text:
What does X mean in a spell's cost?
What does the X in a spell's cost do? For example, Strength of the Tajuru has X in its cost. What do I need to do in order to cast that spell, and what happens with the X when it resolves?
Note: If you need help understanding multikicker, see How does multikicker work?

If your intent here was to fully address Strength of the Tajuru for people who really care about rule details, I think splitting into separate questions might not be the right way to go, since the real nontrivial question people would be likely looking for is what happens when you kick it and pay {X} - when do you make the decisions and how do you calculate the cost?

@Jefromi The answer to "What happens when you kick and pay {X}?" is "Everything that would normally happen when you kick, plus everything that would normally happen when you pay {X}." There's no fancy combo rules. Nothing says "If you pay {X} and you kick a spell, follows these alternate rules instead." Just to give you an example, your question "When do I make the decisions?" could be trivially broken down into "When do I make the decision to pay a kicker?" and "When do I make the decision to pay {X}?" The two mechanics are separate and deserve separate attention.

Fortunately, I entirely agree that they deserve separate attention. I also entirely agree that the answer about {X} with multikicker (how do I declare values and calculate cost, etc) turns out to be trivial. Nonetheless, in the context of Strength of the Tajuru, it is still reasonable for someone confused about how the card works to ask that question, so if the goal of this was to fully address that card, that is a question we should have. Tons of questions turn out to have very simple answers, but that doesn't mean everyone already knows those answers.

@Jefromi Can you explain what you mean by "fully address a card"? Do you mean address every possible question that could be asked about that card?

It is indeed somewhat vague, but fortunately in this case I don't even need that strong a statement. The core question being answered both here and in the other question is "how do I cast this spell?" (either with X or multikicker). Given that the spell in question is Strength of the Tajuru, it is quite reasonable for "how do I cast this spell?" to address both paying for X and multikicker. Again, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with this question, just that the union of the two isn't quite the entire Strength of the Tajuru question you're responding to.

When you cast a spell with X in its cost, you decide how much X will be and then add that amount to the rest of the spell's cost when you pay it. When the spell resolves, you treat any "X" in the text box of the card as the chosen number.
In the specific case of Strength of the Tajuru, you choose a number for X, then (assuming you don't kick it) you pay the chosen number mana of any color, plus 2 green mana. When the spell resolves, you add the chosen number of counters to the target creature.
The basic rulebook has a description of X costs in the glossary:

X, {X}—Some spells and abilities have effects
  that change depending on how much mana
  you use to pay for them. For example, Heat Ray
  is an instant spell that costs {X}{R} and deals X
  damage. If you paid {3}{R} to cast it, it would deal
  3 damage. If you paid {6}{R} to cast it, it would
  deal 6 damage.

Rule 601.2b more specifically covers paying for spells with X costs:

If the spell is modal the player announces the mode choice (see rule 700.2). If the player wishes to splice any cards onto the spell (see rule 702.46), he or she reveals those cards in his or her hand. If the spell has alternative or additional costs that will be paid as it's being cast such as buyback or kicker costs (see rules 117.8 and 117.9), the player announces his or her intentions to pay any or all of those costs (see rule 601.2e). A player can't apply two alternative methods of casting or two alternative costs to a single spell. If the spell has a variable cost that will be paid as it's being cast (such as an {X} in its mana cost; see rule 107.3), the player announces the value of that variable. If a cost that will be paid as the spell is being cast includes hybrid mana symbols, the player announces the nonhybrid equivalent cost he or she intends to pay. If a cost that will be paid as the spell is being cast includes Phyrexian mana symbols, the player announces whether he or she intends to pay 2 life or the corresponding colored mana cost for each of those symbols. Previously made choices (such as choosing to cast a spell with flashback from a graveyard or choosing to cast a creature with morph face down) may restrict the player's options when making these choices.

When a card with {X} in its cost is in any zone other than the stack, the X is considered to be 0 for the purpose of any calculations. This is specified in rule 202.3b:

When calculating the converted mana cost of an object with an Manax.gif in its mana cost, X is treated as 0 while the object is not on the stack, and X is treated as the number chosen for it while the object is on the stack

The one exception is permanents' abilities that need to know about their own mana costs, as rule 400.7c says:

If an ability of a permanent requires information about choices made as that permanent was cast as a spell, including what mana was spent to cast that spell, it uses information about the spell that became that permanent as it resolved.

A cost that includes {X} is a variable cost, you can pick any value for {X} that you want and that number is used to determine the effect of the spell, exactly what the variable does is dependent on the text of the spell. For example, Blaze has a cost of {X}{R} and rules text that says Blaze deals X damage to target creature or player. so what you do when you cast it is determine how much damage you want to do, this number will be {X}, so if you want to deal 3 damage to your opponent Blaze will cost {3}{R}.
Some cards have costs that are {X}{X} like Chalice of the Void, the way this works is you pick the value you want for X and then pay that twice, so if you want the Chalice to have 2 counters on it you would have to pay {2}{2} or {4} total. Astral Cornucopia is similar with its {X}{X}{X} cost but you pay three times X.
For cards with {X} in their cost the {X} is assumed to be zero anytime a card cares about its Converted Mana Cost except for when it is on the stack and you have actually payed mana for it. So if you have an Izzet Guildmage you can use its ability to copy sorceries with a CMC of 2 or less on Blaze only if X is 1 (or 0 but why would you cast it then?). However if you have a Primordial Hydra that you paid {10}{G}{G} for it could still be destroyed by an Abrupt Decay because on the battlefield its CMC is only 2.
Because the {X} is 0 unless you pay mana to cast it this also means that while you can cast them off of effects that allow you to play spell without paying their mana cost like Omniscience you have to pick {0} for X, there is no way to cast Blaze with Omniscience and have it deal damage.

Thanks for the clarification on costs that are {X}{X}.  Was getting ready to ask about that. :-)


text:
Can my commander ever not be my commander?
Once and for all: Is there anything that can possibly be done to my commander that would cause it to cease being my commander?

All of these questions ask the same thing, but aren't general enough to be marked as a duplicate.

If a commander becomes a colorless forest, is it still a commander?

Is a commander still a commander if it gets turned into a forest?

Is your commander still a "commander" if it gets turned face down?

Is a commander still a commander if it gets turned face down?

No, 'commander-ness' is an intrinsic property of the card that nothing can take away.

903.3. Each deck has a legendary creature card designated as its commander. This designation is not a characteristic of the object represented by the card; rather, it is an attribute of the card itself. The card retains this designation even when it changes zones.
Example: A commander that’s been turned face down (due to Ixidron’s effect, for example) is still a commander. A commander that’s copying another card (due to Cytoshape’s effect, for example) is still a commander. A permanent that’s copying a commander (such as a Body Double, for example, copying a commander in a player’s graveyard) is not a commander.

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text:
Should a judge fix a solution agreed to by players?
Alice and Nathan are playing in a Competitive REL tournament.
Alice mulligans to six cards but accidentally draws seven cards. Alice and Nathan agree to not to call a judge, and instead apply their own solution where Alice mulligans to five cards. After drawing her five cards, Alice has a change of heart. She calls a judge to get an official ruling.
If Alice had called a judge before applying the solution she and Nathan agreed to, then the judge would have applied the remedy described in the Infraction Procedure Guide.

If the player has too many cards in hand, he or she may choose to reveal his or her hand, and his or her opponent chooses a card from it to be shuffled back into the library. If more than one excess card was drawn (for example, eight cards drawn during a mulligan to 6) his or her opponent continues removing cards until the correct number has been reached.
If cards are not removed from the hand this way (either due to an error that didn’t lead to too many cards, or by the player choosing not to reveal), that player takes an additional mulligan.
Players may continue taking mulligans after the remedy has been completed.

Should a judge fix or partially fix a solution that was implemented by the players, or should the judge let the situation stand?

Yes, very. I do think that you've now made the title and body slightly inconsistent. The title asks what a judge can do, and the body asks what the judge will do. I would recommend using the way you wrote the title, because the question about "Will a judge...?" appears to be asking the answer to predict the actions of an individual, while the question about what the judge can do is more a question about the rules.

I honestly don't think this question is answerable, since it's entirely subject to the judge at hand.

@Waterseas I would accept an answer stating that it is up to each judge to decide whether to override a solution agreed upon by the players. It might take me a few days to accept an answer like that, since the only way to convince myself that it is correct is lack of evidence to the contrary, but I would accept it nonetheless.

@Waterseas Agreed there's no general answer, but it's not so much the judge that matters, it's the situation. As with everything judges do, they'd have to look at what's happened and figure out the best way to fix it. But sure, different judges might end up making different decisions.

Players cannot make rulings, that should be obvious; only judges can.
From the Tournament Rules:

Judges do not intervene in a game to prevent illegal actions, but do intervene as soon as a rule has been broken or to prevent a situation from escalating. More information on floor judge responsibilities can be found in the Magic Infraction Procedure Guide.

So if a rule has been broken but the game has continued, whether or not the players are aware that a rule has been broken, the judge will intervene as soon as he or she is aware of the situation.
Players can only make decisions regarding how to play the game, and if it comes to the attention of a judge that game rules have been broken, the judge will try to restore the game to a correct state as best as possible up to and including restarting the game, and/or will issue the necessary penalties according to the Judging at Regular REL rules or the Infraction Procedure Guide after evaluating all the evidence and assessing the situation.

