Quote:
Originally Posted by swordtart
My experience was different, we didn't so much mind the new rules being a bit out of whack, we could adapt. It helped that we were a homogenous group and were all learning the rules together. Once we decided what a rule meant, we could all follow it. We may have been wrong, but we were all wrong together.
If we spent two hours arguing a particular rule within the group (and many people would abstain), at least once we reached a consensus we could park it. We would then spend 100's of hours with that same ruling and the proportional time spent discussing the rule wasn't too much of an overhead.
Where there was conflict was when two such groups met (often just for one weekend) and had different interpretations of the rules. You could thrash it out, but you spent more time arguing about it as a proportion of the playing time.
The more groups, the less fun.
Having an "expert" arbitrate wasn't always helpful as they might be making a snap decision on something your group had discussed long into the night over several evenings (and several beers) slowly evolving the ruling based on local preferences.
Fortunately for CW we never had to deal with the "expert" situation as we were a UK group and never got to the states or got involved in the tournament and its accusations of nepotism (we just read about it in ADQ).
We did have WH40K though... the horror! ;(
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I think this illustrates my point - even among friends you shouldn't have to spend hours debating about how a rule works. And when you've agreed on how it works and played with it for months, then run across another group that plays it differently, both sides are kind of entrenched. Difficult to decipher rules that can be interpreted multiple ways are the bane of games and it greatly increases the likelihood that a game will get shelved. If you can't understand how to play a game, even if the actual play isn't too tough once you know how, you won't play the game.
Rules need to be tight, concise, and very clear. Terminology in particular needs to be very concise. I'd argue very strongly that 6E needs to have a glossary (even if it is online) and reserve the usage of key words and terms in the rules and game materials.
I get what you're saying about not liking a referee's ruling when it conflicts with your own - I've had it happen a few times and just rolled with it. This again is a problem in the rules - they should be clear enough that when read, everyone is playing the same game. This is a place where FAQs and Errata become important. Ideally the game shouldn't need them, but more than a few still need these (and as a game increases in complexity, the need increases). FAQs and Errata help fix rules problems, ensure people are playing the same game, and also help improve the game when later revisions are published.
Just my take, but I think it's incredibly important.