This will surely work out fine

[PhoneLobster]

This may not be a place to ask for a sanity check on how a rule is read, but I think I'd like to try it anyway.

I've had an experience with people reading rules in incredibly bizarre ways (yes perhaps even by our standards here), and I kinda want to see what peoples readings of what seem to be very plain English rules to me actually are outside of the specific community I've experienced this in.

So here are some timing rules from a popular board game.

If the timing of an ability uses the word “before” or “after,” the ability’s effect occurs immediately before or after the described timing event, respectively.

For example, if an ability is resolved “after a ship is destroyed,” the ability must be resolved as soon as the ship is destroyed and not later during that turn or round.

If the timing of an ability uses the word “when,” the ability’s effect occurs at the moment of the described timing event.

Such an ability typically modifies or replaces the timing event in some way.

Effects that occur “when” an event happens take priority over effects that occur “after” an event happens.

So first questions.

To you what timing order does this describe?

Does this look like a description of a hard formalized serialized order of operations to you?

If you have three pieces of text that all refer to the same timing event, and one starts with Before, and one starts with When and one starts with After, what order do you apply that text in? And can they effect each other?

I'd like to see some responses on this so I can check the sanity of my interpretations of the basics of this one, then I'll start taking it down the rabbit hole of the next few steps to what I'm pretty sure is crazy town.

[Lord Charlemagne]

I'll give a stab at answering the questions

1) The timing order seems to describe a trigger for when an ability activates in response to something that just happened or is happening. The two biggest points of vagueness I see currently is what does 'destroyed' means (which can be resolved with a definition such as 'when HP = 0' or some such) & the order of operations of abilities such as exactly 'when' triggers or if there are multiple 'when's, which may not be too relevant if it only activates passive abilities that never interact instantly.

2) From the current snippet, it doesn't seem very hard & formalized, but without greater context it could be hard to tell. I could easily see myself just flowing with it in a middle of many games if they had that rule.

3) I presume 'when' would take priority seeing as it explicitly says it take priority & 'before' effects imply they have to happen before when occurs. Also, we were not provided any 'before' text but I figured those would be separate abilities.

Hope this helps & that I read what you were asking for correctly.

[Sir Neil]

Formalized, serialized order of operations is a good way to put it. It seems to enforce linear time: Before > When > After.

[PhoneLobster]

I'd love to already go through and say "yes thats the right thing that I got from it" and "no thats the wrong thing crazy people got from it" but that kinda eliminates the point so while I wait for any more replies to the first bit I'll add some tangential rules quotes that might be relevant to things said.

what does 'destroyed' means

It's not going to be relevant, I think, basically its an example timing event that can happen, we don't need to know more.

the order of operations of abilities such as exactly 'when' triggers or if there are multiple 'when's

This brings something up. The people writing/reading these rules are kinda minimalist fetishists that think that vague implication can be a hard rule. So lets say we have multiple Afters on the same event?

We care about what happens if multiple players do that, or if even just one player does. We get this text...

If there are multiple abilities that players wish to resolve at the
same time during the action phase, each player takes a turn
resolving an ability in initiative order, beginning with the active
player. This process continues until each player has resolved
each ability that they wish to resolve during that window.

If there are multiple abilities that players wish to resolve at
the same time during the strategy or agenda phases, players
take turns resolving abilities starting with the speaker and
proceeding clockwise. This process continues until each player
has resolved each ability that they wish to resolve during that
window.

Now you say, wait. But what if one player has all the different afters for the timing event? Or just more than the others? What order do they play them in.

This community will, I am pretty sure, point at that text and say "its clearly stated above". So guess what they mean?

Though remember how I said they were minimalist fetishists? Thats a quote from the up to date official rules. They also seem to maintain some sort of community wikki rules which I think they regard as better/more up to date than the official rules documents from the publisher?

Those rules were not stream lined into one in that document.

They were removed.

I'm not sure, but I don't think there was a replacement.

Now two other timing rules that might be tangentially relevant...

Each ability describes when and how a player can resolve it.

When a player resolves an ability, they must resolve the ability
in its entirety. Any parts of the ability preceded by the word
“may” are optional, and the player resolving the ability may
choose not to resolve those parts

[Grek]

My understanding is that you resolve things in Before -> When -> After order, and that a 'When' rule can prevent an 'After' rule from triggering if the 'When' rule prevents the trigger conditions for the 'After' rule from happening, but cannot similarly prevent a 'Before' rule from triggering. Obviously, if they had meant for 'When' actions to also take priority over 'Before' actions, they would have said that in the part where they explicitly establish which rules take priority.