This quote from the IPG implies that players can agree on a fix that mutually satisfies them: "If a minor violation is quickly handled by the players to their mutual satisfaction, a judge does not need to intervene."

I think neither is drawing an extra card a minor issue, nor is an extra mulligan a minor fix, especially at competitive and professional REL that the IPG is for. Beside, since Alice retroactively calls a judge, in the end she was not satisfied with the fix, so I think no criterium is fulfilled for the rule you quoted.

Right, players can try to fix things, but once a judge is involved, they're the authority. It doesn't really matter whether the players broke the rules as part of playing the game, or as part of attempting to fix a previous rules violation; the judge can still address it as appropriate. How they decide to fix a fix presumably depends on the details of that situation, just as how they decide to fix a normal rules violation.

I edited the question to avoid calling the "fix" a "ruling", since that seems to be the cause of confusion here.

If I understand right, "fix" vs "ruling" in the question is not really a source of confusion here. If in attempting to fix things the players further broke the rules, of course it can be overridden/fixed by the judge - what the players did wasn't a ruling, and doesn't have any more weight than anything else possibly illegal they might've done during the course of the game.

@rainbolt Yeah I don't feel confused by the question, and if you have the feeling that I answered a different question than the one you asked, let me know.

I think that you answered "Can players resolve errors themselves?", but I asked "Assuming players resolve an error themselves, should a judge override that resolution?" I also think you based the first sentence of your answer based on the example I used, and not the broader question that I asked. It is definitely valid in at least some scenarios for players to break rules and agree on a fix. Again, the IPG backs strongly implies that this is the case. We don't necessarily have to agree on what constitutes a "minor" violation in order to agree that the first sentence is wrong.

Also, the ruling you quoted governs whether a judge should intervene in a situation before it escalates. I am asking about a situation that has already escalated and then been resolved (albeit incorrectly). The only way it could escalate further is if continuing the game would make it more difficult to rewind, but that isn't the case in the example I gave. The game is already impossible to rewind because Alice already took a mulligan to five. Therefore, I don't think that section of the TR applies, or at least doesn't apply to all scenarios.

@Rainbolt Alice called a judge in the end, they did not in fact fix their issue on their own. If she had not called a judge, that would be a different matter, but she did. I bolded the part about escalating because if a player starts the game with an incorrect number of cards in the starting hand, it will have repercussions on the rest of the game.

If a judge is made aware of a situation where the players agreed to a fix that does not follow the rules they need to intervene and make sure appropriate action is taken. The reason is that even a single match can change the tournament standings if tiebreakers are needed between different players.
Tournament Rules

The following tiebreakers are used to determine how a player ranks in a tournament:
  1. Match points
  2. Opponents’ match-win percentage
  3. Game-win percentage
  4. Opponents’ game-win percentage
  Definitions of these tiebreakers can be found in Appendix C. Not all of these tiebreakers may be used in formats
  with single-game matches.

A mistake in a game where players agree on a solution that can end up changing the tie-breaking formula if the correct ruling would have ended up with a different game/match winner.

It seems like most of this argument is just about why it's important for judges to make the right rulings, not why the right ruling might be to attempt to undo the players' attempted fix.

It is more that if the players make the wrong call it can impact players that where not involved in the game which is why judges always need to fix bad calls by players.

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text:
show and tell, gilded drake and primeval titan
I cast Show and Tell and with it play Primeval Titan. My opponent plays Gilded Drake and takes over my Primeval Titan. I assume I'm the one who gets to use the land search ability and not my opponent?

Yes, you will get to search for lands with the Titan's ability; similarly to your other question, the key here is that both Primeval Titan and Gilded Drake have triggered abilities.  Both of those triggers are put onto the stack after Show and Tell has finished resolving, and the controller of the ability is locked into place when the ability is put on the stack:

112.8. The controller of an activated ability on the stack is the player who activated it. The controller of a triggered ability on the
  stack (other than a delayed triggered ability) is the player who
  controlled the ability’s source when it triggered, or, if it had no
  controller, the player who owned the ability’s source when it
  triggered. To determine the controller of a delayed triggered ability,
  see rules 603.7d–f.

When Primeval Titan's triggered ability is put onto the stack (which will generically be just before Gilded Drake's ability is put on the stack, since the active player's triggers are placed on the stack before any inactive players', and it's hard but not impossible to cast Show and Tell outside your turn), the controller of the land-search ability is locked in as the controller of the titan; at this point you still control the Titan, since Gilded Drake's ability hasn't even gone on the stack yet, much less resolved.  The fact that you don't control the Titan when the ability resolves is moot.


text:
Timing conflict with debt card effect
We were playing a game of 7 Wonders with the following expansions: Cities, Leaders, Great Projects (comes as part of the Babel expansion).
At the end of a particular round, we ran in to a conflict in regards to how to resolve effects that occur simultaneously.

One player had played a card that forced each player to discard a certain amount of gold (I believe it was related to the number of military victory tokens).

The other player built a stage of his wonder (Halicarnassus B) which allowed him to build a building out of the discard pile.
The building he chose was of the type required by the Great Project. He just needed to pay additional gold to get a participation token.

The conflict was that if he resolved the other players effect first, he wouldn't be able to participate in the great project. If he resolved his effect first, he would just need to take debt tokens.
I went through the rules and couldn't find anything obvious stating how to resolve these kinds of conflicts. Does anyone know how this situation should be handled?

From the Cities rule book (4):

Important: monetary losses are always resolved at the end of a turn, after players have played their cards, possibly having paid for trade and/or obtained money...

The player is able to participate in the project, but he/she would have to take debt afterwards.
As for whether that player has to participate in Great Project if he/she was going to, I haven't found ruling on it. Player consensus is this being optional and that player may make decision on it after they discovered debt threat.

I will add a precision : you can always choose to take debt instead of paying.
From the Cities rule book, an example:

Tina has the required coins but decides to keep them for later in the game: she therefore takes 2 Debt tokens.

So even without the rule quoted by Deo, player is free to participate or not.


text:
Does an item effect still occur if you go insanse/unconscious using it?
As an example, an investigator had the item Flute of The Outer Gods, which takes 3 stamina and 3 sanity to use and immedietly defeats all monsters in the investigators location. If using the item reduced either the sanity or stamina to 0, does the effect still come in to effect?
Does this apply to all items that require you to lose either sanity or stamina?
This question is not a duplicate of: How does Flute of the Outer Gods work in Arkham Horror and when should I use/buy it? although the answer there is relavent.
This question is asking about items in general and not just the Flute of The Outer Gods

I think this might be a duplicate of In Arkham Horror, can you pay sanity costs to go insane on purpose?. I'm not sure because the question is somewhat different, although the answer covers this question.

The answer in the question you linked does seem to address this, however as you already stated, this question is different as it is asking about item effects whereas the other is asking if the player can intentionally go insane

The question is different, but the answer most definitely applies. I don't see how it doesn't. Kevin Wilson's answer encompasses this.

@generalcrispy The fact that another answer answers this question does not make the question a duplicate.  Would anybody trying to find the answer to this automatically think of looking for "can you go insane on purpose"?  I wouldn't.  (Referring to the same post by Kevin Wilson would be an acceptable answer to this!)

If a cost associated with a spell or exhaust card leaves you at 0 stamina or 0 sanity it will resolve before you become injured or insane at the location you cast it.
What about Flute of the Outer Gods?
After the injury or madness, the spell resolves(Either its success or failure state) in the location in which it was cast the spell.
You then become injured or insane and are transported to the correct treatment facility.
Other spells that does not have such dramatic effects (Like plus to combat checks) are rendered useless since you can not perform a combat check after the spell has resolved against the original target which resides in another location.


text:
What does it mean that uranium always refills from space 16?
In the Power Grid rules we are told the following:

Re-supply the resource market: Based on the number of players and the
step of the game, the players re-supply the resource market (see table
at the back of the rules) from the supply of resources. They start
placing the resources on the highest (most expensive) space lacking
the maximum possible quantity of the appropriate resource.
Exception:
Uranium must be refilled from space 16 and always only with one token
in each space.

Does that mean that if the rate of uranium resupply is 3, none is re-supplied if there are already 3 uraniums in the market? If only one uranium is left on 16, 2 would be added and not 3?

The rulebook is confusingly worded. The "Exception" is calling out a graphical peculiarity, not a rules difference.
The resupply for Uranium works the same as for every other resource: you take the specified number of units and place them on the most expensive slots available. This exception is calling your notice to the fact that there are four extra Uranium slots that do not share one of the large square blocks with Coal/Oil/Garbage, and that once those are full, there is only one slot for Uranium in each of those square blocks.
You can see that this is the case in the example immediately after your quote on p. 6 of the rulebook. The market begins with 2 Uranium on 14 and 16. The table calls for 2 Uranium to be placed, and those are placed on the 12 and 10.

Thanks; reading further does clear that up. It's definitely a poor rulebook.


text:
Command cards (Star Trek Catan) for vanilla Catan?
I played Star Trek Catan for the first time last night and really enjoyed what the command cards (Sulu, Kirk, Spock) added to the game.
I would like to purchase a deck of command cards themed to match regular Settlers of Catan. Does this exist in one of the expansions, or as a standalone?
Edit: Sorry, this is a duplicate of Has anyone made regular-themed version of the Star Trek Catan role cards?


text:
What's the strategy for Shut the Box?
Through this answer I learned of a game called Shut the Box.

