When I look at Realms, I see people playing a game. Outside of events, and sometimes when people are breaking character (I’m guilty of this), I see people discussing the rules. Most of the time at events, I see people playing, which tells me the game has rules. However, just because rules exist doesn’t mean they are written down.
The Omnibus, as a rulebook, has many flaws. It has ambiguous wording, and sometimes conflicting wording. At different events, I sometimes end up playing a different games with different rules. For example, with last year’s change to Enchant Armor, it now is cast on an item rather than on a hit location. The caster may, as an unlimited effect, cast Repair Armor as per the spell to fix the item. This is an issue, as many hit locations are covered by multiple items; a fighter could have both sleeves and bracers on his/her arm. As an unlimited effect, I may fix the sleeve with a spell that fixes the entire hit location, including the bracer. At some events, I’m allowed to use Repair Armor for free on any hit location at all covered by the shirt (since I almost always cast it on a shirt). At some events, I can only fix the sleeve for free, and not the bracer, so I have to tell my fighter how much of their armor I’m fixing.
While I could write a proposal to fix that, it feels like a losing battle†. I see and hear lots of conflicting interpretations of what’s written in the Omnibus, and I don’t think that fixing the ones we’ve found will solve the problem. People will find more, and editing the Omnibus by committee will create more. Instead, I’m content with asking the MM at the beginning of each event what the rules are.
Certainly, when we change the Omnibus, we change the rules. That’s the purpose of the Players’ Meeting and EHC. That said, I think the Omnibus has another, more important purpose, and that is the one I think should be given more focus. The Omnibus is, for many players, one of the first things they read when they want to play Realms. At WPI, we strongly encourage our Freshmen to read it before attending an event. Unfortunately, the Omnibus is very misleading, at times. To quote the Weapon Type and Material Calls section, “Axe-mace trolls are typically only injured by axes and maces; werewolves are only affected by weapons made of silver.” In my two and one-half years playing this game, I have been to 60 events. At about five of them, I’ve seen monsters affectable by weapon types. At last year’s EHC, Tucker’s change to the Blacksmith path made Silver Strike and Enchant Weapon more accessible so that EH’s could more freely use those mechanics at their events. I have had those spells since I grandfathered my spellbook at Feast of Highbridge II, and have cast only one of those exactly once at all the quests I’ve been to since then‡.
When I see proposals this Saturday at the Players’ Meeting, I will think of them in a few categories. There will be proposals to change how we play the game. I will vote on those based on how I think the changes to the rules will impact the game. There will be proposals to clear up ambiguities. I will vote on those based on how impactful I think those ambiguities are to the game, and will often decide I don’t think it’s worth spending time at the EHC to discuss them. There will be proposals to try to make the Omnibus more consistent, and I will vote on those based on how much it will help newer players reading the Omnibus to learn how to play Realms. While those categories probably don’t cover each proposal, they cover many of them. If I felt last year as I currently do, I would not have submitted any of the four proposals I did submit, even though I believe three of them ended up passing at the EHC, as I don’t think they were impactful enough to have been worth the time the EHC spent discussing them, especially as there were more impactful proposals last year that I felt deserved more attention than they were given.
†For the record, I dislike the mechanic of separating armor into items, so any proposal of mine to fix this particular problem would be one which removes the mechanic.
‡To be fair, I cast it into a Mystic Forge, so you could say I cast it several times on that one night quest.