whatever hellfury. sometimes you do really make me wonder. ok. lets all have a tournament, and only a couple of decks get a supercharged card that defies all rules and quite possibly wins the top spot. and then lets give trophies to those decks for winning against the decks that didnt have the supercharged card. and if later those supercharged cards are found to be just average cards, too bad for those that didn't have them. but yeah, you are TOTALLY right.

and we're not talking about 'tons of people' playing casual games, but a NATIONAL TOURNAMENT, where a single faction incorrectly had the power to limit the opponents draw phase ( sure, only a MINOR thing isn't it ). i'm sure the hastur players were quite happy with the 'consensual view' - which wasn't of course "hey guys, everyone happy that we play this card wrong".

 His point, one which I agree with, is that everyone there played under the same rules. So the playing field in respect to what each person in that specific tournament experienced was equal. He isn't saying it was fair or proper, just that they were all operating under the same set of rules. The thing to remember is that any and all tournaments prior to theirs where AG was legal would have very possibly been contested following the exact same rules… in which case it is no different than a FAQ coming out following a tournament. People can bemoan that fact that if the FAQ had come out a day or two earlier they may have performed differently, but the Hastur players they faced may have used a different card or different deck that may have had just the same amount of success… or possibly more.

It sucks that it was played wrong, but this is going to happen when the tournament does not have an FFG representative right there.

Going back to discussion on rulings.

Some cards being played wrong is a problem. The main problem is some players think card does X, some players think card does Y. They design decks thinking about two a bit different different games. Turnament is held, TO says we play X. All the guys who thought it was Y have decks that are not prepared for X. Then it is found that designer intended Y and X is mistake. All players who played X can feel like they cheated a bit, and all players who thought it was Y feel cheated for losing to X.

Yeah, in reality it usually is not that big of a difference between X and Y and it even if you thought its otherwise you wouldnt change your deck much. Usually it doesnt influence outcome of a game that much. But with Alyssa X and Y are really different.

Now we have something Magick did not have 10 years ago - Internet, common, possible to access from a cell phone, making cheap communication and collaboration all over the world possible. I really think the cost of maintaining ruling clarifications is not much when you use web correctly.

Just stop saying "its too expensive" and consider how expensive it really is. Posting about 20 short entries a month is expensive? Posting rulings you already mail for ppl to find is expansive?

Setting up a card base would cost some money. But

a) that much? IT tends to be expensive but im not sure how expensive; and it the IT firm does it right you can use this database for all games that use many cards; even stuff like Chaos in the Old world could use some explanation with some cards

b) why not collaborate with sites like cardgameDB; just talk with their admin, i think there is a high chance he will help and set up service for free cause he likes your games

[edit] I just started writing such clarifications on cardgameDB - i did Spawn of the sleeper, the thing that takes me the most time is the fact that i dont understand those interactions, so i need to look them up as i go, someone who understands rules better should be able to write them quite fast; if there ware 3-5 ppl writing from time to time i think 1000/4 is 250 cards each, many cards dont need much explanation so lets say 210 cards, lets say 1 card a day (not really fast,  5 min or so i think)  in 2/3 of year would make complete card database with rulings

.Zephyr. said:

You cannot just post rulings you already mailed to someone, as is. They'll have to be edited, formatted, converted, checked and re-checked, and usually go through several iterations before they're made public. More than one person and department is usually involved in this process.

Why do you think, do we get new FAQs at most once or twice a year?

Once something is posted on the internet it'll never go away, ever. That alone will give every company pause.

So this process needs rethinking if after all this effort FAQ is like it is. It is leagues better than no FAQ, but i do think it can be leagues better by using power of web technologies rather than XIX century printed document that changes rarely. I don't think that much work was put to it, considering legacy CCG mechanics still in the FAQ and not having logic order in rules explanation section. Or the work focused on stuff that doesn't really matter. (like all the art in current main FAQ, WTF it is to explain rules, simple txt is better as you don't need a specialist in typesetting documents to change it)

Srsly you think that answering online so ppl don't ask the same question over and over is more expensive than answering by mail… this is simply madness. And you do all this work preparing set, play testing all cards, it needs to take many hours for each card, how much more is posting a description of your design? 5 min? 10 min? 30 min?

