My girlfriend and I recently got into an argument over the wording on Victoria Glasser.

"Forced Response: After Victoria Glasser enters play, choose a character. That character goes insane."

She wanted to target a character with Willpower (i.e., Local Sheriff) to go insane, but I argued that he can't go insane because of Willpower. Her argument was that if that was the case, it would say on the card "That characater goes insane, if able."

What is the general feeling on this?

AUCodeMonkey said:

"If able" is a generally confusing term, that means 'if the effect can't be resolved entirely, not of the effect resolves.' - But let's not go there, it has little to do with your question.

Victoria Glasser can't turn a character with willpower insane. Willpower will prevent it.

Oh, and well, "if able" would mean the entire effect wouldn't resolve if your girlfriend tried, not that it matters.

She'll need "the night" or "keeper of dreams" or other blanking effects to get around willpower...

Thanks for the quick response! I assumed that's what it meant (or rather, that's what my inner Munchkin wanted it to mean at the time!), but I wanted to get an outside opinion. I assume that would go for a character with Terror icons? She couldn't make those insane either?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just realized that this was a dumb follow on question. Thanks again for the help!

AUCodeMonkey said:

I don't know what conclusion you made for yourself... but no, she can't either. Although often Enchanted Forest can fix this.

Victoria is pretty good, if you bring the right tool to circumvent the difficulty of turning characters insane...

Actually, the wording of Victoria Glasser is VERY well defined. In fact, there's almost no reason for it to be a Forced Response as opposed to a Response.

1) Choose a character. You can choose any character in play. Doesn't matter if they have willpower, terror icons, etc.

2) That character goes insane. If you've picked a character with willpower or terror, no biggie, they just don't go insane. Victoria could, for example, be the only character in play and she could target herself.

Now, if the wording were: "Choose a character to go insane", she'd have to be able to pick a target that was legal to go insane, and if none were available, she'd not be able to come into play. So it's ALMOST like having it be just a response and not a forced response. The reason it is forced, I imagine, is so that it has the Disrupt timing on it instead of the Response timing.

There is a section of the FAQ on Eligible Targets (Sorry I can't cut and paste right now sigh...). It says:

In order to target a card with an effect that card must meet the targeting requirements. Any part of the effect for which that character (it should say target) is ineligible is simply ignored. For example, with Brain Transplant you may target one insane character and one ready character who are both controlled by the same player as per targeting requirements. If the ready character has willpower or a terror icon, it is ineligible for the second part of the card's effect, (the ready character goes insane) so that part of the effect is ignored.

Well, we actually have the same argument on the Cenacle, and I have a problem with this ...

So, anytime the gamedeveloppers miss a point or produce a wording which is not semanticaly correct, it will mean a totally different effect ?

I've always played Victoria so she couldnt target willpo or T iconed characters. She could'nt even target herself.

If we play it like you said, it meant you won't have any drawback in case it's not in your favor .... Thus I do understand your point, which seems correct, I really disagree with such nitpicking rules which tend to make the game more and more confusing.

Yeah she's definitely a strange card. As she stands now, there's very little reason for her to be a forced response since rarely will you be forced to target yourself with it. The only examples I can think of is if there is an effect in play that keeps Terror icons from preventing insanity and your opponent having no cards in play when you play her, or only characters with Willpower. A very unlikely occurance, but possible I guess.

Also, just for reference, the mistaken wording I listed above (where they should have said target instead of character) doesn't open up the ruling this way. The mistake in the FAQ could suggest that it doesn't apply to non character targets. You'd have to really REALLY *REALLY* misunderstand the wording and argue your case but I can see how it could be misconstrued that way.

So I popped on over to Cenacle, but I can't find the discussion in question. I was hoping to read some good stuff. Got a link?

I went digging through the FAQ a bit more, trying to find something that would suggest that no, this isn't legal, and the "theme" behind the card was what should be used. (I think most of us agree that it seems this card was intended to have it be a limiting effect, i.e. if theres no legal target for insanity she can't be played).