For the case where there are multiple timing effects to resolve at once, it sounds like you should have each player take a turn resolving one of their abilities, using whatever rules are normally used to decide turn order to decide these turns. If that means one player resolves multiple abilities all at once after everyone else as finished, then that's what happens.

(Which is probably a bad way for your rules to resolve things if this is a competitive game, but you're asking what the rules seem to say, not whether they're any good.)

[Anon_issue]

It's gibberish.

[Thaluikhain]

Well, it looks like they mean Before>When>After, but from my reading it doesn't look like there's much difference between When and After, except if you have one of each.

If something happens immediately when a ship is destroyed, that looks a lot like something happening immediately after a ship is destroyed. Unless the destruction process goes on for a bit? However I don't see this as being a problem.

This brings something up. The people writing/reading these rules are kinda minimalist fetishists that think that vague implication can be a hard rule. So lets say we have multiple Afters on the same event?

We care about what happens if multiple players do that, or if even just one player does. We get this text...

If there are multiple abilities that players wish to resolve at the
same time during the action phase, each player takes a turn
resolving an ability in initiative order, beginning with the active
player. This process continues until each player has resolved
each ability that they wish to resolve during that window.

If there are multiple abilities that players wish to resolve at
the same time during the strategy or agenda phases, players
take turns resolving abilities starting with the speaker and
proceeding clockwise. This process continues until each player
has resolved each ability that they wish to resolve during that
window.

Now you say, wait. But what if one player has all the different afters for the timing event? Or just more than the others? What order do they play them in.

This community will, I am pretty sure, point at that text and say "its clearly stated above". So guess what they mean?

Well, to me, that looks quite straightforwards, you'd go round and each player resolves an ability "they wish" to resolve (so their choice) if they have one, and keep going round until everyone runs out of things they want and can do. Everyone gets one (if they want/can) before anyone gets their second and so on.

Though, if you can decide not to resolve anything one cycle and then decide to the next, that's a bit unclear.

[PhoneLobster]

It's probably too soon, so people feel free to keep giving interpretations of the first rules too. But now I'm going to try and take this further down the rabbit hole a bit.

As mentioned a "when"..." typically modifies or replaces the timing event in some way."

And does so with the the proviso that "Effects that occur “when” an event happens take priority over effects that occur “after” an event happens."

Now we start to go into slightly longer grass because from here there really are less rules to be had unless we go specifically to individual ability texts. The rules are that sparse and minimal.

But what we do know about "replacing or modifying" a timing even with a when is that it can definitely change various things about the state of the game, place tokens and models, remove them, give out cards with more abilities, and also very importantly it can nullify the very same timing event it is played on/during and can ADD NEW TIMING EVENTS.

For instance.

"Destroy a ship" is a timing event.

"You activate a system" is a timing event.

So "When you activate a system containing a ship, destroy a ship in that system" is a theoretical ability text that does something and has a before/when/after in relation to a timing event. And it definitely does, and people definitely treat it as, generating a new timing event of "Destroy a ship" which other ability text can be played on.

Before I add any further complications.

Given the original rules on the order of befores and afters, and given the requirement that an ability must be fully resolved before continuing and that afters must be fully resolved directly after their timing event before continuing.

If you tried to play all the following abilities what order would you do that in?
"When you activate a System containing a ship, destroy a ship in that system"
"After you destroy a ship, take trade goods equal to its value from the bank"
"After you activate a System, take 4 trade goods"

*(None of these abilities specifically exist in that exact form, I think, but its fairly in line with the wording of these things and I'm not shopping around large decks of this stuff to get the timing that fits the examples. I'll bring it back to real card text towards the end when I get to the conclusion of this madness.)

[Grek]

My understanding of the rules is that you resolve it 1, 3, 2. When happens before After. You have to finish resolving the When (which includes resolving anything triggered by that When) before resolving the After which triggers off the same timing event.

If the first ability had said "...destroy a ship in that system instead." then the order would be 1, then 2. 3 wouldn't trigger at all.

[Thaluikhain]

Um...Greks' interpretation makes sense, though I could see doing the first, and then going back to the multiple abilities at the same time thing for the two "Afters".

Or a long and pointless argument between players, that works as well.

[PhoneLobster]

Ah quick note, most recent example isn't actually up to the bit I'm disagreeing with people who are wrong on the internet with yet and Grek might want to quickly note that the third ability didn't require the system to contain a ship. Also I think he describes the right justification in his first line but somehow came up with the wrong answer?

I'm not blaming him. These rules could use... more rules...

