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Greetings Fellow Warriors,
Sohoa asked me to write a little piece on a current topic of club debate. Lately there has been renewed discourse directly with myself and on the BBS concerning Error Correction and why rulings are made the way they are. It is important for everyone to understand the spirit of intent of these policies. It is important to interpret written words along with the intentions of those words. I will try to give you some of the thought process that went into crafting these so that everyone can have a better understanding of them. When I first joined the club, way back when Micwil wasn't scary to look at, there essentially was no error correction. Any error made rolling a turn required the entire battle to be rerolled. This was frequently abused as a player simply made a rolling error if the battle wasn't going his way.
When the Handbook was revised, as it pertains to error correction, there was a twofold approach: to preserve as many of the original dice rolls as possible and to try to eliminate ways that an unscrupulous player could intentionally manipulate rolls.
With that in mind, error correction was broken down into two distinct parts: sending errors and rolling errors. The remainder of this article will focus only on sending errors.
There seems to be some controversy on what constitutes a sender error, especially when a "mistake" is made. Mistakes seem to fall into three general categories: outright mistakes, typographical errors, and "errors of intent." To keep this brief, we'll close out with how rulings are made in regard to these general categories.
When an issue is sent for a ruling, if it is an outright mistake then these are usually clear-cut, follow the written rule closely, and are seldom sent to me.
The next argument is then usually that a player "intended" to do this, or it should be clear that "anyone would have meant that," etc. It is impossible for me know what a player intended and believe it or not, players sometimes do some "different" things. Just pull out some of Einstein's or ToddVomit's logs. Another line of argument is that if a unit was rolled for, or not rolled for, that this should indicate intent that a player wanted or did not want said units in the battle. Again, it is impossible for me to determine intent and these circumstances are rolling errors.
The last topic is typographical errors. I break typo's into four categories:
Simple typo: A simple typo will not qualify as a sender error. An obvious typo would be 10 unf instead of 10 inf. I have had people argue that this is a sender error, as there is no such unit as an "unf." This would obviously hold no merit and would not be a sender error.
Complex typo: A typo or mistake (mistake in the sense that there was technically a typo, but the typoed word actually exists, i.e., E.Eur and W.Eur) that has no relevance to the battle and it is perfectly clear, without personal opinion, what the battle was supposed to be. For example, if you sent in a battle with the US attacking W.Eur in an amphib and typed in W.US instead of E.US as the territory of origin, then it would still be a good send.
Total typo: The typo is so garbled that the word cannot be determined. This would constitute a sender error.
Numerical typo: There are no numerical typos, so to speak. You cannot send 10 inf and claim it was a typo and you meant 11 inf. If the number is valid then you are stuck with it. If the number is not valid then it is a sender error.
I hope this has shed some light on how rulings are made and why. Please realize that this is not a comprehensive discussion covering each and every possible twist or turn, but rather a general overview of the more common issues at hand.
Take care.
John