Rules Support

[Angel Barracks]

How much after sales support do you expect where rules are concerned?

I am guessing a lot of people are happy to join either a general forum and pick the brains of other people that have the rules, and many companies of course have their own specific forum where you can talk directly to the author(s).

[Not Connard Sage]

Errata if required.
Other than that, I’m a big boy now and I can usually work stuff out for myself.

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Anonymous]

I pretty much like the ability to ask questions when a rules does not reflect my understanding of reality but since I have no compunctions about changing things I pretty much I interpret as I see best.

[Bandit]

Speaking from the other side of the counter, we were uncertain what gamers expected when it came to support, some join mailing lists, some seek out dedicated forums, some expect little at all, etc…

So we try to make ourselves as available as possible.

To-date we receive and answer questions via the following channels:

• phone – not common, but it does happen
• direct e-mail – fairly common
• Yahoo! Groups mailing list – seems to go in bursts
• various online forums – none dedicated
• via Facebook – rare but it happens that we receive a question there

We also try to provide a lot of supporting material on our website that players might care about, from stuff aimed more at pre-sales questions like 3rd-party reviews, samples of the rules, etc… to stuff you’ll need when playing, like the Quick Reference Guides in various scales and the Second Edition Errata.

Cheers,

The Bandit

[Robey Jenkins]

As a gamer, I don’t expect much, but I do expect a company to respond to criticism and to answer queries promptly.

As a designer, I get queries from a lot of directions.  Facebook is the most regular, but this forum, email and face-to-face at events are all good sources for queries.  I think it fulfils two important functions: first, it establishes a dialogue between the player and the designer that makes the experience of the game more collaborative and social; second, it provides vital feedback on the parts of the game that not only need work but in which players are most interested.  Because the bits they ask about most often are the bits they use most frequently, so it gives a designer an essential insight into what the community is doing with the game – which is frequently not what the designer intended!

[Bandit]

Robey Jenkins wrote:

As a gamer…As a designer…

And I’d agree with all of what Robey said.

Timeliness of response to inquiry seems so amiss in many cases, we try to reply within a couple hours, I’ll tell people who stop by our vendor booth at conventions that if you e-mail us and haven’t heard back the following morning, we must not have received it. Normally we try to have an answer out immediately upon receiving the inquiry.

People are asking you about your business and your product, it seems just horrible to make them wait any longer than necessary.

Cheers,

The Bandit

[John D Salt]

None. It’s not an operating system.

SPI was always quite good at issuing errata, and WRG in the old days would sometimes dish out free amendment sheets — my copy of their 1950-75 armour and infantry rules (the first edition) has amendments made from such a one. Most other companies never bothered.

The only time I can recall asking any rules questions was for GDW’s “Team Yankee”, whose rules were not as clear as they could have been, especially for a book tie-in game intended to attract non-wargamers into the sport. I got a very satisfactory reply. I also got a lovely letter from Bob O’Brien of the WRG when I wrote to him about “Seastrike”, but that wasn’t a rules query, it was a note saying what a brilliant game it was, and suggesting a couple of extensions.

I suspect I am not alone among gamers of my age and weight in buying rules and games largely to steal ideas from, rather than necessarily to play.

All the best,

John.

[Mike]

I miss Bob O’Brien.

[Ruarigh]

I don’t generally expect after-sales support for wargames rules, but it is nice to have and I am more inclined to seek it if I have paid a lot of money for a rules set. If there is a dedicated forum run by the designer(s), I join it and I expect responses to my questions, although I have had mixed results in that quarter. If you’re not going to respond, don’t offer the service. Most of my rules questions are about the intent of the rules, because that helps me understand and interpret them properly, and is immensely useful when playing other people who interpret the words on the page differently. This is where the discussion forums really come into their own.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://roderickdale.co.uk/
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

[Stavka]

None for me, either. I never expected it in the pre-internet past, and don’t now.

To be honest I can’t imagine any stumbling block in a rule set big enough that I would bother emailing the writers about it.   Most misunderstandings are usually cleared up by going back and re-reading the rules more carefully, and if that fails, just appealing to common sense.

I’ve other uses for my time than spending it in email exchanges over wargames rules.

 

[Norm S]

Yes – I expect rule support where needed. I come from a boardgame background where both real and perceived errata has often been a problem.

