History Main / ThatOneRule

** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mystical_Refpanel Mystical Refpanel]] makes it so that a Spell card that targets a player will instead affect the other. But even after PSCT, Spell card never state if they target a player, so you're going to need a trip to the wiki to figure out if Refpanel can respond to a Spell, ''on top'' of learning how it resolves. Short version: anything that draws, discards from the hand, changes your LP, or limits your actions, and that only affects one player, and that isn't an Equip, Continuous, or Field Spell, and it only transfers effect, not cost, condition, or whoever used it... you can generally tell a card falls into this when it doesn't see a rerelease, and Refpanel hasn't been reissued in the OCG for ''seventeen years'' as of this writing, despite its fairly pivotal anime appearances.

** In 5E, the Challenge Rating system is intended to help the DM balance encounters, but is infamous for how bad it is at doing so. The Challenge Rating/CR of a monster is designed to tell you how great a threat the monster is by saying that four adventurers of the monster's CR should have a difficult but winnable fight. For example, if a monster's CR is 3, that means four party members, each of whom are at level 3, should find such a beast to be a worthy challenge, but not a deadly one. Trouble is, what counts as worthy of a high CR is completely arbitrary, self-contradictory, and hard to pin down. One monster with a CR of 10 may be surprisingly easy for a party of level 6 characters, while a monster with a CR of 12 may end up causing a TotalPartyKill on a level 15 party. Plus, even though the adventurers can only reach level 20, a monster's CR can go as high as 30, which is where the system gets really arbitrary. What exactly makes a CR 24 monster less deadly than a CR 27 monster, considering that the party is going to be underleveled no matter what? Challenge Rating is, at best, a loose approximation of the difficulty of a monster, and one that's going to be dependent on so many different factors -- player types, character classes, number of players, available spell slots, and more -- that it's all but useless.

* The ''VideoGame/DonPachi'' series' most prominent scoring mechanic by far is its combo system; destroying enemies within a sufficiently short interval of each other accumulates combo, and to oversimplify, the higher your combo, the more points you get from destroying the next enemy. At first, this seems like an interesting concept, but it becomes apparent that the best way to score is to build stage-long combos, which require extreme levels of memorization of where each enemy is, far beyond what is needed in a survival-based run, because destroying enemies ''too'' quickly will leave you without any enemies to combo off of before the combo timer runs out, breaking your combo and hurting your score.

* The ''VideoGame/DonPachi'' series' most prominent scoring mechanic by far is its combo system; destroying enemies within a sufficiently short interval of each other accumulates combo, and to oversimplify, the higher your combo, the more points you get from destroying the next enemy. At first, this seems like an interesting concept, but it becomes apparent that the best way to score is to build stage-long chains, which require extreme levels of memorization of where each enemy is, far beyond what is needed in a survival-based run.

* The runner's lane interference rule. The batter-runner can be called out if he interferes with a throw that would have resulted in a play at first base. First base is in fair ground, and the runner's lane leading there from home plate is in foul territory. The runner has to divert from the lane to step on the bag by avoiding contact with a fielder while not straying from the base path too much. The most common complaint about this rule is that if a throw is wild or at least uncatchable, then it rewards bad defense by turning an error into an out. It also invites a situation where the fielder can induce an unavoidable collision at first if he sets up to catch the ball in foul territory. In this case, the umpire could overrule an obstruction call in favor of runner's lane interference if the fielder was in a position to catch the ball regardless of the throw's accuracy. Runner's lane interference calls at the Major League level are not reviewable because they are considered judgment calls. Fans have offered suggestions on how to improve this rule, such as putting another base adjacent to the one already there in foul territory as seen in softball or the recently created [=Baseball5=] variant. MLB addressed this for the 2024 baseball season by introducing a rule that expands the runner's lane into fair territory.

