You have repeatedly used the example of the interesting aspects of trading card games and unintended use of certain cards to argue for glitches in video games. This is an opinion i agree with but thanks to you I stumbled upon this in a google search: (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/legally-rip-your-opponents-cards-to-pieces/) . How do you feel about something like that? Would you say this is interesting enough to keep in the game, as nearly all opponents will concede when you start performing this combo, on top of the fact it would still practically be a guaranteed win if you replaced “rip up” with “send to the discard pile”. Alternatively, do you think it crosses the line of an unintended mechanic actively harming other players enjoyment of the game?
That’s really hysterical. I’m really surprised that they would print a card that has an effect where you tear it up, but significantly less surprised that there is a way to transfer the effect to other cards. Of course, it’s only natural that it came from the set Unglued.
What I’d say in this case is, rules are formed by the consent of the players. It’s us who agree to play with the rules presented on the cards in the first place, or with cards of those dimensions and so on. You should probably discuss it with the person you’re playing with before you play, unless you want to be a huge dick. Also I doubt this is among the legal sets allowed in tournaments.
It does raise the question of what I guess you could call implicit versus explicit rules (or formal versus informal, there’s no agreed upon term for this far as I know). Rules in a video game are almost all implicit, regulated by the physical structure of the device, much like the physical game snafu, or ball & cup. In the case of video games, a lot of how we play them are explicit rules actually, things we agree upon, like the goal, map pool, or other modifiers. The goal of a game is always an explicit rule, something that the player(s) accept and agree to play by, where the programming is an “embedded rule,” much like the form of the baseball bat, or that card games are played with cards instead of round chips or kept in memory. This means they work a certain way and serve the game in a certain way. Just something worth considering.
I’d heard about something similar to this before (a card that lets you take actual ownership of someone else’s card as an effect). I’m shocked that anyone takes it seriously. If someone played one of these on me without telling me it was a possibility and claimed the right to destroy or my cards, I’d tell them to get lost.
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