The rules are very simple. The numbers 1 through 9 are "open". Two dice are rolled and numbers are shut that sum up to the number rolled. A player keeps rolling until no numbers can be shut, at which point that player's score is the sum of the numbers still open. The goal is to score as low as possible.
Luck is a big factor here, but is there a strategy to this game? Does the strategy change based on the numbers still open?

I think there's a further wrinkle to the rules. If one is the only tile still open, you only roll one die.

Any panels you close on a turn will, by rule, always have the same sum, so a given roll will always reduce your score by the same amount.
So all you can do is leave open as many possibilities as possible for future rolls. You do this by closing as few numbers as possible on each roll.  Closing 5 is better than closing 2 and 3 because if you roll a 2 or a 3, the 5 won't help you, but the 2 and 3 together can serve any purpose the 5 could serve.
A table is available that shows which numbers are best to close given the currently closed numbers and the current dice roll.

This seems like a pretty solid strategy. However, I'm not sure it's optimal to close the 1 as early as possible. While 1 is open, its value is in letting you close doors when your roll isn't quite right. If you never use it, it's only a 1-point penalty. In fact, judging by the optimal strategies listed here, there's no concession for using the 1 earlier than you have to.

On the optimal strategies listed in the link, the rules are changed to use one die after the game progresses. Creating a table like the links show for the rules described in the OP could probably yield a more comprehensive answer.

There's a table for the 2-dice version listed as well.

I missed that one.  Looking at the table, it does look like it's better to always close fewer numbers, even when the 1 is available. I'll edit the answer.


text:
How should I group rare Magic cards when selling them online?
[Background: this was previously part of a longer question which has been edited into multiple smaller questions. I’ve already researched selling Magic cards, including reading through How do I find out a fair price for my Magic the Gathering cards? and Where can I sell my Magic: The Gathering cards?, and am getting into finer detail.]
Question: I’ve divided my cards by rarity and I'm now deciding between selling the Rares individually or in small groups. My plan is to start with individual sales and then group the unsold Rares. Any suggestions for what these groupings should be, such as Color or Expansion?

yes, you should split them up into several questions

Primarily, you need to judge how much your time is worth. In the general case, you can get more money per card by selling them as singles, or as small groups (such as playsets of 4). However, that will take a lot of time, especially for a large collection. Dumping your whole collection at your LGS for a bulk price is extremely quick and easy, but you're not going to get anywhere near as much money as selling each card individually online... but making all of those online sales will take a long time and require a lot of effort. (Shipping costs should also be considered.)
Rares and old desirable cards are more liquid, meaning it's easy to find someone willing to buy them, which means less time and effort spent selling them. Foils may or may not be liquid, depending on the cards in question.
I do not recommend trying to sell loose old packs over the internet. In the very oldest sets, it is possible to determine the exact contents of the pack before opening it, meaning the savvy buyers will refuse to purchase any packaged old cards unless they're in a factory-sealed box/case. (The assumption being that the seller has determined the pack contains nothing of worth already.)
Even in the sets new enough where that isn't possible, box mapping has been a thing for years, so a seller could pull out all of the worthwhile packs from a box before selling the rest; Wizards has made efforts to counteract this over the years, but they have only really been effective in the most recent sets (roughly Avacyn and onwards -- mapping is still possible, but it is no longer financially beneficial). The possibility of repacks also makes online buyers wary of purchasing loose packs from older sets.

It really depends on how much time you want to spend on this. Selling the cards one by one is the best way to get the more money out of your cards. But if you have for example 2000 cheap commons, it would take a lot of time to list those to maybe get only a few more pennies out of each cards (which may still be worth it for you at the end).
Personally, I like to just split up my cards into 3 piles: cheap (< $1.00), average and valuable (> $10.00). I usually only take the time to list the most worth cards (cards that are actually either played a lot or rarities) and sell all the others for a bulk price.
It would probably be a great idea to do a separate pile for your foil cards (especially the cheap foils) because some players/collectors really look for those and you could get a better value out of those by selling all your cheap common/uncommon foils together.


text:
What are the qualities of a successful beta testing session from the player's perspective?
I'm a board game designer with the luxury of a large public playing area filled with board game enthusiasts. I would like to beta test a new board game and was wondering what YOU, as the player, would consider a successful session.
I've already seen the posts on how to run a session from a technical, or designer's perspective (I have an idea for a card game. How can I best start testing it?). I would like to focus on what makes for a fun session for the player. For example, are you looking for polished, illustrated gaming pieces? Pizza and soda? Do you prefer the game guru (me) answer questions as you go or sit back and let you figure them out on your own? How long should a typical session last? What would you want in return?
When you answer, please mention if you've done beta playtesting before and what your experience has been. I would also love to know if you have experience running these kinds of sessions. Thank you!

Designer and sometimes attendee at design group BOGA DAP here. I'll share my personal experiences and preferences.
As a tester, to feel good about the event:

In general, I prefer the game to be taught as if you were teaching an already-published game. If you are getting a blind playtest, or testing the ability of players to learn from a rulebook, then I expect the game to be 99% done and the instructions to be as clear as you can make them.
If you have specific questions about the game you want answered, in terms of balance or how a mechanism works or how it feels or whatever, let me know. In a playtest game, I am not averse to you changing the rules mid-game if you want to try something out or the rules aren't working.
I have no expectations at all in terms of graphic polish or illustration. An unpolished prototype is a sign that you are not emotionally invested in the game as it is and are open to feedback and changes. Even going so far as a deliberately sketched-in look-and-feel can be helpful.
I expect you to respect my time. I play games for fun all the time, so if the game is fun or at least interesting, I don't need a food bribe. I do want you to be willing to playtest my games as well, and I want you to make appropriate changes or pull the plug if it ends up not working or not being fun.
1-2 hours, with time on the end to ask for feedback, makes a good playtesting session for most games. An early playtest (where we expect to pull the plug quickly and go back and make changes) might end up being shorter, or a test for a very short game. I don't expect to play a medium-or-longer game more than once in a sitting. Unless the game was a smash hit, I expect you to take it back for at least a few changes before we play again.

As a designer, to get the most out of a playtest:

Try to observe the game, rather than playing it yourself, unless you are needed to fill up the player count. This lets you pay more attention to both the game and the players and how they're acting and feeling.
Tell the players what you changed since the last iteration of the prototype. If it's not obvious whether it worked or not, ask the players.
After the game, ask each player what they liked and didn't like. This is tricky. On one hand, never defend your game. If a player gives a criticism that you feel is invalid, ask yourself what you might be able to change to mitigate the perception of the problem - whether in the rules or the explanation. On the other hand, you will need to pass by many suggestions, since they will not lead your game in the direction you want it to go in. Not every game is meant for every player. Criticism might just be telling you who the best audience for your game is.

I've playtested games for a couple of friends (one at various early iterations, one in a near-finished state). What I'm looking for:

Complete rules (even if they may go through more iterations). It's frustrating to have a rules question that is not answered by the booklet because it is intentionally incomplete. On the other hand, unintentional oversights are fine (that's why we play test!).
Detail and finish on the play elements are unnecessary; I've used Lego blocks and random coins as tokens during play tests.
No hovering by the designer. As sitnaltax mentioned, it's probably best if the designer doesn't play. The designer should be available for questions, and observing is fine, but looking over players' shoulders at their cards, etc, is to be avoided.
For long games (e.g. targeting 90-120 or 150+ plays), a single playthrough is likely best. I'm happy to spend a few afternoons on various iterations, but playing for 4 hours in one sitting can be rough. You might even consider pulling out specific subgames if you're looking to balance rules so that you can have multiple playthroughs of the endgame, for example.
Compensation: Pizza and soda, snacks, etc are probably fine. Playtesters should probably get a mention in the final rulebook (there's often an acknowledgements section); it's best if it can be by name but it could be something like "and the Boston gamer's group who helped test early versions of this game."

I agree mostly with sitnaltax and ruds, and would like to add some more points:
The game must be playable and fun to play.
I like it when I can provide some useful feedback. I don't want to play a half done game, but I am happy to help polishing details.

I agree to what was said before. When I designed my board game, I tested it with many "non-gamers" (because I lacked the luxury you were writing about) - but that resulted in some extra insights about what is important:

Make it clear to yourself and to the group at what stage the game is and what the purpose of todays test is. What kind of suggestions do you need, what do you want to test in this round, what questions to ask -> If I test a game, I want to know what I am doing. Many people are also excited to be part of the whole process, so they enjoy stories about "behind the scenes details" and regular updates.
The biggest barrier for playtesting I encountered was that players were afraid it would take much longer than a "normal" game, especially when they had to learn the rules themselves (in retrospective, I should have stopped more games halfway or changes rules in the middle) -> Make realistic accouncements about the time you will need before the game starts.
The most uncomfortable part was when I asked people who played before to explain the rules to new players (I wanted to see what they forget/explain wrong). While it worked perfectly on a "methodological" level, they seemed to feel pressued -> Players might want to avoid judgement by the author/feel observed.
Almost every single player appreciated and used the opportunity of asking the author sitting next to them when they were not sure about rules (instead of debating or looking them up)

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Can Uncommon Magic cards be sold individually for a profit?
[Background: this was previously part of a longer question which has been edited into multiple smaller questions. I’ve already researched selling Magic cards, including reading through How do I find out a fair price for my Magic the Gathering cards? and Where can I sell my Magic: The Gathering cards?, and am getting into finer detail.]
I've noticed on eBay that many Uncommons seem to be sold individually. Assuming I have the time and interest in doing this (I have both), does anyone have experience selling uncommons like this? Generally speaking, can you even sell them profitably or do you just end up selling them in bulk?

