There has been a ton of drama as of late regarding Netrunner's rules, who gets to choose which rules to follow, and who gets to interpret the rules. This has been a long-standing problem with the game -- the official FAQ is updated maybe twice a year, while there are dozens of rulings and clarifications conveyed by the game's developers (Lukas, now Damon) via Twitter. The Android Netrunner Comprehensive Unofficial Rules Wiki -- created and managed by Jacob Morris -- has been instrumental in keeping track of all of these changes for the community. Now, that's worked well ... up until the last few weeks, when it seems that a couple of tournament organizers for National events have decided to ignore ANCUR and Damon's unofficial rulings. First, the tournament organizer for the German Nationals decided that Damon's and ANCUR's description of the NBN: CtM/Salsette Slums interaction wasn't to their liking and stated that Salsette Slums would not "turn off" CtM's ability. Now, the organizers of the French Nationals have essentially said that they'll be following the German Nationals lead. This has prompted Damon to -- again -- state the intended CtM/Slums interaction (via Twitter), and Jacob is doing a great job of outreach to explain exactly why this is the case (see the image above). But, I don't really care about this ruling, to be honest. I'm more interested in two things -- 1. If this incident will finally push FFG Organized Play to work more closely with both the game's lead developer and with these community-run efforts like ANCUR to provide a more frequently updated, official site for rulings. The German Nationals TO hid behind a "Well, I asked FFG Organized Play and they said Damon's decisions weren't official!" excuse, and that's patently bad for the game. The Organized Play people should be responsible for promoting organized Netrunner events and not adjudicating rules decisions in the game. They don't have that expertise nor are they the designers of the game. I'm hopeful that this might push FFG into creating some kind of new system. 2. What's up with these European Netrunner Nationals events? The German Nationals situation this year is just the latest in a series of off-putting choices (they were infamous for not allowing non-Germans and non-residents to play in their Nationals, until FFG made them stop this practice). Is the geographical disparity between Germany and the U.S. something that is at play here? Are there cultural differences here that I'm oblivious to? Why the European revolt? I'm more optimistic about the future of this game than I have been for a long time. I hope the official FFG competitive game learns from these incidents and makes Netrunner a uniformly fun, consistent experience around the world.
