Updates to the Quidditch Rules

[Elliot Briar]

I've been thinking lately that it might help some users, especially those like me who are newer to the site and still learning to use the Quidditch system that it might be good to make some updates to the Quidditch rules.

In particular I've noticed the main issues revolve around the following:

Timing - There's a link on the original rules I think from the old site that's dead now regarding timing. It's easy to not understand how long you should be expected to wait between posts and why hitting an action or Other Action is important to keep your timing up to date. The Quidditch system is great for keeping track for you, but it'd be good to have that info available

Rules for each position - I'm loving playing quidditch and trying out new positions, but for folks who are new to the system and may not be sure, it'd be nice to have a place that explains how each position works and any specific rules for that position. Most are fairly self-explanatory, but it never hurts to have it written down for easy referral, especially if there's confusion for example - Can Chasers take possession and immediately score?

Captain's primer - I recently just took over Beaux and if I didn't have Daphne I wouldn't have a clue what to do. Obviously, you can always reach out to the previous captain or admin, but if we have a pre-written primer, even if that's something PM'd to captains, that explains things like practices and the QCP (including a link to it) it can probably save us all some time, especially if you're inheretiing a team from someone who may not be active or have never captained before.

This is just some of the stuff I've noticed recently, I think some updates and the above additions might help everyone have something easy to refer to. We all love playing quidditch and I think it'll be a lot more fun if we're not getting confused or stuck arguing over minor rule confusion. It might also spare Cyndi some grief if we can preemptively refer to things before mistakes are made.

Just some thoughts, please let me know if I'm missing anything obvious resource wise or if there's some other suggestions that have been confusing other players.

 

[Stefan Archer]

Hi Kris,

We will look into the link which goes to the old site and see that that gets updated or removed. The link itself is actually a link to ensure your board clock is at the correct time to help with the timings of the game.

However, in the rules, it does state pretty plainly when you should go for an action or not. The system also itself helps with this, preventing you from doing an action before an hour is up. There is nothing to say that you can't post multiple times in an hour, you just can't do an action. The rules 2a and 2b are also rather clear about when a ball can be stolen in a scenario where your team has the ball or the other team has the ball. The last part we would encourage people to exercise their own common sense when it comes to determine if gaining possession means you can immediately go for a goal score. We have the old map which can, help to orient where players would be and chose for themselves how quickly they want to score. The map was used in the old system to help pace the game and prevent from someone just constantly attempting to score, which is more difficult to do in the new system.

We'd hesitate to have a step by step guide because it's fairly obvious what roles each position hold (Seekers seek, Keepers keep ). Within the games and practices it's fairly obvious what buttons should be clicked and when. When in doubt, you should feel free to ask your captain or an admin.

Most of the time captains do get primed, they get a PM and access to the systems before the start of any season. The PM is also to help open a dialogue between captains and the admin/staff, there's nothing to say that questions about the system about being a captain can't be sent via that. The system itself can be daunting but it's been built in a manner where it's very hard for things to go wrong, so for any incoming captain, just pressing at things and seeing what they do is encourage, there is little you can do that we won't be able to fix. Additionally, though perhaps the captains from other schools do receive less instructions that those from HNZ, we'd always encourage for old captains to give advice or help out. It's also why we encourage having co-captains to share the work and aid in helping to learn systems. We'll aim to ensure other school teams receive the same information readily available to Hogwarts captains.

Quidditch can be a very heat of the moment thing, and sometimes in the midst of playing it can be difficult to know/remember the rules or know how the situation which appears engages with the rules and what that means. If something happens in quidditch, where you think a rule has been broken we would discourage away from arguing and encourage you to first go to your captain and they can them come to myself or Cyndi who can either provide feedback in realtime about your concern or be able to act upon it.

However, as always we will endeavour to keep an eye on the present rules and systems to ensure they work best and are accessible, we are constantly reviewing them.

Thanks
Emzies

 

[Geovanna Adler-Cade]

I have one main confusion about the buttons and whether or not to post, specifically because you mention above that there’s nothing stopping you posting more than once an hour, however you can’t do an action more than once an hour. That being said this, at least to me, is unclear because of one of the rules:

4. Don't forget - you should always be pressing a button, whichever is appropriate for your game play during your post. Doing so boosts your success rate as well as allows the timer to kick in appropriately for your teammates and opponents.

Does that mean you don't have to always press one?

Also I'm a little confused in that case as I thought it would affect the timings. Say a ravenclaw posts, then a hufflepuff does 10 mins later, and then the same ravenclaw posts immediately again, the second time not pressing a button. Wouldn't the hufflepuff still have to wait after 4 hours (suggesting no one else posts after this in this example) even though the ravenclaw technically posted?

thanks!

 

[Stefan Archer]

Hi Pheebs,

What you are quoting there are not game rules, the game rules are here: https://hogwarts.nz/threads/quidditch-rules.75989/ . The notes mentioned at the beginning of every game are just game notes, things to keep in mind when playing. It is not against the rules to post without doing an action because it can help just move the game along, or keep things going. Someone on the bench can post without an action. If your character in the game preforms an action they should be pressing a button. If they are just flying alongside another player and maybe something happens like a character yells something at them, they can reply to that without preforming an action or needing to press the button before the hour is over. The flow of the game is largely dictated by the actions and waiting to get another, but things could happen in between and you are allowed to react to those without it being an additional action.