It really needs three things, a designer to  / developer to be available and open to answering questions, designers to work hard at trying to clear up all ambiguity before publication and gamers to read the rules properly before asking a question. If that balance can be achieved, I think things work out about right.

There are time when I have been put off from buying a boardgame after visiting the games Q&A page, sometimes you can go through that Q&A and realise that half of it shouldn’t be there anyway, because the point is explained in the rules.

I generally find figure game rules to have less errata, perhaps the beta versions pass through more hands and get better playtesting.

For prolific designers, being available for questions must be a pain for their older designs, as the game was probably 3 games ago and they are now neck deep on a new design, so designers can find themselves in the position of not knowing the answer to a question without digging out the rules and getting ‘into’ the system again.

For tournament games, official errata is more important, local decision making at a critical point is unlikely to go down well in such a competitive environment.

The internet has made things pretty instant and so expectations of an instant reply to things have become the norm. Pre-internet, for the American imported boardgames, one had to write down the question in a way that could get a YES / NO reply, send the letter to the States and wait 3 months for an answer to be turned around, by which time you had moved on to the next shiny thing ……. that did at least encourage one to at least try and work it out yourself before reaching for the pen and you might start to avoid buying from a company with a reputation for frequent / unnecessary errata.

[MartinR]

Pretty much what John said. I’m a big boy now and can figure things out myself, make up something plausible or pick my friends brains.

It is of course nice to be able to fire off queries should the need arise, and games forums are a good place for that.

As I designer, I do get queries from time to time, either by email or through my blog, and I do reply. But as I give all this stuff away for free, don’t expect commercial levels of post sales service.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Not Connard Sage]

Norm S wrote:

I generally find figure game rules to have less errata, perhaps the beta versions pass through more hands and get better playtesting. 

 

I find that there are usually fewer ‘processes’, for want of a better word, in figure games rules than in boardgame rules. Which may be a partial explanation.

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[craig cartmell]

In our opinion as designers, it is incumbent upon us to provide support for a number of reasons. Some of these benefit the players and some benefit us, for example:

1. You have paid good money for our games,
2. We are not perfect and sometimes what we write does not make sense to those that read it,
3. It is an excellent source of design feedback for us,
4. We want people to enjoy our games as much as we do,
5. It is free market research, and
6. We like to encourage and support people to be creative with our rules.

A designer who publishes and game and then abandons it, is doomed to see it fade away.

[Phil Dutré]

As a gamer, I don’t expect anything, and I don’t actively seek out “support”. I find it creates too much stress if you feel compelled to always look for the latest clarifications and rules updates. I want to enjoy a game, not be in a perpetual state of asking myself “Am I using the correct rules?”.

Occasionally, when we play a game, we might have an issue we feel is important enough to find a more official clarification for. In that case, I might look for a FAQ or so online – for boardgames usually boardgamegeek. For miniature games, we never look anything up, we resolve the dispute ourselves.

But support in real-time (as in I ask a question today, I want an answer tomorrow)? No. Some games I play have been published several years, if not decades ago. It’s a bit silly to still expect the original publishers being available to “support” the game. On-line communities or archives are good enough.

[Stephen Holmes]

I don’t expect much, but in the 21st century, I’d expect a commercial publisher to maintain an online presence where.

a) Players can raise queries and have them answered (especially concerning glaring typos or contadictions that escaped the editing process).

b) Publisher maintains a live Errata, so they don’t have to answer the same question multiple times in full.

 

Anything over and above that is good marketing, but not expected.

[Bandit]

Since a lot of time passed since I gave an answer for my company as to what we see in terms of support inquiries earlier in this thread (~4 years ago). Here’s an update on how it has changed:

Then, 2017:

• phone – not common, but it does happen
• direct e-mail – fairly common
• Yahoo! Groups mailing list – seems to go in bursts
• various online forums – none dedicated
• via Facebook – rare but it happens that we receive a question there

Now, 2021:
• Phone calls – rare
• Direct e-mail – common
• Dedicated Facebook Group for the product – very common
• Dedicated hosted forum for questions & errata – uncommon
• Non-dedicated gaming forums – very rare

Many, many tabletop miniatures games and (especially?) historical games aren’t published by businesses or companies, but by individual authors and the venture is a hobby itself for them, not a commercial interest. Next up are games published by businesses on behalf of authors – this ranges from small independent operations like say, On Military Matters, to large enterprises like Osprey Publishing, however, in both cases, most such operations drop responsibility for support back to the designer/author – who again is often doing this as a hobby. The net result is that unless the publisher is the game designer (or included them rather) and is a serious (not necessarily large) commercial venture, support is very often little to nothing. It is really an area that hurts “independent” games.

