" trick does in fact work.

* Numerous instances where we fixed duplicative, often contradictory rulings in the Glossary and/or Rulebook.

CARD WORDINGS:

We were responsible for the wording of every card released, including:

* The Motion Pictures Remastered,

* Paradise Lost,

* and the forthcoming Project Solo.

SLOW(ER) PACE

Compared to 2021, 2022 was a fairly sedate year for Rules. In 2021, just in March and April, we hugely streamlined Nor rules, removed ANIMAL restrictions, offloaded Miracle Worker, changed region seeding rules, and changed stealability for ❖ missions. That's five big things all in two months. I don't think we've done a single thing as large as any one of those five in the 20 months since.

COMMUNICATION

This is less a function of the Rules Committee and more on me as Rules Manager.

* I published monthly rules updates which tried to explain all rule changes and clarifications, large and small -- along with occasional notes about how Rules thinks certain large issues.

* I created the Compendium, a single document that unites the Rulebook and Glossary in order to make ctrl-F rules searches easier.

* I introduced numbering into the Rulebook, in order to make it easier to reference specific rules (especially when jumping from the Glossary to the Rulebook).

* I put the Glossary fully into the CC database which (has turned out to be an ongoing technical headache, but it) has enabled the 1E rules tool to come online. If you ever visit a card page and see "Related Glossary Entries," that's because of the Rules Tool. (There's more I want to do with this, but, for now, this was a big hill to climb.)

* I've tried to maintain pretty open lines of communication with the player base, asking for your input on all kinds of things Rules was thinking about. Some of those questions led to changes (Misinterpreted History), and (perhaps more frequently) prevented changes we were thinking about (errata in the Glossary, alternate seeding). We had another round of What Rule Can Die In A Fire?, talked about inspecting Q's Tents, and recently had a productive discussion about dual-personnel cards.

* I think I only had to issue one bluetext ruling in 2022 (regarding who wins a battle), but hopefully that was a well-communicated bluetext?

* Hopefully you see me as someone who can answer a rules question for you, or at least refer you back to your tournament director because the answer isn't crystal clear. I've certainly answered plenty of PMs in addition to forum discussion, and welcome them. I am, of course, very grateful to all the very smart people who contribute answers in the Rules Questions forum, which takes a lot of problems off my shoulders.

OTHER STUFF?

I'm probably forgetting some stuff, because I'm under the weather today. And, of course, there's a whole universe of things we didn't do, including maybe some stuff you wish we had done and some stuff you're glad we didn't. (I personally feel I dropped the ball somewhat on clarifying errata this year.)

I'm also happy to talk about Rules' plans going forward under me, but I'll need to take specific questions about that, because find it difficult to enumerate stuff we're only thinking about doing. But if you want to know where we stand with, say, revision of the timing rules, ask away.

EDIT: I want to add that I thank the whole current Rules Committee for their hard work over the past year. The blame for our errors goes to me; the credit for our successes to them.

I also thank Jarrod Cafaro (Takket) for his continued work this year maintaining the Dilemma Resolution Guide.
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By Takket
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#591093
I'll break the silence.

It's good. I like the streamlining. Making things more intuitive and changing rules if it removes bulky explanations. I guess I'll apply the "umpire rule". No one says anything about umpires if they make 300 correct calls in a game but if they egregiously miss one you never hear the end of it. So that being said the fact I can't think of anything egregiously bad means I must be happy with the other calls you've made.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#591148
To add in, one thing I think you've done really well is your constant advocating for slimming and trimming the rules wherever possible.

That doesn't mean I always agree, since some of the appeal of 1E for me is the arcane rules, *but* I think regardless it's the right position for the rules master to have and advocate for.
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By stressedoutatumc (stressedoutatumc)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#591298
I'll say that the CC is doing a bang-up job. No matter what people complain about, you are keeping a beloved and interesting game alive. So kudos. Honestly, I'm amazed that the game still has a base and how fun the game is to play.

If I can "complain" about anything, I would say 2 things.

[1] Can't wait to see The Final Frontier come back in some useable form.

[2] Love the elimination of Smoke Bomb. Now...please....KILL ALL THE OTHER DILEMMA CHEATS. i.e. Nilz Baris-Incomming Message. Kes-The Gift, Dauntless-Quantum Slipstream Drive, etc. It's time for those to go.
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First Edition Art Manager
By jjh (Johnny Holeva)
 - First Edition Art Manager
 -  
#591299
I can only add my support and appreciation of the entire 1E Rules Department. 10 Sisko Silent Nods of Respect out of 10.

(AND I LOVE, LOVE the Dilemma Resolution Guide. Thank you Jarrod!)
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By PantsOfTheTalShiar (Jason Tang)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#592315
BCSWowbagger wrote: Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:57 pm So it's Period of Review time, as you can see from Charlie's recent posts. There's no formal PoR for the Rules Committee specifically. If a committee member does a bad job, I'm supposed to fire her. If I do a bad job, Charlie's supposed to fire me. The PoR is when you have the chance to fire Charlie.

Nevertheless, feedback is valuable, and a PoR discussion of How Rules Is Doing might help Charlie decide whether to fire me this year.

Is Rules doing a good job? What is it doing well? What could it do better? Should Charlie fire me?
A few years ago I would have answered 'yes' to that last question, but this year I will say 'no.' The slower pace is a big part of that. Because significant rules proposals tend to draw in everyone's attention (as they probably should), if that happens too often, then it feels like Rules is driving the agenda for the entire department.

I have also felt in the past that Rules has underestimated the price of changing rules, so while there certainly have been changes that are positive for the game, other changes have IMHO not been worth it. While reforming rules is part of Charlie's plan to Stabilize the game, every rule change actually de-stabilizes the game by splitting the player base into one group that knows about the change and another group that doesn't, and it can take YEARS for those groups to converge back together. In the meantime when those groups meet you get friction, and moments where the game screeches to a halt while you try to figure out what the rules are, which is what this was all supposed to prevent in the first place.

Though this all can be traced back to bigger issues. Rules gets tasked with having to aggressively control the complexity of the game because Design is not doing its part to manage complexity. And the CC has become hyper-fixated on rules being the main barrier to entry when I don't even think it's the biggest barrier. It's just what gets the loudest complaints and it's what a subset of the CC loves to spend time on.

I guess I let myself get a little off-topic there, since I think Rules has been doing a good job with the everyday rulings and clarifications. I won't review every change this year but I think Zaldan was a clear improvement and looking through discard piles was a good change even if I would have gotten there a different way.
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