* The runner's lane interference rule. The batter-runner can be called out if he interferes with a throw that would have resulted in a play at first base. First base is in fair ground, and the runner's lane leading there from home plate is in foul territory. The runner has to divert from the lane to step on the bag by avoiding contact with a fielder while not straying from the base path too much. The most common complaint about this rule is that if a throw is wild or at least uncatchable, then it rewards bad defense by turning an error into an out. It also invites a situation where the fielder can induce an unavoidable collision at first if he sets up to catch the ball in foul territory. In this case, the umpire could overrule an obstruction call in favor of runner's lane interference if the fielder was in a position to catch the ball regardless of the throw's accuracy. What makes this worse is at the Major League level, runner's lane interference calls are not reviewable because they are considered judgment calls. Fans have offered suggestions on how to improve this rule, such as putting another base adjacent to the one already there in foul territory as seen in softball or the recently created [=Baseball5=] variant.
* The "Manfred runner" rule, which places a runner on second base at the start of every extra inning. Fans tolerated this rule when it was first introduced in the COVID-shortened seasons as a NecessaryWeasel to fit as many games as possible into a smaller amount of time, but once it became permanent in 2023 despite the league going back to a normal schedule, audiences cried foul. The main criticism of this rule, unlike other rule changes designed to increase scoring and pace of play introduced in the same season[[note]]such as the pitch clock and pickoff limit rules, which are well-liked[[/note]], is that it creates a scenario where a team can lose or even get ''walked off'' [[WinsByDoingAbsolutelyNothing despite not actually making any mistakes]]. Theoretically, with the Manfred runner rule, it is possible for a pitcher to ''have a perfect game and lose''. This creates a scenario where the pitching team has an incentive to immediately intentionally walk batters to try and create a force out scenario, and the batting team has an incentive to try and go for sacrifice bunts and flies to advance the free baserunner--exactly the kind of slow, boring play that the MLB was trying to ''avoid'' by instituting this rule.

** Even after being removed the "Planeswalker Redirection rule" is still causing problems. Originally the rules allowed non-combat damage to be redirected from a player to a Planeswalker they controlled in order to retroactively allow various things to kill Planeswalkers, similar to how creatures could directly attack them. However the rules were changed in 2018, allowing spells to directly target Planeswalkers, which generally makes much more sense, but also means many older printings of cards don't clarify if they can specifically target Planeswalkers, forcing players to constantly look up if a specific spell or ability can target planeswalkers or not

** The rule that disallows players from reordering the cards in their graveyards. This can interfere with effects that count cards of a certain type in graveyards, and forced players to pay strict attention to resolution order when placing cards in graveyards (for example, [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=220139 Day of Judgment]] must go on top of the creatures it destroys, while [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=446831 Earthquake]] must go under them). All this for only a handful of cards that cared about the graveyard order ([[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=184537 Death Spark]], anyone?). This is, of course, extremely annoying, particularly because most of those cards aren't any good anyways and haven't been reprinted in a decade or more. For tournaments in any format which does not include those cards (which, at this point, is most of them), ignored the rule and allows players to freely reorder their graveyards at their convenience.

** Despite being removed in a 2018 rules update, the "Planeswalker Redirection rule" continues to cause headaches to this day. In order to allow damaging abilities which were printed before Planeswalkers existed to still hit Planeswalkers, the original rule was that non-combat damage dealt to a player could instead be redirected to a Planewalker they controlled, so any spell that damage a player could also be redirected onto Planeswalkers. The fact that creatures attacked Planeswalkers directly while abilities and spells lead to a bunch of strange edge cases, but was at least functional. The new rule made it so that damaging spells and effects would directly target the planeswalkers with no redirection possible, which makes more sense to most players, but also means that many older cards had to be updated to target Planeswalkers directly. This means many, many physical cards have effects which don't actually match their text, forcing players to look it up to figure out if a specific card can or can't target Planeswalkers.

** If you were behind the ball when it was passed to you, you're onside regardless of where any defender was.
** The same is true if you were in your own half of the field when it was passed to you.

** The yellow-line rule at Daytona and Talladega is widely considered one of the most arbitrary and useless rules in the series. The rules state that drivers cannot advance their position if any of their wheels go under the yellow line that delineates the track from the apron, except if they are forced beneath it; however, what counts as going beneath the yellow line and being forced under have never been made clear, and the rule is often enforced in wildly disproportionate ways. Many fans outright call for this rule to be abolished, considering it exists at no other tracks but the aforementioned two.

* An incident similar to the "Berry"/"Barry" one on ''Jeopardy!'' happened on a 1982 episode of ''[[Series/{{Password}} Password Plus]]''. Marcia Wallace contested a judgment call where her contestant's guess of "Hairy" was determined to be phonetically dissimilar to the password of "Harry". The staff not only maintained their ruling against her, they also rolled out a chalkboard which explained the pronunciation difference. Marcia was understandably not amused.