But let me take the opportunity to point something out.

"you Activate a system" is a timing event.

"When you Activate a System" is a timing window attached to that timing event.

No you aren't crazy there hasn't been a definition of a timing window. There isn't one. You have to figure out what one is by the context it appear in within the text of other largely unrelated rules.

You might notice for instance. That the rules text about how to resolve multiple abilities that happen "at the same time" mentions timing window. Well. They mention a window. They don't specify it is a timing one. (nice)

That is the only mention of timing window that appears in the entire section of the rules headed "Timing".

And yes, again, the community seems to have removed it from their version of the rules document. It was apparently wasteful text no one required.

Their version of the Timing section DOES have an additional paragraph that does, (tangentially) mention a timing window. Its a cut and paste from the combat section where for some reason two different timing windows are the same timing window. Something that only happens twice. Both in the resolution of combat.

And yes even when we are told that two timing windows are merged into the same timing window we still don't have an explicit description of a timing window. However. Helpfully. The official rules that talk about timing window merging in the Space Combat section use the timing windows of "at the start of" and "at the end of" instead of "Before" and "After". The community rules use "Before the start" and "After the end", which would be nice, but the actual relevant cards int he game still say "At the start of" and "At the end of" so who knows what good that's supposed to do.

Anyway tangent aside.

Here's another thing.

"Before you Activate a System"
"When you Activate a System containing a ship"
"After you Activate a System not containing a ship"

All refer to the same Timing Event. but are probably* referring to three different Timing Windows associated with it, there are strong examples of this.

And yes all three have different conditional text but they are still the same Timing Event.

*this is going to be one of the bigger yet somehow more tangential WTFs eventually

[Orca]

That's a horrible mess if it matters whether you get the goods from activating the system before the goods from destroying the ship. Does it matter? Ever?

[PhoneLobster]

This fake example doesn't matter. But some of the real interactions do.

Also, if it helps, according to at least one top level community rules expert, the actual "official" (I don't think they are really official... but they like to act like it) answer to "which order would you get those trade goods in?" might actually be "Whatever".

But we aren't up to that yet, though I think I have already provided you with all the relevant rules text he used to come to that interesting conclusion!

[Kaelik]

Grek is a she.

[PhoneLobster]

My apologies to Grek, I'll try to remember.

[Kaelik]

I think both Afters go into the "After Resolution Queue" and then are resolved in presumably, the order of the actors choosing. (unless different people had those rules texts?)

You resolve the when, which makes the new timing event happen at the same time as the other timing event, and both afters are resolved after that timing event.

I recognize that this is not a clear direct statement from the rules, but it's how I would resolve the When X, New Timing Event Y structure where afters are triggered by both X and Y.

[PhoneLobster]

Multiple top rules men in the community in question would slap you in the face and demand you get out for using that reasoning Kaelik.

Then just one of them would almost agree with your conclusion for differing and by far, very far, stupider reasons.

But seriously more than one of them would pause explanations of their very complex timing rules (based on very limited amounts of simple text) to suddenly denounce "Magic Stack type mechanics" and "separating triggers and execution which is a Magic Stack type related thing". And I'm very sure that if they saw you say "After Resolution Queue" it would set them off.

Also they liked to break off from that rant to say that elaborate hard formal rules for timing resolution were NOT an intended part of the game rules and were a thing that would be bad for a complex competitive strategy game because they would hurt the flexibility of negotiations.

I will note. There ARE additional not directly related timing rules (and several other sets of rules) in this game that are exclusively about what negotiations are allowed and when.

The one who would go on this rant the most would be the one who would agree with Kaeliks conclusion (partly), but definitely not a fixed order Queue of any kind. Instead his argument was all about not being allowed to add timing windows (not a thing anything says) and instead expanding them (not a thing anything describes).

And they certainly don't go into an ordered queue, instead the After Timing Event A and After Nested Timing event B are the same "expanding" timing window and therefore fall under the heading of that rule they deleted about resolving multiple events "at the same time" or "in that window". Which he didn't refer to, possibly because he was one of the ones that might have deleted it.

But anyway, therefore the afters generated by different timing events happen in the same magical expanding timing window so it happens in whatever order the player likes because you DID get that clearly from the deleted rule that the player picks whatever order they like for abilities in the same timing window on the same timing event right?

Even though these are different timing events as well and only in the same window because he basically just made that up to everyone's apparent surprise.

