How could a new BBRC work?

[Toffer]

I suppose my ideal would entail:

* no changes to existing skills or CRP rules. A stable core ruleset is the best thing we have as a community, at least for tabletop. An attempted transition between rulesets that have changes to rosters and skills would not, in my opinion, do the tabletop game any favours whatsoever
* potentially a couple of new rosters and perhaps new skills every year or two... Let's say three of each, every two years. Have them targetted at different aspects of the community, for example two in tier 1 (one short term focussed, one long term focussed) and a T1.5/2 challenging, counter-intuitive team
* a new section added to the rulebook for 'perpetual leagues'. I acknowledge the issues long term online play is reported to face, but would like to see it seriously explored whether those problems (a) can be proven to trace back to the issues identified and (b) can be solved without altering any other format of the game.

I personally wouldn't touch CRP+ with a bargepole, primarily because of my first point above.

These words are words I like

[Chris]

As to who should be on the BBRC... I guess Galak for past services and as a rep for industry, someone like dode for cyanide environment, a rep from FUMBBL, Lycos as I think he has done the most tournies then someone like geggster so TT experience around the world. If you wanted it to get bigger someone selected by the NAF? But basically industry, both online formats, tabletop and tournies.

Again I suspect cyanide want to sell teams and want the least popular to get buffs to see them be picked and I guess bought more. I suspect that means some form of narrowed tiers, whether through rule or roster or both changes.

Would also (in the context of reaching out to cyanide above) give a better process for introducing new teams they think of, ones we think would sell/have minimum work for cyanide.

[straume]

Cross post...

I think Mike has a point. Cyanide want popular changes. They do seem to erratically reach out. Their ageing rule is sensible in the context of their perpetual open MM league.

I would love it if the NAF could reach out to Cyanide. Find out what they want.

The new BBRC would come out of that.

Offer them free brainpower, analysis and testing to move the rule set forward. FUMBL can test rules before BB2 implements them. I suspect that would be to make teams a better sales proposition and stop the domination of certain teams in their common open and long term league formats. But who knows before we ask?

The rest of the offer would be to advertise Cyanide in NAF events for free (the World Cup will get some coverage, more if people drive PR on it, why not offer plenty of mentions of BB2 to cyanide?) and to provide a new user friendly rulebook to them to teach and rule the game. Use some of the NAF billions to pay Galak to write it up.

In return we get some sensible changes and a unified blood bowl scene.

This!

I think it is a very wise decision to try and go for dialogue with Cyanide on the rules development. Why follow differents paths? If Cyanide goes "bat crazy" with the rules, okay, then no. But Cyanide do have incentive (as Chris points nicely points out) to work with the community and make rules that will work for all of us. After all: The changes we have seen so far (Khorne, Bretts, Human Catcher +AV) are not exactly game breaking.

[Vanguard]

no changes to existing skills or CRP rules. A stable core ruleset is the best thing we have as a community, at least for tabletop. An attempted transition between rulesets that have changes to rosters and skills would not, in my opinion, do the tabletop game any favours whatsoever.

I'm curious as to whether there is anything to support this other than a personal opinion?
There are plenty of popular games with a static ruleset (chess/scrabble) but there are also many with evolving rulesets (Magic/Netrunner/Warhammer/Infinity/X-Wing) that are still popular. One of the big advantages of 'Living Rulebook' is that the meta changes. The best teams and skills can change, tactics that won you a tournament last year are not quite as effective anymore. As players, we should welcome these challenges. Rather than having to pick up a new team when I want to try something different, my existing teams will have new challenges.
As NAF members, we have a set of house rules that we expect new players to accept and use when they attend tournaments:

• No Illegal Procedure
• No four minute timer
• No SPP or player development
• 1.1/1.15/1.2m Starting Teams
• Player resurrection

I'm not aware of anyone arguing that we shouldn't use these as they'll confuse and alienate coaches from outside the NAF.

[rolo]

The only reason that a rules committee is necessary is if they are at least considering some rules changes. There are a lot of people suggesting stuff, I see the role of a new BBRC as the same as the old BBRC - to filter out the chaff and periodically (every year or two) publish a rules update.

