Every years teams try to have everyone read out the whole manual. Most of the time it gets skimmed over because its over 100 pages long. I had the idea to cut out all the information not really relevant to the audience members.
After taking the time to read through everything in depth I ended up with a document a little less than 30 pages long. I'm hoping to see what the CD community thinks and what feedback you have.
Feel free to use this with your own teams for those who don't want to read everything to find what's important.
Seriously, this year the manual has nice bolded lines at the beginning of each rule explaining the gist. It is not that hard to CTRL-F or just scroll through it.
I’m sure that many teams require everyone to have read every page of the game manual, but as a team with diverse interests and other extra-curricular activities it has not been reasonable for many of our team members to read through it. Those students haven’t read the game manual at all and will have no info.
I have not added anything to the manual, only deleted information that is extraneous or irrelevant to those watching from the stands. It is something we can share with spectators and our active scouting team so they have at least read what we think is most important.
I hoped this would be a helpful tool for bettering the experience both for less involved and deeply involved members because more people will be more knowledgeable.
-Overall I completely removed sections 8 & 9 as they aren’t essential for understanding this years game.
-The other edits were removing most of the field measurements and specifics because those objects will all be right in-front of us at our events.
-I as well took out all rules concerning fouls on the part of the drive team as, in our opinion, those students should be required to read the whole game manual.
-The common fouls we’ve seen so far in week 0 & 1, and the fouls integral to understanding the game are both still there
If I have the time I’ll put in footnotes, but most everything falls under those guidelines.
I bet that if you asked every team in FRC, you’d find very few teams withOUT “diverse interests and other extra-curricular activities.” If they’re team members, they should be reading the manual.
However, if you want to create something that parents and/or sponsors can read and refer back to so they can learn the game from the stands, go for it! I think that’s an excellent idea! But if that’s the case, it needs to be 1 page, not 30. There is no in-between here.
Use the official crib sheet, and Section 2, and that should cover 90% of what a random casual spectator needs to know.
I can understand wanting to remove stuff. But seriously, everyone should have at least a basic understanding.
If I was going to make a “Required Reading List”, it would be:
Stand Sitters, read:
Section 2
Section 4
Section 5
Section 7 OR the Crib Sheet–either works, but Section 7 is preferred.
Section 11
Section 10 before playoffs.
If I had my druthers, it would be the entire team reads the entire Manual, once at any rate. You have 8+ weeks to do it, and some of the sections can be read in one short sitting.
And, one thing to bear in mind: It’s the rule you didn’t read that will confuse you.
This is basically that “Required Reading” packaged up all nicely to send out as a link to everyone. I hope that this gives all the info needed to stop most all of the “Why did {Insert some mildly complex game action} happen?” question we hear all too often at competition.