Carrion Crows & First Strike Strikes (Not Anaesthetic Touch)

Haze,
Before you start claiming everyone finds everything easy. I've watched experienced people get a bunch of stuff wrong. Even James was telling Darby he was wrong about stuff to do with VTES. I'd heard about Darby-Dance decks when I started playing VTES... so he's not new to the game. The rules are not well defined, they have gaps in them. Glaring ones if the CRR and General Rulings pages are anything to go by.

Regarding Carrion Crows, again, it isn't about not being able to 'play' Carrion Crows, it's about being able to read a card and the rules and without the need for a Google Search be highly confident you can predict how the card behaves in all situations. I actually want 90% of Pascal's Rulings to basically be "Yes/No the card works that way because of Rulebook X.X.X.X and this phrase written on the card." and IF there is a need for something more than that like a General Ruling or a 'card class ruling' or a 'key-phrase ruling', it doesn't result in something that must be searched up off the internet, but will make its way directly into the rules.

Rules + Cardtext should be able to solve everything. If people are reluctant to errata the cards, and that is the least desirable since it just creates something else that must be searched every game, then the solution is to make amendments to the rules.


Charles,
If there are so many darker ones, please, bring them out and start arguing them. Start trying to make VTES a stronger and stable system.

Putting errata on cards is the least useful option while VTES is out of print. It just trades a ruling for a cardtext that must be searched. Doesn't solve the problem, just moves it to another box and left alone. The easiest thing to do is to write into the rules that "Damage which is applied to a minion during the Strike Resolution phase is applied at the same time as normal strikes unless otherwise specified." Plus, it would then be worth defining environmental damage as "Damage which is caused during combat by a source other than the acting minion's strikes or the minion's own special text (i.e. by equipment, retainers or combat cards that are not strikes). This damage is not considered to have been done by any minion." Both are solved quickly. We can refer to environmental damage in the rules and on cards easily, thereby making their interactions simple.

A large number of rulings, particularly general rulings, should not exist. They are all in effect rules errata that are not put into the rules. If we errata a VTES card and reprint, then the new card has the new text.

Why are we keeping these large numbers of rulings around?

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

A large number of rulings, particularly general rulings, should not exist. They are all in effect rules errata that are not put into the rules. If we errata a VTES card and reprint, then the new card has the new text.

Why are we keeping these large numbers of rulings around?

You are right. I agree with you. But "revamping" the rules ain't never gonna happen.

what's funny is that the CE Murder of Crows had prepared for all this

but the template was ignored because Carrion Crows was much more popular. and maybe, just maybe, because everyone assumes normal strike resolution by default for everything in the game since first strike is such a rare exception. unless they're rules-lawyering.

maybe we can errata all these retainers and fake-retainers to include the word "normal" on them? Villein was changed with only one word. I'm sure anyone who bothers to look up the official rulebook can also look up current card texts.

yeah the game's rules are messy and tangled, but patching this one has zero practical effect. trying to add an "environmental" keyword to the rules without adding it to the cards themselves isn't what I would call elegant.

AaronC,

Changing the rules is far less problematic than it seems. Mostly it means putting all of the 'rules' from the various places in one place in one document. Not that hard.


Haze,

Yes, that structure would be fine, but it's the only card that has it. So a precedent for change? Maybe.
Putting Environmental Damage as a class into the rules would actually eliminate a lot of rulings and queries about how cards interact (Does X count for Disarm? Does X count for Street Cred? Does X count for Taste? Does X count for [Some future card not yet designed]?) Plus it is not actually a particular large rule change.

Patching this rule, and the other combat stuff of which there isn't even a formal agreement on the steps in combat, would make the whole thing far more elegant. Elegance in solutions is usually to make one change to effect many other simultaneous changes. Change the rulebook, and elegantly make large numbers of specific rulings irrelevant. Change the rulebook, eliminate the CRR entirely (one less 'source' to check).

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

AaronC,

Changing the rules is far less problematic than it seems. Mostly it means putting all of the 'rules' from the various places in one place in one document. Not that hard.

I didn't say it was hard, I said it ain't never gonna happen. The vultures circling over the carcass of VTES are never going to agree on how the victuals should be arranged before they run out. Leave the carcass where it fell, they say.

I think putting all the rulings in one big-ass box is in fact a better solution than our current contest of "my LSJ rulings google-fu is mightier than your LSJ rulings google-fu! Fwah!!!!"

The fact of the matter is EVERYONE either has a smartphone, tablet, computer, or link to the overlord hivemind of the interwebzez shoved in some bag, pocket, or other orafice at all times. And anyone who doesnt is by process of elimination either: in need of a charger, withiut electricity, in isolation in prison(many regualr inates get email priviledges), aumish, or stubborn but nevertheless sitting within 4 paces of someone with some instant-ish way to get to the internet.

So,...............

Why dont we go the way of the Gatherer and compound all rulings and erratta into our official cardlists AND secret library?

Anyone new or old can just SEE WHAT THE HELL A CARD DOES by going to the place where they go to see what a card SAYS anyway.

And as for this topic, i think Haze found our solution. "Envirnmental" is great slang, but combat key words (remember Paralyze? Then youve been playin longer than me ) are probably optimal right now.

Also, Im always 179% in favor of one word errattas. Lilliths blessing needs "if any" removed. Ashur tablets needs "minion" between "13" and "cards".

But i kinda feel like the point is being missed here. When i was captain optimist about PoD, i feltcitcwas less relevant that people couldnt find easy rulings. The game would pick up soon then, and we could fix it afterwords. Well, that didnt happen, so maybe we should make fimdimg rulings less likexa rubix cube.

Espefially for somethimgs that can be, oh, i dont know, misread by people that have been playing for YEARS.