* Defensive pass interference rules have been contentious for many years. If a defender interferes with a receiver trying to catch a pass, the ball is placed at the spot of the foul (or the one-yard line if it happens in the defending team's end zone) and the offense is given an automatic first down. This can, and with some frequency does, become the most lethal penalty in the entire game, as DPI on a long pass play may produce penalties in upwards of 30 yards. Even a personal foul (which is handed out for dangerous or overly aggressive behavior) is a mere 15 yards and fresh downs. Fans tend to hate the severity of the penalty, and some voices are always calling to make it a set penalty of 15-20 yards, but even those who hate it tend to admit there is a good reason for it being severe (without it, defensive backs would have little incentive to *not* interfere with passes longer than 15 yards). There are also more than a few fans who are okay with the penalty if the interference is blatant, but feel that given the severity of the penalty, the referees need to be very selective about ''when'' to call it, and will get upset if the penalty is called in a situation where the offense is minor or questionable.

** Sometimes, an offside player doesn't even need to touch the ball in order to be offside, which happens if he is interpreted as being involved in the play in some way (like letting the ball pass through his legs or blocking the field of vision of the goalie).

* The NHL has a few rules that vie for the title. The consensus champion, though, is the "puck-over-the-glass" rule. Specifically, following the 2005 lockout, the NHL made it an offence to shoot the puck over the glass from the team's defensive end, netting the offending player a two-minute penalty for delay of game. It's suspected the rule was implemented to boost scoring by boosting penalty minutes (since teams on the powerplay score more), but it does so by penalizing something that is usually an accidental action and which causes no more of a delay than icing the puck (which is not a penalty). Few things are more frustrating than watching your team take one of these penalties (even worse, because icing is legal while on the penalty kill and many players try to bank the glass off the puck and out, this penalty usually gets called on teams already down a man, leading to a 5-on-3 penalty).

* ''VideoGame/{{Espgaluda}} II'' seems like a pretty straightforward BulletHell vertical shmup, with, much like its predecessor, a unique Kakusei mechanic that allows you to slow bullets down, but it drains your gems over time and causes enemies to turn much more aggressive if you stay in this mode after your gems run out. However, if you intend to play for score, this game becomes a very complicated beast. This game introduces Kakusei Zesshikai (also known as Absolute Ascension Dead Zone), a mechanic for cancelling bullets for massive amounts of points and which makes the game significantly more complex than its predecessor. First of all, using it requires both gems and gold, and drains both at a very fast rate, making it difficult to find a good opportunity to use it. Second, bullets cancelled with this mechanic trigger revenge bullets that can cost the player precious lives, and often the bullets spawn in ways that are counter-intuitive, but those revenge bullets can be cancelled for even more points. But without this mechanic, it can be somewhat difficult to get the two point-based extra lives (at 15 million and 35 million points) since the point gains from using regular Kakusei are quite tiny in comparison. It's rather telling that, while most Creator/{{CAVE}} games don't have instructions on how to use their scoring systems to the fullest, ''Espgaluda II''[='=]s console ports actually has an in-depth tutorial on how its game mechanics work, including how to use Kakusei Zesshikai. It's a very satisfying technique to use when pulled off correctly, but the high execution barrier means most non-hardcore players will be content to just use regular Kakusei instead of recklessly endangering their run.

* ''VideoGame/{{Espgaluda}} II'' seems like a pretty straightforward BulletHell vertical shmup, with, much like its predecessor, a unique Kakusei mechanic that allows you to slow bullets down, but it drains your gems over time and causes enemies to turn much more aggressive if you stay in this mode after your gems run out. However, if you intend to play for score, this game becomes a very complicated beast. This game introduces Kakusei Zesshikai (also known as Absolute Ascension Dead Zone), a mechanic for cancelling bullets for massive amounts of points and which makes the game significantly more complex than its predecessor. First of all, using it requires both gems and gold, and drains both at a very fast rate, making it difficult to find a good opportunity to use it. Second, bullets cancelled with this mechanic trigger revenge bullets that can cost the player precious lives, and often the bullets spawn in ways that are counter-intuitive, but those revenge bullets can be cancelled for even more points. But without this mechanic, it can be somewhat difficult to get the two point-based extra lives (at 15 million and 35 million points) since the point gains from using regular Kakusei are quite tiny in comparison. It's rather telling that, while most Creator/{{CAVE}} games don't have instructions on how to use their scoring systems to the fullest, ''Espgaluda II''[='=]s console ports actually has an in-depth tutorial on how its game mechanics work, including how to use Kakusei Zesshikai. It's a very satisfying technique to use when pulled off correctly, but the high execution barrier means most non-hardcore players will be content to just use regular Kakusei and settle with getting just enough points for the two point-based extra lives.