And about quality of published answers. If you make a community site with discussions and disclaimer that those rulings are not 100% official and may change it will still help a ton and lesser editing requirements. You're posting rulings not business decisions… only ppl who care about rules will care, and those ppl are much better off having database of what was already ruled and good way of searching for rulings. 

I agree that if you post wrong ruling fans might not be happy, but its a matter of creating right community where all are aware that rulings get posted fast so there might be slight errors that will be corrected. Just note that you correct so ppl are not confused and i think its fine, much better than what's now.

Just see what I'm uploading to cardgameDB - its not that hard and helps a ton.

Fan collaboration, just send an AP/mat/domains/other cool stuff to fan who writes best rulings or sth, a little contest or gamification elements - it designed right you'll get fans working for you for free and enjoying it as they improve the game they love… there are reward-like things that don't cost much but are cool like access to some unpublished content or forum badges etc.

It definitely needs much thinking through, but you can apply this not only for CoC but also for all other games to build engagement and community around your games that uses your site regularly, so its easier to advertise new products and can improve sales of your other games.

[this forum engine needs much work btw… popup for ctrl+v, links look like crap so its better to paste url as text, quotes are not visible in editor, no option to turn WYSIWYG off and have simple text box, edit button goes inactive so you cant correct typing etc in older posts…]

 What do you do for a living Zephyr?

 I'm not sure i should answer such personal questions, but it might explain my actions.

I'm just graduating from CS course. I'm currently writing my masters thesis so it makes everything that is not my masters thesis seem much more interesting, like solving the riddle of how the cards i bought actually work. I don't have much work experience yet, so I still think IT magically changes the world. Reading much about gamification and thinking about education makes me more frustrated by comparing reality to my image of perfect world. I have my last holiday break before getting to do actual work so I have much free time to do stuff like clearing up FAQ and writing entries on cardgameDB. Frustration also helps as its quite strong emotion and i can be quite stubborn.

I really love CoC but I really hate any ruling problems. I believe game starts when players know the rules and have experience of the game. And i believe if players can't get the rules the one who wrote them is to blame. Those ruling problems hurt my play experience considerably, as even if they didn't change much i felt like i don't know what are those cards supposed to do. Turns out I was right, as many things work completely different than i initially thought. Including series of story cards that are not a comeback mechanism that can make 2:0 into 1:1.

 That makes a lot more sense now.

You have no real understanding of how a business operates yet and what man-hours are worth. All of the reasons why they don't do what you suggest will make a lot more sense to you in about 5 years of working or 6 months of owning your own business. I know this is going to come off condecending, not much I can do about that, because without that level of experience you won't get how much time is invested per dollar earned in prophet make something a reasonable investment versus an outrageous request.

Think about it this way. In the pursuit of your degree lets say you  have a choice of classes in underwater basket weaving or physical education. These classes do not contribute to your chosen skill set but there are minimum credits in electives that you must have to graduate. Each hour outside of these classes that is required for you to pass that class is an hour you cannot spend on the classes that contribute to your skill set which is necessary to gaining said degree. The choice then becomes one of taking the class that requires the least amount of time to pass the class so you can spend the maximum amount of time working on the harder and more important classes.

Because there is only 24 hours in a day and you require a certain amount of time to sleep, eat, and excrete, and even some hours of "down time" to socialize to prevent burn out, you can choose a class like basket weaving that will end up eating +3 hours a week outside of the class or can do the physical education class which takes +0 hours outside of class (assuming both classes have the same amount of in-class time). The reasonable choice is the class with the smallest footprint in your schedule.

This is what I mean that adding extra paragraphs to the rules every month for 20 cards (and remember they have hundreds of card that will need this also) and then additional paragraphs to address how the cards interact with older cards and adjustments to older cards entries because of how they interact with new cards. Then you have someone who is going to need to have all of that verified, edited and uploaded. We are looking at dozens of manhours minimum each month. Then remember this is one of two games Damon does so we are looking at nearly a work week devoted only to explaining existing cards and interactions.

Until Cthulhu start sbringing in siginificantly more money so they can afford to hire an additional person or pay him enough to make up for the increased hours of work it is just unreasonable to expect this, and untennable for them to do without that additional income.

