Council of Elrond

UPDATE AND MORE NOTES - 9/6/2019:

Looking at this more, I see fewer discrepancies in the rulings, or, at least I was able to find more explanation for the apparent discrepancies between the rulings and the rules.

A lot of the trouble results from no explanation being given for the rulings in the digest. Maybe explanation was given 50 times and so Ichabod was tired of replying again and again (clearly he was from what he says in the digests. Don't ask him about the white hand on FW again). Unfortunately, many times the "well-known" explanation did not make it into the Digest. Maybe it was only given in person, via email, or on the "silent-tower" mailing list (which is completely gone for the early days of the game, unless someone has an email archive).

But sometimes you actually can find an explanation and I finally found one for Rebuild the Town. At first, it seems seems to be a bogus ruling. But then there is actually a non-intuitive interpretation of the Site Phase that solves this discrepancy. Unfortunately, this interpretation of the Site Phase having multiple site-phases, one per company, is just not clear from the rules (compare to the M/H phase) viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3940

Probably the biggest misunderstanding I had and that others have is that a "clarification" is interpreting the rules and not changing the rules. Clarification is a misnomer -- clarifications are often changes to the rules. Errata was ONLY issued when the original wording was in conflict with the new rules and needed to be changed. This is described in the Companion.

Some interesting notes on ICE:
https://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistor ... ory9.phtml
http://forums.theonering.com/viewtopic.php?t=91496

All of this historical context raises the questions of whether the rulings made by Ichabod are worth the parchment cyberspace they're written on? Might the game be on firmer footing if his rulings were completely nullified and new rulings, clarifications, and errata were issued from a relatively blank slate?

I think that's backwards. One would assume that the rules are legit and the rulings are merely clarifying the rules. But here, the rulings are the are not simply clarifying the rules but actually overriding them without bothering to update the rules to be consistent. Clearly the result of some outside pressure and the lack of time/money.

My understanding is that Ichabod's bogus rulings are actually the rules of the game and the Rules Book is not the rules when inconsistent with Ichabod. Ichabod's rulings have precedence even if they don't fit the mechanics of the game. This statement is presumably correct because the rulings were used in tournaments despite any inconsistency in the actual Rules Book. Plus, I assume this is how everyone plays still. For example, everyone plays A Chance Meeting in the site phase (allowed by "clarification" but disallowed by the rules in my interpretation) and no one plays Rebuild the Town before facing the automatic attack (disallowed by ruling and errata but still allowed by the rules in my interpretation).

But yes, I think it would be helpful if the rulings were made into errata (which they were in all but name) and if the errata included more wording such that they are consistent with the printed Rules Book. In this day, we are not being held back from making errata by the Marketing Department.

That's more what I meant. Instead of maintaining all of these separate (and inconsistent, scattered, poorly-documented) rules sources from ages ago, it would make far more sense to consolidate "how everyone plays" into a modern set of rules, errata, and clarifications that are all in one place and are henceforth treated as the Law of the Land. If this were done, all of the old sources could be retired, as they would be obsolete. I feel like this modern, unified rules document should be the overarching objective of the Council and the ARV.

That would be nice. But who has the time? Brandobras already spent dozens of hours on the original URD. And just organizing this years vote will take dozens of hours too.

Stil, Jabberwock said he is working on updating/maintaining the URD - https://councilofelrond.org/forum/viewt ... =75#p30654
https://councilofelrond.org/forum/viewt ... =68&t=3324

But yeah, the ARV seems like a handful.

I have a PDF file on my computer called "Middle Earth: The Rewrite," though it doesn't have any author attribution beyond what is implied in one of the introductory lines of text: "During and after working on the Universal Rules Document, it struck me..." That is, I am assuming the author of that document is also the author of the URD. Does anyone know if there has been an "official" attempt to rewrite and streamline the rules? Is this document that attempt? For those familiar with the document, how was it received?

Our friend Brandobras wrote the original URD. You can see in the old thread I linked. https://councilofelrond.org/forum/viewt ... =16&t=1500

If you are interested in old MECCG drama similar to what I posted here, you can also find it in that thread.

Also, there are rewritten card images floating around the internet.

Beyond Brandobras' efforts, there are also rules re-written by Ichabod of ICE (the guy who handled the MECCG list Q/A rulings digests). I guess this is as close to an official attempt as we have. I think its a better starting point but I haven't read it in a while. http://www.meccg.net/netherlands/meccg/ ... chabod.pdf

I looked into this more and found out way more than I ever wanted to know.

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2019 6:21 am I looked into this more and found out way more than I ever wanted to know.

Do tell.

Ah, well, I was implying that I will not be sharing but that there is more to read if someone wants looks. I used Google.

...given that, I'm no longer surprised by the rules and rulings. And also thankful we even have this game.

"There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains... and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about."

There are older and fouler things than NetReps in the deep places of the Rules.

The Rewrite I did is meant to be used with GCCG (and should be available on the svn, at least). It overhauled essentially the entire game in an attempt to make cards function and the various options actually be balanced. The rules document is a little useless without the rewritten cards, as many finicky rules were simply transferred on to the card texts, themselves.

I haven't had time to work on it in ages.

This was the thread.

As an example of the kind of thing I did:

River is playable on a company using Region or Under-deeps movement, prevents the company from doing anything during the site phase, and a Ranger can tap to discard River. This actually makes the card function without the abuse of playing it on the site of a non-moving company or a River stopping Radagast when he's *flying.*

I'd have to give it another look, though, as there have been more than a few ambiguities in the rules brought to light since I worked on it. I'm not even certain I have the tools to edit the cards, any more.

Bandobras Took wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:32 pm This actually makes the card function without the abuse of playing it on the site of a non-moving company or a River stopping Radagast when he's *flying.*

Or avoidance by a company that gains an additional movement/hazard phase.