Even the other top rule men seemed to back away from that one. Also possibly because his odd random outburst in that direction sort of instantly un nerfed the thing they were trying to indirectly nerf by reimagining the games entire limited available text on timing rules from scratch in the first place. They might have also backed away from it because the expanding timing window thing would have basically broken the current way ever other timing issue in the game is dealt with.

I should really close on the end of this and my actual beef with this rules set/wild reinterpretation of it.

But I think people need to get the basic timing rules a bit more right first, since you currently aren't really close enough to an interpretation largely shared by me and the community before it wildly diverges.

Lets try this.

Remember when I said there are strong examples that before, after, and during on the one timing event are a definitely three separate timing windows?

There is rather a bit of text about action cards and the political agenda phase, and agenda cards. In this case perhaps too much to directly quote without making this more of a mess so I will try to summarize, and point out this isn't anything anyone disagrees with.

"an Agenda is revealed" is a Timing event.

There are some cards with ability text that specifically happens in "before an agenda is revealed" and it is specifically described as a timing window. Everyone around the table gets a chance to announce AND resolve their before an agenda is revealed cards. Those CAN change what agenda is revealed or if one is revealed at all.

THEN there are a number of "when an agenda is revealed" They are explicitly called a timing window and everyone gets a chance to announce and play them. If the befores have changed the nature of the agenda revealed these WILL be played on the new agenda. And these are fully executed before we do the afters and they CAN again change the agendas that are revealed.

THEN there are a number of "after an agenda is revealed". They are again explicitly a timing window, again everyone is explicitly given a chance to announce and play them. And if the agendas they are being played on are changed by the whiles or the befores, well the afters are going to be played on the results of those prior windows.

I think it is worth noting that the afters are definitely resolved and announced in the after window (on this same single timing event), and will only be valid to play, or even make sense when announced/resolved, based on the results of the prior windows on that same single agenda reveal event.

It is also worth noting (almost) all of these abilities in all three windows are on Action cards, and "play an action card" IS also Timing Event and a common response to playing one of these action cards is basically a "when an action card is played"... basically cancel that action card. And yes, it immediately resolves, not only before the next window on the "reveal an agenda" event, but ALSO before you even get to the next player who gets a turn at announcing an ability use in that same timing window!

Yes. That is right, resolving an ability that creates a timing event can not only interrupt a timing event, it can interrupt a timing window too! And then someone can play another god damn timing event on it, during that interruption.

None of that is in dispute, and none of that is (supposed to be) changed by what is in dispute.

You know looking at it, I cannot see how I can possible help with understanding this. I'm losing morale just trying to explain how these rules are used... during the bit of them everyone seems to mostly agree on...

edit: Maybe I should quote from the "learn to play" rules, the online community never does that...

Oh Yeah this is one of those games that has a learn to play book, a alphabetized reference and no "just the rules of the game in actual fucking order and not the learner wheel ones for babies" book.

It also has an official "online living reference" which is a fucking pdf that never seems to get the clarifications you are waiting for and is otherwise just the alphabetized reference again only the few bits that are updated are printed in unreadable light red fonts and its all on so many colour rich background images that you cannot print the damn thing without your large office scale out of production borderline restored antique colour laser printer running out of all the ink you need for your business to print plastic tags with pictures of flowers on. (you all have one of those right? If not I swear you do NOT have enough ink to print this rules reference once.)

Man, I'm getting to tired to continue this one right now the typos are multiplying, I might come back later after some sleep or something.

[Stubbazubba]

Without looking at any responses, just the prompt:

To you what timing order does this describe?

Before -> Event/When -> After

Does this look like a description of a hard formalized serialized order of operations to you?

Probably not 100%, probably still some flex somewhere, but trying to approximate that, yes.

If you have three pieces of text that all refer to the same timing event, and one starts with Before, and one starts with When and one starts with After, what order do you apply that text in? And can they effect each other?

Before -> When -> After.

They can affect each other in that an earlier one can pre-empt a later one, e.g. if an ability said "before your ship is hit by a torpedo, immediately move 1 space forward," then how it plays out is that the Player A hits Player B's ship with a torpedo, then Player B activates the ability and moves his ship out of the way, turning the hit into a miss.

No comment on whether that's a good idea or not, just my knee-jerk interpretation based purely on reading it and not any of the other comments yet.

[Kaelik]

I should not have used Queue,

Because my point is that both timing events would be contemporaneous at time =T, and then all the Afters for both Timing Events would go into the same After Resolution system. But not Queue, because from that one rule it does seem clear that after resolutions are resolved with each player (who has one) choosing one in some order and if only one player has all the Afters, they get to resolve them in whatever order.

