...because it never actually
lived.Years have been spent wasted on talking arguing over the merits of "
PC or no PC?" In the end, the result has been lots of talk, little action. To put it another way, all bark, no bite. Supposedly there is a "PC Website" up, but in a year it is still a mess of broken links and bad templates. Emails have been sent to Decipher but no headway has been made. Some people want change and some people don't. Some people still play and others left long ago. And on and on it goes. A notable exception to this is Tbiesty's work on an Unofficial Rulebook, which I hope we can use.
Why has the PC failed?- Lack of Official Sanction: We are all waiting for that magic day when Decipher says, "Good job, TLHH! We'll be more than happy to hand you the necessary licenses and support a LotR PC!" That day will never come. It came for SWCCG, perhaps, but that was before Decipher was crushed by financial scandal and became a company struggling to survive. The best thing I think we can hope for is that Decipher tolerates this site's existence. Any more would be pushing it.
- Lack of Leadership: Supposedly the committee should have a head, but who has ever agreed on who that head should be? Some people who may have been well qualified have joined TLHH from the outside, but couldn't get a real following because they were new to the community. And... not approved by Decipher.
- Incessant Quibbling: Errata or no errata? X-list or no X-list? Virtual cards or not? Official or not? So it goes.
What needs to be done differently?I propose that we do not necessarily need a "committee," but that we focus on building the LotR
community or
players group. We could still use leadership, but in the meantime:
Forget about being "THE" official PC.We have a little section of the internet here, a platform that we like to use (GCCG) and a few hundred people. Why worry about "controlling" LotR at-large when we can come to some agreements about how
we want to play? We can make a set of TLH
House Rules. If you play a game in real life and you want to go by TLHH Rules -- great! If not -- great! Play the game and enjoy it either way!
I remember when I was first playing LotR, I had no idea about errata. My friends and I played the way we thought we should. And even when we heard about the official X-list (ruining TS with bans on
NSttS and
HttWC for example), we just ignored it.
If we establish a TLHH/GCCG players group, my hope is that TLHH members will be happy to play with the house rules. But if a TLHH member plays with a non-TLHH member?
Fall back to the official format.
That being said, I think that now that we are hosting GCCG, we have lots of opportunities available to us. We have an official platform for TLHH play! GCCG gives the opportunity to use:
- Custom Formats: We've already seen this with the addition of a much-loved old format, Towers Standard, and a custom format, Pre-Shadows Multipath. I've heard players want to bring back "War of the Ring Standard" -- sets 4-13. We can do it! Changes to the R- or X-list? We can do it! The deck check takes care of the details.
- Errata: Errata is easy in GCCG. Press CTRL+H on a card and you will see its official text.
- Virtual Cards: We can easily add text-based virtual cards, and there may even be a way to have a card's new text overlay the official image so that no images are changed. As SW has done, we could take old cards and make improved, virtual versions. Say, Lightfootedness (V). Players could choose which one they want to play.
- Dream Sets!: Just the same! If we make the cards ourselves and respect copyright, we could add our own dream sets and actually play with them! At the very least, we have a text-based option.
Organization ideas:I think instead of having a "ruling committee," that it would be better to create small teams to facilitate design and discussion. Then, leave the final decision to the rest of the GCCG players themselves. Notice that when Thran, for example, creates dream cards in the Chamber of Marzabul, he takes feedback from the players and revises his original ideas? This is the process we want to see. I suggest something along the lines of:
- Movie Head: Person to help finalize Movie-Block based decisions (sets 1-10).
- Standard Head: Person to help finalize Standard based decisions (sets 7-19).
- Tournament Director: Person to organize contests and tournaments on GCCG.
- Deck Designer: Person to organize deck building contests and prizes.
- Rules Team: Group of 5-10 players to initiate new discussions on possible rules changes and consider community feedback.
- Dream Team: Group of 5-10 players to design the text of virtual cards and text or custom graphics of dream cards.
But that's just a quick sketch. Why do we need anything set in stone before we start? Start sharing some ideas and let's see what we can
do about them!
Topic: The PC isn't dead... (Read 2422 times)
