Infallible Gamesworkshop?

[JoeGuardsman]

I might be the only loser here who reads most of the articles in White Dwarf but if I'am maybe this will be fresh news to you. For about half a year now GW has been unwilling to recognize any mistakes made in the rules writing of their games. Well I really mean the mistakes in 40K, because it is the only game that doesn't have a foot to stand on as far as the rules go. GW's stance has changed reguarding rules interpretations and FAQs; where they were once willing to accept the expansiveness of their rule system and impossibility of writing a perfect system they now follow their RAW principle. RAW means (Read As Written), meaning to ignore common sense and spirit of the rule just so that they don't have to write an FAQ. I think that it is ironic that a principle that will be used by power-gamers to argue the rules for their advantage would have such a powerful acronym. I wish I didn't like the guard so much; maybe I could've just kept playing Fantasy and LoTR and not have to worry about theoretical scenery, preposterous exceptions and the ambiguous wording in every other sentence of the rulebook(seriously, look at my 40k rulebook; every other sentence is highlighted.) I have a degree in Linguistic abiguity and the sentences are scientifically ambiguous.

[IVSothicIV]

I wanna make an army out of Empire troops now....................

[NileChild]

Yeah it does really suck, but hey, if they focused more effort on rules development, they would spend less time on the profitable ventures of their models. They would be spending less time coming up with new designs for models and updates for armies like DE and Orks would take even longer and they woudl lose money because there would be longer periods of time when there were no new models available, they would then lose money, have to jack up prices of models even more and we'd be spending ridiculous amounts of money on old models.


The alternative would be to hire people with degrees in things like linguistic abiguity to help them with rules develpment, but then they would have more paychecks to give out and then to keep paychecks the same would jack up model prices.


It's not as drastic as it seems when you write it out, but neither of the ventures are really in their best interests. I completley agree with you (read some of the sentences in the DE codex, it's insane) But I can see why it stays the same.

[Torquemada Coteaz]

well...
an FAQ is quite simple to write: set background, choose 2 column format. the B, I and U buttons are IN the quickbars. And I'm sure they have word processor capability, if not a PDF maker.
and it takes, what, less-than-an-hour to make a page?
Determining what to write is just as simple: 1) ask the devs 2) when faced with "Abusive" and "Non-abusive" (relatively) choices (as the choices usually separate into), always choose the Non-Abusive

[Perturabo]

Perhaps its the gaming communities continued tendency to turn to GW for an answer to all its problems?
As I see it....
As the community has grown and as technology has developed so people can communicate more readily with each other, more and more contact is made with a wider circle of gamers, rules inconsitencies come light more often and GW is seen as the font of all knowledge (after all it is their trainset) so it is to them that people turn. Over time this turning to big brother for the slightest quirk has led to a community that is unable to think for itself and a a over aggressive rules enforcing policy from GW....
Going from a "use common sense" approach to a "do what we say" and trying to write the uber rule book
Just my opinion

[MSguardsmen]

read this months white dwarf where that alessio catavara or what ever his name is (im completly guessing at that last name) retracted and restated what he meant. he says that he does not mean for players to just avoid common sense and use raw he means use raw look at it and come to your own conclusion.

however in my case i always use the dice 1-3 your right 4-6 im right on a roll of 1 or 6 i slap the heck out of you and you owe me 5 dollars or 100 victory points for wasting valuable game time

[Ikarus]

The way it should be handled:

The Hand of Fate-> 3rd edition

roll higher than your opponent, its gold.

[IVSothicIV]

Originally Posted by MSguardsmen

read this months white dwarf where that alessio catavara or what ever his name is (im completly guessing at that last name) retracted and restated what he meant. he says that he does not mean for players to just avoid common sense and use raw he means use raw look at it and come to your own conclusion.

however in my case i always use the dice 1-3 your right 4-6 im right on a roll of 1 or 6 i slap the **** out of you and you owe me 5 dollars or 100 victory points for wasting valuable game time

Hit dat' ass!

[Torquemada Coteaz]

possibly less swearing? >.>
*agrees with dicerolls*

[JoeGuardsman]

Originally Posted by MSguardsmen

he does not mean for players to just avoid common sense and use raw he means use raw look at it and come to your own conclusion.

This very statement is my problem with the RAW principle, because that is all people who use the idea do; is come to THEIR own conclusions. GW enforces RAW and people have a defence for the "My way is THE way" tactic. One thing that is good about tabletop games is that you can choose who you play against and I can just find someone else who beleives in a sportsmanlike discussion followed by a roll off if we hit an impasse. Leave the RAW players to play against each other and we will all be happy I guess.

