If I get my thread back on topic please, my proposition is that CB should clarify their rules on an ongoing basis with short simple rulings in some way similar to the Oracle for Magic: the Gathering. I'm encouraged that there are ten times as many players mostly in favour of the idea than mostly against it (40 to 4), which is a pretty strong vote for a idea that could be implemented in short order. I'm sorry if it upsets some people that I keep banging on about clarifying the rules, but - as anyone who's worked in the military or the emergency services will agree, only absolute clarity about rules of behaviour will hold up in situations that are intense. Any ex-military personnel (paging @Section9) could give us examples of doing something extremely upsetting, dangerous or life-threatening because they were duty-bound by the rules designed to help them through those situations. And emergency services workers could likewise give us examples of situations of great suffering where they were able to apply clear rules and strict protocols with generosity, latitude and compassion. Tabletop games aren't life or death, but they can feel that way because much of their attraction is that they're immersive and make us more invested in the outcomes of the situations. We really must get past the fearful notion that clarifying rules means they'll always be applied harshly to every situation - the opposite is true, and will result in more generosity and sportsmanship. Thanks for that vote of support @daboarder.
Sure they're short staffed, but reports from people who deal with them professionally is that their non-executive staff are extremely attentive and get things done very quickly; they just need to be allowed to do things by the executives. So I really think it's mostly a lack of will to clarify the rules, and that if we can present or even demonstrate a workable solution, they'll pick it up and run with it - if only because it's less trouble in the long run! Nice story about having to shoot civvies, by the way Well if the Golden Banhammer said it, that's good news indeed! Spoiler: What's the Story with Koni? https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/93c031fa-a152-419f-b31c-d9103d0859a7
Aros have different effectiveness depending on whether you play intent or not but peopleve agreed not to discuss it so w/e
While I love the rules clarification system used for MtG, I doubt something like that can be implemented for Infinity (although I honestly wish for a system like that, it would solve so many questions and useless arguments..). But I have some thoughts on a more viable solution. I come from the IT Service Management, so I do know something about handling issues and performance drops. There's a quite well-known framework that is very popular amongst ITSM personnel that's called ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). I won't cover what ITIL is and what principles does it propagate, as then my post would probably span a few pages, but in general, ITIL is a composition of best practices on how you should manage IT-related services in your company. One of the most important terms in ITIL is Incident. An Incident is a situation that describes a service quality drop, or a disruption of that service. So, for example, if CB forums would suddenly go down, this would be an Incident. Incident's lifecycle usually ends in its Resolution. Incidents are investigated to Resolve the issue that's causing the disruption, as your main goal in Incident Management is to ensure the fastest restoration of normal service operation. If we have an Incident that's reoccuring quite often, that means we have a Problem. The main goal of IT in every company is reducing the number of Problems. So, to reiterate, when you see that certain Incident is reappearing quite regularly, you usually understand that something wrong is causing these, and you create a Problem. Then you can relate similar Incidents to that Problem. And once you solve the Problem, you also solve all the related Incidents since they all have a common Root Cause. That ensures that the Problem will not reappear in the future and thus no more simialr Incidents should be appearing. *** So, it I was to apply ITIL principles to Infinity, I would register each weird rules interaction as an Incident, tagging rules involved in the interaction for future reference. If later someone would submit a similar Incident about the same weird rules interaction, we already have some history on that, and if we are meticulously tagging our Incidents, we also might have some statistics on how often does this weird interaction appear in discussions and what is its impact on the gameplay. The solution provided for the Incident should not necessarily be a permanent one. It might be a workaround that ensures that players can at least get around the issue, so it would not affect their game too much. So, in that sense, a solution to an Incident would be like a ruling from a person officially authorised by CB to provide such rulings. If we see an Incident that appears all too often, we should create a Problem record and link all related Incidents to it. Of course, users should be notified that this Problem is noted and it is being solved (for that, some transparency needs to be ensured in rules clarification process). A Problem, once solved, thus becomes an entry for the upcoming FAQ/Errata/Rules edition. Once in a while (I guess once per season is more than enough), solved Problems should be all compiled in a FAQ update and a new FAQ should be released. Or Errata. Or even a rules update! Who knows? :D *** With that in mind, I think that setting up a simple freeware ticketing system (ZenDesk?) that can be used by select users (Warcors?) to submit an official rules clarification request should help with solving these rules issues. There should be public read access for any Problem submitted to the system so that any player could check the status on any known (open/closed) rules interaction issue and apply the suggested workaround. I'm not saying this is the ideal setup, but I hope this is enough to understand the idea. Basically, I advocate CB to start tracking these rules bugs in some specialised software (if they are not already doing this), and do that a bit more transparently that it is done currently. I think no miniature company ever dared to do something like that, and from my experience in ITSM, more transparency always leads to more customer satisfaction, which leads to.. you got it.. more PROFIT :P
