- Posts: 228
- Joined: Thu May 03, 2012 4:03 pm
Reed wrote:The rules are actually clear and explicit about this. There is no room for interpretation.
Dungeonbowl rules, page 3, "TELEPORTING":
"When a player moves onto a pad, roll a D6. The player is immediately teleported to the pad with the same number."
"When a player moves onto a pad". That is, when they voluntarily step onto a pad or when they are pushed there. Not when they do something or anything while standing on a pad. Not while they have something or anything done to them while standing on a pad. Not blocking or being blocked on a pad.
Cyanide's decisions on this, conscious or incidental to the program code implementation, are not interpretations. They are rule changes.
It is a great pity Cyanide has not explicitly, clearly and above all comprehensively listed their rule changes anywhere. They could still help us the players out a great deal by doing just that. Cyanide, if you are listening, could you please create a list of the Cyanide Dungeonbowl rule differences from the two Games Workshop rule books on the game web site? I'm sure active volunteers will appear to help you with the work if you need them, but it is you who would need to get the ball rolling.
Actually, when in comes to Cyanide documentation about teleportation, the game manual has this to say on page 35:
"Teleporters
There are teleporters in a dungeon. A player need only step on one to use it"
That is all that is said about it and you are told to see the Games Workshop rules for further information. This means there should be no teleporting on blocks even according to Cyanide's own documentation. So the current situation is not just a rule change, it is an undocumented rule change. Fun times.
Like all parts of the dungeonbowl rules I'd say that the rules on this aren't definitive - movement is explicitly discussed, but nothing is said as to how actions such as blocking. We interpret the lack of mention of these actions as that they do not active the teleporter - whereas cyanide have decided to rule that actions do active the teleporter.
I am as annoyed with cyanide as the next coach over rules errors which they've made in bloodbowl and haven't corrected over the last 3 years that the game has been out - but in the case of designing dungeonbowl I think the "fault" is more with games workshop for not producing a comprehensive and detailed ruleset rather than the essay which we currently have. Cyanide have had to work out precise rules for a lot of ambiguous situations which are not covered in the rules essay - while I may disagree with the interpretations that they've made I don't think that most of them have been rules changes, but more writing rules where none existed before.