Alan Kwan#
Warning: article disputes official rulings
Thinking about the impact of restricting Reaction cards to one of each
type per action, in particular Surprise Influence, I went and
looked at the voting rules again, from that badly-written-but-not-
as-bad-as-revised rulebook. And, in page 39:
"A political card always provides one vote for the Methselah playing
it. This card is immediately replaced after being played."
Fine. This refers to the calling Methselah.
"Additional political cards can also be used by any of the other
Methselahs for votes. The actual effects of these cards are
ignored. Cards used in this way are discarded to the ash
heap and not replaced until the voting is finished."
Plural in "cards" (the first one). Normally, we would conclude
that each Methselah can play as many cards as he wants. But
why "any of the _other_ Methselahs"?
The above sentence is hopelessly ambiguous. There are at least
2 valid interpretations, _none_ of which corresponds to the
DTR:
(1) Each of the _other_ Methselahs can play additional political
cards for votes.
(2) Only one of the _other_ Methselahs can play additional
political cards for votes.
Though we know that (2) makes no sense. (1) has been proposed
and discussed on this newsgroup.
But look at the follwing sentence:
"In addition to the vote provided by the card played, you get ..."
[votes for vampire titles]
Note the singular for both "the vote" and "the card".
Could it be possible that it was intended that each Methselah
can get only one vote from Political cards during each vote?
Let's try to see if this interpretation (3) contradicts with
the preceeding statement:
Assumption:
Each Methselah can get only one vote from Political cards
during each vote.
Statement:
"Additional political cards can also be used by any of the other
Methselahs for votes."
Combine:
"Additional political cards can also be used by any of the other
Methselahs for votes, but each Methselah can play only one such
card."
- interpretation (3)
It reads alright. The plural in "cards", under this interpretation,
refer to a total of a plural number of cards being used by a plural
number of Methselahs.
Back to the first statement:
"A political card always provides one vote for the Methselah playing
it."
"A politcal card" providing one vote. Not "each" political card.
So interpretation (3) does not contradict here, either. One possible
paraphase (according to WotC rules-editing standards):
"A Methselah gets one vote by playing a political card."
This may well be what the sentence intended to say, without the
"each" overtone.
If the limitation of only one political card being useable by each
Methselah was intended, this would explain the use of the
term "any of the _other_ Methselah", because of the (albeit
not totally correct) assumption that the calling Methselah has
already played one card.
This interpretation would also balance the fact that (as suggested
by some of the net.personality; unofficial) only one of each type of
reaction (such as Dread Gaze and Surprise Influence) can be used
during a vote, while multiple political action cards can be used.
--
"Live Life with Heart."
Alan Kwan kw...@cs.cornell.edu