Unfortunately, all I was able to find was more stuff that suggests that she can in fact target herself. For example, under the "Multiple Effects and the word Then" section of the FAQ, we have the Y'Golonac example of "pay 1 to choose and ready a character. That character must..." They mention that since these are not linked by "then" that the first and second parts happen independently.

I think the lack of the "if able" section also might suggest that they intender her to be able to target herself due to the section in the FAQ that talks about having to choose a valid option for an if able clause if it exists. Something like (sorry, I'm typing this up w/o the FAQ in front of me) "if a player must choose between "if able" targets, he may not choose an option that has no eligible target unless an alterntive with an eligible target doesn't exist" (I'm pretty sure I got the wording wrong, but the idea right)

And, for reference, I want her to work the way that PRODIGEE suggests she should. I just can't find a rulebook reason for it.

PRODIGEE said:

KallistiBRC seems to be mostly right, though. There is a huge difference between 'choose a character to go insane' and 'choose a character. That character goes insane.'

If Victoria had "forced response: choose a character to go insane." that wouldn't mean that she couldn't be played if the condition wasn't met. It just means the forced response can't trigger. It also means that if you have any character on your side that can go insane, you'd have to choose that one - and since it's worded as a 'cost' type effect, you can't choose an opponents' character either!

Marius said:

The conclusion I'd come to was that it worked the same way for Willpower that it did for Terror icons in that she could not make that character insane. I kind of view this now like Hastur's ability: "Pay 3 and choose a character. That character goes insane." You can't make someone with Willpower or T icons go crazy with that ability either, since it's worded the same way. Otherwise, he'd be WAY overpowered, as would Victoria Glasser.

KallistiBRC said:

You could take the Y'Golonac example and push it even further. The final page of the FAQ also states that you can select a ready character to "choose and ready", meaning the "and ready" portion does not resolve. Even within the framework of that specific statement, separated only by the word "and", they allow you to apply each effect independently.

Would that not also apply if the wording were something akin to, "Forced Response: When Victoria Glasser enters play, choose a character and make them go insane?" It appears as though they've given you permission to choose a character and ignore the "and make them go insane" part should it not be possible or convenient. Or does it work differently as it's a forced response that occurs when she enters play, and should it not fully resolve she's not otherwise allowed to be played? I recall seeing that in the FAQ somewhere, but now I can't track it down ...

Deek said:

•Y'Golonac, The Obscenity
-
Type : Character
Cost : 4
Skill : 4
Icons : TTCA
Subtype : Ancient One.
Game Text: Villainous. Invulnerability. Action: Pay 1 to choose and ready a character. That character must commit to the same story as Y'Golonac, if able.
Flavor text:
Illustrator: Derk Venneman
Collector's Info: Core Set F122

Y'Go works, because the first part simply fails. If it had a "Then that character..." the first part will fail, and the part after the 'then' would not resolve because of it.

Deek said:

That would be different. If the effect was worded that way, you'd have to pick something to go insane for the effect to be satisfied, and you must choose an eligable character if it's available.

Deek said:

You're not 'ignoring' the ability, you are causing it to fail. Same end result though.

Remember, the forced response part isn't part of you playing Victoria, it's an effect that happens after you do succesfully play her.

Ooookay! I think I get it, now. I've been out of the CCG scene for quite some time, my left and right hemispheres are firing out of sync. Need to scrape the rust off the ol' critical thinking skills.

This discussion reminds me why I've never managed to get anyone interested for long into playing CCGs: There are just too many fine points in the rules. Unless you're learning the game from something who's intensively studied every rule and card text, you're never going to get everything right.

And since it's a competitive game you're extremely likely to always lose to such a person, so that'll usually end in frustration, too.

This is all too frigging complicated!

I don't think I'm a dummy regarding my ability to figure out game rules, but this is really bordering on the ridiculous.

Arkham Horror is definitely orders of magnitudes easier to learn and play correctly.