[McKinstry]

I do like an FAQ and/or errata as needed but as others have said, I’ll simply apply common sense in most cases.

I do appreciate it when a firm makes such things as a Quick Play Sheet or if appropriate such things as game tokens or roster sheets available as pdf’s on a website but it isn’t a requirement and certainly not an obligation.

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[madman]

I really appreciate when companies have either a dedicated forum or make it part of a gaming web site. I am not on FB, as are many others, and find that, especially as an only option (common) sucks and to an extent shows a disregard for players.

I really appreciate it when the publishers/designers have space on their site with informative downloads. FAQs, QRSs and errata as well as support like scenarios or suggestions.

I have used emails and appreciate it when that is available as an option. I would never call, even local.

[Sane Max]

The first edition of Blitzkrieg commander was a club favourite. but its extreme simplicity caused some issues (the usual sort you get with wargames – ‘but that’s not how things work in real life’ type stuff)

The designer was very active on his own forum, and people would say ‘surely Pete, if you are behind a wall makes no difference when artillery hits’ and he would go, ‘Yes, agreed, good point – no benefit from Linear obstacles for artillery’ and we would go ‘OK!’ then a week later someone would say ‘But surely if you are on one side of a wall and the artillery lands the other side… ‘ and he would go ‘that’s true, benefit from cover against artillery’ – ‘Ahh OK we would say..  and then someone would say ‘but the artillery doesn’t represent one shell – it’s many shells landing in a templated area’ and Pete would go ‘Yeah, that’s true actually…’ and so on

it would have been a better game with less support 🙂 It’s not like it was a complicated Game, rather the opposite. (I do like uncomplicated games, me)

 

 

 

 

 

[deephorse]

It’s nice to have the option of some rules support.  Just last week a situation arose in a game where my opponent made a particularly perverse interpretation of two rules, and linked them to his benefit.  He can also be stubborn and wouldn’t concede that his conclusion was incorrect.

Now the authors of these rules don’t usually respond to questions.  They started off doing so, but the burden became too much and so they stopped.  Perhaps this indicates some shortcomings in their rules that so many questions were generated?  Regardless, I like playing them, and most issues can be sorted locally.  But not this one.

My ace card was that I have access to some of the play testers, and so I asked them for clarification.  They agreed with me, but sought the views of the authors for me.  The authors described my opponent as “unscrupulous”  Armed with this condemnation we were able to resume, knowing for certain what the correct interpretation was.  Without support, and with an “unscrupulous” opponent, we would still be arguing to this day.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Sane Max]

deephorse wrote:

The authors described my opponent as “unscrupulous” Armed with this condemnation we were able to resume, knowing for certain what the correct interpretation was. Without support, and with an “unscrupulous” opponent, we would still be arguing to this day.

I translate that as ‘your opponent is interpreting the rules in a way we didn’t foresee when we wrote them.’

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a set of rules that didn’t allow that in the first place? You don’t get fistfights at Chess Tournaments over interpretation of the rules. One day someone will write a set that is both readable and actually easy to interpret, and in only one way. There are no Support Websites run by the authors of Chess, not just because they are dead, but because it’s not needed.

[John D Salt]

Sane Max wrote:

You don’t get fistfights at Chess Tournaments over interpretation of the rules.

Chess has seen numerous fistfights, some stabbings, a couple of shootings, and an axe attack, but presumably these were all about something other than interpretation of the rules.

Sane Max wrote:

There are no Support Websites run by the authors of Chess, not just because they are dead, but because it’s not needed.

FIDE maintains the Laws of Chess, and the latest revision is from 2009:

https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf

All the best,

John.

[Sane Max]

John D Salt wrote:

FIDE maintains the Laws of Chess, and the latest revision is from 2009: https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf All the best, John.