Just some uncommon cards can sell individually, like Path to Exile, Skullclamp(before banned). You can check eBay or website like Card Kingdom, Magic Cards Info and so on to track the price.


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Scrabble - What if any "House Rules" work to even the playing field with more and less experienced players?
Related:What is a fair Scrabble handicap
Scrabble is a great game for competitive type A types and the learning curve is STEEP at first. Great game. Like most games, house rules vary and are fine as long as everyone agrees.
I enjoy introducing new people to the game, but it's not fun for anyone if I win the first game by 250 points. One thing I find helpful is giving everybody a list of 2 letter words. It's just not fair otherwise because of course I have them memorized, yet a newbie isn't going to know that QI and ZA are legal plays.
Assume relatively equal mastery of the English language. What else can be done to help those first few games be competitive?

i prefer making the more experienced player change letters after every turn.

Time limit and patience for the experienced player.
If the experience player limits self to 15 to 30 seconds per play and is very patient with new players, the game levels without house or extensive rule changes.
For new players to get-into-the-game, competition is not needed so much as enjoyment.  For a seasoned competitor, obliging a quick play (and maybe forgoing QI & ZA) is a challenge.  The senior player should not look up words, but tolerate first timer's usage of such.
Other limitations require the senior playing with 5 or 6 or letting others play with 8 or 9.  (I prefer the limits (time, tile count) on the experienced player rather than mess up the fundamentals for the new player.)
See Jolenealaska

Why not do something simple like taking away some points from each word that the more experienced player scores?  You could do it as a set amount of points per word which would mean low scoring words wouldn't count. Or you could set it as a percentage of each word meaning higher point count words wouldn't be worth as much. Both of these methods could help balance the game while helping the newer player learw.


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Name of this interesting variant of Tic-tac-toe?
A group of grad students and I regularly meet up at conferences. Often, we spend our coffee breaks between talks playing various suggested generalisations of common pen-and-paper games to see if we can find an interesting one. This has lead to some quite interesting games in the past such as connect 4 with changing gravity, and tic-tac-toe on more general surfaces (such as a cylinder and Klein bottle). A group favourite, which was suggested a few months ago seems to be an interesting variant of Ultimate Tic-tac-toe.
For want of a better name let us call it Spillage-tic-tac-toe or Spillage for short.
Before stating the rules I shall ask my question.

Is the game Spillage a well-known variant of Ultimate Tic-tac-toe? If it is, is there a reference to the game being solved in the literature? If it is not, can any insight into winning strategies be offered?

I'll now attempt to give the rules of Spillage. I apologise for not including any images with the rules (which would help to illustrate certain game states) and if anyone feels like editing the question with such illustrations, you are encouraged to do so.

Spillage

Players: 2
Board size: 9x9 - separated in to 9 smaller 3x3 'meta squares' similar to Ultimate ttt.

We will label the 9 smaller 3x3 meta boards in the obvious way with the numbers 1 - 9 (using bold to indicate a meta square) reading from top-left to bottom-right, and the individual 81 squares by subscripts n_m to denote the m-th square in the n-th meta square. So for instance the four corner squares would be labelled 1_1, 3_3, 7_7, 9_9.
As usual, player O and player X alternate placing their respective symbols, O's and X's, on the board, with X going first, until a player wins or all available squares have been played in without a win (resulting in a draw).
There is no restriction to where a player may place their O/X (this is the first major deviation from Ultimate ttt).
When a player creates a line of three consecutive identical symbols anywhere on the board, if the central symbol is in a meta square which has not yet been claimed, then that player claims the meta square which that central symbol lies in. Chains of more than three consecutive symbols are considered to be separate instances of three-symbol chains, each with their own central symbol.
For instance, if no meta squares have yet been claimed, and the squares 4_2, 1_9, 2_4 all have O's in them, then 1_9 is the central symbol of the chain and so O claims the meta square 1 . If O later plays 2_2, then (if 2 has not been claimed yet), 2_4 is a central symbol and so O will claim the meta square 2 as well.

Once a meta square has been claimed, it can not be claimed by the other player. A player wins, when they claim a chain of three consecutive meta squares as in the usual tic-tac-toe. So, for instance if player O later claims 3 in the above scenario before X can win, then O has won the game.

As a side-note, I'm new to this particular SE (but not the SE-network), so if my question doesn't conform to any community guidelines, I apologise.

Tic tac toe has roughly 3^9<20000 possible states. This game has roughly 3^81>1e38 possible states. These are both large overestimations, but I very much doubt this game is solved. For comparison, a similar estimate gives that the number of states for chess is 12^64>1e69.

@KSFT Does noughts and crosses really have that many states? Surely you can consider states which are symmetries of other states to be the same.

@TRiG No, all the games have far fewer legal states than that. It's just a very rough estimate.

BGG doesn't have any game with "Spillage" in the title. Looking at the Tic-Tac-Toe entry there is also no game that reimplements Tic-Tac-Toe which is the same as Spillage. There are a number of games which play some sort of meta-game of Tic-Tac-Toe in which there are nine 3x3 games being played and the object is to get 3 in a row on the meta-board. So all in all "Spillage" would seem to be as good a name as any.
I'd guess that the game is a first player win like the game Hex since having an extra position can't hurt.
Since it is a "new" game it won't have been solved. But writing a program to play would need a dept first approach with symmetry. The look ahead would seem to be fairly uncomplicated so I'd guess that a computer could either win or tie with a decent program.
Given that the human moves first I'm not sure that a human could out-play a computer on this. If such a winning strategy could be found for the first player then the game would just be a gigantic meta-Tic-Tac-Toe game of course.

You're right that it's either a first-player win or a draw, by strategy-stealing, but I don't see any compelling reason to believe that it's one over the other.


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How does the Hickory Woodlot card work?
I'm a little unclear on the The Magic the Gathering card Hickory Woodlot

Hickory Woodlot enters the battlefield tapped with two depletion
counters on it.
Tap, Remove a depletion counter from Hickory Woodlot:
Add {G}{G} to your mana pool. If there are no depletion counters
on Hickory Woodlot, sacrifice it.

The card is a land, so can it be tapped without removing a depletion counter to produce mana as normal?
Do you sacrifice it immediately after removing the counter? In other words do you have to have counters on it to use it's ability or can you use it one last time without?

If for some reason it existed on the battlefield with no counters, you would not be able to activate its ability since you could not pay the cost.

Lands can only have the abilities printed on them. Any land that has one of the basic land subtypes (Plains, Island, etc.) also has an inherent ability to tap for one mana of the appropriate color. Hickory Woodlot is a land, but it has no basic land subtype, so it has no additional abilities of that sort besides what is printed. You can only tap this card for the ability using the depletion counters, to add 2 Green mana to your mana pool.
As to your second question, You perform all steps of an ability in order. First, you pay all costs (in this case, tapping and removing a depletion counter) and then, you perform all effects. The first effect is to generate the mana, then, there is a check against the depletion counters. This will check AFTER the counter has been removed, so you can essentially use this ability twice, and immediately after the second use, the land is sacrificed.

thanks for the edit, i wasnt sure of the exact way to refer to the basic land subtypes so went for a broad and hopefully reasonably understandable approach. Obviously the rules appropriate wording is better, thanks for the clarification!


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Would Loyalty Abilities be negated by Pithing Needle?
In doing research on how to counter activated abilities (See here) I found the Pithing Needle and I wondered: do Loyalty Abilities count within the activated abilities targeted by Pithing Needle's text?

Pithing Needle would always nullify the planeswalker's loyalty abilities.
According to rule 306.5d of the November 11, 2016 edition of the Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules, loyalty abilities are activated abilities that (typically) do not produce mana.

306.5d Each planeswalker has a number of loyalty abilities, which are activated abilities with
  loyalty symbols in their costs. Loyalty abilities follow special rules: A player may activate a
  loyalty ability of a permanent he or she controls any time he or she has priority and the stack is
  empty during a main phase of his or her turn, but only if none of that permanent’s loyalty
  abilities have been activated that turn. See rule 606, “Loyalty Abilities.”

And this is echoed in rule 606.2 of the same compendium.

606.2. An activated ability with a loyalty symbol in its cost is a loyalty ability. Normally, only
  planeswalkers have loyalty abilities

Additionally, as Jefromi pointed out, loyalty abilities are never mana abilities according to rule 605.1a

605.1a An activated ability is a mana ability if it meets all of the following criteria: it doesn’t have a
  target, it could put mana into a player’s mana pool when it resolves, and it’s not a loyalty
  ability. (See rule 606, “Loyalty Abilities.”)

Clarification: a "mana ability" is a specific kind of ability that generates mana, not one that costs mana (there are additional restrictions as well).

