If WotC want's this to happen, then WotC needs a single document (they seem afraid of the word "errata," so we don't need to call it that) under their control where all _CS_ rulings are neatly and clearly cataloged. A searchable database would be ideal, but a pdf would suffice. (BTW: I know that we have a "collected" CS rulings document stickied to the top of one of the DnD forums, but it's a joke! That document is hardly ever up to date, it's often self-contradictory, contradicted by other CS rulings, and/or contradicted by rulings compiled in the various FAQs. To top it off, it's not conducive to searching for or reading about a specific topic.)
I must say that as a frequent LFR judge, this massive cluster-**** is really frustrating me, and I'm to the point that, RPGA guidelines be damned, I'm just going to start making up my own rules!
If there is uncertainty over how a rule works, the GM is to decide how to apply the rule. The CCG acknowledges that GMs can use CS responses in forming his or her decision, but it doesn't - to my reading - say that the CS responses are definitive in all cases.
Customer Services are a rules resource.
If there is uncertainty over how a rule works, the GM is to decide how to apply the rule. The CCG acknowledges that GMs can use CS responses in forming his or her decision, but it doesn't - to my reading - say that the CS responses are definitive in all cases.
No, that was the old system: if the rules source (the book + errata) wasn't clear, the DM was responsible for making a ruling. He could be guided by anything he wanted (CS, FAQs, the DM at the next table), but none of those were binding.
Now, CustServ is an official rules resource. DMs are prohibited from deciding what rules elements are allowed, and cannot make up rules if official rules already exist.
Sure, if there's a contradiction, a DM can decide to go with another rules source over CustServ. That will, however, almost never be the case: CustServ answers are usually direct, unambiguous and limited to a specific question. Specific trumps general, so if the PH is silent, ambiguous or vague on an issue, and CustServ specifically says "Power X works like this", then CustServ wins.
According to the CCG, CustServ answers are just as definitive as the PH or the CCG itself. A DM cannot ignore them and still be considered running an LFR game according to the rules.
So, if CS#1 says "blue" and CS#2 says "orange" (and for this example, other sources are silent on the ambiguity) - the table DM makes a ruling as they best see fit (and they should ALWAYS remember the "Have fun, don't be a jerk" guidelines).
The players may spend a little time debating the ruling - but as written the table DM is the final arbiter (though in a larger setting I expect the Senior GM for the event is still intended as a valid appeal).
No, that was the old system: if the rules source (the book + errata) wasn't clear, the DM was responsible for making a ruling. He could be guided by anything he wanted (CS, FAQs, the DM at the next table), but none of those were binding.
Now, CustServ is an official rules resource. DMs are prohibited from deciding what rules elements are allowed, and cannot make up rules if official rules already exist.
Sure, if there's a contradiction, a DM can decide to go with another rules source over CustServ. That will, however, almost never be the case: CustServ answers are usually direct, unambiguous and limited to a specific question. Specific trumps general, so if the PH is silent, ambiguous or vague on an issue, and CustServ specifically says "Power X works like this", then CustServ wins.
According to the CCG, CustServ answers are just as definitive as the PH or the CCG itself. A DM cannot ignore them and still be considered running an LFR game according to the rules.
And without a central database or searchable listing of CS responses this is a functional problem. What are DMs supposed to do when a player shows up to a public game day with a printout from Customer Service that comes down on the broken and unlikely side of any of the various rule debates? How does the DM know if the printout in genuine, or if the player went CS fishing until they got the answer they were looking for? When the player points to RPGA rules does the DM have any recourse except to openly violate the wording of the CCG?
Sure, if there's a contradiction, a DM can decide to go with another rules source over CustServ. That will, however, almost never be the case: CustServ answers are usually direct, unambiguous and limited to a specific question.
I don't think you're living in the real world. While a given answer will be concise, direct and unambiguous, there is no track record of consistency.
Check out this thread:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1208137
In two pages, you get two different answers from CS. If one player comes in with the 2nd answer, and no other answers, how are we to know. This stuff isn't anywhere we can easily get to it.
That's just one thread. Read any of the errata forums and you'll see tons of them. Worst of all, the questions and answers are often spread over multiple similar threads. If you look hard enough, you can often find the answer YOU'RE looking for.
In the end, they're pitting 1 DM against a table full of players. Without an easily searchable DB/Document I don't see how this can possibly work.
I don't think you're living in the real world. While a given answer will be concise, direct and unambiguous, there is no track record of consistency.
You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that is a good thing--indeed, I've argued at length that having multiple (potentially inconsistent) sources, with one of them completely unauthenticatable, is a bad idea.
However, I am saying that a DM doesn't have the choice to ignore a CustServ ruling and say that he's merely 'interpreting' the rules--his only options are to either abide by the unsourced printout in front of him or to accuse the player of unethical conduct. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant to it being the rule.