I think that the most valuable start would be to define a threshold for any rules change (such as a new roster, or defining Illegal Procedure as an optional rule, or whatever). A lot of players are very much against any change, and will need to be convinced that any rules committee will act responsibly.

Something like:

- Does the proposed rule improve the game? (If not, it should be rejected immediately)

- Is the rule balanced? (If a new roster is too powerful, or a new rule favors or nerfs a few races disproportionately, that's a problem)

- Is there broad support for the rule? (Thousands of players have played the Khorne team in Chaos Edition, at least hundreds more in tabletop leagues (it's optional in obblm))

- Does the rule fit the fluff? (This will mostly affect proposed rosters - Space Marines for example do not exist in the Blood Bowl world). The fluff isn't important to everybody, but Blood Bowl is a "fantasy" game so stuff outside of a fantasy setting wouldn't feel right.

- For new roster suggestions: Is the roster sufficiently unique? (A roster that can be described as "Orcs, but tougher and slower" might be too extreme and not really "feel" new)

I think the threshold for a rule change should be high, but not so high that it's impossible to even consider fixing some of the real issues with the Blood Bowl ruleset. And we can all admit that there are some issues. Just think about the house rules that your local league uses - every one of those is because someone saw a problem and proposed a solution.


Incidentally, people are holding up Chess as a model of consistency. But that's unfair to Blood Bowl, Chess is centuries old and there have been many rule changes during that history. Queens used to only be able to move one square diagonally. The rule allowing pawns to move two squares as their first move was added in the 15th century. En Passant was a controversial "house rule" for a long time. Even in the 20th century, different chess bodies have argued about the 50-move rule. White moving first was only defined in 1889.


So to put it annoyingly simply, I expect that a new BBRC would occasionally introduce sensible rules to fix real problems, and filter out anything which does not.

[Waldorf28]

Fascinating points about Chess - thanks for sharing .

[PercyTheTroll]

For background before tackling the point at hand. I commission a small Cyanide League of mostly new or lapsed Blood Bowlers. We're likely to stick to Cyanide despite it's flaws.

There are two ways for the NAF to handle this:

1) You publish an addendum to the CRP with standard house rules for NAF tournaments. This can be as simple (define how a resurrection tournament works) or complicated (wholesale rule and roster changes) as you like. This will likely impact only the TT Tournament scene and possibly some TT Leagues and FUMBBL Leagues.

2) You publish LRB 7. In an ideal world you get Cyanide (and FUMBBL) onboard during early development of BB2 (ship has sailed) to ensure consistency across the rulesets. You can then do anything you want within the same basic mechanics.

I would prefer option 2. Obviously that involves dealing with Cyanide and narrows your flexibility with the new rules (they have to be codable within the game engine) but it would ensure that the BB community split between TT and Online doesn't get any wider. Like it or not, Cyanide's game was great advertising for the community and TT scene and you risk losing the benefit of that by striking out on your own. But by not being involved in any new ruleset you exclude TT players of great experience from the decision making which seems daft.

Good luck, I really hope you can find a way to get Cyanide involved and build the community.

[Joemanji]

Mike, maybe you should quote Paul's original post for tone? It seemed to me that this thread has moved a little ways from the 'in reality what do you see a BBRC doing?' as I understood it.

The thread has morphed into a right/wrong of NTBB. What changes people would like to see has merit, but was not the thread's intention.

I am genuinely interested in how people could see a rules committee working in practice (NAF or otherwise) and who it would effect. Can I perhaps steer us back to that?

I consider that Cyanide will do exactly as they want and TT tourney rules seem pretty balanced. So wouldn't a new BBRC would have pretty limited scope?

Are we really suggesting getting the best minds in BB together from TT, Cyanide and FUMBBL, to discuss rosters and core rules, only for Cyanide to ignore it completely and tourneys to have a couple of new or slightly amended rosters? Because if so, a BBRC might only really benefit FUMBBL (and they are more than capable of making any tweaks themselves).

[VoodooMike]

I should open by saying that I don't think a new BBRC is a good idea. I think the NAF should take a firm stance on how its own sanctioned tournaments are played (more firm than they have thus far) and that they should lay out clear guidelines on how they do or do not accept new rosters, changes, new rules, etc... and follow those procedures when considering any widespread change in future. Does that require another BBRC? I suppose that's open for debate.