[CHIAPETOFDOOM]

HAHA

I bet a games workshop employee would spontainously COMBUST if they ever saw one of the epic games between Squat Comando and I!

We get on tangents and talk and make pizza and half the time forget whose turn it is to move the tank divisions or masses of gribblies so we just shrug and move on. Now we know the rules fairly well but heck we don't spend more than a minute interpretting anything we dont understand! Our models aren't that patient! THEY WANNA FIND OUT WHOSE GONNA DIE!!!

Sometimes we just slap parts on old vehicles for the IG and make new ones and make up stuff,(There are about 2 new IG vehicles modded/invented(YES, plausible and not silly concepts) every time Im at Squat Comandos house) and new gribbles slapped together or spoken of.

Im all for saying Games Workshop is far too SILLAY! These days our games lean more and more towards modded figures, bargain bin or ebay bitz and rules that if they take more than a minute or two delaying the battle, are overridden by teh "fun rules" (aka random deaths, wound alocation, and general sillyness)

I would love to play a more strict game with one of you folks too, but theres my take on how to control Gamesworkshop sillyness. I hope I didn't ramble again...uh oh...

[experiment 626]

well, the thing with competitive style games is that there will always be those who's only goal is to win at all costs... it's inevitable and they'll always be around.
the main problem with the faq's was;
a) the problem of continuously updating them to take into account newer rules/conflicts and/or new sitiuations that hadn't yet arisen.
b) many, many people were either oblivious to the faq's and/or simply chose to ignore them for various reasons...
c) not all tournaments enforced the faq's meaning that there would be alot of 'bad blood' going about because one tourny would enforce the faq's while another one wouldn't... (even judges within some tournaments would waver on the yes/no question as to the faq's validity! )

so instead of conintuing on with the mindnumbing task of fixing every little quirk and loophole, jervis brought in the "rule as written" principle to try and allow the dev to sleep at least 3 hours a week...
now, as far as i'm concerned, this doesn't mean that the written rule is absolute! there's still alot of really weird contradictions that common sense dictates shouldn't happen. (such as the psycannon vs. turbo boosting bikers debate!)

instead, the RAW principle is ment to easily and quickly work through the vast majority of little things like tyranid synapse preventing 'Instant Death!' or kill/dies outright wording...

overall, just because we are now to follow RAW doesn't in any way mean we through our common sense and highly respected sporting behavior out the window in favour of getting that tiny advantage!!!

cheers!

[Torquemada Coteaz]

or you could be like me, sometimes, and rough up the cheesehead (especially when he knows he can't beat you with a non-cheese army, is shorter tahn you and keeps taunting you 24/7 and saying he's better than you in every way. yes "he" i understand political correctness but i dont hit girls)

In any case I like to apply common sense to any sort of arguement. Winning through logic and common sense feels like a "win" as opposed to "just because".

RAW is fine, as long as it gets me my Psycannon ignoring T-Boost save :P

[Perturabo]

Well this all seems to come to those annoying people dubbed "Rules Lawyers" we all know them, normaly found with bible/codex in hand speaking very loudly over everyone else "quoting" verbatum from the book with a smug look on their face-they will never discuss or be flexible (Ive seen more than one storm off home in a huff mid battle)
For me these people spoil my gaming, I try to avoid playing them but if I must (in a tournament say) I keep quiet and just get it over with quickly - petty of me I know but the whole experience should be about fun - discussing problems and coming to common agreeable solutions.
Long live the dice off

[r4wr89]

Originally Posted by experiment 626

well, the thing with competitive style games is that there will always be those who's only goal is to win at all costs...

JERK ALERT JERK ALERT JERK ALERT

honestly. okay. sheesh. i also dislike the snobby people who think they can win anything....and the people who won't allow anyone within 5 feet of the table.

anyways, enough rambling. i completely forgot the topic of this post. well, when i read what you all have said i'll be caught up. i shall return.

haha :]
-ant

[Killermoose]

Unfortunately all these jerks are needed if GW is going to stay around. Its just a shame that all of them either can't be bothered to learn to play the game, or are truly incompetent. Then you have the Power-gamers and Rules Laywers. Quite frankly, they all need to be burnt at the stake.

Anyways, rant over. Perhaps we should get slightly more BOT?