You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that is a good thing--indeed, I've argued at length that having multiple (potentially inconsistent) sources, with one of them completely unauthenticatable, is a bad idea.
However, I am saying that a DM doesn't have the choice to ignore a CustServ ruling and say that he's merely 'interpreting' the rules--his only options are to either abide by the unsourced printout in front of him or to accuse the player of unethical conduct. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant to it being the rule.
Sorry I misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying your position.
When you go to the forums you generally only see the times when CS has gotten things wrong. And yes, they have made mistakes. You don't see the much greater percentage of the questions they've gotten right.
What I've typed above doesn't really swing much weight in the the original argument of how CS rulings can be weird at a table, just a tidbit we seem to forget. I think Wolf stated it best however - if you have a case where two CS reps have disagreed (as is the case in the forum posts mentioned), then the DM can make the call. That solves your inconsistent answer issue and leaves the power in the hands of the guy running the game.
A player who has a particular combination of powers, feats, and items may ask CS for clarification on how it works. If he receives an answer which suggests the most powerful of the possible interpretations, he's likely to stop asking, and carry that with him to games. A GM may never have considered the combination before meeting it with this player, or may have considered it and decided that he will resolve the ambiguity in a less powerful way. If he hasn't received an answer from CS to support his interpretation, when the player comes with a CS answer there is then one 'authoritative' resolution to the rules question - even though there is no proof that this is the only way CS agents have responded to queries on these rules, no proof that this is the designer-preferred resolution to the query, and no proof that CS have come to the most accurate interpretation of the written rules.
I have no problem with CS answers being a resource for GMs to take into consideration when making adjudications about ambiguous areas of the rules. The fact that someone else has looked at the rules and come to a particular conclusion is persuasive. But I'm wary of players being able to think that GMs are 'cheating' if they interpret rules in ways which differ from a particular CS response; that's a valid attitude to have if a GM ignores the Updates, or even the FAQs - as those are published documents which are available to the GM as part of his ongoing attempt to learn the rules and have at least some level of quality control and review.
BTW: Last weekend, I heard a group of players complaining about another DM's ruling, saying pretty much what you said:
...players being able to think that GMs are 'cheating' if they interpret rules in ways which differ from a particular CS response...
What the players didn't seem to realize was that CS had made more than one ruling.
I think that's the problem however --- they're not really public knowledge.
What the players didn't seem to realize was that CS had made more than one ruling.
I think that's the problem however --- they're not really public knowledge.
This. I wish that instead of just Frequently Asked Questions, they compiled a list of official answers to tough rules situations that are likely to come up whenever a particular combination of rules are used together, even if any particular combination is something that would only happen infrequently.
Having something like that as one big document to which you can subscribe to update notifications would make CS a far more useful rulesource to me, the player and DM (RPGA and otherwise).
How does the DM know if the printout in genuine, or if the player went CS fishing until they got the answer they were looking for?
This. Exactly this.
You have set up a situation where a player with an unsubstantiated printout potentially trumps DM authority.
We're not talking about two different conflicting CS rulings showing up. A player can easily keep asking a rules question in different ways til he or she gets the answer they want. Then they just print out the response and take it with them to games.
Or worse, they make up an answer. Fake the response e-mail.
There's no way to verify it. Asking CS to confirm a response is impossible for a game that's in session.
Worse, a DM dislikes a particular item and plays the CS system to obtain a ruling that seems to support his position. I as a player have no way at the table to verify that the DM isn't just manipulating the system to get what he wants. I have no established documentation that I can double check.
I as both a player and DM now have to go from game to game and wonder if I'm going to get the rules changed out from under me because of somebody's printout. This is nearly as bad as the early days of Living City where rules changes were passed by word of mouth, and you never completely knew what was legal from game to game.
Even the FAQ or Rules Compendium are preferable to CS. Those are at least verifiable sources.
Bottom line is, CS is not a reliable rules source. It just isn't. While they do get a lot of answers right, they also get a lot of answers either conflicting or just flat out wrong. And that is simply not acceptable for a resource that DMs MUST abide by.
Also, WHY is there not a order of precedence for rules sources?
WHY is is so bad if some rules sources remain just "optional if the DM chooses to use it", like the D&D FAQ used to be for previous campaigns?
-karma
WHY is there not a order of precedence for rules sources?
I find the most amusing part of the lack of an order of precedence to be this:
- The RPGA CCG is an official rules source;
- The Character Builder is an official rules source.
If there is a conflict between the two, a DM is apparently free to choose which one he likes.
So, if the Character Builder says that a particular character is legal for LFR purposes, a DM is able to (though probably not required to) consider it a legal LFR PC, even if it violates the CCG.