[Orion]

If "when" effects tend to "modify or replace" the event that triggers them, I wonder how they interact with "before." Can they go back in time to pre-empt it?

If I have

"Before you do A, do X" and "When you would do A, do B instead," then when I try to do A, do I end up doing "X, then B" or "just B"?

EDIT TO Add:

What if I have

When you would do A, do B instead.

Before you do A, do X.

Before you do B, do Y.

Is the correct order "X, B" "Y, B" or "X, Y, B"?

AND

If you have "When A, also B" and "Before A, X" and "Before B, Y", do you do "X, A, Y, B" or "X, Y, A+B"

[Orion]

We care about what happens if multiple players do that, or if even just one player does. We get this text...

If there are multiple abilities that players wish to resolve at the
same time during the action phase, each player takes a turn
resolving an ability in initiative order, beginning with the active
player. This process continues until each player has resolved
each ability that they wish to resolve during that window.

If there are multiple abilities that players wish to resolve at
the same time during the strategy or agenda phases, players
take turns resolving abilities starting with the speaker and
proceeding clockwise. This process continues until each player
has resolved each ability that they wish to resolve during that
window.

Now you say, wait. But what if one player has all the different afters for the timing event? Or just more than the others? What order do they play them in.

I think it's implicit that when it's your "turn" to resolve an ability you choose and resolve any one of your abilities that were just triggered. If some players run out of abilities they "pass" when it becomes their turn. If one player has multiple abilities and no one else has any, they may resolve them in any order.

[merxa]

Real life examples from actual play where order is in debate would be useful at the point.

I would ask these rules master a clarifying question.


If the same confluence of events occurred in two different games with different players, ought they be resolved in the same way? Or is there 'table negotiation', whatever that means.

Understandably if a player has multiple trigger events to resolve they resolve in the order they declare, that would be my default assumption if it isn't otherwise codified anywhere.

But, how often multiple trigger events occur is in question, it seems vague at what level you parse game events.

In the 1,2,3 example; I can see arguments for events resolving in 1-3-2 or 1-2-3 order, it depends on what a 'activate a system' means, it might even go down to what 'activate' and 'system' mean, I could even see someone claiming the ',' in your example being an important marker for resolving 'timing' windows.

[PhoneLobster]

I think it's implicit that when it's your "turn" to resolve an ability you choose and resolve any one of your abilities that were just triggered. If some players run out of abilities they "pass" when it becomes their turn. If one player has multiple abilities and no one else has any, they may resolve them in any order.

I'm marking this out as being one of the most directly "correct" answers in this thread.

It's good to see because it's important to say that you can implicitly determine some rules from a reading like this.

But... it's kinda an important little rule. Was that the most efficient way to communicate it without confusion? Will most players even FIND that rule when looking for an answer to the questions it implicitly answers?

And, then should that rule just up and be deleted because someone decided it was redundant? (I'm pretty sure a ruling about initiative/clockwise from speaker order becoming the default exists somewhere else in the rules but it is even harder to find that if you were just looking for an answer on this implicit question, and even vaguer in it's implicit implications for this specific case).

It would have taken a line or two to make a rule like that explicitly clear, and then that line of rules would exist, in the correct place in the reference, and wouldn't accidentally get deleted because of something unrelated.

There are limits to acceptable minimalism in rules, and this is a damn good example.

[PhoneLobster]

Anyway. Let me try and bring this to something resembling a conclusion?

The name of the game
If it helps remotely at all, this game is the very popular and well known Twilight Imperium 4th edition. Maybe knowing that might trigger some memories or rule familiarity for people. It is genuinely a great game, it just has some issues. Now, hopefully this doesn't lead people to using this to hunt down this one community I'm annoyed with, but there are like four or five TI4 communities active on the internet so hopefully no ones breaking any link to outside rules here.

Before When After
OK, the first quoted rules are very clearly instructing us that you do things in order, before, when, after, when they are triggered by the same event. Each has priority in turn (though this is dangerously implicit about befores) but it is very explicit that whens change basically everything and do it with total priority over afters.

You must complete it NOW! Plus Multiple Timing Events
OK this is worse, but it's how it works. The instruction to fully execute abilities before continuing and the instruction that befores, whens, and afters must complete with their trigger event and cannot wait to later is very straightforward.

The problem is, like half the rules in the game you don't have an inkling of the implications until you see what's on the various cards and game components.

I mean even knowing what timing events can exist basically requires seeing those materials (a thing rules should really do a bit better on).

And we really need an answer on what happens when their are multiple timing events, in serial and when they interrupt each other.

