Forgetting mandatory effects

Joscha wrote:

I'm with you in that point, nobody should gain an advantage by making a mistake. It is the problem of responsibility that makes me go "nobody should get a warning". Why should the owner of Carver's Meat Packing and Storage get a Warning if some other player forget about that card or that hostage counter? Shouldn't that player get the warning?

Well, in this case, it was the player who controlled Carver's who forgot about the hostage counter.

In the case of Carver's, it is entirely reasonable that the controlling player should be responsible for remembering its effect because they can gain blood for each hostage counter in play.

Joscha wrote:

But if you warn that player you demand of each player that he or she remembers every effect at the table, a very hard task if it's coming to vampire's specials or the pure number of played cards and its effects.

That's just it - if everyone is responsible for remembering "universal" effects, then practically it isn't possible to caution/warn everyone when serious mistakes are made. I suspect that this was done intentionally by LSJ and other judges to reduce the amount of penalties given for mistake-making. Robert Goudie posted a link on this thread to some very interesting discussions with LSJ from 2004 about this stuff. It really sounded as though LSJ wanted to move away from penalizing people for making "mistakes" that affect game state, and he did this by making everyone at the table responsible, thus meaning that no one ever got a penalty. Some of his thoughts are pretty surreal. You might be able to tell that I think his philosophy was too liberal and impractical.

Joscha wrote:

Remember, two warnings mean Game Loss. I don't know if the game would be more fun if that threat is in the air.

I think we're thinking too much about warnings. Surely a caution would have been the correct response to forgetting the hostage counter. I think most mistakes are inadvertent and should receive a caution to start, not a warning.

Joscha wrote:

In our playgroup we'd try to play the turn in the same way like before with the same mistakes. Honesty demands that.

The judges' guide says that rewinds should be considered when few or no cards have been played. Otherwise it suggests adjusting pool, blood, or minion totals. That would certainly be my philosophy: Adjust the game state to one that is as close as possible to the current state but under the condition that everything had been played correctly.

KevinM wrote:

henrik wrote:

First, I think you're using a circular way of looking at cheating. If you don't look for cheaters you'll never find them.

Who said that I never look for cheaters?

Noone said it right out. My point was that your way of looking at it, from what I've gathered from your posts here, is that next to noone cheats at VtES and that your friends would never cheat (rough cuts, but this is the picture you've given me). Also, this isn't about you personally, that wasn't my intent with the post. It's about the way of looking at cheaters/cheating that you (and probably many others) seems to have.
I think that an attitude like that makes you look less for cheaters. Automatically assuming that everything is just forgetfulness and misplays gives those who wants to cheat a good place to do so. And no, this does not mean that I want total paranoia from judges instead.

KevinM wrote:

henrik wrote:

The scenario you talk about (one where no one cheats) would be the perfect tournament scene but believing we're already there is probably a bad thing, even more so for judges.

I'd bet cash on it, that no one cheats at Origins. In 12 years:

1. There's never been anyone who has acted like they were cheating.
2. There's never been anyone who I've heard talking about cheating.
3. There's never been anyone who has requested that I watch a player because they may be cheating.

And, most importantly:
4. There's never been any REASON for anyone to cheat.

Really, Origins is Just That Cool(TM).

How does cheaters act? Except for the obivous breaking the rules part, of course.
No talking about cheaters and no requesting judges is hopefully a good sign, yes. It's not really relevant to this discussion though. The fact that players haven't noticed any cheating does not mean that it doesn't exist (it might point that way though). And while this can be seen as some witch-hunt arguments, the point is still there.

And for point 4. Some people just like to win. A lot. It can be reason enough for someone to cheat. I can understand how tens of thousands of dollars (as in MtG prizes) will bring more cheaters, but just because the fame and fortunes gained from winning a VtES tournament are relatively small it doesn't mean there's no reason for anyone to cheat.

KevinM wrote:

henrik wrote:

Second (and this is the thing I'd most like a reply to), what's the point of having a partial judge? Why not just leave the decisions to the players at the tables instead?

You REALLY should come to Origins. You'd LOVE it.

See, I tell everyone to figure things out on their own otherwise I'm going to have to come over there and no one will be happy with the ruling. Certainly, I *will* come make a ruling if requested to do so, but you'd be surprised at the goodwill of the players, even predators and preys, and how the majority of the tables deal with their own issues and **everyone is OK with the result**.

This is bad, imo. Rulings, backtracking, corrections of game state shouldn't really be left to the players. They should be made by judges in order to get them consistent (over the entire VEKN would be best, but at least over the current tournament).
I think that every table gets some kind of informal leader. Someone who's more charismatic than others, more likely to be listened to. Having that person push for ingame agendas is a part of the game, and that's fine in my opinion. However, those people (and I don't believe they have more or less intentions of cheating than anyone else) might also be able to get their way when it comes to backtracking etc. This might or might not be intentional from their side. It might or might not be cheating. I certainly think it's something that shouldn't happen though, yet I know for a fact that it does. Some people are more likely to be allowed to take that Parity Shift which could only target their grand prey back in their hand after playing it with the intention of taking pool from their prey.
In my eyes, having misplays, rollbacks and "corrections" of gamestate handled differently on each and every table takes away from the integrity of the game. A tournament win is worth less if it might be because the winner got to have his/her way when a contest was forgotten, or during a mistakenly taken action.

KevinM wrote:

henrik wrote:

Third, a tip. I read an article about cheating in MtG on Extrala's blog a week or so back, it was rather interesting. Especially the text written by a friend of a now banned player, where he talks about how hard it actually can be to discover that someone you know/think you know is cheating. I think it would be a good read for most judges, especially those who believe that noone ever cheats in VtES.

I don't believe that "no one ever cheats". I just think it's ludicrously rare and nearly unworthy of messages on a VEKN.net thread.

Not discussing a potential problem won't really solve anything. It will help those who actually does cheat to keep cheating, since their methods will be unknown by most judges. Granted this thread is probably not where it should be done, but it kinda started here and Pascal did ask for input (I'll try to write some of that as well in a couple of days).

KevinM wrote:

I suspected a Canadian guy of cheating once, just to get back at me because he got pissed off at me asking him to speak in English. Instead of calling a judge, I just smashed his deck's face and ousted him.

I still suspect a certain Ohio player, that refuses to attend Origins, of cheating because several players at a local game shop suggested to me that he was cheating there. If he ever attends any Origins events, I'll keep a close eye on him.

I've heard second-hand of one of two French guys that don't play anymore that actually did cheat. I think I heard third-hand of some Spanish guy who tried to cheat once. An American friend told me of someone about 15 years ago that cheated one single time.

Not sure what the point is here. I had a friend who cheated on a casual monopoly game when I was a kid.

Aaron wrote:

I think we're thinking too much about warnings. Surely a caution would have been the correct response to forgetting the hostage counter. I think most mistakes are inadvertent and should receive a caution to start, not a warning.

Once a mistake is made, it is made, and we can't revert this.
However, we can try to enforce it not to happen again. That's the idea behind a Warning. "Do it again, and that time, the penalty will will penalize."
I think we can ask players to focus on their cards. A mistake can happen, of course.
I'm not saying Cautions are useless, nor that each tournament should have the same level of penalties. But really, having 20 players call the judge(s) because they forgot to choose to contest isn't something reasonable, and some discipline is an easy way of teaching players not to make the same error again.
I bet Xaddam's friend will never forget about Leandro's effect from now on

(btw, that new judegs' guideline isn't written at all, so far)