And, yes, I can't fathom the idea of making an entirely unverifiable printout an official rules source for the campaign. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not CustServ is reliable, the fact that their rulings are not available in a publicly accessible database should have immediately disqualified them as being usable as a rules source.
-- Brian Gibbons.
I'm always right.
Q: In my last game, someone disagreed with my interpretation of a rule. Were they wrong?
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A: Yes. In all situations, whatever interpretation of the rules you prefer is the correct one. If your DM disagrees with you, he's wrong.
Please let me know if you need anymore help!
We would appreciate your feedback on the service we are providing you. Please click here to fill out a short questionnaire.
To login to your account, or update your question please click here.
Paul
Online Response Crew
Wizards of the Coast
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Saturday-Sunday 10am-4pm PST / 1pm-7pm EST
A player who has a particular combination of powers, feats, and items may ask CS for clarification on how it works. If he receives an answer which suggests the most powerful of the possible interpretations, he's likely to stop asking, and carry that with him to games.
You have set up a situation where a player with an unsubstantiated printout potentially trumps DM authority.
We're not talking about two different conflicting CS rulings showing up. A player can easily keep asking a rules question in different ways til he or she gets the answer they want. Then they just print out the response and take it with them to games.
Or worse, they make up an answer. Fake the response e-mail.
I just don't see these scenarios playing out in any meaningful way.
We live in the era of trust. All of LFR is built on it (and you can argue prior campaigns were, essentially, as well).
Forget the sources/CS angle. Any player can show up with some power and say it was in splatbook X, or in Dragon, or in whatever and is valid. Unless a player has the CB at the table or wants to search the Internet on their phone/PC, you have to trust.
Similarly, you can just fudge your bonuses. "Yeah, I have the implement expertise feat... sure... and the other one that does X, and the one that... so, I hit, and I do all this dmg". Or, lie about equipment. "Well, I use the daily item on this thing I picked a few mods ago... and then the property on this thing I bought with my own cash... sure."
However, players take chances when they cheat. They can ruin their reputation forever. CS responses on big issues tend to be discussed on forums. At any given table, you stand a chance that someone is into LFR/4E enough to have seen those posts. And they might have a phone with Internet. Pull up the Compendium... pull up the thread for CS responses, run a search...
(And I do recommend DMs subscribe to the CS response thread. It is pretty useful and doesn't get too many e-mails per week.)
Players can cheat in tons of ways. Cheating on CS is one of the riskier things out there. A cheater stands a decent chance of raising the suspicions of one or more persons at the table, especially the DM. That sounds like a folly move and unlikely to fly.
And, as time goes on, I expect DMs to be better and better armed at knowing what CS has ruled. If I look at my 3.5 DMing... there was little way to be informed of rule issues outside of the Infinite Monkeys list, and most things I just couldn't track. Now, I'm pretty well caught up thanks to the rapid answers from CS (nice job they are doing on timeliness), the forums I subscribe to, and just casual looks at big topics.
DM’s and PC’s fishing Cust Serve for the answer that supports their position?
Or better yet, making up fake CS emails?
Do you all really have people like this in your play groups?
I DM and play semi-regularly at 4 different private and 3 different public venues in my area, plus playing once a year at a major Sci-Fi convention with over 30,000 people. Not one of the 40 or 50 different people that I have gamed with at an LFR event have been close to the kind of @s$-hats that you all are dreaming up.
Have I run into a small handful of ignorant people? Sure. But willingly malevolent cheaters? No, not a one.
Forget the sources/CS angle. Any player can show up with some power and say it was in splatbook X, or in Dragon, or in whatever and is valid. Unless a player has the CB at the table or wants to search the Internet on their phone/PC, you have to trust.
Huh? If a player shows up without the documentation for their character they had better hope the DM doesn't have any questions. It's the player's responsibility to have the sources for all their character options on hand. If they say "I use power X" and the DM says they are not familiar with that power and it doesn't sound right to them the player had better be able to show the source or at least a printout from the Character Builder. Otherwise the DM is perfectly within their rights to rule the power/item/feat/whatever however they want including disallowing it altogether.
Similarly, you can just fudge your bonuses. "Yeah, I have the implement expertise feat... sure... and the other one that does X, and the one that... so, I hit, and I do all this dmg". Or, lie about equipment. "Well, I use the daily item on this thing I picked a few mods ago... and then the property on this thing I bought with my own cash... sure."
Again, huh? I don't know what other people's experience has been but I see people called on their math all the time. Someone says they have +13 on an attack and someone at the table asks how they got that. 90% of the time it's curiosity and not any sort of suspicion but the numbers had still better add up. Almost every game someone ends up showing their math to the table for one attack or another.