** Modern ''Tetris'' games use what is known as the [[https://tetris.wiki/Super_Rotation_System Super Rotation System]]. In many older ''Tetris'' games, it can be hard to rotate pieces in tight spots, since if the piece's new orientation would be blocked by another block or a wall, the piece will not rotate. So some ''Tetris'' games implemented a "kick" mechanic where if you try to rotate a piece but it would be blocked, the game will attempt to shift its new position to an adjacent space. SRS involves a complex set of tables to determine how pieces should rotate in tight spots. The kicks aren't always intuitive either, as upward kicks tend to get prioritized, meaning that if you're trying to slip a piece into a tight gap, the game will more than likely pop your piece out instead. Ironically, ''Tetris: The Grand Master'', a series known for its complex grade systems, has one of the more BoringButPractical versions of wall kicks: If piece rotation is blocked, try shifting the piece one column to the right, and if that doesn't work, shift the piece one column to the left of its intial position, and fail if neither of those kicks work.

** Modern ''Tetris'' games use what is known as the [[https://tetris.wiki/Super_Rotation_System Super Rotation System]]. In many older ''Tetris'' games, it can be hard to rotate pieces in tight spots, since if the piece's new orientation would be blocked by another block or a wall, the piece will not rotate. So some ''Tetris'' games implemented a "kick" mechanic where if you try to rotate a piece but it would be blocked, the game will attempt to shift its new position to an adjacent space. SRS involves a complex set of tables to determine how pieces should rotate in tight spots. The kicks aren't always intuitive either, as upward kicks tend to get prioritized, meaning that if you're trying to slip a piece into a tight gap, the game will more than likely pop your piece out instead.

* Ranking up in ''VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster'' is simple enough: Score enough points. And clearing multiple lines at once gives you a better points-to-line ratio. But once you reach rank S9, the game ceases to tell you how many points are needed for the next rank. This is because the final rank of [[TitleDrop Grand Master]] requires you to meet score and time quotas at levels 300, 500, and 900, ''and'' finish with a high enough score and low enough time. [[GuideDangIt None of which is stated in the game itself, and you're not informed whether you meet or fail any of these checkpoints.]] Later games in the ''TGM'' series only get more complex.

* ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga'' seems like a pretty straightforward ShootEmUp...except for its take on the DynamicDifficulty "rank" system. Basically, rank very slowly increases over time, and actions like shooting (especially by tapping the shot button rapidly) and collecting items will additionally increase the rank. Eventually rank will get to a point where enemy attacks become too aggressive for most players to feasibly dodge, resulting in feeding continues or otherwise a thwarted no-continue run. The only way to reduce rank is by ''dying'', and the rank decreases more the fewer lives you have in stock when you die. The intricacies of rank are [[https://shmups.wiki/library/Battle_Garegga/Advanced_Rank extremely complex]] and forces the player to commit several [[ViolationOfCommonSense Violations of Common Sense]] to strike a balance between surviving, not collecting excess powerups or powering up too quickly, and occasionally suiciding to keep the rank at a managable level.

* ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga'' seems like a pretty straightforward ShootEmUp...except for its take on the DynamicDifficulty "rank" system. Basically, rank very slowly increases over time, and actions like shooting (especially by tapping the shot button rapidly) and collecting items will additionally increase the rank. Eventually rank will get to a point where enemy attacks become too aggressive for most players to feasibly dodge, resulting in feeding continues or otherwise a thwarted no-continue run. The only way to reduce rank is by ''dying'', and the rank decreases more the fewer lives you have in stock when you die. The intricacies of rank are extremely complex and forces the player to commit several [[ViolationOfCommonSense Violations of Common Sense]] to strike a balance between surviving, not collecting excess powerups or powering up too quickly, and occasionally suiciding to keep the rank at a managable level.

** Summoning conditions in regards to reviving monsters. If a monster's effect says it can only be Special Summoned one way, can it be Special Summoned from the Graveyard after being Special Summoned through that method? For some cards, no. For others, yes. In the modern day, this is pretty easy to distinguish, since the former (known as "Nomis") say "Must be Special Summoned by X", and the latter (known as "Semi-Nomis") say "Must ''first'' be Special Summoned by X." The thing is, the terminology on older cards was far less distinct, and known to change every couple of years--for instance, "can''not'' be Special Summoned ''except'' by X" versus "can ''only'' be Special Summoned by X", which happened in a period where they were trying to ''formalize'' the definition. Go back a little earlier, and you're trying to pick between which of [[https://i.imgur.com/ENNFV2r.png these]] [[https://i.imgur.com/bno2tFJ.png two]] cards is a Nomi. Reprints with modern text have somewhat alleviated the issue, but there's still a lot of cards out there with text that remains outdated.