The restrictions on mana abilities explicitly include this: "605.1a An activated ability is a mana ability if it meets all of the following criteria: it doesn’t have a target, it could put mana into a player’s mana pool when it resolves, and it’s not a loyalty ability. (See rule 606, “Loyalty Abilities.”)" There are loyalty abilities that produce mana, like Chandra, Torch of Defiance or Xenagos, the Reveler but they're not mana abilities.

I'm confused how you reached that final conclusion. Loyalty abilities, as you said, are definitely activated abilities, just a special kind that planeswalkers have. And they're never mana abilities, so Pithing Needle will always work on them.

@Jefromi I've been up for 14 hours, and apparently it shows. ;P


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How to grant haste en masse in a mono-green Commander deck?
In my Elf Commander Deck (edited version of the Guided by Nature 2014 Commander Deck), I have Nissa Revane and as I was looking through the MTG tag of BCGSE I saw this question asking about if elves summoned with Nissa's -7 ability have summoning sickness. Since the answer is yes, I was wondering if there is a green or colorless card that I would be able to use to counter their summoning sickness (preferably an elf that grants other elves haste). Is there a card that would be able to fit into the restrictions of my deck?

One thing to consider, do you need to give the creatures haste en-masse? A Heedless One with Swiftfoot Boots or a similar artifact would do the trick. Combine with Wirewood Hivemaster and she should get big enough.

In addition to @ghoppe, you can use [mtg:Ivy Lane Denizen]. He sees each elf entering with him, so you can order the effects.

Could this question not have been answered trough the use of a simple gatherer search?

@NeilMeyer The reason why I was asking it on here is because I was hoping for an Elf that would have granted haste (which I did try searching for).

A simple search for cards with the words "creatures" and "haste" in their text boxes reveals a couple cards with Green color identity that grant mass haste:

Akroma's Memorial is an artifact that grants your creatures Haste, along with a few other abilities.
Concordant Crossroads grants all creatures Haste, not just yours.
Reflex Sliver gives all your Slivers Haste and Hivestone makes all your creatures Slivers, so together they give all your creatures Haste.

Crashing Drawbridge from Eldraine taps to give all of your creatures haste for the turn.


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Organizing a rule book
Bit of Background
I am currently trying to organize a comprehensive rule book for a board game I have been designing for some time now that is about to go into a testing phase. This being my first board game I've run into a wall.
The Problem
I don't know how best to structure the rule book. For instance, I'll be trying to explain how a piece moves in relation to the kind of tile it is on. Because in my game different pieces do different things depending on how they are positioned, this is quite complex. What ends up happening is I don't know whether to put the information under the type of piece, or under the type of tile, or under the specific situation in which the rules apply.
I feel if put the information in one place or the other it will leave the players confused, and if I put it in multiple places the book could get kind of lengthy, and scare potential players away.
The Potatoes
What do you guys do when you make your comprehensive instruction booklets to avoid this problem?

Although written for card games, you may find some useful (inverted) tips on How not to write the rules of a card game.

One issue is staring at this blank canvas of a rule book and not knowing where to start.
To find out where to start, first realize exactly what you're trying to accomplish:
Tell someone how to play.
I might suggest you show the game to a few friends, preferably the most interactive ones. If they ask questions, then when you explain it to another friend, you have the insight of what they may be thinking and the ability to answer just what's on their mind.
You will learn exactly what to write by sheer redundancy of explaining the rules over and over, and subconsciously you'll build a structure of your explanation that you could use while writing your rule book.
Hope this helps you getting started.

This seems really helpful. So Ill make like a few rule book variants with the information in different places. then ill have a few play test sessions with different people and give them the different rule books, and take notes on questions they have for each version. From here I could go back and make revisions based on what I learned from each rule book, and maybe combine the methods in the final version as best I can.

I prefer BLUF (bottom line up front): first tell me the objective of the game (in one sentence). Tell me how to win. Tell me how / when the game ends. From that tell me more about the turn sequence. Describe what a turn looks like. Describe my options. Show me examples with pictures and special cases.

This seems to be a good solution for finding a place to start and work from. It could help with getting players to understand what it is they are doing from the start of the game, and work to achieve said goal.

I agree totally here.  When I do a rules explaination its vital to start with "you win by....."  ie most points/cash, first player to do something etc...   Then when your doing the rest of the rules players of got this peg to hand on why they are doing actions and not just what they can do.

What are you trying to write? Are you trying to write a comprehensive rule book? Or are you trying to write a quick start guide?
If you're going to write a quick start guide, you should walk a player through a simple but representative session of your game. At the very minimum, you need the following:

Setting up the game
The first turn
The first round (and/or regular triggers)
Typical events that may occur on any given round
Win conditions

Depending on how similar these are, they might be combined or incredibly short. For example, the first round might be "each player does the same as first player, going clockwise." But it might also include "at the end of each round, roll the die to determine a new monster to attack the heroes" or some other thing.
By walking a player through a game, you clearly define the things that are in and out of the players' control. Your objective with this guide is to get as close as you can to a video of an actual game.
If you're trying to write a rule book, this is a different beast. A rule book is going to be very dry and uninviting, but will be very clear about everything it says. A rule book should contain

Prologue about the game
Definition of each game element
Detailed turn structure
Legal (and illegal) actions allowed by the players
Legal (and illegal) interactions between each element
Specific cases that came up during playtesting
Glossary

At the very least, you need to be able to tell the reader exactly what the purpose of whatever document they're reading is. Don't call something a rulebook if it's a quick start guide, and vice versa. You might not even want to include a rulebook: just make the comprehensive rules available online - they're easier to update that way, and as long as people aren't forced to go online to play the game, you should be fine.

What I am aiming for is a full on rule book. Like what you would find in any other board game you would open up. I don't have the resources to make a video. I also Feel that putting the information up online would be counter productive to game testing because rather than being able to straight up take notes on the players reactions to the rules, I would have to try to figure out what there reaction to the rules are from there reaction to using a computer or a website they have never been on before.

Most games I play do not have a comprehensive rule book. Settlers of Catan comes to mind. It has a quick start guide with a glossary. It does not cover every situation that might possibly come up.

I agree with you on this. I did not at the asking of this question consider that there were two different kinds of rule books. I suppose that a comprehensive one would be what I am looking to create. thank you for pointing this out.

I added the Comprehensive bit to the question to help others understand what I was truly asking.

With that in mind, I should point out that the second half of my answer deals with the comprehensive rule book as well and what it must contain.

This video from my "How to Write Clear Rules" course might help:
Sequence of Play versus Reference Rules
http://youtu.be/fEqtp0c540w
A few other videos from the course will appear on my Game Design YouTube channel along with this video, but most will not.  The course itself is at Courses.PulsipherGames.Com.  As far as I know the course is the most comprehensive discussion of writing game rules anywhere.  It's not a topic I discussed at length in my book "Game Design", which is first about video games.
Lew Pulsipher

Answers here are expected to fundamentally answer the question on their own, without relying on an external link which can go dead and make your answer useless as a result. Please edit this so it actually answers the question.

Granted, the answer could be fleshed out some but I don't think this is unworthy as is.  The answer would not be useless without the links.  Enough information is supplied (Title/author) to enable the content to be found if needed.

A challenge we all face in writing rules is the extremely diverse intellect of the gamers that exists out there. I encounter people during field testing of my game that show signs of fluency within the first game where others look clueless, generally my observations have been, a player can get my game in 2 to 4 games where others will take 10 to 15, that pretty well illustrates the opening statement and all this is irrelevant to how well the rules are written! So when writing those rules keeping it simple is your best rule!

Agreed, but the question was about organizing the rules. How do you organize for simplicity?


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Does changing control of an object update that object's timestamp?
This is a follow-up question to does gaining control of an aura gaining control of a permanent give me the permanent?

Player A has a creature.
Player B casts Control Magic on it. B controls the creature.
Player C also casts Control Magic on it. C controls the creature due to the enchantments' timestamps.
Player D casts Steal Enchantment on player B's Control Magic.

Does player D or C now control the creature now? Player C's Control Magic is more recent, but does B's Control Magic timestamp get updated because of Steal Enchantment?

Player C controls it

613.6a A continuous effect generated by a static ability has the same timestamp as the object the static ability is on, or the timestamp of the effect that created the ability, whichever is later.
613.6c An object receives a timestamp at the time it enters a zone.

Even though you gain control of it it stays in the same zone, the battlefield, but it is an aura so there are more rules to it

613.6d An Aura, Equipment, or Fortification receives a new timestamp at the time it becomes attached to an object or player.

But it is still enchanting the same creature so it does not receive a new timestamp meaning player c still controls it


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Do I retaliate against a missed attack?
The rules for retaliation state:

When exactly does retaliate trigger?
Retaliate triggers after all effects of an attack have been applied. If the retaliating figure dies from the attack, the retaliate does not trigger because the figure is removed from the board beforehand. If the retaliating figure is pushed out of the range of its retaliate, it also does not trigger. However, if it is pulled into retaliate range, it would trigger.

But does a zero-damage attack (after modifiers) count as an attack?
For context, I had a Bandit Guard (attack 2) draw a -1 Attack action and a -2 Attack Modifier card, resulting in a final damage of 0 against my Brute who was using Eye for an Eye.  If I had been using a Shield enhancement, I would ignore the attack and not expend a Shield charge since it's a zero-damage attack.  But in this case, I have a Retaliate ability up which plays by different rules.
Is my Brute able to retaliate against his attacker, even though the attacker essentially missed?