Who would a new set of rules affect (i.e. where would they be used)?

If you wanted a NAF-based BBRC to have any relevance they would have to be mandatory for all NAF sanctioned play. The primary reason Cyanide can push through changes is that they implement them and then your choice is to play with those changes or not play at all (in the context of their offering) so people give their changes a fair shake and see if they can live with them... and of course they can, because nothing dramatic has changed. Those changes then spread past the borders of Cyanide's direct influence by simple diffusion.

Who should be on the BBRC?

NAF is, ostensibly, run by a group of elected individuals... if this new BBRC is to be a part of the NAF then it should have a clear method for either election or appointment by elected NAF officials, and there should be systems in place to prevent it being filled with the same people constantly. I think the original BBRC suffered pretty terrible stagnation and groupthink.

How should the rule changes be decided?

There should be rigid, public guidelines set out for this sort of thing, and the NAF BBRC should be required to adhere to those... with progressive levels of consent required depending on how dramatic a change it is (simple majority for small things, unanimous consent for moderate things, possibly a NAF-member-wide vote for major things). No more BBRC oligarchy crap.

I think there is a distinction between TT and online players, or those who play online exclusively would maybe be more accurate. TT players show ther commitment to the game by spending time and money to get places to play leagues, pay 'club fees', buy tournament tickets, spend money on accomodation for tournaments, etc. I'm not saying that online players do not spend some money but there may well be those who got Cyanide for 2.99 and FUMBBL is free (though you should own a copy of the game). An online player can dip in and out which to my mind means that by and large those exclusively online players will tend to be less committed to the wider BB community.

Oh yes, this! In fact, I think we should go back to a democratic system in which people need to be land owners to vote, too... I mean, why should people who aren't tied to the land be trusted to vote? They could pick up and leave at any time.

Dirty vagrants... the lot of 'em!

If online can't (Cyanide) or won't (Fumbbl, at least in the past) then....

...then it's a wasted effort. TT-based playtesting is a ridiculous joke... it's anecdotal bullcrap and relying on it is going to produce nothing better than the original material. It is the deep rooted problem that BB has had for ages, and if that's all we're going to get this go-'round then things should be left just the way they are.

Online is required for progress because it is required for proper data acquisition. The litmus test for a successful change is not "it feels good" because that's every damned change anyone makes when playtested in a social environment. Places like Cyanide can make changes and then they get playtested to death because nobody needs to convince anyone to play it... it's right there, and you just play it. You'd need Cyanide or FUMBBL to sign on for that ahead of time, or the NAF would have to field their own online system.

[koadah]

You'd need Cyanide or FUMBBL to sign on for that ahead of time, or the NAF would have to field their own online system.

Fumbbl's code is closed and only has one dev for the client and one for the website as far as I know.

It could be a bit slow getting changes coded.

Here are some chaps who seem in need of something to do.

[macabeo]

The only reason that a rules committee is necessary is if they are at least considering some rules changes. There are a lot of people suggesting stuff, I see the role of a new BBRC as the same as the old BBRC - to filter out the chaff and periodically (every year or two) publish a rules update.

I think that the most valuable start would be to define a threshold for any rules change (such as a new roster, or defining Illegal Procedure as an optional rule, or whatever). A lot of players are very much against any change, and will need to be convinced that any rules committee will act responsibly.

Something like:

- Does the proposed rule improve the game? (If not, it should be rejected immediately)

- Is the rule balanced? (If a new roster is too powerful, or a new rule favors or nerfs a few races disproportionately, that's a problem)

- Is there broad support for the rule? (Thousands of players have played the Khorne team in Chaos Edition, at least hundreds more in tabletop leagues (it's optional in obblm))

- Does the rule fit the fluff? (This will mostly affect proposed rosters - Space Marines for example do not exist in the Blood Bowl world). The fluff isn't important to everybody, but Blood Bowl is a "fantasy" game so stuff outside of a fantasy setting wouldn't feel right.

- For new roster suggestions: Is the roster sufficiently unique? (A roster that can be described as "Orcs, but tougher and slower" might be too extreme and not really "feel" new)

I think the threshold for a rule change should be high, but not so high that it's impossible to even consider fixing some of the real issues with the Blood Bowl ruleset. And we can all admit that there are some issues. Just think about the house rules that your local league uses - every one of those is because someone saw a problem and proposed a solution.