So, timing events are whatever is referred to in timing text on abilities. They refer to god damn everything. But mostly it's specific (little a) actions or events, and very commonly specific individual sub-steps of turn structure, like the move step of a tactical action, though it will probably be worded more like "when you move" or something.

When it's things that already happen after each other, its very straight forward. Activation happens before Move in the turn structure, so you do Before Activation, When Activation, After Activation, Before Move, When Move After Move. Done.

The problem is in the text "modify or replace the timing event", because once you start looking at ability text you will realize a lot of them remove or modify the timing event, and a lot of them GENERATE an event which OTHERS refer to as a timing event.

Which means a timing event can happen INSIDE another timing event. Which is bad because you are supposed to completely execute your ability AND completely execute all befores and afters before continuing.

Looking at the inadequate core rules text there is no technically correct answer in my view. Refusing to execute the abilities of befores and afters related to an event happening inside another event until after the first event IS an attempt to follow the two "must complete now" instructions but also violates them by NOT completing the various abilities of the new event when it appears.

Fully executing all of the befores/afters etc of the new event inside the old event before completing the remaining abilities related to the old event is ALSO in violation of the instructions to complete all these things right now because you are putting some of the abilities related to the old event "on hold". It's sort of less bad because you might argue that an event triggered by a when is part of the when somehow and that means you are still executing the when of the old event... but its a fucking mess.

An actual rule explicitly addressing this would be better.

But it doesn't matter you have to pick one interpretation of completely executing everything right now to make the game work, and as it turns out if you look at the abilities in the game, you do the one where events generated by a when are part of fully executing the when along with all their befores and afters.

So you get the thing where you nest events inside other events and execute them from top to bottom in order so...

1) Original Event executes a when
2) when creates a New Event
3) New Event executes its before, when and afters
4) Return to Old Event, it executes it's Afters.

There is no rule saying this, there are basically 4 or 5 rules that collectively require this OR the other interpretation. both interpretations could be said to be queuing abilities in some ways (one queues up after abilities related to old events while resolving nested new events, the other option would queue up abilities related to new events while resolving old events).

At this point let me describe another thing this community's top rules guys complain about. They complain about situations where one interpretation of a rule (or implicit rule constructed out of the failings/oversights and implictations of 5 rules combined) can make the game work, and the other interpretation breaks the game.

They see it as a "non question" OBVIOUSLY the answer that makes the game work is the correct one, and therefore the actual formal rule (...that isn't explicitly written anywhere ever).

This is. Not cool. Because again, you need to be familiar, maybe very familiar with the rest of the game to know the correct answer, and if you aren't, well you have to pick one right now to keep playing and if you pick the wrong one, yes, it breaks the fucking game now doesn't it?

Anyway. Point is. Correct answer is if a when creates a timing event you fully resolve all befores whens and afters of that timing event before moving on to the afters of the original timing event that generated that when. It's the standard interpretation, its how everyone does it, if we stopped doing that fuck knows the implications you would have to comb the entire game and count the things exploding.

But, if you do it like it is done, you have firm answers on the relatively few times this ever comes up. And it hardly ever comes up because there are so many potential timing events in the game and almost everything triggers off something different that is already earlier or later in the normal turn order it's mostly FINE and you never bother teaching new players this stuff and only rules nerds even know it exists.

A wild Nerf Trap appears
OK, so lets get to a point of contention. An expansion was released. Its been around for a few months. It has a new faction. This is their fault.

The new faction has 2 whens and 2 afters on their sheet and a starting technology with 1 when on it.

And they ALL interact with each other.

Some of them are on the same one or two timing events.

One of them.

One of them is a when on a timing event another one is an after of and it generates a timing event that yet anther one is an after of.

So we care about the order. Because the when, it triggers the first after, and the first after makes the conditional statement the second after has viable.

Also, this combination allows the faction, which is a specialist with the least popular widely regarded as mediocre combat unit in the game, gain one of those at the cost of one unit of the most expensive currency/resource in the game. As long as they have previously spent it already and have units and planets there and etc...

This of course was OP and had to be stopped "It cannot be intended that on THE THIRD FUCKING ROUND of controlling a planet after spending 2 command tokens to get there it now only costs ONE COMMAND TOKEN for ONE PDS! Not for the new PDS faction!"

But. This community, it's not just a community of players or rules nerds. Its a god damn fan community. And it's rules nerds are more fans than rules nerds, their rules nerd capabilities... look, they just can't read basic English.

I've established they are minimalist fetishists, they are actively hostile to making rules explicit, they are actively hostile to providing clarifications, they are actively hostile to queue mechanics, they are actively hostile to mechanics that "split" triggers and execution (fair enough nothing in the rules does that I guess).