I think you've made the same misinterpretation we did in calling that card a 'miss'.  This was (no pun intended) misleading.  The card that shows a 'null' symbol is not a 'miss'.  It means "no damage is done by the attack" (page 11 of rules). I get why thematically you would say "the attacker essentially missed",  but that is not the case.
The card in question in the 'attack modifier deck' just affects the damage done.  I don't think Gloomhaven has the concept of 'hit and miss' - just damage and effect.  So note that if the 'no damage done' card is pulled by a player or monster they will still get to apply other effects such as poison and wound.  The attack still happened and 'miss' isn't a thing. In fact, the word 'miss' never appears in the rules and 'hit' only ever refers to hit points.
Regarding Retaliate the FAQ it says the following for retaliate.

A retaliate takes effect after the attack that ininiated it.

So even if the attack does no damage, and even if there are no other effects,  you will still retaliate as you were attacked.
If theme helps, imagine your Brute has time to hit someone back with retaliate,  the bandit tries to hit him and doesn't damage.  Do you think the Brute will go 'Oh that didn't hurt so I won't hit back'?

I think my misunderstanding was largely because zero-damage in other games counts as a missed attack and often doesn't trigger such effects.  Sounds like that is not the case in Gloomhaven, which is good news for my Brute.

As further support that no damage ≠ miss, it's explicitly stated in the rules that an attack that deals no damage can still have other effects (poison, immobilize, etc).


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When playing the Rumble in the South variant, what adjustments should be made to the neutral forts?
I'm playing the Game of Thrones board game in a group that only has four players.  To fix some of the balance problems with the original four-player game, we tried using the Rumble in the South variant suggested by pandorym:

In this variant, Stark and Greyjoy are unplayable and their lands are impassable. The impassable regions thus include: Bay of Ice, Flint's Finger, Ironman's Bay, Seagard, The Mountains of the Moon and The Narrow Sea. This variant is excellent at creating a true 4-way battle with shifting alliances! However I tend to make the win condition only 6 castles instead of 7 to speed up the game.

However, while this description makes it easy to mark off which territories are out of play, it is a little unclear on how neutral forts change.  Normally, there are a whole bunch of neutral forts in the southern lands, but the middle of the board ends up being fairly empty and open for rapid conquest.
If all four players are playing in the south, do the southern neutral forts need adjustment as well, or do they still serve a balancing purpose?

I think they would be as they would for a 6 player game, as the south would have the same number of players in it. They serve a purpose to balance out things out, such as Storms End being very easy for Dorne to take, and so it would be the same in Rumble in the South


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Do I win or lose if I play "Trade Hands" while tied for "10 Cards in Hand"?
I have 11 cards and have to play 2. You have 10 cards. My first card to play is the goal "10 Cards in Hand", which says:

"If someone has 10 or more cards in his or her hand, then the player with the most cards in hand wins.
In case of a tie, continue playing until a clear winner emerges."

We now both have 10 cards.
My second play is the action "Trade Hands". Does this take effect immediately (I now have your 10 cards, you now have my remaining 9 and I win) or is there a gap where I have played the card before we swap where I have 9 cards and you have 10 and win?

You WIN - at least, per the official rules as of November 2024. This scenario is addressed specifically in the game's official FAQ:

Q: How does 10 Cards in Hand work in conjunction with Trade or Rotate Hands?
If you and an opponent each have 11 cards in your hand, and you play Trade Hands, would you win because after the card’s effect occurred you had 11 while the opponent had 10, or would the opponent win as soon as the card was played and left your hand?
A: You should need to finish the Action (i.e. follow through with the hand swap), before considering the issue of someone meeting the Goal. Thus, it’s that first thing you said.

Curiously, the FAQ used to say the opposite! It changed at some point between May 22nd 2024 (last archive date of the old version in the Wayback Machine) and November 10th 2024 (when Wyvern pointed out the change to me in the comments on this answer). The old version said:

Q: How does 10 Cards in Hand work in conjunction with Trade or Rotate Hands?
If you and an opponent each have 11 cards in your hand, and you play Trade Hands, would you win because after the card’s effect occurred you had 11 while the opponent had 10, or would the opponent win as soon as the card was played and left your hand?
A: This is a tricky question. At first it seems like you should need to finish the step you were in the middle of (i.e. follow through with the hand swap), before considering the issue of someone meeting the Goal. After due consideration, Andy concluded that we must obey the underlying principle of everything happening instantly in Fluxx. So, while the trade does happen simultaneously, the card must first leave your hand (be played) in order for the trade to happen, therefore, you lose the game the moment the 11th card leaves your hand.

Apparently the ruling has changed since this answer was posted, because the page it links to now says the opposite. "A: You should need to finish the Action (i.e. follow through with the hand swap), before considering the issue of someone meeting the Goal. Thus, it’s that first thing you said."

@Wyvern Good catch. I've updated the answer to reflect the change, and nailed down when the change occurred as best I can. Hopefully nobody desperately needs to retroactively determine if they followed the rules correctly in a game they played in the 5-month period between the last Wayback Machine archive of the old rules and today, because if so, I have no answer for them. :)

I had to pull out my deck to check this one, but I believe you win in this case!
The reason is the wording at the top of every action card (emphasis mine):

"To play this card, do whatever it says, then place it on the discard pile."

So, technically, action cards are still in your hand until you've performed the action they tell you to do.  So when you play "Trade Hands" in the situation you describe, what actually happens is:

You and your opponent exchange hands.  Both of you still have 10 cards in hand, including "Trade Hands".

You take "Trade Hands" from what is now your opponent's hand and place it on the discard pile.  Your opponent now has 9 cards in hand, while you still have 10.  You win.

Yeah, that does feel kind of weird, and of course in practice what you'd actually do when playing is set "Trade Hands" aside before passing your hand to your opponent.  But technically, according to the rules, it still counts as part of your hand (which becomes your opponent's hand) until the exchange is over.

By the way, if the explicit statement on each action card that I quoted above isn't convincing enough for you, some additional support might be offered by the "Discard & Draw" action card, whose instructions read:

"Discard your entire hand, then draw as many cards as you discarded.
Do not count this card when determining how many replacement cards to draw."

Clearly, if action cards were removed from your hand before they were played, there would be no need (except, admittedly, avoidance of doubt) to include the second sentence on the card at all.
I went through all the other action cards in my basic Fluxx deck, and as far as I can tell, these are the only two actions where this rule could make any direct difference.  However, note that following the rule as written does have one non-trivial indirect effect: whenever other cards are discarded as the result of an action, the action card ends up on top of them in the discard pile.  I don't think the order of the discard pile actually matters much (if at all) in basic Fluxx, but there are cards in other Fluxx editions for which it does matter, such as, off the top of my head, "Composting" in Eco Fluxx.  In any case, the "Let's Do That Again!" action explicitly tells you not to change the order of the discard pile, so clearly it's supposed to be at least potentially significant.

The FAQ disagrees: http://faq.looneylabs.com/question/46 (It might also be that the Action card is "in play" while the action is being performed and therefore not counted as part of your hand...)

I would say that the effects are an inherent part of playing the card and that there is no 'gap' between playing the card and the card taking effect.
For the purposes of games like these, there are certain states that are used, such as 'in your hand' and 'in play'.  There are no intermediate states such as 'in the process of being played', as that would start to make the rules very difficult.  As a result I would say the transition from 'in your hand' to 'played' is immediate.

According to the rules it comes down to how you interpret "that player wins immediately regardless of who's turn it is" (once the goal conditions are met). Since you have to play the card in order to make the hand swap happen at the point you play the card your hand has 9 and the opponent has 10. They meet the win condition before the action happens and the game is over.
This is also covered somewhat in the online Fluxx FAQ:

Q: Suppose I play Draw 2 and Use 'em and I draw two Goals, and one of them will cause my opponent to win. Can I play the two Goals in instant succession, with the one that doesn't make them win on top, so that they don't get to win?
A: No. Any time a Goal is played, it provides a chance for someone to win with those conditions. No matter how briefly that Goal is in play, it counts, and if someone meets the conditions in that instant, they win.


text:
How on earth do I crew a non-vehicle?
The Kaladesh update bulletin includes the following line:

208.5
Also on the subject of power and toughness, we have a new rule that if a creature has no power or toughness, that value is 0. This can happen if you manage to get a crew ability to animate a non-Vehicle artifact.

The newly defined rule itself says:

208.5 If a creature somehow has no value for its power, its power is 0. The same is true for toughness.

The update bulletin doesn't mention what cards could possibly enable this to happen though, and I can't for the life of me figure out how this gets set up. Is it some combo involving Necrotic Ooze or something?
How can I crew a non-vehicle to arrive at this situation?

The simplest method of accomplishing this probably involves using a Mizzium Transreliquat. Say you control a Mizzium Transreliquat, a Sol Ring, a Smuggler's Copter, and a Grizzly Bears. Then you can get the situation the bulletin is referring to by doing the following:

Activate and resolve the Mizzium Transreliquat's second ability targeting the Copter.
Activate the copy's Crew ability.
While that is on the stack, activate and resolve the Mizzium Transreliquat ability again targeting Sol Ring.
Let the Crew ability resolve, animating a copy of a Sol Ring.


text:
What happens when a non-creature receives "+1/+1 until end of turn" effects, then later becomes a creature?
A recent question, Can Disallow prevent me from crewing a vehicle?, brought up the following scenario: Veteran Motorist is tapped to crew a vehicle, but the crew ability is countered by Disallow. The vehicle remains a non-creature with no power or toughness (301.7b). However, Veteran Motorist will try to give it +1/+1:

Whenever Veteran Motorist crews a Vehicle, that Vehicle gets +1/+1 until end of turn.