What the CoC LCG needs to be a real success, imho is a set of 'beginner cards'. Currently, you get ultra-complex cards right out of the core set. That's just not the way to pave the road for a game that is appealing for a majority of gamers. I know this is because the game didn't 'start' as an LCG, but it's frustrating, nonetheless.

I can certainly appreciate that sentiment. It is unfortunate that the very nature of these games themselves allow for (and encourage) all sorts of interpretations. Basically, it's like this: "Here's a game, these are the rules, but there are no pieces. Here, here are the pieces. Each piece, breaks a different rule in a different way, but that's ok, cuz that's a rule too. Good luck!"

I actually taught the game last week to a new player. He used one of my decks against my playing another of my decks. We ran through the rules pretty quickly, without going into all the finer details of edge cases and stuff like that. During the play of the game, there were lots of times some of these edge case rules came up. To keep him interested in the game and hopefully wanting to get his own cards and play more was to just ignore it all. When he'd do something that was actually against one of the "fine detail / nitpicky" rules , I'd just let it happen (making a note of it on a piece of paper for later) in whatever way he had interpreted it to work. If it was a larger common rule (such as trying to play a normal action / response during story resolution) I'd correct that.

Then, after the game, I went through all the "nitpick" rules. This let us play a fun game, w/o all the "Oh wait, sorry, you can't do that" that just spoils the flow and fun of the first games. The end result was he won a few, lost a few, and enjoyed the game enough to grab a Core Set on the way out (we played at a local game store).

I guess the short of it is that the tricky rule situations and interpretations can just be ignored for the sake of fun until you get into more serious play levels.

I suppose a saving grace is the fact that the majority of cards play as one would expect, at first glance. The "edge case rules" (as you put it, great term btw) seem to be relatively rare compared to the total number of cards in play. As a new player, I both appreciate and fear the complexity in equal measure. That being said, I enjoy games like Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Arkham Horror and other excursions that require rule books an inch thick and errata a mile long. Someone attempting to break into an LCG from a less rules intensive gaming environment would likely run screaming from the room.

KallistiBRC said:

To me this seems to indicate it would be nice if the game effects could be split into a 'basic effect' and an 'expert effect'. The 'expert effect' are only used once you've got a good grasp of the 'basic effects'.

To elaborate a bit on my previous post:

I've recently made a comparison of CCG templating and templating in the D&D 4e RPG powers. Imho, there's a fundamental difference in the templating goals of both games. In D&D 4e the game designers and developers wanted to make sure you could play the game without 'system mastery'. Thus they strife for transparency and clarity in all their descriptions. Also this is a cooperative game.

In a CCG there appears to be an element of the metagame that involves tracking down inconsistencies in the templating that are easy to overlook. What in D&D would probably be a templating error seems to be fully intentional in a CCG. By omitting or replacing a single word in an otherwise identical description the effect becomes something completely different. This obfuscation of card effects promotes system mastery which is probably a goal in a (highly) competitive environment. It's part of the fun and the success strategy to search for such oddities when creating a deck to hopefully gain an advantage over an opponent who overlooked the inconsistency or didn't realize its implications.

One problem that kind of spoils the fun, though, is templating that is actually wrong. Unfortunately, this has been quite frequent in the recent APs. I'm really hoping for better quality control in the future expansions. I mean, I have to trust the game designers' know what they're doing. It's not a good thing at all if I get the impression the designers' don't know their own game...

I really enjoy the game despite its flaws, but I wished it was more accessible.

jhaelen said:

I agree with most everything in your last post except for this line. True, there are some who do try and approach the game this way and hope for a few wins in this manner. I think, however, that the vast majority of rules questions on these forums come from a situation that comes in game that neither person had previously thought of. Like the Guardian Pillar thread... It came up due to somebody actually having a support card destruction card and wanting to play it after the ability had been used. Then it was a "Hmmm how does this work?" situation. I do agree, however, that it tends to spoil the game when people search for little rules here and there, or a mistaken inconsistency in the card print and then take advantage of it.