From: woodc@aix.rpi.edu (Christopher A. Wood)
Subject: Re: Star Trek III Combat Simulator
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 17:51:56 GMT

In article <22597@galaxy.ucr.edu> wwallace@ucrengr.ucr.edu (wayne wallace) writes:
>In any sort of well-thought-out combat system you should not need to make up
>rules, and should remember the rules from game to game. If you let the game
>degenerate to who can curry the referee's favor the best, you might as well
>toss the rulebook out the window instead of pretending to play a wargame.
>These same people who abhor rules lawyers also want the success of a player to
>depend on luck and the best die rolls instead of any real strategy. There
>is nothing wrong with this if this gives you and your friends pleasure and
>fun, but as a rules lawyer myself, I will not play in a game where the rules
>change from session to session, and luck counts more than skill. (Exception:
>occasionally people want to vegetate and play games like Wiz War and Nuclear
>War. If I also want to vegetate I don't mind playing then.)
>

  wow.  Someone who will defend rule-lawyers.  I am amazed.  While the 
article was well reasoned, I don't agree with many of the points brought
up (some of it because of the differances in deffinitions, some of it
for other reasons)
 Games should have consistant rules that cover the scope of the game.  
Frequently, all the rules cannot cover every situation.  In fact, I
can't think of a game that covers *every* possible situation.  That's
somewhat impossible, I would think.  What seperates rules lawyers
at this point is that they don't care about what is being simulated
but instead, if there is a problem, they go over the rules 
like lawyers (hence the name) to find out exactly what the rules do and
don't say.  Interpolating from other rules, argueing for hours, and
never bothering to think about it in a way that would make sense in the 
simualtion.  What isn't stated in the rules often becomes much more
important than what is  ("It doesn't say I can't , so therefore I can...")
  When I want play a game, I want to do that.  I don't want to sit around
for 6 hours as two rules lawyers (or one lawyer and everyone else playing)
argue forever about a discrepancy in the rules.  
  Of course, the true sign of a rules lawyer is not as much this, 
but how the discrepancy arrose in the first place.  Many times the 
lawyer will search out the rules for such a discrepancy, and then 
use it in the game to his advantage.  No consideration is made to 
preserve any of the flavor of the game, just the single-minded 
persuit of winning overwhelms him.   Spending hours looking
through rules looking for loopholes is somthing I can't understand.  
Gloating about and useing those which have been found boggles my
mind.  The two games I have seen that happen in the most is Star Fleet
and Champions.  That is why I have given then the "Rule Lawyers only"
sticker, because in order to compete, you must take on the same 
attitude and find your own loopholes.  Because I don't believe this
is the spirit of gaming, I don't play those games.  
  I really enjoy games with high strategy and little luck.  Games with
a lot of luck are fun for a while, but get stale fast.  Makeing 
remarks about "weak minds" of those who would rather play games 
then argue about then doesn't make any sense.  (Although I understand
that was not attributed to Mr. Wallace)

  Loopholes and rules lawyering is usually the defence of those who 
don't want to play within the rules.
  
  Feel free to continue this, although we should probabally should 
change the subject header.  I am not trying to flame anybody here,
rather make my point.  I would hope that this discussion could stay
at that level.  I mean, it's just not that pressing a topic that needs
a flamefest.


-- 
 Chris Wood
  woodc@rpi.edu
   "All Men Are Equal in the Eyes of Fish" - Herbert Hoover