Interestingly enough, when the math gets audited the table finds missed bonuses as often as they find improperly added ones.
And BS on magic items? Anything questionable is going to show up with a ten second check of the player's paper records. Unless the group as a whole has decided to ignore the rules in general you just can't get away with this sort of thing. And if they have decided to ignore the campaign and character rules you don't need to get away with it.
Players can cheat in tons of ways. Cheating on CS is one of the riskier things out there. A cheater stands a decent chance of raising the suspicions of one or more persons at the table, especially the DM. That sounds like a folly move and unlikely to fly.
Actually, for all the flack that LFR takes for being so trusting and the lack of documentation it is very HARD to cheat, especially at-table. If you assume that every game is with completely new players then sure, the system is broken. But that;s not the case in the real world. 90% of anyones games are going to be within the same gaming community. So you can't just add items or experience or switch your character without it being noticed. You can't pull weird rule tricks every week without it being resolved, one way or another, pretty fast. Yes, the documentation is pretty minimal but at the same time there is so little that it is very easy to see where the 'I's haven't bee dotted or the 'T's crossed.
Any ability or item or whatever that is worth cheating for will also be called right away. And if it something so minor that no one ever notices than it's not worth cheating for. The type of deliberate systemic cheating you are describing here is simply not possible.
Huh? If a player shows up without the documentation for their character they had better hope the DM doesn't have any questions. It's the player's responsibility to have the sources for all their character options on hand.
Again, huh? I don't know what other people's experience has been but I see people called on their math all the time.
I've had the opposite experience. I seldom see DMs question how a player can constantly hit or hit on really low die rolls. I have yet to see someone ask for source material, though I have had DMs ask for the player to explain how something (feat/power) works. What most commonly will happen is that another player will volunteer to look it up while play continues, if the book is on hand (hard to do with Dragon).
And BS on magic items? Anything questionable is going to show up with a ten second check of the player's paper records.
I have yet to see any paperwork checked for any LFR game, from Gen Con slot 0s last year to the current time, with scores of games played/judged. Maybe it happens where you live, but not in the places I have visited or where I am based.
Come to think of it, I never bring paperwork to games. I play online a fair bit, mostly judging when I play in person. I hate printing things out when I do get to play. (Then again, if anything questioned something for which I lacked paperwork, I would happily drop whatever was being discussed. My fault for not bringing whatever they wanted to see!)
Anyway, the idea that cheating is hard to get away with would only prove my point... it isn't worth worrying about whether someone will try to fake a CS entry or choose to deliberately take one CS answer but not a follow-up. I think the open trusting nature of LFR is a good idea, even being the rigid documentation type of guy I am (I liked ARs and I liked DMs signing off on them). Few people are likely to think they can get away with cheating, because there are ways they can get caught and it would ruin their reps.
Let's take an example. If I play a warforged and read about Reparation Apparatus in Dragon, and think 'does this work with living constructs?' I might just assume it does. I might ask each GM. I might email customer services. If, when I email Customer Services they say "yes, it does, I'm not doing anything dishonest or underhand by taking it to a game and, if a GM says "it doesn't work", feeling somewhat upset - after all, I asked CS, and have paid good money for the item. I might leave the table feeling that the GM has it in for players, or doesn't like Warforged, or just wanted to 'win', or a whole host of other issues. I might think that the GM has deliberately ignored something which is entirely clear and un-nuanced, like a CS answer which clearly says 'Yes it works'. And I can point at the CCG and get the impression that he was entirely wrong to do that. (disclaimer re Reparation Apparatus: I've not followed the various arguments on this closely, this is a hypothetical situation where CS say 'yes' to this question - and it may be moot anyway now the EPG is out)
In this situation, no-one is actually cheating, or seeking an unfair advantage - it's a potential cause for dispute and dissatisfaction between people who are acting entirely properly, in their eyes - and that's unfortunate.
Do you all really have people like this in your play groups?
More than a few of us play LFR primarily at conventions, where you can literally go the whole weekend gaming with different strangers at every table.
Bottom line is, we're now being told to trust a resource that has in the past and is still currently somewhat untrustworthy.
While they do get a lot of answers right, they get answers wrong often enough for many folks to dismiss their reliability outright.
Moreover, we now have a situation where an unverifiable printout can trump published rulebooks, where the rules can literally change from table to table based on what answers people manage to get out of CS.
It creates inconsistancy in the campaign.
As a corollary, my main problem I had earlier with LFR officially using the Rules Compendium before was because it was erratically updated, had errors, and was largely undocumented so you never knew what changes HAD been made. They've since made a concerted effort to improve this, and as such my objections there are greatly reduced.
Rules changes need to be done on a set announced schedule, in a central location for ease of access. I should not be going from table to table wondering if updates and rulings have changed.
-karma