Well put, I agree with this.

- Who would a new set of rules affect? Ideally everybody, both TT and online, although it may be too late for Cyanide to accept/comply/colaborate. I'm happy that the release of BB2 is probably going to put things in motion, it's such a pity that the initiative wasn't taken when the metagame began feeling somewhat stale (around Chaos Edition, I'd say).

- Who should be on the BBRC? Tough question, very subjective. I nominate Purplegoo and/or Happygrue from FUMBBL because they are excellent coaches with a very positive and constructive outlook, and maybe some dissenting voice like Pakulkan and some experienced member like Galak. Whether JJ should be in or not is very very controversial in my opinion... maybe if this brings the community closer to GW, I guess...

- How should the rule changes be decided? See quoted text above.

Edit: Emphasis should be put on game design regarding rule changes. Boardgaming has evolved a lot during these last few years, and BB should learn from it to become a better game. Nothing too drastic, just a more consistent approach:

- Identify and rank shortcomings in terms of detrimental impact.
- Propose different fixes per issue and compare them, with their pros and cons.
- Adopt the best (least bad) solution.

[VoodooMike]

Fumbbl's code is closed and only has one dev for the client and one for the website as far as I know.

It could be a bit slow getting changes coded.

Your two dev-like people's problem isn't that it's too much work for two people, it's that they don't give a shit 99% of the time. I'm sure that sounds harsh, but project fatigue and lost interest is something you can see a mile away, and something I've experienced myself. Neither is eagerly active in the community, only popping up once in a while... and when things get done, they get done in small bursts, then there's radio silence for long periods of time.

Getting bored developers to do work involves finding their motivators, and often that's just vanity. Sounds like a sann0638 thing, to me.

Here are some chaps who seem in need of something to do.

Talkers talk, Doers do. That thread isn't going to lead anywhere, and (in my ever-so-humble experience) people who talk at length about something they might do are probably never going to get around to doing it. Multiply that by the number of other people in the discussion, as "well, I'll just wait for the other guy to get things started..." helps spread the inaction around even better, and you've got... well... the usual.

If the NAF wanted to field their own online BB system they've (theoretically) got the resources needed to make it happen. Even if they can't find one or more people who are interested in making it for them, they collect yearly membership dues. I have a hard time imagining they're spending all of it on "administrative fees" (read: pizza and beer).

[koadah]

It's unlike you to be harsh Mike.

People do have lives though. Priorities change.

I think that some members would have a fit if the NAF leadership tried to spend hard cash on online gaming.

[Chris]

Depends, how good are they at Poker?

[VoodooMike]

People do have lives though. Priorities change.

I'm not objecting to that fact and I'm not putting them down for it - I'm simply pointing out that FUMBBL's developers are not actively interested in FUMBBL. I don't think they're going to ditch it, or do no work on it ever, just that the interest the FUMBBL community has in further development of FUMBBL is not shared by the people who can actually implement that development. Many of you try to spin the "do nothing" approach as being philosophical in nature, but I'm quite certain that isn't the case.

FUMBBL had, for a long time, a monopoly on online BB - while diehard members of that community like to claim its the best-of-the-best, it was mostly just the only-of-the-only. Combined with project fatigue, that resulted in an unwillingness to do any real work on anything, and FUMBBL was stuck on LRB4... until Cyanide came around with its LRB5 implementation and being the only game in town wasn't enough to keep things going strong, which resulted in actual development being done to get FUMBBL up to date, rules wise. That's straight out vanity-powered action, which I can totally relate to - I've been in that position myself in the past with projects. The point is that we know what holds FUMBBL's development back, and what gets the gears moving again.

If people want FUMBBL to be involved in something, they're going to need to push the right buttons to make that happen.

I think that some members would have a fit if the NAF leadership tried to spend hard cash on online gaming.

As opposed to what... spending it on nothing? I seem to recall that the NAF collects quite a bit more than it spends on anything. Let "some members" have fits - some members will have fits over the NAF entertaining any rules changes. Some will have fits over them not doing so. You can't please everybody all the time, so you might as well do the best you can in the process of being yelled at.