official rulings

Hello all,

I am under the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that this rules forum and it's rulings are the final word and are determined by people who actually work for, or are authorized to make official rulings for, Black Chantry.

Am I mistaken about this?

The issue was use of the rack by a vampire in torpor. In the card rulings here there is no ruling one way or the other concerning this.

He pulled up a ruling from vdb that said a vampire in torpor could use it. I then stated that it was not an official ruling because it wasn't on VEKN. I am unable to find the ruling on vdb, but there were 5 listed there and 2 listed here.

Any thoughts about this?

Older rulings were from Usenet. The rulings listed on VDB point to official rulings. All _new_ official rulings will be made here.

LSJ was the rulemonger for VTES for several years, then Pascal Bertrand (aka floppy) was the rulemonger, now the current rulemonger is Vincent Ripoll (aka Ankha), all the rulings coming from them are official rullings.

if someone put you from vdb a ruling from any of them, then that's the official ruling.

dalefi wrote:

Hello all,

I am under the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that this rules forum and it's rulings are the final word and are determined by people who actually work for, or are authorized to make official rulings for, Black Chantry.

Am I mistaken about this?

No. For now.

dalefi wrote:

The issue was use of the rack by a vampire in torpor. In the card rulings here there is no ruling one way or the other concerning this.

He pulled up a ruling from vdb that said a vampire in torpor could use it. I then stated that it was not an official ruling because it wasn't on VEKN. I am unable to find the ruling on vdb, but there were 5 listed there and 2 listed here.

Any thoughts about this?

Per ANK 20230825 "BTW, all LSJ/Floppy rulings are valid, unless there's a more recent official ruling saying otherwise. I'm not sure why we would need a further confirmation."

VTES is 30 year old game with cards from the 1994 still usable and using "rulings" from those times. It's only natural that one cannot condence those to fit inside a nice 21 page long rulebook. There's attempt to collect most important ones on this site to here www.vekn.net/history-of-vtes-rules but you'll run more then likely into some reversals as things have changed while the card texts have changed. There's also the groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad that for the time used to be "official" source. After that it was for a while boardgamegeek where rulings/questions like these boardgamegeek.com/thread/649428/questions-about-the-as-played-window were asked. Then eventually it moved to here.

VDB is trying to ease new players in by having community submit *most recent* rulings so that new players do not need to dig over 20 years worth of discussion to find answers. Unless there are newer rulings saying otherwise, even the TOM 19951216 or RTR 19941109 are quite valid. People are always free to confirm that by asking for the card here, they just should not be disappointed if the answer is either "yes" if they provide the ruling they're asking about *or* it is quoting the ruling that the vdb provides. Or long ramble from me or someone like me who feels the need to also explain *why* things are they are. If for nothing else then to point back to that later with quick link.

As for the "vampire using rack" question. Please note that nowhere in the rack it said that the chosen vampire has to be ready. Per rulebook and previous 1.4 The Golden Rule for Cards: Whenever the cards contradict the rules, the cards take precedence. So if the card says that during it's controller's unlock phase the chosen vampire can gain 2 blood, then they can. There's nothing about "using" in the card text.

If there's design intent on the card to limit it's usability, it's stated in the card, just compare to various hunting grounds where the state of the receiver is stated to limit it's effect.

Therefore the ruling is just confirming that, yes, the card is played as it is worded. Note you can click the ruling number on VDB and it will take you directly to that discussion so you'll see the whole context yourself. Where the more recent one is topic here, saying what I'm saying with fewer words. I cannot applaud the effort that goes to VDB enough.