This ability does get triggered, even if the ability was countered, because Veteran Motorist was tapped to pay a crew cost:

702.121b A creature “crews a Vehicle” when it’s tapped to pay the cost to activate a Vehicle’s crew ability.

What happens to this "+1/+1 until end of turn" effect? If I successfully make this vehicle a creature later this same turn, will it have a +1/+1 boost, or will that have disappeared somehow and not apply?
Let's suppose I have another untapped creature around and I'm going to use it to crew the vehicle, or I have Ensoul Artifact or Tezzeret's Touch or Tezzeret the Schemer's emblem ability available to use.

Thinking about it in a regular usage scenario, doesn't the vehicle get the +1/+1 effect before becoming a creature?
When you tap the Veteran to crew, isn't the stack:

Vehicle gets +1/+1
Vehicle becomes a creature.

So, the vehicle gets +1/+1 before becoming a creature, but the effect applies after becoming a creature. In fact, there's never a point in time where it is a creature without the +1/+1.

Thanks! I didn't think about that. That makes it pretty clear. :)

Consider including that this is why the triggered ability of the Veteran Motorist is worded "that vehicle gets +1/+1 until end of turn." If it was worded "that creature" the ability wouldn't work in all cases.

@DrunkCynic That's not accurate. Phrases which refer to an object by a characteristic such as "that creature" do not care if the object being referred to currently meets that characteristic. It's just shorthand. In this case, "When ~ crews a vehicle, that vehicle gets..." is being used because it's immediately understandable, whilst "When ~ crews a vehicle, that creature gets..." would be confusing.

@doppelgreener Influences of 608.2i noted, but not pertinent in this situation. Motorist's triggered ability is in response to crewing the vehicle, 702.121b, bringing all the joy of 603. In the generic scenario, the crewed vehicle will not be a creature when the ability is triggered, placed on the stack, or resolves; that is why it is written as "that vehicle." 608.2i would apply if some other effect, while the triggered ability is on the stack, stopped the permanent from being a vehicle.

In the example case you brought, the animated vehicle will still have the +1/+1, however this is honestly the edge case for +1/+1 effects since Veteran Motorist specifically gives the buff to the vehicle being crewed.
Most +1/+1 effects specify they effect creatures, which means the card needs to be a creature when the effect resolves to get the boost in the first place. Ampryn Tactician for example buffs all creatures when he enters. Veteran Motorist is in fact the only until end of turn buff I can think of that specifically affects a non creature permanent this way.


text:
Where/how does the Magic: the Gathering Quick Start Guide booklet actually get distributed in the physical world?
Magic: the Gathering has a basic rules PDF, aka the Quick Start Guide, that was instrumental in my understanding the basics of the game (like the stack and spellcasting). The M15 version is available from the Wizards site.
Despite being such a great resource, I've never actually seen this in the form of a physically printed booklet even once. It explains so much about the game, and if every MtG player had one of these, I bet we wouldn't have half the confused beginner questions we get. I've heard from several sources that M:tG intro decks used to come with basic rulebooks, but that's no longer the case.

Instead, the only physical rules printing I've ever seen are these little fold-outs that come in the intro packs and fat packs, which are good enough to get you started but skip many vital details:

(photo credit: youtube)
I live in Australia, I started shortly after M14 was released, and at various points I've opened booster boxes, fat packs, intro decks, and duel decks and been to pre-release events and the M:tG booth at a couple of Penny Arcade Australia Expos. All of that, and I've never seen even one of the Quick Start Guide booklets.
So: Where and how do the Basic Rules booklets actually get distributed, if at all? Where would I expect to find or see one in real life?

Not reassuring: http://wpn.wizards.com/en/article/tools-teaching-new-players "Download, print, and hand out the Quick Start Guide..."

Looks like someone had this question five years ago on mtgsalvation. At least two posters claimed that the intro decks come with basic rules booklets. I tried to verify and couldn't, but maybe someone else can confirm. It would make sense, given the name "intro deck".

@Rainbolt If we're talking about this thing, no, they just come with the fold-outs I mentioned. Which is a little frustrating, they need these books the most! :P It seems decks did once come with a rulebook, so maybe that was five years ago.

I can confirm that these kind of booklets were available up to at least 8th Edition as physical copies: I bought some kind of introduction pack which contained two 40 card theme decks and a quick start guide (see archive.wizards.com, it's the rulebook that's available as a PDF).
So far it doesn't look like they're still available as physical copies. My first guess was to look at the Magic 2015 Core Set 'Deck Builder's Toolkit' because according to the Wizards website it contains:

The support you need to build your own Magic: The Gathering decks. Includes 125 semi-randomized cards suitable for building several different decks, four 15-card booster packs from a variety of recent Magic sets, 100 basic land cards, a deck builder’s guide, a Magic learn-to-play guide, and a card box. (Emphasis mine.)

However, a youtube video (I will link in the first comment, since I don't have enough reputation for more than two links) shows that it's the same 'Rules Reference Booklet' as mentioned in the question, as well as a 'Deck Builder's Toolkit' fold out which I think contains deck building tips. Clash Packs seem to contain similar kind of fold outs (see second video linked in comments). Together with Jefromi's answer it seems unlikely that this rule book is physically available anywhere else.

Deck Builder's Toolkit video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVmYpiqP4w (in the first 30 seconds).
Clash Pack video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Q9VLOx_uw (1:35).

I suppose the fact that it says "crop" in the filename does sort of suggest they at least had an version for professional printing and they've cropped of the bleed to distribute the PDF. Maybe they meant to distribute it to stores as before and just... didn't?


text:
How does Over My Dead Bodies interact with combat-related abilities of creature cards in my graveyard?
Over My Dead Bodies is an unstable card that has Graveyard creatures fight in a sort of undeath. We also know that whilst they're involved in combat, they're also effectively on the battlefield, at least for the purposes of global effects. From the Unstable FAQ:

Will global effects affect the graveyard creatures?
Here's where silver-bordered rules get fun. Over My Dead Bodies allows you to attack or block with creature cards in your graveyard. If you do, for the duration of combat, the attacking and blocking creature cards are treated as if they are creature cards on the battlefield which means they can be affected by spells or abilities that would affect creatures on the battlefield. That means, for example, if you have a Lord of Accursed on the battlefield ("Other Zombies you control get +1/+1"), all your attacking and blocking graveyard creatures (which Over My Dead Bodies makes into Zombies) would get +1/+1 while in combat.

I'm interested to understand how these creatures' abilities can interact with combat, if at all. Let's assume to that end that Over My Dead Bodies is out, and I have a Brutal Hordechief and a Raving Dead in my graveyard.
Raving Dead has an ability that enforces how it attacks at the start of combat, and triggers on it dealing damage:

At the beginning of combat on your turn, choose an opponent at random. Raving Dead attacks that player this combat if able.
Whenever Raving Dead deals combat damage to a player, that player loses half his or her life, rounded down.

Brutal Hordechief has an ability that affects my attacks, and lets me choose blockers:

Whenever a creature you control attacks, defending player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
{3}{R/W}{R/W}: Creatures your opponents control block this turn if able, and you choose how those creatures block.

Do any of these abilities function while these creatures are in my graveyard? (Let's assume they're going to attack either way.) Am I dealing with just a vanilla 2/6 and a vanilla 3/3, or do I have to take into account any of these abilities as well? Are there specific kinds of abilities that do work and ones that don't? Has Mark Rosewater mentioned anything to clarify this?

Good choice of examples.

During combat, all creatures in your graveyard are treated as if they were on the battlefield. Anything they could do at this time while they were alive, they can do now even though they are dead.
This is covered in the Unstable FAQAWASLFAQPAFTIDAWABIAJTBT:

Do the graveyard creatures cause attacking or blocking triggered abilities to trigger?
Yes. Remember that they're treated as permanents on the battlefield while in combat, so a graveyard creature attacking will cause anything that triggers when a creature attacks (including its own abilities) to trigger.

With further confirmation that "on combat damage" abilities work on Mark Rosewaters Blogatog

wretchedor30 asked: I have out Over My Dead Bodies and attack with Phage the Untouchable. As she is in a graveyard, would it still cause game loss, or is the ability only relevant on the field?
MR: Her ability still works.

In regards to your specific examples:

Raving Dead's ability triggers at the beginning of combat (which is during the combat phase), so you will need to attack a random player. If that player doesn't block Raving Dead (perhaps they have no creatures in their graveyard) they will lose 2 life, and then half their remaining life rounded down.
If you control a Brutal Hordechief in your graveyard, when you attack during your turn each creature you attack with both alive and in the graveyard will cause the defending player to lose 1 life and you to gain 1 life. You also may use Hordechief's activated ability during combat, before blockers are declared.