For the second part of the question, in the moment of the game, you can always check back with the rules and see what those say when that scenario happens, or you can reach out to your captain, or myself or Cyndi. However, the rules would give the best help as of now.

Thanks
Emzies

 

[Geovanna Adler-Cade]

Hey! I had been quoting the post that Reeves put up with the list of rules in the most recent game, although what you’re saying does make sense. I suppose seeing actions and game play as two separate instances do help, and it would be fun to know extra roleplay posts can be added outside of these actions as usually I wait until the hour is up! I just suppose it feels as though the rules can be a little confusing when there’s mixed messages.

 

[Elliot Briar]

Is there an easy way to draw the line between what should be an action and what can just be a random post to react to things? I'm not sure what the point of the other action button is now if you can post to move your character or react and it doesn't require a button press to "set your time" so to speak.

 

[Elliot Briar]

(Conversations like the above are why I suggested perhaps some clarity is needed in the rules as a lot of folks, including long time players and captains have questions and the rules do not have a definitive answer. Asking staff/captains is all well and good but when you're in the middle of the game, timezones and schedules could make it so you're not getting an answer for hours, and knowing the games these days, that might mean the game is over before you know what happened.)

 

[Amber Chou Wilson]

I always kind of had a lot of 'unwritten rules' in my head while playing quidditch, like not scoring immediately once you have the quaffle (it seems weird to fly across the whole pitch in one post?) and not posting between the hour, as I always felt like that would be confusing. This conversation is adding more questions for me, too, and I have been confused about rules in the past as well.

If you can post between doing actions, does that mean you can say you do something in that post as long as its not a 'critical' action like scoring or catching or whatever? Like, can I post that I grab the quaffle on the hour, then post ten minutes later to pass it to a teammate? Or can you just add more flavor type posts, where nothing of significance happens?

 

[Geovanna Adler-Cade]

On the back of this, do we know what would count as a post that would require the other action button to be pressed, vs an action that would be considered not to need it?

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

First, I do want to mention that my biggest grief isn't any of the above mentioned things. It's when captains sit in confusion when there are very clear channels to communicate with me or Emzies about quidditch. The Hogwarts captains have a whole area for this and everyone has access to my PM. So, any of these questions could have been discussed in any of those places prior to them becoming such confusion. That disappoints and confuses me.

Second, the old rules were very strict in who could do what when, what points were required for those actions, and even restricted travel, and they increasingly began to not work for HNZ. The new rules and the quidditch control panel were intended and precisely worded to address those issues, and create ambiguity so as to allow for increased gameplay, movement, and reaction, and to not have players have such control over outcomes, their own or others.

I agree with Emzies and think it's a lot more productive for us to have the discussion of scenarios that could potentially come up when they actually come up so again, when there is confusion, go to your captain, me or Emzies. We're not going to come up with a manual as the rules do cover what they need to and when but we will consider the value and need of adding some guidance surrounding the 'other action' button. As mentioned before, we do continue to review the rules and gameplay to see when and if there is a need for a change in rules, and no changes are ever made during a season. As of right now, there will be no changes to the rules or game notes.

 

[Elliot Briar]

I think I'd appreciate the clarification on the other action button at least. Perhaps we could create a Quidditch FAQ thread for questions that seem to come up a lot or that other players might think it would benefit everyone to know the answer to? I think my main concern pushing any questions to PMs is if the same question or concern is repeatedly coming up, you have to answer it multiple times. This way it just offers folks a chance to resolve their own problem or have more resources to draw on in public. I don't know about other players, but due to response time and knowing Staff have a life outside of the site, I always like to save PMing as a last resort sort of action.

(Additionally, perhaps now that there's a second non-HNZ school, perhaps the Beaux and Ilvermorny Captains can be looped in for the main captain resources as well?)

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

I think it could also become a blind leading the blind - read : all of the current confusion - when you should becoming to Emzies or I who are the refs. I would not support any Quidditch FAQ for this reason.
Emzies already addressed the second bit.

 

[Elliot Briar]

I can understand the concern about not wanting incorrect information posted, I just feel it's obvious there is confusion and questions about, and I thought it would beneficial for those to be answered publicly rather than by PM, since that way only one person gets the answer rather than everyone.

Would a FAQ that is only answered by staff be easier to manage than a bunch of individual PM's from players about the same topic?

 

[Geovanna Adler-Cade]

This is tricky because as one of those Hogwarts captains, yes I could have gone to the captains PM, however there is also a lot to be said from discussing it like this as then everyone has a chance to talk about what they find difficult or confusing. Plus with everything in the open it helps other players and future captains not having the same problem.

I think even the fact that the rules were recently posted in the game that Emzies has just said are not the rules, adds to the level of confusion. If there are mixed messages between the refs then how can we we confident that the rules are correct? I just think that if they are reviewed and clarified it would stop any future problems, and save a lot of back and forth behind the scenes discussions for issues that may repeat.

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

We've made it pretty clear we'd prefer PMs. Players can PM their captains who can PM us, same as we expect during gameplay and same as we engage with teams. I PM and loop in every captain I am aware of in all quidditch communication