From: phaedrus@halcyon.com (Mark Phaedrus)
Subject: Re: Ex Post Facto Victory?
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 08:09:06 GMT

In article <C0F4Lz.61q@csi.compuserve.com> nbetz@csi.compuserve.com (Nathan Betz) writes:
>Okay. After a bout of late-night gaming which ended in a furious yet
>unresolved argument, my roommate and I have decided to tap the wisdom
>of the net for a resolution.

     I'll refrain from the obligatory wisdom-of-the-net jokes on this
occasion. :)

>The situation can be described thusly: Player A has four bases and is
>in a challenge for the win. Player A nearly blunders into a win, were
>it not for Player B deftly playing a Flare causing Player A to be beaten
>like a red-headed stepchild. The game continues for another couple of
>hours. Just as the sun was beginning to rise, and Player A was about to
>suffer a humiliating defeat, he digs through the rules and discovers a 
>loophole which would have prevented me from playing the pivotal Flare
>several hours and scores of turns ago. He unjustly declares a victory
>and a melee ensues. Even after giving him a severe beating within a
>jot of ending his puny and pathetic life, he still fails to see that light.

     This is something that the rules for Cosmic Encounter (and most other
games) do not cover.  In a game with the complexity of Cosmic Encounter, 
where the rules are often not impeccably clear to begin with and where 
powers, Flares, etc. alter the rules in different ways every game, errors in
play are bound to happen.  That means that players need to decide on house
rules to cover these situations.

>Hence, we need your help in determining who is right. 

     You can't come to us for that; this is something your group has to work
out for itself.  We can tell you how our groups handle it, but that has nothing
to do with being "right".  (Unless, of course, someone from Mayfair steps in
and gives an "official" ruling, in which case some of us will chuckle quietly
and ignore it anyway. :) )

>I maintain that
>even if the Flare was not played correctly, unfortunately what's done is done
>and you can't go back and change game events that took place hours ago.
>We usually go by the rule that you can change a decision or dispute an
>event as long as no new game events have taken place, at which point
>its too late.  He believes that since the Flare could not have been 
>played, and he otherwise (probably) would have won the challenge, he
>wins the game.

     Basically, I've always gone by the theory that Cosmic Encounter is a
complicated enough game as it is when you're just worrying about the situation
as it exists on the board in front of you; having to worry about every action
that's gone on in the past as well just makes things impossible.  In the group
I play in, if you spot something going on incorrectly, you'd better point it
out in that same phase, or next phase at the latest.  Beyond that, you get
appallingly little sympathy. :)  The idea of going back and debating something
that happened several hours ago would be ludicrous (other than the occasional
whine of "How the **** did I miss that?" or "Better not try that next game,
bud...").  Again, though, this doesn't mean that we're "right"; if your group
wants to establish rules for going back and reviewing plays from your 1991
games, feel free. :)

     I think a lot of this depends on the chemistry of the group you're in.
The people I play with have fun whining about losing or gloating about winning,
but we don't really take the game all that seriously; nobody loses any sleep
over our games (at least I don't :) ), and when a rules dispute arises (as in
the infamous Fungus-Terrorist conflict), somebody will usually concede pretty
quickly to keep the game going, or we'll have a quick vote and go with whatever
the group says.  Table talk is the rule rather than the exception; people often
show their really interesting cards to their neighbors, and so on.  Other
groups I've played with in the past were much more serious; the house rules
were written down and strictly enforced, unnecessary table talk was verboten,
and rules debates could go on for five or ten minutes.  I'm not saying one
style is better than the other, but you need to be aware of the style of the
group and of the other players.  If you're the freewheeling sort, and you're
playing in a strict group, you're probably not going to enjoy yourself too
much.
-- 
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