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GalakStarscraper |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Juggernaut Q
 Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 07:43 AM
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Ex-Rulz Committee
Joined: Feb 11, 2003
United States of America
Posts: 1562
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Frantic wrote: A solution to this could be to put it in the FAQ thats allways in the end of the rulebook. No room for that. FAQ is full.
And its not an FAQ ... I haven't yet seen more than one person interpret it wrong on the forums. To be an FAQ ... it really does need to be a frequently asked question and one that is prone to misinterpretation (ie when they ask the question they have guessed wrong (which in this example you had not)).
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Frantic |
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Post subject: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Juggernaut Q
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 07:47 AM
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Joined: Jun 11, 2007
Sweden
Posts: 252
Location: Sweden
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GalakStarscraper |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Juggernaut Q
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 07:50 AM
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Ex-Rulz Committee
Joined: Feb 11, 2003
United States of America
Posts: 1562
Status: Offline
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Spazzfist wrote: I would tend to agree with you here, but then in BB it is possible to intercept the ball before it is even thrown!  |
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Lycos |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Juggernaut Q
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 10:21 AM
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Former President
Joined: Aug 22, 2003
Undisclosed
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AK_Dave wrote: I consider myself to be a person of at least moderate intelligence, which may be hallucination on my part, with good command of the English language (another potential fallacy). So if I can read this so blatantly wrong, I am confident that I am not alone.
You are not. I started randomly asking people on email and you are by no means alone. I read this topic when it was just after Galak's first post on page one and then started asking. Others thought exactly as you did.
In support of Tom and Ian, the guy on BBRC I asked (they can guess who) did get it right!! |
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AK_Dave |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Juggernaut Q
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 11:04 AM
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Joined: Nov 29, 2005
Anchorage, Alaska
Posts: 102
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
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GalakStarscraper wrote: Not belittling you ... trying to drive home the point. And your version was NOT the same as LRB 5.0. You left off the word "instead" from the end of the skill.
I overreacted to the way that you were trying to "drive home the point".
Okay. I think it would have been simple to just say so: "Because you omitted 'instead', this is the implication. That word needs to be included."
I'm fine with that. I overlooked the implication of the omission that one word. I saw it as superfluous when it was not. That doesn't make the rest of my suggestion worthless. I'm not claiming to be infallible. Most days I don't even attempt infallibility.
Quote: I find it fascinating to read this from you when you are the one soapboxing on perfectly written rules.
We disagree: I don't think the rule is perfectly written in the first place, but my attempts to suggest an alternative are also imperfect.
I am willing to concede: 1) that rewriting this section CAN make it worse; and, 2) perhaps the existing language is the closest to perfection that we can achieve.
Here's how I see it:
1. The rule for Juggernaut contains two sections, two things that can be done with the skill. You can do the first, or you can do the first and the second, but the two sections are really only linked by the fact that both of them are predicated on the Blitz Action. By combining them together into a single complex sentence, it is easy to read the skill other than it is intended by skimming by a little too quickly and paraphrasing the skill as "If this player takes a Blitz Action [...] treat a ???Both Down??? result as if a ???Pushed??? result has been rolled instead." That is clearly not how the rule actually reads and is incorrect.
2. Seperating the two sections into independant sentences reduces the complexity of each sentence and makes this error less likely to occur.
The edit that I suggested did this imperfectly. I can think of other ways to rewrite this, but most of them would not be consistent with the way that rules are written elsewhere in LRB and would thus be inappropriate.
For example:
Code: 15.31 Juggernaut (Strength)
III - SKILLS
III.31.01 A player with this skill is virtually impossible to stop once he is in motion.
III.31.02 If this player takes a Blitz Action, then opposing players may not use their Fend, Stand Firm or Wrestle skills against blocks,
III.31.02.01 and he may choose to treat a ???Both Down??? result as if a ???Pushed??? result has been rolled instead.
Not only is that exceedingly ugly to look at, it is awkward to read and totally inconsistent with everything else in the rulebook. I would rather gouge my eyeballs out with forks than read game rules that are organised like Star Fleet Battles. But it makes the point that "section B" is an optional appendange to "section A". Thats why I didn't suggest it.
Here is another way to do the same thing:
Code: Juggernaut (Strength)
A player with this skill is virtually impossible to stop once he is in motion.
If this player takes a Blitz Action, then: 1) opposing players may not use
their Fend, Stand Firm or Wrestle skills against blocks; and, 2) he may
choose to treat a ???Both Down??? result as if a ???Pushed??? result has been
rolled instead.
Working within the LRB context of "rules written as ordinary sentences and paragraphs", my thought was that the error could be minimized by simplifying the language and de-complicating the sentence. Break it into two sentences. That would seem to make it obvious, because when you're skimming a little too quickly a period (full stop) will tend to interrupt you.
Alternatively, the sentence could be made even more complicated and achieve the same purpose by replacing the ", and" with a "; and,". Its a little awkward to read, but since "he may choose to treat a ???Both Down??? result as if a ???Pushed??? result has been rolled instead" is a complete sentence the more appropriate puncutation to use would be the semicolon. This has the unfortunate effect of placing the "If this player takes a Blitz Action" on the wrong side of the semicolon and implying that this condition only applies to the first half of the rule. When it does not.
Thus we come to my suggestion to simply break the complex sentence into two independant sentences.