 

wow, that’s an interesting read; ‘It has been agreed that since horses don’t move in L-shapes in reality, from now on Knights can move straight forward, straight backwards, and are slower downhill or uphill.’

seriously though – the rules changes are about times in tournaments, player behaviour and stuff like that, that has no bearing on the actual game. the game is unchanged.

[Bandit]

madman wrote:

I would never call, even local.

How come? Not taking any issue, just wondering what makes you so disinclined vs other methods.

Sane Max wrote:

it would have been a better game with less support 🙂 It’s not like it was a complicated Game, rather the opposite.

I’m not sure that what you describe is “more vs less” but rather “poor vs consistent”.

deephorse wrote:

He can also be stubborn and wouldn’t concede that his conclusion was incorrect.

Was the action the player took illegal under the rules? Or was it outside of some unspoken convention?

Sane Max wrote:

seriously though – the rules changes are about times in tournaments, player behaviour and stuff like that, that has no bearing on the actual game. the game is unchanged.

I’m not sure I’d agree that rules governing tournaments “have no bearing on the actual game”, but chess has changed substantially over time, though not in a long time. But, assuming we’ll deal just in the relatively recent past when there haven’t been substantial changes, designing a wargame that has no room for interpretation isn’t difficult. Designing one as comprehensive as the market desires while doing so, that can be more of a challenge. Chess addresses a very small number of variables compared to the average tabletop miniatures wargame.

[Mike Headden]

Chess is a boardgame with a small playing area and very limited movement and “combat” rules. The options for confusion or misinterpretation are limited.

No rules on Knights crossing linear obstacles or Queens moving through bad going or built-up areas. 🙂

Personally I’m looking forward to a new edition of Codex Black 😀 😀 😀

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Sane Max]

Mike Headden wrote:

Chess is a boardgame with a small playing area and very limited movement and “combat” rules. The options for confusion or misinterpretation are limited. No rules on Knights crossing linear obstacles or Queens moving through bad going or built-up areas. Personally I’m looking forward to a new edition of Codex Black

 

that’s what you think 🙂 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64061

 

 

[John D Salt]

Sane Max wrote:

seriously though – the rules changes are about times in tournaments, player behaviour and stuff like that, that has no bearing on the actual game. the game is unchanged.

To my surprise, not so. Granted that things have been pretty calm since about 1640, when castling was introduced into the English game, a quick flonk about with Google reveals that FIDE has amended the rules of play on at least these occasions:

1928 50 move rule amended to allow more moves if needed to force checkmate
1928 Threefold repetition rule introduced
1952 50 move rule amended to allow 100 moves if needed to force checkmate
1974 Vertical castling loophole closed
1975 Threefold repetition rule clarified
1984 50 move rule clarified
1985 Threefold repetiton rule clarified again
1989 50 move rule clarified again, allowing up to 75 moves
1992 50 move rule changed back to being just 50 moves
2008 Chess 960 variant added

Six changes since 1974, that’s more editions than the WRG modern rules.

If there aren’t many arguments about the rules of chess these days, it’s not because the framers of the rules showed any particular genius for clarity and the avoidance of ambiguity, it’s because a very large community of players has been using and arguing about the things for several centuries.

Give Phil Barker another 400 years to get things nailed down and I imagine you won’t see many rules questions in DBA.

Mr. Picky doesn’t have the heart to e-mail FIDE and point out the spelling error (“en passante”) in the current edition of the rules.

All the best,

John.

[madman]

Bandit wrote:

Stephen Madjanovich wrote:

I would never call, even local.

How come? Not taking any issue, just wondering what makes you so disinclined vs other methods.

Mostly knee jerk reaction but;

1.I work and cannot call from work.

2. Don’t feel comfortable if the number works after hours it may be someone’s home.

3. I like having “something in writing” like an email or on line message to refer back to in case I heard different from what was said.

[deephorse]

Sane Max wrote:

deephorse wrote:

The authors described my opponent as “unscrupulous” Armed with this condemnation we were able to resume, knowing for certain what the correct interpretation was. Without support, and with an “unscrupulous” opponent, we would still be arguing to this day.

I translate that as ‘your opponent is interpreting the rules in a way we didn’t foresee when we wrote them.’ Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a set of rules that didn’t allow that in the first place?.

