SamhainIA wrote:
So here is the problem with taking a liberal stance.
Person A says, "well this is how I think the rules should work, I hope and encourage the rulemakers to change them"
Person B says "well person A said that the rules should work this way, and I agree so I'm going to use the new rule"
Person C says "well person B did it, so I'm going to do that too"
Person D says "well I can see him doing that, but i cant find that in the rules, I give up on this game the rules are too complicated"
Person E says "well I don't like this rule over here, since you are ignoring that one, I'm going to ignore this one"
I think that this argument can be summarized as the "Slippery Slope" argument. It certainly has -SOME- merit. The flip side of taking a strict interpretation of the rules however is the notion that not everyone is as intimately familiar with every rule that exists as would be ideal.
The is particularly true when it comes to new players, and new GM's. Indeed, even the PCI staff is not familiar with everything at the same level. So what you end up with is the player or GM that is an expert on rule "A", knows comparatively little about rule "B" and thus interprets rule "A" without thinking about the ramifications of "B". Subsequently the expert on "Rule B" comes along and says "HEY! You can't do this." To which the player who has been playing according to Expert A's interpretation responds by saying "But I've been doing this for years..." and thinks to himself Expert on Rule B is {insert explicative}. This leads to confrontation, which leads to ill will, which leads to people leaving the game, which means we have no game left to play. The result is a slippery slope, that slides off the hill in another direction.
What we need isn't strict rules policy. Or a liberal rules policy. What we need to find is the goldilocks policy. We need that sweet place between playing a game that has grand consensus about what is proper, but without creating an environment where a handful of rules experts chase away new players who innocently read things differently.