Carc Central Community > Official Rules
CAR 7.5 Prep Discussion: The Junction Problem
danisthirty:
--- Quote from: jungleboy on February 21, 2018, 03:18:41 AM ---I appreciate Bill's in-depth analysis here, but for the sake of brevity, am I right in saying that what this whole debate basically comes down to is the CC1 tile, which should be open according to the way it's presented artistically but is closed according to the rules?
If that's all it is, wouldn't it be enough to simply note this oddity in the CAR and move on rather than to try to make sweeping philosophical judgements about what constitutes open and closed junctions and the like?
If it's about more than that, then ignore me and continue debating.
--- End quote ---
-infinity billion to this.
I don't see the benefit in reclassifying everything as required to fit the current set of rules/ understanding/ artwork we have, even if it seems to make sense. Whenever we do this, something else comes along to break it and we're left trying to put together the pieces of an increasingly complicated jigsaw puzzle.
The purpose of the CAR is to bring clarity to the rules and help people to apply them correctly. If we as a group of self-proclaimed Carcassonne aficionados can't agree on what constitutes a junction/ roundabout/ crossing/ other (or why we even need to) and are considering introducing further complexity in terms of how we refer to such features, purely to satisfy every conceivable edge case on paper, then it could be that we need to reassess what really matters.
Just a Bill:
My goal is actually to reduce the complexity of this issue.
What additional complication do you perceive is being introduced here? The complexity of the inconsistencies between artwork, rules, and (supposedly) intended gameplay already exists and was all created by the publisher. The Open Junction terminology has long been a part of the CAR already, going back more than eight years (at least as far back as version 5.0 beta 6 in July 2009). I'm not adding any new terminology or rules; I'm simply trying to identify how the tangled undergrowth has come to exist, and find the short, simple, intuitive path through it.
jungleboy:
--- Quote from: Just a Bill on February 21, 2018, 07:04:14 AM ---I'm not adding any new terminology or rules; I'm simply trying to identify how the tangled undergrowth has come to exist, and find the short, simple, intuitive path through it.
--- End quote ---
I haven't thought about this in any significant detail so apologies if I am underestimating the complexity of it all. I'm saying the short, simple, intuitive path is to define what ends a road during the rules of the basic game (e.g. 'A road is completed when the road segments on both sides end in a crossing (a 3 or 4-way junction with a village or trees), a city segment, or a cloister, or when the road forms a closed circle' - bolded is my addition), and then make a note when you get to Crop Circles 1 saying something like, 'This road looks like it is open because there are no trees or villages, but HiG has ruled that it is closed. House rule it if you want.'
Leven:
--- Quote from: jungleboy on February 21, 2018, 07:37:19 AM ---
--- Quote from: Just a Bill on February 21, 2018, 07:04:14 AM ---I'm not adding any new terminology or rules; I'm simply trying to identify how the tangled undergrowth has come to exist, and find the short, simple, intuitive path through it.
--- End quote ---
I haven't thought about this in any significant detail so apologies if I am underestimating the complexity of it all. I'm saying the short, simple, intuitive path is to define what ends a road during the rules of the basic game (e.g. 'A road is completed when the road segments on both sides end in a crossing (a 3 or 4-way junction with a village or trees), a city segment, or a cloister, or when the road forms a closed circle' - bolded is my addition), and then make a note when you get to Crop Circles 1 saying something like, 'This road looks like it is open because there are no trees or villages, but HiG has ruled that it is closed. House rule it if you want.'
--- End quote ---
Wouldn't it be even simpler if we leave out the bolded addition, and just mention the known exceptions in the chapters of the specific expansions where the general rule (the roads end at the crossing) shouldn't be applied in the case of a given tile? These exceptions are quite few: the "roundabout" tile of A&M, the Russian promo tile, the labyrinths, plus the roundabout from the catapult but the latter isn't officially confirmed yet, as well as I know.
Just a Bill:
Since we're starting to debate specific wordings now, I need to point out that for the Carcassonne concept of roads joining together, "junction" (origin: join) is a much better English word than "crossing" (origin: cross). Junctions can include 3, 4, or even more road segments coming together, whereas crossing in this context is more limited, connoting two independent roads (4 segments) running through and across each other. A crossing can also be a single roadway/walkway running through or over some different object such as a river or railroad track, which again is not appropriate for the Carcassonne context. Visually...
In English, this is a junction but it is not a crossing (instead it is a "T junction" or a "Y junction").
In English, these are crossings but they are not junctions.
"Junction" works for all Carcassonne game scenarios, but "crossing" implies the wrong interpretation in all three of these examples (and others).
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