The FAQAWASLFAQPAFTIDAWABIAJTBT says "If you do, for the duration of combat, the attacking and blocking creature cards are treated as if they are creature cards on the battlefield". Are you sure about the Raving Dead beginning-of-combat ability?

@MichałPolitowski I believe my interpretation of the rules are correct. The issue with the Un-sets is that it lacks the full coverage and clarity of the Comprehensive rules, so a lot of questions that come up just can't be answered with RAW. It forces you to go out and try to look into the designers head-space to determine RAI. I think that the intention is for creatures to be treated as if they are on the battlefield for the duration of combat, regardless of if they attack or not.

I understand that this is all strictly a RAI exercise. Given that, there is also the question "Can I target a graveyard creature that isn't attacking or blocking?", and the answer is "Not with anything that targets a creature on the battlefield. Remember you treat them as on the battlefield only while they're attacking or blocking." I don't think this should be read simply as "only during the combat phase".

@MichałPolitowski Hmm, that is a good point. If I were ruling this in my play group though I would probably say that things being told to attack still happen as it is in the spirit of the card. I suspect it could go either way though if you were to ask MaRo at Blogatog.

The overly literal answer
The card mostly gives us this to go on:

Creature cards in graveyards can attack and block as though they were on the battlefield

Rosewater's FAQ specifies a lot of details, but a common thread stands out: creature cards in graveyards are only treated as creatures on the battlefield while attacking or blocking.

Over My Dead Bodies allows you to attack or block with creature cards in your graveyard. If you do [emphasis added], for the duration of combat, the attacking and blocking creature cards are treated as if they are creature cards on the battlefield which means they can be affected by spells or abilities that would affect creatures on the battlefield.
Remember you treat them as on the battlefield only while they're attacking or blocking.
Remember that they're treated as permanents on the battlefield while in combat [emphasis added], so a graveyard creature attacking will cause anything that triggers when a creature attacks (including its own abilities) to trigger.

What does this mean in practice? Well...

Combat begins with the beginning of combat phase. No creatures are attacking or blocking ("in combat") at this time.

Raving Dead's triggered ability "at the beginning of combat" will not trigger, because it is not actually in combat at this time.
Likewise, because Brutal Hordechief is not in combat, either, its activated ability cannot be activated at this time.

We proceed to the declare attackers phase. All attackers are declared simultaneously, then we check what state-based actions or triggers will resolve.
The card text itself says we can declare a card in a graveyard as an attacker. Rosewater's FAQ clarifies that this means it's virtually "on the battlefield" until end of combat. This is a continuous effect (c.f. the bit about how removing Over My Dead Bodies will instantaneously end it); thus, when we check for triggers after attackers are declared, all graveyard-creatures will see each other as "on the battlefield."

Brutal Hordechief's "whenever a creature you control attacks" ability will trigger, and it will "see" every attacking creature, living and dead.

From this point until the end of the combat step, every attacking graveyard-creature is in combat, and therefore on the battlefield. None of the cards in the defender's graveyard are in combat yet, however, so none of them are on the battlefield.

Based on the implications in the FAQ (treat creatures as really, truly on the battlefield), you may now use Brutal Hordechief's activated ability now.

The defender declares blockers. This is pretty symmetrical with the declare-attackers situation.

Brutal Hordechief's activated ability will let you force your opponent to block with cards in their graveyard (respecting the constraint that the living may only block the dead and vice versa). I think it's a bit of a confusing chicken-or-egg situation but the most sensible and intended reading is clearly "if it could be a creature that blocks, use the normal rules to figure out how it blocks, and then it becomes a creature if it has now joined combat."

Damage is exchanged, then state-based effects and triggers happen as normal.

At this point, Raving Dead is still in combat (and therefore, on the battlefield), and it just did damage to a player, so its triggered ability will trigger. Simple.

So, 3 out of 4 abilities worked as intended, but the quirk about how you have to attack or block before your creature is "animated" means that beginning-of-combat triggers don't apply.
Simpler readings
I think it's pretty clear from Rosewater's FAQ answers that the intent of the card is to let you throw your graveyards at each other in combat, and the fun thing about it is really, really treating them like they're on the battlefield for the duration of combat.
I also think that, comparing the card text to the FAQ, it's clear that they struggled with a way to actually communicate that idea in Magic-legalese. Which is why the card actually says something very limited and most of the details about "you can use all your abilities and static effects apply and it's AWESOME!" are just in the FAQ.
In that light, I think it's reasonable to treat the Un-FAQ as not-quite-absolute, also. Just his best effort to communicate his vision using limited space and time, and likely only addressing the specific cases that came up during WotC's own design and playtesting.
If you feel like the best way to make sense of the card is to drop all these details about beginning of combat vs. declare attackers and just throw your graveyards at each other, I think it's reasonable to bend the normal flow of play and just say that abilities that technically trigger before a creature is "in combat" can still be used, as long as you triple-extra-promise that creature is actually going to attack or block later.
Basically, choose flavor-logic over rules-logic, if practical, because the rules-logic isn't going to hold perfectly anyway, and some of the corner cases that fall out (e.g. removing the randomness from Raving Dead) may actually end up rather unfun anyway.
(And if someone puts a Blazing Archon in their graveyard and says "now you can't attack me at all, MWAHAHA," go back to that overly literal section for the duration of that single argument.)


text:
How concise can I get the Soulbond boilerplate in a homebrew card without functional changes?
The Soulbond ability represents a couple of very long and wordy abilities:

When this creature enters the battlefield, if you control both this creature and another creature and both are unpaired, you may pair this creature with another unpaired creature you control for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield under your control
Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, if you control both that creature and this one and both are unpaired, you may pair that creature with this creature for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield under your control.

Suppose I want to make a card with Soulbond, but I want to give it a way to pair with creatures other than these two ETB triggered abilities: specifically, I want to give it an activated ability that pairs it with something. I'd need to recreate Soulbond's rules text for the activated ability, but that's quite a lot of text to put on the card.
Sometimes, however, rules text is deliberately redundant just for clarity's sake — for example, Ashcloud Phoenix had a few words added to its first ability that only served to remind players of what the rules already did — so maybe not all of those words are strictly necessary, and just add clarity.
Under current rules infrastructure, if I'm homebrewing a card that has Soulbond and an activated ability that pairs it up, how much of the Soulbond boilerplate can I drop from that activated ability's text?
Or in other words, are these all functionally equivalent? At what point have I taken out enough that I've fundamentally changed the nature of Bonding? (Assume these are on a creature with Soulbond.)

Full template:

{T}: Choose a creature you control. If you control both the chosen creature and {this card} and both are unpaired, you may pair the chosen creature with {this card} for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield under your control.

Dropping most of the "if":

{T}: If {this card} is unpaired, you may pair an unpaired creature you control with {this card} for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield under your control.

Dropping the "as long as":

{T}: If {this card} is unpaired, you may pair an unpaired creature you control with {this card}.

Do you intend to make your pairing ability mutually exclusive with Soulbond? In other words, do you intend to have your ability use the "pair" definition from 702.94b-e, and therefore have your pairs count the same as Soulbond pairs for the purposes of pairing and unpairing creatures?

There are no specifically soulbond pairs - soulbond is just a keyword representing 2 triggered abilities that can establish a pair.

@murgatroid99 I imagined this would be on a card with Soulbond. Should I add that explicitly?

Yes, I think that is unclear. When you say "Soulbond replica", I thought you meant "an ability with similar functionality to Soulbond"

@murgatroid99 What I do mean is "an ability for a soulbond card that lets it pair other than the two ETB triggers". I'll edit.

@murgatroid99 How does this update read?

That's a lot clearer.

I have a couple of suggestions for improving all three templates. The phrase "that creature" is normally written as "the chosen creature". The phrases "this one" and "this creature" are normally written as "" (the effect refers to the card it is printed on by proper name).

@Rainbolt Thanks for those wording suggestions. I've updated the abilities in the question to leave good templating here for posterity. :)

All three templates are functionally identical.
The first and second are already very similar, although the first has the better wording, one that's typical for choosing something.
The third is very condensed, but the rules for "being paired" handle everything that happens to the pairing once it's been established:

702.94e A paired creature becomes unpaired if any of the following occur: another player gains control of it or the creature it’s paired with; it or the creature it’s paired with stops being a creature; or it or the creature it’s paired with leaves the battlefield.

The only purpose of the "soulbond" keyword ability is to establish the pair. Since your activated ability takes care of that part, even with the short third template, only the rules for "paired" are now of interest.
Overall I would recommend using the first template, simply because it explains everything there is to know about pairing right on the card, rather than requiring a look into the CompRules.
You could drop the words "on the battlefield" from the first template, because that's already implicit in "being a creature".

All three wordings have the same effect. The last one looks different in that it doesn't say that the bond goes away if control changes or they stop being creatures, but the rules cover that; the wording of soulbond is redundant.
With none of your wordings does the ability have a target. This has some minor effects, like allowing you to pair with a creature with shroud or protection and the not making you choose the creature to pair with until the ability resolves.
The first two could also be changed to say "this one" instead of "this creature", like the original.

Are you sure about the differences is the abilities because the rules already unpair things if control changes or they stop being creatures. 702.94e A paired creature becomes unpaired if any of the following occur: another player gains control of it or the creature it’s paired with; it or the creature it’s paired with stops being a creature; or it or the creature it’s paired with leaves the battlefield.