James Hazelton wrote:
I still maintain that you cannot observe the hand limit on your turn.
The simple and unavoidable truth is that Andy had never even
considered observing the Hand Limit on your turn until a fan pointed it
out on this list. This was after 3.1 came out.
This is true. And that's not how I ever play it, nor how I ever intended it
to work.
How this whole thing started is that I was sloppy with my language long ago
and we've kept using the standard established text ever since. It's all to
do with the word "may". When I wrote the phrase, "During your turn, you may
ignore the hand limit," I was thinking of it only as "this is something you
get to do, isn't that great?" not something some players would find to be
an attractive option.
But then I started getting questions like this from Bryan Stout:
I can only conclude that the "may ignore ... as long as"
wording on the card allows the current player to apply the Hand Limit at
any point in their turn they want. It would take the stricter (and
shorter) wording I mentioned last time to unambiguously enforce the
stricter interpretation. In all honesty I cannot say that those who
interpret the rule to allow earlier Limits in one's turn are wrong,
because of the way it is phrased -- even if Andy didn't realize the
implications of the phrasing at first.
... and I had to agree that, since I'd used that pesky word 'may', I'd
created something that had to be optional if someone wanted to interpret it
that way. I also concluded that it didn't even bother me, since it really
isn't a very useful trick very often, and decided to allow it.
But that's all in the past, what about the future?
We're about to go to press with Monty Python Fluxx, plus we're about to
reprint Zombie Fluxx as version 1.1 (with a few little tweaks) and later
there's Martian Fluxx and someday Fluxx 4.0 and who knows what else. All of
them will have Hand Limits. So what should I do for these and all future
versions of Fluxx?
1) Keep using the traditional text because it's established
2) Re-write the text so that James et al will agree with the optional
interpretation
3) Eliminate the option by re-writing the second paragraph as "This rules
does not apply to you during your turn. When your turn ends, discard down
to x."
We've been using option 1 for a long time, but I'm suddenly finding option
3 very attractive. Thoughts?
-- Andy