[experiment 626]

Originally Posted by JoeGuardsman

I might be the only loser here who reads most of the articles in White Dwarf but if I'am maybe this will be fresh news to you. For about half a year now GW has been unwilling to recognize any mistakes made in the rules writing of their games. Well I really mean the mistakes in 40K, because it is the only game that doesn't have a foot to stand on as far as the rules go. GW's stance has changed reguarding rules interpretations and FAQs; where they were once willing to accept the expansiveness of their rule system and impossibility of writing a perfect system they now follow their RAW principle. RAW means (Read As Written), meaning to ignore common sense and spirit of the rule just so that they don't have to write an FAQ. I think that it is ironic that a principle that will be used by power-gamers to argue the rules for their advantage would have such a powerful acronym. I wish I didn't like the guard so much; maybe I could've just kept playing Fantasy and LoTR and not have to worry about theoretical scenery, preposterous exceptions and the ambiguous wording in every other sentence of the rulebook(seriously, look at my 40k rulebook; every other sentence is highlighted.) I have a degree in Linguistic abiguity and the sentences are scientifically ambiguous.

well not strictly related to how abusive the RAW principal is, i also find it very humorous the number of tactica articles and battle reports that encourage illegal play!!!
honestly, you'd think they'd proof-read or at the very least check to make sure everything is good and legal before printing it!

case in point, the battle report in the canadian issue of WD300 between the blood ravens & orks; the space marine commander had 2 relics! (both the halo & mantle.) the number of smurf players afterwards who then argued that because it appeared in white dawrf, the 'offical' magazine, that they could take 0-1 of each artifact/relic was insane! (just to point out, the guy playing the blood raven army is well known for never reading the fine print!)
funniest of all was that US GT style battle report between the space wolves & LatD armies were both forces were illegal!!!

as bad as the RAW ruling can be, i find this kind of misimformation even worse... the fact that they also ran that article about how killer all drop pod marine armies are was infuriating to say the least! gw goes on and on about how the game is suposed to be fun for both players, and they go on and encourage the extreamly power-gamey tactics of the plasma gun/assault cannon drop pod army?!!

okay, time to climb back into my cage and brood on how hypocritical gw is...
cheers!

[Killermoose]

See, I think that an all drop-pod army isn't too bad, depending on what you have inside. I know one of the staff down at my local GW is doing something like this, but the force he has inside is a more themed (as its Dark Angels its mostly plasma, but I don't think there's any assault cannons, which means there's not much anti tank). So it's a fair list which most armies stand a chance against (and the models are going to look real sweet, he makes alot of converted and well painted armies - he made my Uber-Autarch). But I agree, it could be horribly exploited to general AssCan doom, which just isn't fun.

[rintinglen]

Let there be no bones about it.
RAW sucks gutter water: Because Jervis Johnson is too f******g lazy to correct what he failed to write clearly in the first place, because GW haven't a clue about intelligent game design in the first place, and because they used to do it right.
Am I the only antiquated fellow or Dam who can remember when they used to publish a monthly column called "Chapter Approved" that authoritatively dealt with questions raised? Is that too hard to do? I realize that the magazine has become little more than a pricey catalog, over-filled with LOTR crap and battle reports designed to get us all to run out and buy the latest armies, but two pages an issue dealing with frequently asked questions is not too much to ask. The mere fact that some bit of foollishness has made it to paper is not reason to perpetuate it for the 6 or 7 years we will have to wait for the new codex. (Somebody please give me the address of the dolt who included the words immobile in the description of Drop Pods in the Space Marine Codex--I want to give him, her or it an english lesson.) Failing to address the vagaries of the game is failing to support the game. There is reason why their stock prices keep falling. It is precisely things like this.

[Gnr. Keil]

To bad you have to go through hell to become a GW employee, and even more to try and get on the main staff team. If they had dedicated players like us wrighting the rules i think alought of these problems wouldn't be coming up, or would be at least looked at and handled.
Isn't it great that we can come up with our own rules atleast. I have a 15 page book with rules i developed. Even a new turn system for 40k.

I bet a games workshop employee would spontainously COMBUST if they ever saw one of the epic games between Squat Comando and I!

I have been kicked out of a GW store for not having my models based. Want to talk about combustion. After i asked if it was really that important to the game the manager freaked, turned bright red, and i was told not to come back until the models were complete.

[Dan296]

for not having them BASED!!?!??!
i can understand if you show up with them not primed, or several times when they are just primed. but based? come on....thats rediculous. show up there again with one model based just to spite him.

[JoeGuardsman]

Yeah at the store that I worked in the only way you would get ridden on for not having models based is if they hadn't been based for a long time...and you have to be an annoying person. So there is the question, ofcourse there is the chance that the GW guy is the annoying guy forcing the inverse properties of annoyingization on you.