They also think the rules as written are perfect... but intention is more important, and THEY have a sort of parasocial relationship to a designer so they basically are the popes of TI4 and know gods will... often without asking for clarification or a new rule, which remember, are things they are hostile towards.

So they need to nerf this rule. But they cannot change or add anything and they cannot even just say that one of the relevant abilities on this new faction needs a change in wording.

They have to re-interpret their way out of this.

Some relevant rules text
So here are the relevant abilities, in the correct order, according to the agreed upon and necessary interpretation of the timing rules.

1) When you activate a system, you may explore one planet in that system which contains one or more of your units.
2) After you explore a planet that has no sleeper token, you may place or move one sleeper token onto that planet
3) After you activate a system that contains 1 or more of your sleeper tokens, you may replace each of those tokens with one PDS from your reinforcements.

So, additional context you might want to know about that. An activation also costs you a command token, and usually takes a full turn/round locking up that system and everything on it for an entire game round (which is multiple turns/actions for each player).

To reach the situation of having an un-activated system with planets that contain you units but do NOT contain one of your sleeper tokens you FIRST need to have Activated that system, committed ships and ground forces to it, explored it in the "normal" way (not the ability mentioned above) placing a sleeper token PREVENTING the combo above THEN you need to activate it AGAIN in order to REMOVE the original sleeper token. THEN in your third activation you can do this combo with your third activation/command token. And command tokens are precious. Especially for this faction. And PDS are regarded as second rate investments.

This takes, usually 2 game rounds for setup potentially happening in round 3, assuming you don't have better things to spend your time doing.

The game often ends in round 5, and if not usually ends in round 6. Any planets you don't invade in round 1 will of course be 1 round behind.

The game is complex, there ARE ways to make the setup maybe 1 step faster, but they all cost something of note.

Also you can make this interaction worse and more complex because this faction has THREE other abilities that COULD insert themselves into this process given certain preconditions AND a fourth "ability" that is instead actually more of a clarification that their OTHER abilities can trigger ground and space combat phases when they place units into planets and space with enemy units in (that needed to be an ability on a sheet, why, BECAUSE IT FUCKING WASN'T AN EXPLICIT CORE RULE BECAUSE OF COURSE NOT).

But we don't need to worry about their other abilities it is the simple three abilities executed in proper serial linear order that cause this "problem" that needed fixing.

The community non-fix
Actually for months everyone on the online communities/boards/whatever that noticed this were just fine with it. It worked the normal way, it did the thing, it was a bit edge case. There was a solid answer that basically anyone talking about it reached in post or two that required no special gymnastics.

The community fix
Very very belatedly it finds its way to the attention of this one community, which thinks of itself I'm pretty sure as the biggest, best, and most on the ball community for the game. Coming to the party months late and with their own hot take.

Now. Remember the rules cannot be allowed to be wrong. There cannot be a new rule. Stop asking for clarifications. It must somehow be implicit already.

Also they cannot break the current timing rules, there are DEFINITELY things that have when on that make afters invalid. And also that make them valid, but, without a very thorough combing, maybe only by generating new events.

But THIS specific combo must not be allowed.

And so it wasn't.

And people going "wait WTF" basically hasn't stopped since.

I think everyone here has seen this sort of thing in various game communities before. People with some sort of internal community clout make a ruling that doesn't make sense. Then they, and others try to defend it... and no one really understands it, mostly because it doesn't make sense, so the justifications shift a fair bit.

Mostly they point at the rules which don't support them and just say "there see, we are right!"

Their followers also do that, but with less accuracy at which and how many rules they point at.

Many of their followers actually defended this by saying the following.
1) This is based on an additional a house rule the community just uses and which they personally do not know the shape of.
2) This is based on RAI and a quote of something a designer once said to someone somewhere no they don't even have a hint of what the quote was.

But of course, once you get to the "top rules guys"... both those defenses about intentions, secret rules and secret quotes, are shed immediately, the justifications their followers had to create to try and understand this were ethereal nothing. It's right there in the wording and implications of... text that doesn't say that and that you've already seen all of.

Steel man defense of the fix
I really want to point out that this IS a distinct version of the fix I have to select/create from their attempted justifications because they WERE contradictory, made differing claims and in one case from one of the "top rules guys" diverged WILDLY.

So they can't change the timing order. And they say this does not. Everything still executes in the same order.

They redefined execute. And kinda redefined 'the same order".

So THIS is how you resolve this in order according to them.

