Govern(superior) and other Ventrue questions.

LOL, OK I understand your concern but a couple of things to keep in mind; it was 2002 and the rules back then stated that a player was entitled to "choose the means of their demise" so self-ousting wasn't technically illegal if the player felt then couldn't pick up any more vps.

Conceding a table (as per a deal for example) wouldn't be made illegal for a few more years at that point. And it was a storyline event.

Everybody else at the event knew each other quite well from prior events and 'hang out' vtes weekends. So the expectation, believe it or not, was to try to court this new group of players.

Since I was still a new coordinator at the time, I deferred to the other, longtime city princes in attendance (there were 3) and none advised to take a formal action (in fact the longest tenured of the group, when I asked if I should issue warnings, expressly advised NOT to, stating "you can't prove it" and it was just a storyline).

And we did co-organize another (constructed) event with this group, where the discussions were held upfront regarding what would and wouldn't be considered acceptable play... unfortunately that tournament was also marred by shenanigans from certain members of this group. Nothing you would term illegal play at the tables but other pettiness; they threatened to withdraw from en mass due to the start time being pushed back to accommodate out-of-town players who were running late, just as an example (there were other points of drama throughout the day).

Ultimately when the players from this group didn't perform very well in that tournament either, they essentially retreated back into the night and refused to play with the at large group any more (neither locally nor regionally).

Soonerborn wrote: Anyway only one member of this playgroup, playing euro-brujah, was tied for 5th going into the final and lost the die roll to get the final seat.

They colluded yet managed to NOT put a single player into the final...

I'm not really into touching other people's cards, as they may have cooties or worse ... unsleeved cards. So, I don't bother cutting anybody. People ask me about preventing cheating and my go to response these days is: I want my opponents to cheat, when I win it will just prove how much better a player I am. Maybe in life (say, poker or whatever) cheating matters, but this is a niche CCG.

V:TES cheating: just .. don't .. care.

Well said, just so. Again this was 15 years ago, I probably only remember it because I was very new to organizing. But that pretty much sums up the prevailing attitude of the day.

FWIW I've seen MANY more instances of judges allowing misplay (or failing to recognize or just getting the ruling flat wrong) than instances of outright cheating.

In my experience 'cheating' typically takes the form of casually 'forgetting' to pay the cost of some random mandatory card effect. Or trying to play superior with inferior minion. Sometimes it gets flagged right away and sometimes it doesn't (and I prefer to believe it's accidental more than intentional).

I know in the local group if you try to cheat outright (like bloating on a govern to a non-younger vamp), you'll get caught. And ridiculed relentlessly.

I've ousted with a superior Aire of Elation.... Played by Marcellus.

My prey was scooping before I looked down and started the "wait! Don't touch those cards!" Shuffle. I feel like the guy wanted to eat and scooped the next turn anyway, but still, I feel I've seen other people make similar misplays way more than diliberately cheat...

ur_vampire wrote: I think you misunderstood Lönka, I read his post as follow: HE will end the discussion for himself, not end the discussion in general.

I read it the same way, actually. It's annoying to me that Lönnka repeatedly insists on letting me know that he's no longer going to participate in the discussion, like his thoughts are such a precious touchstone for how the game of VTES works and my thoughts on the game don't dignify a response from him. That's fine if he doesn't want to discuss anymore, but he doesn't have to make a big annoying show about it.

ICL wrote:

Soonerborn wrote: Anyway only one member of this playgroup, playing euro-brujah, was tied for 5th going into the final and lost the die roll to get the final seat.

They colluded yet managed to NOT put a single player into the final...

I'm not really into touching other people's cards, as they may have cooties or worse ... unsleeved cards. So, I don't bother cutting anybody. People ask me about preventing cheating and my go to response these days is: I want my opponents to cheat, when I win it will just prove how much better a player I am. Maybe in life (say, poker or whatever) cheating matters, but this is a niche CCG.

V:TES cheating: just .. don't .. care.

Agree 100%. The play to win rules in tournaments are misguided in my opinion. The example of the "problematic" playgroup that showed up to a tournament posted earlier in this thread is a great example. I don't see that the playgroup did anything wrong. Perhaps the group is inexperienced, perhaps they find making reckless plays more fun than winning games, perhaps they were trying to prove a point that not playing for VPs messes up games, etc. I think that's just part of VTES, for better or worse. Having rules with lots of gray area to curb bad play/cheating/collusion is extremely problematic. It's a niche CCG. If you don't like that bad negligent players can affect the outcome of games to such a great extent, either do something in game to overcome it or play one of the roughly 857,273 other niche CCGs out there.