Guys, in a handful of threads I've been in recently I've seen people making appeals to "the designer" or "the writer" to solve questions. Just as a reminder, in the Ars FAQ you are asked not to do that. It's considered rude to take the sort of stance where if you don't like thew views of experienced players, you just demand to speak to whoever wrote it as a tiebreaker.
Demanding to know the authorial intent, and dragging authors into arguments when the other members of the community can answer your questions perfectly well, and even document them for you in cases, isn't a great way to keep some of the younger authors around. I'm as curmudgeonly as they come and even I am thinking of jumping ship fro mthe Berklist, where this sort of thing happens all the time.
So, basically, I just wanted to remind people that the authors aren't here to umpire disagreements. Thanks for your time.
I don't buy this. While I can see that authors/developers shouldn't spend their time adjudicating questions, I think it is fair for new (and old) posters to ask the authors/developer questions about a definitive answer to things.
Whether or not the authors/developer feel inclined to give that answer is another thing (I'm generally not).
Neither do many people of the "If dad says no, ask mom" mentality.
If someone doesn't want the input of everyone on the forums, why would you post your question there?
Any question in which you sought an answer directly from an author should be posed to the author.
Asking opinions on the forum, getting many opinions to choose from, and then asking for an author's "definitive" answer is little more than grandstanding.
Is it rude to keep asking in various threads that Atlas release more books as PDFs? I do try to keep bringing the issue up, and it's been a while since they did release any, but would there be a better way to get their attention than posting it on forums?
I don't think it's rude if it's relevant to the thread. If it's not relevant, it's thread hijacking.
In general, I don't think the forums are a good place to address Atlas Games. It's a good place to talk to the community of Ars Magica (and other games') fans. So a thread saying "I love Atlas' PDFs! I wish they would make more!" (unless it's beating a dead-horse) is good, a thread saying "Atlas - please do X" is not.
Anything basically goes, but if you ONLY want the opinion of Atlas and/or authors, then a direct mail might be smarter.
A general awareness that Atlas and or/ authors frequent the Forum, so a thought on how, as in what tone, criticism is raised is reasonable. Not only to the benefit of them, but because it is in everybody's interest that the debate continues to benefit from occasional participation from the authors.
As a writer for the line, I have no objections to responding to queries on forums. Sometimes queries will point to issues that genuinely need clarification and are worth sharing with the community as a whole.
That said, I think that it is important to avoid seeing the designers' words as law. After all, every saga differs, and in some sagas it will prove more expedient to disregard certain rules or develop house rules that fit in better with the group's vision of the game. I have no objection. for example, if another group wants to disregard the rules that I provided in RoP: D on the pillars of Islam if something else works better for their saga. Heck, we all have our own ways of dealing with the infamous pink dot problem...
Just my two filus. My falsan, I guess, since Arabic has a dual...
I don't think appealing to the designers is rude per se. However, an appeal that takes the form of "your answers aren't good enough, I want the designers to reply!" is rather impolite to other forumites.
Emailing me directly ( arsmagica@davidchart.com ) is the best way to get a direct answer out of me. I do answer all the email I get, although it sometimes takes a few days, particularly if I need to think about the answer. Sometimes the answer will be "whatever works for your saga", though, so the question is "why do you want my answer?". Errata, incidentally, should be sent to me by email; I do miss ones that are just mentioned on the forums.
I monitor the forums, but I don't read everything, and I tend to stay out of debates, because it's rather hard for me to say something that doesn't sound official.