But this is all predicated on my initial self-centered and egotistical presumption that if I could be so idiotic as to misread this rule so completely that there likely exist others who have or can do the same with equal ease. |
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NAF # 8106
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GalakStarscraper |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 11:27 AM
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Ex-Rulz Committee
Joined: Feb 11, 2003
United States of America
Posts: 1562
Status: Offline
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 Thanks AK_Dave ... if you had written something like this before I promise my responses would have been very different.
That was a VERY well written response to this topic.
My problems come down to my history working on the rules. Especially the skills section I sat down with two professional proofreaders and one college writing professor and worked with them skill by skill to do a full rewrite on the skills section. So when you see my responses ... I just ask you remember I went through this process.
Now you just stated my one biggest problem. If you add a full stop ... you don't grammatically change what the skill does at all ... in fact you just end up making the skill longer due to repeated text. Grammatically they will be identical. As SolarFlare (a school teacher) already pointed out ... grammatically speaking the current text in the rulebook is correct for what stating what the rule does.
So my problem with concept here of changing the rule is that I read the rule grammatically the right way and Jervis has rules about not making rules longer for no good reason. He's changed rules to just delete a few words from the rulebook in the past. So for me the full stop is no more clear than the current version. However I will conceed that some may not understand the ", and may" method of conjuction. Heck I had to explain on another BB Forum this morning (I read many each day) to a non-native English speaker that the LRB 6.0 wording for Stunty does not make them suffer a KO'd AND a Badly Hurt result when 7 and 9 are rolled since they didn't understand what the word "respectively" meant.
So the rules need to be as clear as possible.
But my question is does a full stop really make the rule clearer ... or are most people still not going to get that its two seperate things not hinged to each other even with a full stop? Namely like below:
Quote: Juggernaut (Strength)
A player with this skill is virtually impossible to stop once he is in motion. If this player takes a Blitz Action, then opposing players may not use their Fend, Stand Firm or Wrestle skills against his blocks. In addition, if this player is performing a Blitz Action, he may choose to treat a ???Both Down??? result as if a ???Pushed??? result has been rolled instead.
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AK_Dave |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 01:09 PM
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Joined: Nov 29, 2005
Anchorage, Alaska
Posts: 102
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
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| Its repetetive, but it works and honestly I think that is the best combination. It kinda beats you in the forehead that Juggernaut only works on a Blitz Action, and that the second part of the rule is dependant not only on the first but on the Blitz Action itself. I think it would be hard to skim by that one too fast, and easy for someone translating this into another language to get it right the first time. I think your version is less awkard to read than changing ", and may" for "; and, may". It emphasizes the proper way for Juggernaut to work. It looks like a win. |
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NAF # 8106
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Doubleskulls |
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Post subject: Juggernaut Q
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 02:41 PM
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Ex-Rulz Committee
Joined: Mar 05, 2003
Undisclosed
Posts: 2627
Location: Kent, UK
Status: Offline
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AK_Dave wrote: Ian: I did propose different text. See above. Thank you.
 Sorry for not reading the whole thread.
Just to reiterate what Galak said. It is important to the BBRC to get the rules clearly understandable however that is difficult because of the contention inherent in a rule book itself.
Normally people coming in with a specific complaint want to increase the length of explaination of the rule without really considering the larger context. We are trying to get people to play the game the same way.
Long wordy rules - even if in correct English - are much more likely to be ignored, misunderstood and/or misplayed. Most people just aren't interested in reading legal style rule books. In the worst instance this can just put people off playing the game altogether.
Unfortunately some people have a natural desire to twist rules to behave the way they want them too - even if the correct reading of the text one way they end up playing another way because they want it to be so. Correcting the English used doesn't help here at all because it really wouldn't matter what you wrote.
Regardless of the correctness of the English people will still misinterpret it. Not everyone's English is at the same standard, and this is especially true when a significant proportion of the readers of the rules do not have English as a first language. Written documents are a very imperfect form of communication and very difficult to ensure consistent interpretation. Its actually an area where forums excel since it gives a chance for interaction to discuss how to play a certain rule under all circumstances.
So what we really end up trying to do is write rules in such a way that its short, easily comprehensible and gets the majority of coaches playing the game the same way.
Generally speaking people coming into discuss rules clarifications are complaining and as such don't really want to take all that into account - they just want to focus on the specific problem with the matter at hand. However, for the majority of coaches, those efforts can easily be counter-productive and end up with more people playing the rule "wrong". |
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Ian 'Double Skulls' Williams
SLOBB
NAF Racial Results
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AK_Dave |
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Post subject: RE: Juggernaut Q
Posted: Jan 16, 2009 - 05:08 PM
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Joined: Nov 29, 2005
Anchorage, Alaska
Posts: 102
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
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I think I understand, Ian. Rules folks like yourselves, you and Galak, have seen a lot of prissy whining about this-and-that. The "I don't like this" complaints can easily become "whack-a-mole". I am sorry that I contributed to that sort of butting heads.
I agree that long wordiness, even though its how I often write, is not the best approach for game rules. Elegant and minimalistic use of language is an art that I have not mastered. I confess that the LRB5 form of the rule may be the best form, but I think that Tom's most recent suggestion is just a little stronger. I concede that my ability to craft concise game rules pales in comparison with his, or that I need more practice. |
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NAF # 8106
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