[boromirofborg]

"Your matching ❖ personnel and ships native to the Alpha Quadrant and without ∇ must report as if they were ."


Is it:
A - matching ❖ personnel and matching ❖ ships
OR
B - matching ❖ Personnel and matching ships.


I think A, but just making sure

[BCSWowbagger]

A

[JeBuS]

Out of curiosity, how would it be written if it was intended to be matching ships?

How would it be written if it was intended to be any of your ships?

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

[Professor Scott]

Out of curiosity, how would it be written if it was intended to be matching ships?

How would it be written if it was intended to be any of your ships?

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

1) matching ships and ❖ Personnel. Matching applies to both sides of the and
2) ships and matching ❖ Personnel. Nothing passes through the and
3) As written. I believe the term is called transitive property, and players just need to learn it.

[JeBuS]

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

3) As written. I believe the term is called transitive property, and players just need to learn it.

That's the opposite of the answer to the question. Rather than answering with what we could change to make understanding easier, you suggest the understanding shouldn't be easy, and folks should just do better.

Rather than saying "this language is correct", we should be saying "what other language is also correct that would be better understood?"

[Professor Scott]

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

3) As written. I believe the term is called transitive property, and players just need to learn it.

That's the opposite of the answer to the question. Rather than answering with what we could change to make understanding easier, you suggest the understanding shouldn't be easy, and folks should just do better.

Rather than saying "this language is correct", we should be saying "what other language is also correct that would be better understood?"

Well other than the obvious answer of:

"Your matching ❖ personnel native to the Alpha Quadrant without must report as if they were , and your matching ❖ ships native to the Alpha Quadrant without must report as if they were ."

which is more a question of space, and arguably even of wasted space, I am not sure what else to suggest. This is a complicated game and some of the onus is on the player to parse the language correctly. I pity the non-native speakers but sometimes it's IYKYK.

[sekce31]

I pity the non-native speakers but sometimes it's IYKYK.

Yeah. Well... I must admit as a non-native speaker I would guess this one wrong. Maybe in different languages "and" is different. Especially in law like documents (e.g. game rules) where things have to be undoubtful this would not pass.

Space-saving and undoubtful would be using icons like "matching ❖ personnel and ❖ ships may... "

[boromirofborg]

we are also dealing with a player base from around the world so nuances in grammar aren't quite as simple as saying just learn it.

And even for native speakers like me, I would say there is always the possibility because English grammar isn't always consistent, and miswordings are things that happen.

In a perfect world where we had more time, I really appreciate what Magic does with their releases, where any card that has remote ambiguity gets release notes.


For example - https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card ... eid=426896

this is an uncommon from a set almost a decade ago, and it doesn't do anything super unique or weird for the set, but if you look at the card in the database, most questions you might have are already answered.


There is a middle ground between making every card super wordy and the other extreme of requiring a glossary entry for every card.
The way I see it glossary should be about rules or exceptions to the rules, but card notes like this and the dilemma resolution guide would be a way to state the exact effects of a card without ambiguity .

(and yes, I would be willing to work on this if needed.)

[BCSWowbagger]

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

If you can come up with a clear answer to this question we can dependably use, at least going forward, without the big drawbacks we usually find with these things (takes up too much space, requires new iconography, not backwards-compatible), I will personally mail you $10.

That's not a rhetorical device. I've thought about it. It seems like it ought to be possible. But I've never cracked the code, and neither has the Rules Committee as a whole.

[JeBuS]

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

If you can come up with a clear answer to this question we can dependably use, at least going forward, without the big drawbacks we usually find with these things (takes up too much space, requires new iconography, not backwards-compatible), I will personally mail you $10.

That's not a rhetorical device. I've thought about it. It seems like it ought to be possible. But I've never cracked the code, and neither has the Rules Committee as a whole.

The cheating answer is to say that we should be writing cards that players understand. If that means we don't have space for 5 different functions on the same card, then we drop it to 4 and offload the 5th. The point should be a playable, grokkable game. Not to cram as much as we can into the smallest space.

[Armus]

How can we write it so we don't have these questions occurring with every other set release?

If you can come up with a clear answer to this question we can dependably use, at least going forward, without the big drawbacks we usually find with these things (takes up too much space, requires new iconography, not backwards-compatible), I will personally mail you $10.

That's not a rhetorical device. I've thought about it. It seems like it ought to be possible. But I've never cracked the code, and neither has the Rules Committee as a whole.

The cheating answer is to say that we should be writing cards that players understand. If that means we don't have space for 5 different functions on the same card, then we drop it to 4 and offload the 5th. The point should be a playable, grokkable game. Not to cram as much as we can into the smallest space.

Cute response but sometimes even one function has a hard time fitting on a 3 line template.

Say what you will about 2e, at least the cards have a solid amount of space for game text.

[JeBuS]

If you can come up with a clear answer to this question we can dependably use, at least going forward, without the big drawbacks we usually find with these things (takes up too much space, requires new iconography, not backwards-compatible), I will personally mail you $10.

That's not a rhetorical device. I've thought about it. It seems like it ought to be possible. But I've never cracked the code, and neither has the Rules Committee as a whole.

The cheating answer is to say that we should be writing cards that players understand. If that means we don't have space for 5 different functions on the same card, then we drop it to 4 and offload the 5th. The point should be a playable, grokkable game. Not to cram as much as we can into the smallest space.

Cute response but sometimes even one function has a hard time fitting on a 3 line template.

Say what you will about 2e, at least the cards have a solid amount of space for game text.

So use the 4-line template. Here's your new lore for Whisked Away, if we want to make it happen:

Vessels suddenly transported across the galaxy must decide between settling down or making a long trek home.

If you need a 5th line:

Decide between settling down or making a long trek home.

If you need a 6th line:
it's two cards. Make it two cards.

[BCSWowbagger]

The cheating answer

That is correct. You will not be receiving the $10.

One part of the problem (that makes an answer worth $10) is that it's not obvious which wordings are going to raise questions in the first place. Some wordings raise questions. Some do not. (Sometimes the ones that do or don't are structurally identical!)

In a small set like Twilight (30 cards), Rules generally makes (I would say) a couple dozen wording tweaks to eliminate perceived ambiguity, based on our sense of what players might find confusing or ambiguous. (This is in addition to making sure the cards actually follow the rules, which is our primary focus.) We didn't touch this because, frankly, we didn't see it as ambiguous. No shade to anyone who does, it just didn't cross our minds as a practical problem, so the question of "should we sacrifice space for clarity" didn't arise in the first place.

Sidebar: I think Design has made great progress in the past 5 years toward not filling up card space with big fancy multifunction cards. Lots of cards are being broken up into multiples.

[JeBuS]

Just based on the past couple years of sets, it seems to me Rules might want to add another item to the checklist:
Any card functionality that uses conjunctions where an adjective (be that a word or icon) can be transitory, should find a way to explicitly list the possible options.

[Ashigaru]

I'll admit, I've had cases where I read a card and said "I'm pretty sure this is what they INTENDED, but am I certain this is what the card actually SAYS?" One example that comes to mind was Library Record Tape where I said "I'm sure they meant (OFFICER or Computer Skill), but I could see someone reading this another way."

Actually, ARE parentheses a viable way to extend a prefacing symbol to everything in the group? Like if Whisked Away read "matching ❖ (personnel or ships) native..."