Re: Re: Requesting Other GM's Opinions

[email protected] Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:53:03 -0400
Newsgroups gmane.games.diplomacy.cat23.gm
Message-ID <[email protected]> 
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Some of you guys would really make great senators....

This entire issue boils down to two things.? Almost all of us have acknowledged that Trout's house rules were stated beforehand, and that he was correct to adjudicate the way he has.? He really has no choice but to do so.?? With that out of the way the only thing remaining is a question of what exactly is gained by having a house rule so written.? In my view the ONLY thing gained by this is instances of controversy like this.? There is no benefit to be had by ruling the order in question? invalid.? Part of the natural beauty of this game is it's simplicity. When we write our house rules, isn't it best to keep this in mind?

As someone else correctly pointed out, the overwhelming majority of occurences of this scenario are going to be the result of a typo.?Are we really interested in being that focused on invalidating an order on a typo???


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Kuehn <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:13 pm
Subject: RE: [CAT23-GM] Re: Requesting Other GM's Opinions



Steph Mabie writes: 

> Bear in mind that A & F are English designations for the 
> generally accepted (and official) pieces of the game (Army & 
> Fleet). Could "F"
> stand for "Force?" Could "A" stand for "Armada?" It is 
> plausible, in either case, that the A or F could stand for 
> either type of unit, and without asking the player exactly 
> what he meant, the GM cannot know. 

I'm sorry, but I reject this argument.  Assuming you are conducting the game
in English, the "A" to mean "army" and the "F" to mean "fleet" are
explicitly defined in the rulebook.  It completely stretches credibility to
assert that "A", when used as a unit designation, is somehow ambiguous.

It is reasonable to recognize, however, that unit designation mistakes are
1. relatively easy to make, and 2. hard to spot once made.  Also, the
rulebook does not explicitly require the use of unit designations at all
(although all the sample orders use them).  Therefore, I don't have a
problem with someone concluding it is therefore less disruptive to the game
to ignore unit designations  Which is what you are doing by assuming:

> [W]hen a player names an area occupied by that player,
> no matter what unit designation is used -- he wants that unit to do
> something.

That's a legitimate human factors argument.  But ambiguous?  No, "A Lon" is
not ambiguous in the least.  It clearly does not "admit of two meanings".

> If he happens to misorder it otherwise -- telling an army
> to move to sea, or a fleet inland, or affecting a space it can
> otherwise not affect (ie, A Lon - Ber), then fine. Poorly written?
> Very much so. Illegal? Not in my opinion.

I would hold up "A Lon - Ber" as the very definition of an illegal order.
Did I misread you?

> [O]ne of the other players (who, as it
> happened, was Edi Birsan) pointed out that since "Swe - Nor" could
> have only one possible legal interpretation, it should have been
> considered a legal move.

I want to make sure we're clear on the phrasing.  "Swe - Nor" has only one
possible interpretation which results in a legal move.  That's different
from saying that "Swe - Nor" has one possible legal interpretation.  That
difference can be important depending upon how you construe the sentence in
the rulebook which says, "An order which admits of two meanings is not
followed."  Does an order which has two or more possible interpretations,
only one of which results in a legal move, "admit of two meanings"?  The
answer to that question resolves a great many misorder disputes.
Unfortunately for us, the rulebook doesn't explicitly answer it.  Which is
why we have the Model House Rules.

-Adam



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