"Then you have someone who is going to need to have all of that verified, edited and uploaded."

Let me expand on this point too.  Until you've done it, maintaining a set of rulings and updating special ability text may appear to be a few simple cut & pastes.  In reality it doesn't work like that.  It's staggering how many rounds of checking, reverifying, and so forth it can take to try to end up with a clean and correct final product.  I wouldn't have believed it until I helped edit a new edition of a game rulebook and dealt with complex rules questions myself.

 And my example, and breakdown for this is all VERY simplified.

 By your line of thought if i make a crappy product i should not give additional man hours of work to make it a better product becouse i cant afford it.

And if i make a good product i have money to throw into a trash can on stuff that takes long time???

The argument about taking easy classes also sems to not make much sense here - its universities mistake to force you to do stuff you dont need, or you need it and should be taking it seriously. If you really dont want to improve your product but only get paid yeah, why wase time? But i dont think this is the case.

What I claim is: doing per card FAQ does take some time, but not that much as you need to make all those decisions when designing cards anyway and now you need to write them down to explain what the card does to playes. It will make the game better so it will be worth it.

I may be wrong, I dont know actual cost and how much better would game be and how much rule problems affect actual sale etc.

This "it costs much more than cut and paste" i really dont understand - becouse the rules are checked but not communicated to players now. Damon already answers those problems and spends much time designing cards, i really believe he doesnt write random text but thinks about complex interactions. Better comunication with players via card comments is litteraly cut and paste compared to writing a FAQ entry or answering a mail, and concerning cards that dont end up in FAQ it is not much work, as those cards need only short simple comment… unless they need some more and would end up in FAQ anyway - nad with those cards you just make the same work a bit sooner and dont confuse players.

Revisiting older cards would make this process much worse, but its not what im suggesting - Im suggesting you communicate what you already designed better. If old cards break players will tell you about it and you can update comment as you update FAQ.

The only real problem is if you change completely previous rulings changing old cards, but this is something you dont want to do anyway as it will really confuse players - and i thin if you do it noting it in per card comments is not a bad way to go. If you dont want to check all old cards at once just mark them as "to be corrected" and so it later in longer time span.

And this time is not wasted, as writing good comments makes you think about interactions with other cards - so it can be incorporated into a design process to improve said design process.

Also it is a problem of many FFG games, i didnt buy Invasion solely because I didnt understand core set cards and saw no support for players who want to know the rules. CoC has better wording and CCG experience to learn how to word cards and make timing structure. Also I had friends who seemed to know it. Even though i really like deckbuilding and LCG model, rule barier is something that does discourage new players. Even one shot games like Chaos in the old world still have some card interpretation problems. And its not that those problems are ignored - FAQ gets updated, it just can be improved so much by having an orginised card library with rule comments with FFG rulings and an ability to easly poll what is actually problematic to players.

well, thats just FFG for you and it has a poor reputation for this in australia. you either learn to live with it or change companies.

FFG produces high amounts of glitzy, rules unpolished and colourful games for the Gollums out there. i enjoy a few of them but prefer other companies for my complex boardgames.

 But they have such great ideas. If its short development cycle and not enough testing than so be it - clearing up would require redesigning the game.

But when rules are designed and communications is at fault it can be fixed with relatively small cost - thats my idea.

 I'm amused that within a handful of years Zephyr you are going to have an ah-ha moment. Until then you are doomed to be disappointed. I'm pretty much done with sympathy for you. Myopic points of view and entitled players have destroyed more playgroups I've been involved with than games whose after market support is less than some players want. No other industry is expected to do this and most companies in this industry don't do it at all. Yet people complain.

Its just a simple cost vs profit question. 

I love how you not even consider me being actually right, see Dominion rulebook… didnt go that bad to explain cards for them.

But I know i can be wrong.

Still if its too expensive for FFG i dont understnad no fan project, I did upload FAQ and some rule comments on CardDB in like a month or so, with more ppl interested in actually making this game accesible over longer period of time it would be done much more already. Considering efficency discussing on this forum is a waste of time compared to posting an entry under card on a site (and you made this economic arguments). Here one person will learn the rules and maybe 10 will read and also learn something, on site it stays for all who will have problems in the future in an easy to find fasion…