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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 10:52 pm
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Location: Nashville, TN, USA
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A bit of thread-o-mancy, as it's appropriate. From the NEWS, NEWS, NEWS thread...
(J0k3r @ Jan. 29 2008,12:13)
QUOTE Well, at least that means the rules review is moving.
Does it? One easy test... Neal, have you heard or noticed any increase communication or activity regarding the Rules Review?
I was holding off on posting anything as I was hoping for better news.
Back in late Nov/Early Dec, Jervis responded to the petition and Andy's resultant prodding. He indicated that he felt he owed the Epic players an update. The people included on that email were:
Me
Greg Lane
Sotec
Greg Bak
Andy
I sent the change docs to everyone. Sotec quickly bowed out, as he resigned from the ERC a while ago (no replacement, despite his and my recommendations for a successor). Andy didn't respond to any of the messages until he sent a message to the effect of "No need to copy me any more. Just tell me when I need to update the files on the website."
Jervis reviewed the change docs and said for his part he was happy to have the changes go through, but just because we could, doesn't mean we should. He made a vague statement about not making too many radical changes, as it upsets players, and warned about trying to close loopholes for the benefit of rules lawyers. He made a few suggestions about some of the more verbose changes needing editing or trimming down, which I think were entirely fair.
I asked several questions about how people wanted to proceed, whether we wanted to set up a vote on the changes and so on, trying to nail down some semblance of a procedure for approving or rejecting changes. No substantive responses from anyone on how that should be accomplished.
Greg Bak has done some really great work and has supported Epic with multiple articles for Fanatic, but he has not been involved in online discussions for years. He is opposed to the large majority of the changes, including opposition to things that are simply including long-established FAQs into a consolidated document. He expressed a rather strong opinion that he felt like most of the changes were geared towards trying to stop rules lawyers and since that's basically impossible, we shouldn't take it into account at all.
Greg Lane, despite having approved and used the large majority of the changes for years echoed the "don't cater to the rules lawyers" sentiment. I'm not sure why. He recommended rather than doing direct text editing, use a Q&A structure like an integrated FAQ. He favored that approach because he felt it would be easier to get the "it's a miniature game, don't be a jerk" message across.
I pointed out that the large majority of the changes to the core rules were, in fact, simply FAQ integration or the inclusion of existing rules into the core, e.g. Lance, Support Craft, etc., and not targeted at rules lawyers. Similarly, aside from Eldar, the majority of the changes to army lists were minor point and ability tweaks backed up by years of play. I said that the Q&A structure is a good idea when possible, but a few items need to be integrated, e.g. the multi-TK allocation.
Jervis recommended we determine which parts could be Q&A and which needed to be integrated.
Since the wind was clearly blowing towards a minimalist approach, I sent a list of all the changes in the change docs, marked as to how necessary I felt they were, and a second marked as to whether I felt they needed to be integrated, or could be Q&A.
So far, neither Greg Lane nor Jervis have responded to those emails. Greg Bak responded with a list that cut virtually everything, including every single revision to every army list and also rejecting some FAQ clarifications. My take on this is that, like many people who have seen some of the clarifications for the first time, he sees some of the clarifications as "changes" because they aren't what his group plays and he is unaware of any confusion.
Greg Lane and I had a side conversation about the National Championship in Memphis, especially the rules to use. He expressed the fact that he thinks we can get through the changes and finalize things within just a few weeks. He wants revised rules for the Championship, which means that they really need to be final by March 1. As noted above, however, he hasn't responded with comments on the actual proposed changes. He's just general discussion of direction.
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To sum up my current feelings, between Jervis' stated hesitancy, Greg Bak wanting to veto everything, Greg Lane giving them some level of license by implying the changes are primarily geared towards rules lawyers, and the utter and complete lack of any structure whatsoever...
I don't think anything will happen.
_________________
Neal
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