This brings up a subject close to my heart, and that is rules authors failing to transfer their understanding of how their rules work to the written page.  You are correct, they never anticipated someone interpreting the two rules concerned in the way that my unscrupulous friend did.  The play testers obviously didn’t either, because it would have been clarified in the printed work (I hope) if they had.  To be fair to them, there were three of us playing that game, and two of us didn’t interpret the rules in that way either.

This shouldn’t have been an issue that needed to be adjudicated by the authors though.  The unscrupulous one was outvoted two to one on the matter, and should have accepted that, but as I said above, he is particularly stubborn, to the extent of taking his bat home if he doesn’t get his way.  I didn’t help matters by calling him “childish” at that point!  He is over 70 years of age.

Anyway, I have long felt that some rules authors know their product inside out, as they should, but then fall at the hurdle of putting that knowledge across to those of us without access to the authors.  Play testers may work with an incomplete rule set, I know, I’ve been one.  But they can sort things out with the authors.  But if the authors don’t remember to put those clarifications into the rules then you get the unscrupulous situation that we found ourselves in.

As for “wouldn’t it be lovely…..” etc., there are rules that cater for every situation.  Sam Mustafa writes some very clear rules.  My introduction to ‘proper’ wargaming, as opposed to the ‘knocking Airfix figures over with a matchstick’ type, was the legalese approach of SPI and their board wargames.  For many years they were my only source of wargaming enjoyment.  Yes, they made some ‘turkeys’, but they were probably down to the need to publish a new game every two months for their subscribers.  Some unfinished product was certainly sent our way.  But the majority of the games I bought played perfectly well with no recourse to the designers.  I will add though that I  was playing solo, so I only had to argue with myself.  And I also recognise that a boardgame is not a miniatures game.  A counter can only be in hex A, or not in hex A.  A miniature can be in the equivalent of hex A, but also in one of a hundred other positions partially in or around that location.  So the SPI approach may not translate well to miniatures.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[deephorse]

Bandit wrote:

 

deephorse wrote:

He can also be stubborn and wouldn’t concede that his conclusion was incorrect.

Was the action the player took illegal under the rules? Or was it outside of some unspoken convention?

.

It was outside of some unspoken convention, but it was pretty bloomin’ obvious that it was very much ‘outside’.

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Stephen Holmes]

Mike Headden wrote:

Chess is a boardgame with a small playing area and very limited movement and “combat” rules. The options for confusion or misinterpretation are limited. No rules on Knights crossing linear obstacles or Queens moving through bad going or built-up areas. Personally I’m looking forward to a new edition of Codex Black

Don’t get me started on the unimaginative paint jobs (Come on Chess guys, would a bit of drybrushing or a dip kill ya’?), not to mention the monotonous terrain and the inflexible army lists. The teams don’t even represent proper historic nations.

 

Seriously: There appear to be two leading causes of rules questions.

1. An author who struggles to clearly communicate (It’s a much harder job than you’d expect, but editors, playetesters and second opinions can help).
2. Players who struggle with reading comprehension (let’s cut some slack here, we didn’t all get A* in our English A-levels).

 

On point one: I own several sets of rules that were released to a big fanfare, and turned out to be poorly written, incomplete, rambles. Caveat Emptor, I guess. There seems to be a lot less of this in our modern digital age, where blog reviews are up  almost as soon as rules are released.

On point two: We’ve all browsed fora(ums) where somebody asks “What’s the shooting range of a Churchill Crocodile, I can’t see it anywhere”, followed by 4 or 5 replies saying “Page 18 on the British Equipment list”.

 

Something that’s occasionally classed as “rules support” – but isn’t: Releasing regular rules updates that the punters have to buy, and selling massive picture books with the latest special rules and army lists.

[vtsaogames]

I do like rules support, FAQ and such. Not required but a nice extra.

 

Unscrupulous? Damn, banned a chap from my house decades back, calling him a rules lawyer. Unscrupulous sounds so much better. And more accurate.

 

Point two: I’m that guy. See the rule while reading but can’t seem to find it in mid-game…

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Patrice]

Fascinating thread.

Every time someone doesn’t understand something in my rules, I remember a thing I heard when doing my (compulsory) military service, the instructor telling a class of future reserve officers: “If the lads haven’t understood, it means you haven’t explained properly.”

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Author]

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