Contradictory FIRST Statements

[meaubry]

In a perfect world, having a set of rules that are unambiguous would be great. I can sympathize with the Game and Rule makers as I have co-created 7 different games (we hold what is called the ChiefDelphi Invitational) and develop a new FIRST like game for it. We've been fairly sucessful and most of the teams have enjoyed participating. But, with each new game comes trying to develop the rules for the Game, the Kit, and the Scoring. It isn't easy anticipating every thing that could result in a question or concern. We have had the best results when we kept the rules and the scoring simple. We have had the most problems when we try to over complicate the scoring and the game rules. The rules should be easy to understand and easy to enforce (if you need special stuff to figure either out, it gets tough - is it touching something? get the official piece of paper to see if it can slide between...) It is not good if the audience and players cannot immediately tell if it is a score or not. It is not a good idea if the audience and players cannot keep track of the score because it can change quicker than they can react - the players have no time to counter the strategy being used on them and the audience stops trying to figure out score. Even with the ability to generally see who has the most of something, if that observation can be negated (even with a complex explanation - this was touching or that doesn't count because) it will cause problems for the audience. If the game requires the casual observer to "read the fine print" in able to understand the game it will lead to the types of problems that have occurred in recent years. Game and Rules can be designed using the KISS method and still be challenging. In fact the game should be the challenge, not trying to interpret the rules. Just my opinion.