Shortcuts in VtES Official Games

AaronC wrote:

It appears to me me that LSJ favored "compassionate" rulings that allowed people to go back when they made gross errors.

It makes sense in a multiplayer game, even without compassion. In the Razor example, if the player who made the mistake is forced to self-oust, then his predator gets an advantage over the other players still in the game. He hasn't done anything to deserve this edge and the other players haven't made any mistake so that can be seen as unfair to them. If the self-ousting player is allowed to roll back, then he is the one being given an unfair advantage, but a much smaller one than a free VP, so that is the least disruptive solution for the table.

Non-existant user wrote:

AaronC wrote:

It appears to me me that LSJ favored "compassionate" rulings that allowed people to go back when they made gross errors.

It makes sense in a multiplayer game, even without compassion. In the Razor example, if the player who made the mistake is forced to proceed, then his predator gets an advantage over the other players still in the game. He hasn't done anything to deserve this edge and the other players haven't made any mistake so that can be seen as unfair to them.

Well the situation can easily be read the other way around: you are not being simply lenient and compassionate, you're giving an unfair advantage (cards in hand) that establishes a precedent in which a player who, in a position where he might have no chance of winning (ergo, can even self-oust), can bend the rules.
In the end of the fix, the player will possibly have new cards in his hand for you can't simply take away and shuffle the new ones, since you don't know which they are; you'll have to do something like return everything played to hand and randomly pick the excess cards.

Then do what? give him a warning? big deal, awesome trade -- a warning for a shot at living longer. :/

Some of our favorite "short cuts" are:
"nothing before strike with hands for 1"
"No more cards to play during this Action / combat"
Put you hand on the table and say "play your cards".
Or the best that we learned at an EC:
Your pred/prey plays a card and asks for blockers - we reply "You do not exist" to mean do anything you want, I will do nothing in response.

These phrases seem to get said more in the last 5 minutes of a game.

david.tatu wrote:

Some of our favorite "short cuts" are:
"nothing before strike with hands for 1"
"No more cards to play during this Action / combat"
Put you hand on the table and say "play your cards".
Or the best that we learned at an EC:
Your pred/prey plays a card and asks for blockers - we reply "You do not exist" to mean do anything you want, I will do nothing in response.

These phrases seem to get said more in the last 5 minutes of a game.

We actually use the first one a lost, except for the strike.

The last one is hilarious, I'm gonna ask Brum why he never told us that since he was at the EC. And while it's hilarious, it's also a non-binding block response -- unless the rules contemplate the use of shortcuts

Thanks David, that's the kind of examples I wanted to know if people used regularly.

Over here, we generally only use shortcuts in combat to signify that we have nothing pre-range and no maneuvers.

We made a big deal over not taking back actions for a while back, and it made things smoother once players go the hang of favouring quick checks over shortcuts.

e.g.

• 'Anything else?' if a player pauses after playing a bunch of card
• acting player will ask 'Anything before range?' once he/she is done with pre-range
• 'Blocking?' after declaring the action to indicate that we have nothing else as the action is announced
• 'Done' to signify the end of our turn

What we find is that players become trained to give and listen for audio cues rather than assuming the game state. Much less confusion and much less time wasted on rollbacks

then his predator gets an advantage over the other players still in the game. He hasn't done anything to deserve this edge and the other players haven't made any mistake so that can be seen as unfair to them.

His predator gained this advantage by reducing his prey to 1 pool. There is no such thing as 'fair' and 'unfair' during a game of V:TES except in the case of cheating/incorrect rules interpretations. If a player accidently self ousts, try not to smirk as they scoop their cards from the table.

If they try to use the rules to gain an advantage on their bad play, you correct the self ousting player who incorrectly declared an action and rewind the game to the point he played the Aaron's Feeding Razor. The player replaces the card he drew from the Feeding Razor to his library and finishes correctly declaring the card he has played. Since he has already indicated the minion to take the action and is only missing the cost and +1 stealth he declares it and continues as normal.

Complete Rules Reference:

B. Declare the effect.

1. Fully announce the effect (as applicable: the minion playing/using it, targets, cost, and so on). If the effect is a card, play the card to the playing area.


200:Correction of Game State

Philosophy:

It is important that the player committing the infraction receive no benefit in the game for doing so.