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[KingZog3]

I haven't played dominion in a while, but my opinion was that the counter was handy in games with no alt vp, because it just facilitated an already easy job. But it shouldn't be shown with alt vp cards since they are hard to count, making it a valuable skill. Same goes with masquerade games.

[LastFootnote]

If you want no log at all and no point counter, we can remove the numbers indicating how low a pile is removed aswell. Not sure about tracking you draw pile in the rule, but that could go away aswell then I guess.

That would make it obviously more random, but if that's what the majority wants...

The game rules allow you to count your draw pile, opponents' draw piles, and supply piles (but you can't look at each of the cards in the Knights or Ruins piles). You can't count your discard or look through it unless a card tells you to do so (Phil Stone, Scavenger, Hermit)

The bolded part is incorrect. You are not allowed to count other players' draw piles.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Do the purists feel the crushing guilt from all those times they looked at their opponent's deck count on Dominion Online? Think about how naughty you've all been.

[LastFootnote]

Do the purists feel the crushing guilt from all those times they looked at their opponent's deck count on Dominion Online? Think about how naughty you've all been.

I enjoy being able to see my opponents' deck counts, but I wouldn't say it's crucial to my enjoyment of the game.

I have to assume that the point of the rule is so that you don't bog IRL games down by making other players count their decks. Online that's not an issue.

[AdamH]

If you want no log at all and no point counter, we can remove the numbers indicating how low a pile is removed aswell. Not sure about tracking you draw pile in the rule, but that could go away aswell then I guess.

That would make it obviously more random, but if that's what the majority wants...

The game rules allow you to count your draw pile, opponents' draw piles, and supply piles (but you can't look at each of the cards in the Knights or Ruins piles). You can't count your discard or look through it unless a card tells you to do so (Phil Stone, Scavenger, Hermit)

The bolded part is incorrect. You are not allowed to count other players' draw piles.

Aroo?

So I'll attach an image of the relevant part of the base set rulebook, and quote it here. The main section says

A player is allowed to count how many cards are left in his Deck, but not in his Discard pile. A player may not look through his Deck or his Discard pile. A player may look through the Trash pile, and players may count the number of cards left in any pile in the Supply.

Then the sidebar says

Players may count cards in Decks and Supply piles and may look at cards in Trash.

Seems relatively clear to me that this last part gives permission to count the cards in all decks, including opponents' decks. I don't remember any other ruling on this, but maybe I'm wrong.

[pacovf]

Pretty sure text in the main section takes precedence over text in the sidebar, and the main section clearly only allows to count your own deck.

[AdamH]

Pretty sure text in the main section takes precedence over text in the sidebar, and the main section clearly only allows to count your own deck.

The whole thing from that other thread is that if the rules allow you to do it, you can, otherwise you can't. The main part doesn't say you can't count other peoples' decks, and then the sidebar says you can. So you can. The main part and sidebar don't seem to contradict each other at all.

[Seprix]

Nah, Adam. It sounds like each player is allowed to count his own deck. I see no express permission to count other decks. Why does everyone have to be a lawyer and get the rules their way?:p

[Mic Qsenoch]

when playing with real cards do you HAVE to keep your discard pile face up and show the top card?

Yes.

Computer implementations are obv. necessarily going to be variants. You don't want to have to choose the order that you discard everything in clean-up for example, it would suck. Showing the deck sizes in a computer version seems fine. IRL I have a general idea, and the reason not to let you count is just to not waste time.

Here's some relevant quote from Donald in a thread which asks about counting the opponent's deck. The answers in that thread are "you can't count opponent's deck".

[AdamH]

All righty then, the word of DXV is binding. Though I went through this whole schtick once before IRL and we all agreed that the rulebook said you could count the cards in your opponent's deck. I mean, I'd argue that the letter of the rulebook allows it but that doesn't matter, you can't do that.

Usually the only thing I care about is a rough percentage of how far they are through their shuffle. I've never asked for a count of my opponent's cards in an IRL game before.

[Haddock]

All righty then, the word of DXV is binding. Though I went through this whole schtick once before IRL and we all agreed that the rulebook said you could count the cards in your opponent's deck. I mean, I'd argue that the letter of the rulebook allows it but that doesn't matter, you can't do that.

Usually the only thing I care about is a rough percentage of how far they are through their shuffle. I've never asked for a count of my opponent's cards in an IRL game before.

You'll get a rough percentage anyway, just at a glance.  I doubt Donald X would suggest that you're not allowed to look at your opponent's deck from across the table; you'd get such information accidentally even if you were trying not to look.

[jsh357]

I usually bribe people in to counting their decks for me

[Witherweaver]

All righty then, the word of DXV is binding. Though I went through this whole schtick once before IRL and we all agreed that the rulebook said you could count the cards in your opponent's deck. I mean, I'd argue that the letter of the rulebook allows it but that doesn't matter, you can't do that.

Usually the only thing I care about is a rough percentage of how far they are through their shuffle. I've never asked for a count of my opponent's cards in an IRL game before.

You could argue that "You can count cards in decks." is a true statement when you are allowed to count Deck1 but not Deck2 through DeckN. 

[Seprix]

I usually bribe people in to counting their decks for me

Offering someone a card costing up to $ isn't a 'bribe', Jsh.

