From: rob@dosequis.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere)
Subject: Rule Lawyering (WAS: Star Trek III Combat Simulator)
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Electrical Engineering
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 21:42:49 GMT

In article <q-mzv=c@rpi.edu> woodc@aix.rpi.edu (Christopher A. Wood) writes:
>  wow.  Someone who will defend rule-lawyers.  I am amazed.  While the 

Well, yes.  Not all of us are terminally pre-occupied with being PC.  1/2 :-)

>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)

As he was trying to point out, your definition is fatally flawed by failing to
distinguish between several very different kinds of people.  You can disagree
with that, but as an engineer I feel forced to point out that disagreeing with
the facts is not a very productive passtime.

>  Feel free to continue this, although we should probabally should 
>change the subject header. 

Agreed and done.

>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.

Agreed.  I'll calm down now.  (Especially since what follows is both
reasonable and reasoned.)

> 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.  

I'm not sure about that, but since in practice, many rule sets _do_ have
loopholes, the theoretical question becomes a tad academic (Which, I guess,
is why I had to make this comment. :)

>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.  

This is bad only if the question of `what is being simulated here?'
unambiguously settles the problem and doesn't create further problems down the
line.  In the specific case of Star Trek based games, you start out with the
fact that the source material is inconsistent (How nuch damage does a photon
do?)

The rules will often present you with less ambiguity than the source material.
You may have a loophole that isn't covered by the source at all.

>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...")

This is unambiguously BAD.  Nobody has tried to defend this practice.  

>The two games I have seen that happen in the most is Star Fleet
>and Champions.

I have never played Champions (the superhero genre doesn't appeal to me), but
in SFB, I've had the sort of problem you describe exactly once (and a year
later the guy was still embarrassed about it.)  I'm not saying this sort of
thing doesn't happen (There's a bunch of logically unnecessary rules in SFB
that seem to be there for the sole purpose of forestalling just this sort of
abuse.  Presumably ADB wouldn't have bothered if it hadn't been a problem.)
But nobody says you have to play with the assholes.  There are non-abusive SFB
players; in my experience they're a majority.

SR
---


Newsgroups: rec.games.board