** The fine print on spell/trap/effect monster cards can also lead to some unusual circumstances and headaches. Legendary Fisherman on the Field while "Umi" is active? If no other monsters are on the field, opponent can attack your life points directly. Trap Card negating the effects of all monsters on the field? Monsters can still be special-summoned by their own effect, ignoring any change to ATK and DEF as a result[[note]]A monster effect that allows you to special summon that monster isn't considered to activate on the field.[[/note]]. Both of these are official rulings. Also, flip effects of monsters ONLY activate after damage calculation. A face-down defense-position monster that is attacked is NOT flip-summoned, it is merely "flipped". A handful of cards have the exact text "When this card is flip summoned..."
** By a similar count, some costs are merely conditions to activate an effect (meaning they can't be negated), and others are part of the effect itself (meaning they can be negated). Determining which is which and how it affects your strategies can be quite troublesome for a new player. For example, take Skill Drain and Stardust Dragon: Stardust can tribute itself while on the field and negate a destruction effect, Skill Drain negates all monster effects on the field. You'd expect it to negate Stardust completely, but since Stardust's tributing of itself is a cost, this isn't negated, and then since Stardust is now in the Graveyard, its effect activates there and therefore Skill Drain does nothing to it.
** There are cards (such as [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Thunder_King_Rai-Oh Thunder King Rai-Oh]]) that specify that they can negate the special summon (any summon that isn't a normal summon or flip summon) of a monster. Despite what they say, they can only negate certain special summons. They can negate anything where a monster special summons itself without starting a chain (synchro summon, xyz summon, Cyber Dragon, [[GameBreaker Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning]], etc.), but they can't negate a special summon performed during the resolution of another card's effect (fusion summon, ritual summon, Monster Reborn, etc.). This is because you aren't allowed to activate effects during the resolution of other effects. Cards that can negate any special summon have to explicitly say that they can negate a special summon or an effect that would summon a monster.

** Mystical Refpanel. Its effect: it can change the target of a card that targets one player to the other. Figuring out what this means will likely require another trip to the wiki. Short version: anything that draws, discards from the hand, changes your LP, or limits your actions, and that only affects one player, and that isn't an Equip, Continuous, or Field Spell, and it only transfers effect, not cost, condition, or whoever used it... you can generally tell a card falls into this when it doesn't see a rerelease, and Refpanel hasn't been reissued in the OCG for ''seventeen years'' as of this writing, despite its fairly pivotal anime appearances.

--> '''Ted Lasso''': "WILL YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THAT WAS OFFSIDE!? ...no, I'm asking you seriously, explain offside to me.

** This is extended into ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', which brings the Plus and Same rules over wholesale in it's recreation of said card minigame. Due to lacking any particularly good explanation or visualization of said rule, it's mostly considered the same way it is in [=FF8=] - a way for the [[TheAllSeeingAI computer]] to pull off wins from nowhere.

* The runner's lane interference rule. The batter-runner can be called out if he interferes with a throw that would have resulted in a play at first base. First base is in fair ground, and the runner's lane leading there from home plate is in foul territory. The runner has to divert from the lane to step on the bag by avoiding contact with a fielder while not straying from the base path too much. The most common complaint about this rule is that if a throw is wild or at least uncatchable, then it rewards bad defense by turning an error into an out. It also invites a situation where the fielder can induce an unavoidable collision at first if he sets up to catch the ball in foul territory. In this case, the umpire could overrule an obstruction call in favor of runner's lane interference if the fielder was in a position to catch the ball regardless of the throw's accuracy. Fans have offered suggestions on how to improve this rule, such as putting another base adjacent to the one already there in foul territory as seen in softball or the recently created [=Baseball5=] variant.

*** Fifth Edition, which doesn't have "nonlethal" damage as a rule at all, simplifies this to just stating that whoever deals the damage which reduces a monster/NPC to 0hp can simply declare they are knocking them out rather than killing. Of course, this is still subject to DM arbitration as to wether this is possible given the ''way'' the damage was dealt (like with an area-effect fireball)
** In 5E, the Challenge Rating system is ''intended'' to help GMs balance encounters, but is infamous for how bad it is at doing so.