[drsteelhammer]

If you want no log at all and no point counter, we can remove the numbers indicating how low a pile is removed aswell. Not sure about tracking you draw pile in the rule, but that could go away aswell then I guess.

That would make it obviously more random, but if that's what the majority wants...

The game rules allow you to count your draw pile, opponents' draw piles, and supply piles (but you can't look at each of the cards in the Knights or Ruins piles). You can't count your discard or look through it unless a card tells you to do so (Phil Stone, Scavenger, Hermit)

Yes- and Goko+MF do it for you. You are allowed to count the Provinces you bought- but they could do it for you too!

But the physical components of the game do not have the obligation to aid you in counting what you've bought since the rules don't specify that obligation as part of the "contract". If the game game you pencil and paper for stuff like that or a slider or simply stated that you can use such tools acquired elsewhere, then Goko-MF would be obliged to give you a deck tracker as well.

Counting supply piles and draw decks with the aid of the physical stuff to count is in the rules, but picking up the discard pile to look through it is not. Neither is being allowed to keep track of deck contents with anything besides your mental capabilities.

Having a deck tracker is therefore a variant, though one that comes close to the variant we already have online. Having a full log available but not a deck tracker seems like an arbitrary  design choice to make it more difficult for one track their deck, though less difficult then it would be IRL because of the full log. What keeps people from tracking decks online with pencil and paper is their limited patience, really.

My comment was a bit misleading because I didn't mean to say they are the same, I just wanted to compare them because I feel like they are similar.

Yes, you are allowed in IRL games to count the supply piles and possibly not write down how many VP everybody has, I agree. But if someone I play with counts all the supply piles every three turns, chances are I'm not going to play with them very often because I don't want a game of Dominion which is two hours long and I don't even do anything most of the time. Of course it is no problem for me if somebody counts some piles when it gets closer to the ending, but you get my point.

Now in the Online Version they always count for you. They don't have to do that but I admit an interface where you could count yourself would just be obnoxious. I think the VP counter does something similar. IRL, you can only "remember" how many cards are bought by the different people, but in my experience the only consequence is that I play more slowly. From my point of view, it is not really a skill to track how many provinces or alt-VP cards each player has. If there is an essential card in the supply, I will know the split aswell since its important. If a supply pile is at 8 cards, I can remember whether I have 0, 1 or 2. I have no problem with that. But when I have a log, I can play faster and be a bit more "reckless" since I have the information backed up.

So to me this is what I mean with that it is a similar issue: Goko counts the card, so you don't have to do that. It's not really a skill, so it would just take time. And I think almost exactly the same about tracking the cards.

[markusin]

^ You're not wrong. The question is where to draw the line with what information the interface provides. I honestly don't have an answer to that, and so I am ambivalent to the whole point/deck tracker debate in terms of what should in principle be allowed. It seems natural to me to just have a static rulebook deem what is and isn't allowed. Dominion Online has shown that it isn't bound by what is allowed and not allowed in the rules. Apparently you can't count your opponent's deck. Gosh, I've been using Goko's interface to do that.

We don't have a rulebook specific to Dominion Online, so now we have room to argue what should and shouldn't be allowed. It's an argument worth having I suppose. Personally, I'd be satisfied with any ruling on the contested issues of deck tracking.

[Stefan_k]

I miss the time on ISO when you could see which cards you had in your deck. I would like to add to that to also see what cards are still in my draw pile.

[Witherweaver]

I miss the time on ISO when you could see which cards you had in your deck. I would like to add to that to also see what cards are still in my draw pile.

And my opponent's hand.

[markusin]

I miss the time on ISO when you could see which cards you had in your deck. I would like to add to that to also see what cards are still in my draw pile.

Wasn't that an extension?

[blueblimp]

I miss the time on ISO when you could see which cards you had in your deck. I would like to add to that to also see what cards are still in my draw pile.

Wasn't that an extension?

Yep. On Goko, it would actually have been easier (arguably) to do draw pile tracking than on isotropic. I did some testing around the launch and found that you could hook into when cards are transferred between different locations in the interface, eliminating the need for log parsing entirely, which is nice. On isotropic, I think that to do draw pile tracking, the log alone would not be enough (unlike for deck tracking), and you'd need to look at current hand contents also and combine the information.

I miss the time on ISO when you could see which cards you had in your deck. I would like to add to that to also see what cards are still in my draw pile.

And my opponent's hand.

I assume you're joking here, but an interesting thing about draw pile tracking is that it's not symmetric, in the sense that there's enough information available to know your own draw pile contents exactly, but it's not even possible to know the exact combined contents of your opponent's draw pile and hand. The reason is that not all cards are revealed when discarding.

This has a practical consequence that makes draw pile tracking problematic. The isotropic deck tracker extension and Salvager's point counter both provide the same information to you and your opponent, so that it's fair even if your opponent can't run the extension for some reason (like if they don't use a compatible browser). Since draw pile tracking is asymmetric, you simply have no way to tell your opponent what's in their draw pile, because you don't know. This means that if your opponent weren't running a draw pile tracker extension, there'd be no way to provide both players the same amount of tracking.

That's one reason that I didn't pursue trying to write a draw pile tracker extension for Goko. (The other is that it's a decent amount of work, and not very fun work, apart from the initial reverse engineering.)