thoughts on Play by intent

You may also declare a BS attack believing you have LoF and turn out you do not, it is a potential LoF that did not turn out to be true, basic skill requirement is not valid BS attack becomes idle.

 

Targetless requires LoF to be used normally. We don't spec fire smoke grenades all day.

This is the point that your clean definition of etc. Breaks down.


Just to be clear, I'm not arguing the opposite. I want clarity and right now psychoticstorm and others are attempting to assert the rules are clear and therefore do not need clarification.

 

I love this game more than anything, but can we quit pretending that the creator's vision of the game would be able to stand up to a moderate stress test, like the one @Plebian provided with his mirror example, just because it was their intent? The rules as being presented by those wielding authority in this thread do not even work, before you consider if they are fun/balanced/feasible to follow.

Even if it was CB's intent that we forgo AROs we could have taken, and cop AROs we could have avoided (the consequence of not being able to check hypothetical lines of fire), they haven't written rules that force us to. And given that checking hypothetical lines of fire is just examining the board, it would be impossible to.

Pretty funny people are unwilling to accept intent in gameplay but will accept it in the rules that govern the game.

 

Well the smoke marker itself serves the same function as a model in my mind for the etc deffinition, you can extend that to mean it serves as its own target for line of fire as well(in truth I hadn't thought of it until now, either it works as a co-incidence or i'm on to something here..) but I very much agree with the idea that a few of the rules, this one in particular could do with some clarification or at least reassertion of there intention where they've been widely played differently to it...

 

As I said many times the rules will not prevent you playing however you like, but you must understand how the rules are supposed to work, regardless of how you want to play the game.

No rule system will survive the contact with the player base, exploits, abuses and misinterpretations will always find their way, it is another thing a few people writing the rules and try to make the rules as good as they can be on the little space they have a few, then a few hundred playtesting the rules and finally getting the rules released in the wild having tens or hundreds of thousands play them.

What we can do is find exploits and abuses and patch them and explain how the rules are supposed to work, again without making the FAQ looking like a Phonebook.

This will not change how people will want to play the game in their group, but knowing what is actual rules and what is variant is important.

 

See I blanch at the idea of introducing "believing" into rules. Do we want a polygraph to become a gaming aid (that we can't use because it is pre-measuring anyway)? Let's see each of two reasonable players agree about what the other believes.

I am fast coming to the conclusion that not only is nobody playing by the rules as intended, but they couldn't if they wanted to.

 

You could def be onto something. It might only need a little clarification and then maybe a statement on how LoF is determined/what's considered too much while checking the state of the table.

That would settle it. Some might not be happy.

 

@psychoticstorm not trying to overwhelm you, but if this is how the game is meant to be played, would you mind clarifying how these situations are supposed to work?

 

When you are making up definitions and restrictions on the spot...

 

I think the key term you need to change here is what is intended in the rules.

Trying to argue it's in the rules and people are too blind, stubborn, misusing or abusing them is unlikely to garner much good will.

I believe what you say is what the rules should say. I just don't think they do with anywhere near the clarity you say they do.

 

Oops, first quote was supposed to be

 

I understand not wanting to have the FAQ be as long as the rulebook, @psychoticstorm , but given the time and energy you're having to give to this thread, isn't it the lesser evil at this point? Twenty minutes of writing a "design note" or similar(plus how ever long to get it approved etc..), versus the next 5 years in this repetitive cycle?

 

Seriously though, how much difference do you think theres going to be between a laser line and placing a sillie and looking at the other sillies on the table.
Cause its not going to be much, eyes are pretty friggin good at lining up two 3 points round a corner as i demonstrated previously its a matter of time (and not even that much)

Or are you next going to argue that I cant bend over to lookt through one sillie at another sillie and adjust my mini before declaring my end position because its "too accurate"

Whole thing is stupid

 

@david_lee

From what I can gather, the creators intended for this situation never to come up, therefore it doesn't in real INFINITY.

 

An FAQ doesn't need to look like a phone book. Errata (which should be easier with a PDF product) and some FAQ should be more than enough to contain rules explanation bloat. Errata is the chance to correct things that have no been explain properly and FAQ the chance to confirm something is working as intended in the event it seems weird (which will be why it is an FAQ in the first place).

I've worked on compiling FAQs before and with less than 1 page of Errata and 2 of FAQs the community was able to help reduce over 90 questions down to 3. Half the FAQ were just people being silly in some peoples views but you see the same question coming up each week in the forums/FB you have ask yourself why that is and just bite the bullet and clear it up. Some of them were questions that came up with perfectly clear text (to me at least) but with a terrible example diagram that actively created the question being asked. If another game company and system can do this why not CB? The rules section of that forum is literally now filled with 3 post threads because someone can point to the Errata/FAQ file that a new player didn't know exist and that is the end of discussion.

 

What are you even talking about? I can assure you, I'm well acquainted with my own poll...er...uh... I mean... I can see the results just fine.

I think you're just confused by me giving @psychoticstorm the benefit of the doubt regarding his viewpoint, and trying to show him that even if he were right, we still have a problem.

The poll wasn't about what method people thought was correct or right, I specifically mentioned that in the OP. All the poll is meant to do is give us an idea as to how many people are using certain methods currently being debated.

I'm actually pretty frustrated by both sides right now, because I think many posters are being deliberately obtuse by ignoring the clear contradiction and lack of clarity in the rules. I only fall on the intent side because it makes the most sense to me personally, and feels like the right conclusion to make in light of that missing clarity.



I have to admit, I only just now watched this, because I felt like it had been described well enough, and I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to see.

No offense, I appreciate the effort/intent put towards this video even if I don't agree with some of the content, but why do example videos always throw any notion of tactics out the window? Also, why do they so often get the game wrong?

For instance, the active model in Scene 3 would not have had cover, because the player ran them up to the corner in the open instead of hugging the wall. Yet, they still allowed cover? Again, no offense, but it makes it seem as if those demonstrating the mechanics don't really understand the nuances of the game. That's not helpful to anyone.

 

Thats why videos arent the rules nor the "intent" of the rules

 

No doubt this is an alluring idea to those who want to consider Infinity a purely theoretical game of abstract strategy, like chess or Go.

Alas Infinity is simply not like those games, but rather a tabletop war games of considerable inherent inaccuracies. It trades-off pure strategy and tactics for the visceral rush of moving beautiful models around evocative scenery to simulate quite vicious, close-quarter tactical combat.

It really isn't a particularly serious, purely theoretical and abstract strategy game like chess or Go, but note that even those games are both formally played on the clock. Even Grand Masters can and do get into time trouble, rush their moves and make mistakes*.

Infinity is not a theoretical and abstract strategy game with all the time in the world to support perfect decision making - the game creators traded that all off for great miniatures instead. But not even chess and Go allow time for perfect decision making in the competitive arena.

Let's not try to ignore the game creator's intent by appeals to our intellectual vanity.

* I heard a great story about a Korean Go Grand Master taking 8 hours to make one move, losing the match on the clock, but never losing to that challenger ever again. I don't really know if it's true, but I know I want it to be true! Can anyone corroborate the tale?

 

Some of us aren't doing that. Some of us are acknowledging that we can't be entirely certain what the creator's intent is. The thing is, we'd like to hear it from the actual creators. Also, we want them to understand that if that intent is being miscommunicated or ignored by a large group of people, then perhaps something should be done to correct that.

 

Yeah pretty sure the game creators "intent" isnt to break the rules as todd point out that vidoe is pretty inconsistent to the core rules