i agree with JECEs point #3

rollerfiend: "dudes, i don't know why redhouse is getting so much heat for suggesting this idea."

As a member of the "con" camp, I'll try to explain. Someone made a poker analogy upthread and it's apt. Years ago I was playing poker at a friend's house, and a couple different times after winning a pot because no one would call my bet, his roommate grabbed my cards after I threw them in and looked at what my hand had been.

If there are any card players among you, you will know that is extremely bad etiquette. If it had been my house I would have asked him to leave. If I were a less civilized person, fisticuffs may have resulted.

Essentially redhouse's proposal would legalize looking at my cards after the hand to see if I'd bluffed or not. It would seem to undermine the very foundation of the game, at least as I understand it.

As for a real world comparison, think not so much of ambassadors and heads of state and whatnot - think more along the lines of those anonymous power brokers in dark smoky back rooms, making deals on a handshake and the power of their reputation, doing the dirt no one WANTS to put in writing.

@Hazel-Rah - Love the poker analogy and, yeah, if everyone has folded, they haven't bought the privilege of seeing my cards. Had someone done that at my table, they would be ejected form the game and any money on the table given to the person whose cards they looked at. If they wanted to complain, the could talk to my Louisville Slugger.

Oh, and I love your name. Haven't heard it since the last time I read or watched Watership Down.

Re: messing with Calhamer,
That's totally beside the point. There is absolutely nothing in the original rules that would prohibit writing some standardized pieces of papers that you put certain basic info on that you put into an archive for later studying of the game. But whatever.

As long as nobody except the person "writing the paper" knew what was on it or even new it existed during the game. But if *any* of it was visible while the game was going on (even the existence of the treaty), it becomes a tool that others will use against those who don't do the treaties.

+1 to Draugnar for having read Watership Down!

I tried signing up as "General Woundwort" but messed it up somehow and couldn't log in to that account. So not knowing any better I made a new one as Hazel-Rah instead. Later I figured I'd better ask the mods to delete Woundwort so I didn't get banned as a multi.

I'd have much rather been Woundwort, he's such a badass. Oh well.

I've actually read it several times. It and Plague Dogs are both outstanding novels.

The Plague Dogs had the worst, laziest cop-out of a deus ex machina ending that I'd ever read. It was so offensive to me that it tainted the entire book.

Apparently it was a dumbed-down American edition, which tacked on a crappy sappy happy ending, along with simplifying some of the Gaelic dialects used by some of the characters. I need to find an original English edition, because I remember really enjoying it up until the very end.

An easier read as they were intended for pre teens and teens, but Biran Jacques Redwall series is pretty good overall. No Watership Down, but good nonetheless.