1) You activate the system and execute the When you activate a system explore a planet bit.
2) That immediately triggers and executes the after you explore a planet bit and places a token.
3) You move to executing the "After you Activate a system" bit.

... and then it changes.

There are two versions of this. One is that ALL your triggers are checked BEFORE THIS PROCESS OF EXECUTION.

I will pretend that is a strawman version. But it wasn't because they DID in fact use it for a bit. I mean it also became apparent that if you did that then it would become possible to for instance do this...
1) When you activate a system containing only one ship, destroy it
2) After you activate a system containing only one ship, take all the money and win

Which they know is wrong because then you have all sorts of situations where whens cannot make afters invalid and that IS a problem. Once that was pointed out... well they were NEVER arguing that (they did).

Also that does require splitting the triggers and the execution, which remember, they keep ranting against.

SO the best defense one put up was that it ISN'T in ANY of the timing rules its this rule...
"Each ability describes when and how a player can resolve it"
combined exclusively with the text of this ability...
"After you activate a system that contains 1 or more of your sleeper tokens, you may replace replace each of those tokens with one PDS from your reinforcements."

And that the text of the ability overrides the normal timing rules and directly refers to a time BEFORE WHENS EXECUTE and despite being an after has PRIORITY and despite the whens being able to change and create timing events they do NOT change or create this one.

The claim is this ONLY happens here and ONLY with this text.

It's worth noting... this isn't different to the wording of basically every other after with a conditional in the fucking game.

This is obviously fucking stupid but it IS the very strongest position presented.

And it's obviously wrong because the only timing the card mentions at all is "After" which is defined by timing rules that execute whens firsts. Also it does not define any alternative timing and uses no other tenses or separation from the only defined timing it mentions. Again, you don't get to split triggers and execution AND these guys don't claim this interpretation does that anyway. This somehow all happens at once, all happens after but checks before for its conditional, because, hey look at the wording its obvious!

My version of the fix
The strongest version of this I personally can come up with is to make up a new rule and say that all conditionals on afters must be true for the entire timing event across all windows. Which would allow negations of afters by whens, still enable the creation of new timing events by whens but not allow whens to enable afters via changing conditional requirements on the same timing event.

The problems with this are. 1) I do not want to do that. 2) Thats not what anyone else is doing, 3) It's still likely to break something somewhere, just less. 4) No adding rules bloat!

Sanity Check this
So ultimately the thing I wanted from this is...

...this is crazy right?

You cannot simultaneously...
Retain the current timing rules
Pretend you are executing this in the same order
While not splitting triggers and executions
While not making up shit about retroactive timing call backs that none of the text says anywhere

So, tell me I'm wrong and crazy.





And also the dumbest version of this...
One of the top rules guys decided to go a different tact, the one that made up a bunch of stuff about never making new timing windows and expanding timing windows and executing all afters from different timing events together in any order you like.

I mentioned it already. But the best bit is this. His position is based on pure fantasy but might? negate the thing he wanted to... but by not just his admission, but by a thing he pointed out without realising the implications, would allow placing sleeper tokens the same turn you remove them(instead of removing them the same turn you place them). Which then becomes a NEW way to do the thing they just tried to nerf out of existence (place PDS with only 1 Command token/activation) and do it an entire round/activation/token sooner/cheaper.

[Grek]

Also I think he describes the right justification in his first line but somehow came up with the wrong answer?

Yeah, I had originally thought "Oh, obviously you just resolve them in Before->When->After order and break ties based on the order their triggering events happened!" But that was obviously incoherent. When I went back to re-read the part where it says "When a player resolves an ability, they must resolve the ability in its entirety.", that changed my interpretation to basically match your 'nested trigger events' idea, but somehow forgot to edit my answer to 1, 2, 3.

But I think people need to get the basic timing rules a bit more right first, since you currently aren't really close enough to an interpretation largely shared by me and the community before it wildly diverges.

Entirely possible. I've been hedging my answers quite a bit, because you can't fruitfully analyze these sorts of meta-rules in a vaccuum, since sanity checking your interpretation is such a big part of figuring out what the rules are trying to say. See my flub above as an example. But I also agree that a key part of good rules-writing is minimizing the need of the player to make these sorts of judgement calls.

So, tell me I'm wrong and crazy.

No, that all sounds less like rules-lawyering and more like rules-glossatory. They're very clearly starting with the bottom line and doing whatever gymnastics they need to get to that conclusion.

Also:

Grek is a she.

My apologies to Grek, I'll try to remember.

This exchange was very nice to see, so thanks to both of you.