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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Taking Notes - Against the Rules?

« on: February 06, 2019, 11:43:29 pm »

However, it makes complete sense that you're not allowed to take notes because it's an issue relevant to gameplay and nothing in the rules says you can. That seems entirely obvious. Next, people will be asking if they're allowed to use the Zarrow shuffle, a matter on which the rulebook is equally silent!

But again, nothing in the rules says you can count things up out loud, or on your fingers—issues just as relevant to gameplay—yet the general consensus about those, unlike note-taking, seems to be that they're fine. Since the rulebook treats these two cases in exactly the same way, the distinction between them must follow not from the rulebook, but from common notions of the "default" rules applying to games. If games are considered by common custom to allow tabulation on the fingers unless specifically forbidden, but disallow note-taking unless specifically permitted, I understand how the silence of the rule book on these points can be interpreted in two opposite ways. Without reference to common custom or convention, I'm not sure how you would justify that*.

If the convention that note-taking is disallowed by default were truly universal, it would indeed seem to follow that a game of Dominion that lifts that restriction would have to be classified as a variant. There seem to be enough dissenters to this rule that I do not personally consider it one that truly goes without saying. Nonetheless, given that the game designer intended it to be a rule of his game regardless of one's conventions for other games, and has made these intentions clear, I'm coming around after all to the view that it should be considered a canonical rule of the game. I still don't know how to reconcile that with the official website billing the "variant" as "Dominion Online", however.

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*The exclusion of the Zarrow shuffle can be justified by appeal to common sense—we all know what the purpose of shuffling in games is, and that this purpose is not served by a false shuffle—but I don't think that the same can be said of the note-taking question, since either style of play results in a perfectly sensible game. I think it speaks well of Dominion that it doesn't need a memory aspect to make it interesting, even if it has one.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Taking Notes - Against the Rules?

« on: February 06, 2019, 04:51:06 pm »

Here's the thread where I convinced guided. GL on it working for you. It is not the kind of discussion worth having as many times as I have.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=876.0

I understand that. I didn't expect you to respond to my post in the first place. Since you cite your argument in that thread, I'll address why it doesn't convince me, but I don't expect you to necessarily respond again.

The argument that convinced guided was:

Dominion does have a memory element though. It is not a pure memory game, but there is a memory element. This mostly comes up with scoring, but is called out specifically by cards like Wishing Well.

It doesn't convince me because I think it begs the question: we agree that for anyone using a notepad or the like to track all the information he needs, the game does not have a memory element, while for anyone not using such an external tracker, it does, so the question of whether memory is an inherent element of the game is equivalent to the question of whether using a notepad vel sim. is allowed*. You can't support your answer by assuming it as a premise!

In any case, given that the officially licensed online implementation of Dominion, complete with score tracker and game log, is a "Dominion variant" by your definition, I can't quite understand your position. The site is not called playadominionvariantonline, after all. I should think endorsing its version of the game as the official implementation of Dominion™ would give that version at least equal status to any derived by inference from the rulebook that didn't bark in the night.
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*As far as I know, everything else about the game, if tracking information is permitted, remains perfectly sound, including Wishing Well. Even if you know the exact composition of your remaining deck, the choice of card to wish for is not always trivial.

3

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Taking Notes - Against the Rules?

« on: February 06, 2019, 01:37:36 pm »

With all due respect to the creator of this brilliant game, I have never agreed with this particular view of his. The thing is that he did not put the prohibition on taking notes in the rules, but considers it something that is disallowed by convention in any game until specifically allowed by the rules of that game. It follows that if you disagree with Mr. Vaccarino about the general convention (i.e., you would not apply it to a game that he had not designed), you equally disagree about its applicability to Dominion, since this is not one of Dominion's rules.

Rules, for all games, say what you are allowed to do within game contexts; they don't say what you aren't allowed to do, because that would be endless. Yes sometimes rules note a particular thing you aren't allowed to do because it's a common question.

I don't believe it's possible to use the prescription, "Do only what the rules explicitly allow" [hence, DOWREA] without at least implicitly referring to unwritten conventions. Tracking the game state is a case in point, as the very strictest application of DOWREA would imply that you can't even track the game state in your head (or, for that matter, even think about the game at all), since the rules have not explicitly provided for this. This is reductio ad absurdum, but I think it makes the point that DOWREA is not sufficient guidance on its own to settle questions like this. We reject the proposed restriction because of its absurdity—that is, its incompatibility with our shared norms—despite that it's not addressed in the written rules. Conversely, it's not addressed in those rules because it's a commonplace, not because it's something you're not allowed to do.

If you don't find the reductio compelling, consider more physical methods of tracking the game state, such as ticking things off on your fingers or muttering under your breath, or, for that matter, adjusting the position of a play mat, as the OP described in this thread. As far as I know, there is no controversy about doing such things, yet I can't see an objective reason to distinguish them from tracking things on a notepad on the basis of the rulebook. The rulebook says nothing about tracking the state in any way. If this silence means that, by definition, you are not allowed to track the state, it should mean that by definition, you are not able to track it in any way. I can't see where the distinction between a notepad and a muttered count emerges from the rules without reliance on implicit conventions.

4

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Taking Notes - Against the Rules?

« on: February 06, 2019, 11:22:22 am »

Found it:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=876.0

Also here:

We finally have an official ruling on the legallity of an automatic point counter?

A point counter is for sure a game variant, not allowed by the rules.

I encourage people to play whatever game variants they want, provided they comply with local laws and are agreed upon by all players.

With all due respect to the creator of this brilliant game, I have never agreed with this particular view of his. The thing is that he did not put the prohibition on taking notes in the rules, but considers it something that is disallowed by convention in any game until specifically allowed by the rules of that game. It follows that if you disagree with Mr. Vaccarino about the general convention (i.e., you would not apply it to a game that he had not designed), you equally disagree about its applicability to Dominion, since this is not one of Dominion's rules.

Analogously, it's almost certainly an unwritten rule for most players that you may not take 6 hours on your turn, but if you play a long-term game of Dominion where everyone thinks for hours, you are not playing a Dominion variant. Rather, if you're playing with a variant, it's of the usual conventions applying to the playing of games in general. And, of course, if you and your group happen to play games that way most of the time, you're not playing a variant at all.

In any case, while all this may have some philosophical ramifications, it does not seem to have many practical ramifications, if any, since, regardless of where the rules come from, the critical thing is that all players know them and agree to them. I presume that I could happily play a game of Dominion-with-note-taking with GendoIkari: he would consider our game a "Dominion variant", whilst I would consider it a standard game of Dominion with unusual conventions of play; potayto, potahto.