As always I do my best to remain as unbiased as possible and I do have a little bit to put out here. No I have not been to a major and no I have not played a butt ton of locals and I am still very new to the FGC scene, however I do have experience with playing and running tournaments within a competetive environment back in my Warhammer 40k days of playing the table top, so I will be using much of my experience from there as well as my experience from the military as well.
First off, there is no need to set a universal set of rules for all tournaments to follow in throughout the country, if all TOs would like to band together and create such a thing so be it, but there is no true need to do so. Every TO should be setting the rules and those rules must be enforced by the TOs or whoever else is deemed by them to have that position, this is why most tournaments should typically have more than one TO in place.
Perfect Legend: Though I know I have had many disagreements with you in the past I am simply going to say this and only this and it is not just for you, but everyone out there that partakes in these tournaments. It is the responsibility of all the players that entered in the tournament to understand and know the rules of what is and isn't allowed. If the rules are set that during a button check you are to pick your character of choice for that set, then that is the rule that must be followed. If players decide to not learn the rules of the tournament, there shouldn't be an argument at all between TOs and players, but the rules are to be enforced accordingly regardless if the player was ignorant of said rules. Plain and Simple. Whether or not if the player agrees to these rules or feels they are unreasonable is irelevent, they paid to play and therfore agreed to accept and abide by said rules, consider your sign-up being the signing of a contract stating you will agree and obey to the terms of use.
The players should never have the ability to make the desicions as far what is to be done when a rule is broken intentionally or unintentionally. It is the TO's job to discern exactly what occured and to make a valid judgement on how to press forawrd. A good reason for this definatley comes form my 40k days of playing in those tournaments as well as running them. Since a game of 40k is based around a preset book of rules on how a game is run, there will be times and situations where both players will be confused on how to handle said issue and situation, mainly due to the wording of a rule, in which case the TO has to make the valid desicion on how a rule will be interprated from the rule book. You CANNOT allow a player to decide the way it will work, for they likely will biasly decide the outcome that will favor them in the long run. The TO must hold that responsibility regardless if they don't or want to feel like they are being an asshole in the process. As a TO they must maintain the business is business and it is nothing personal regardless if the players involved are their personal friends.
Rules must be present in a tournament for they keep things flowing smoothly and help to address when an issue occurs such as a hardware failure or a player trying to cheat. Rules, procedures, and protocols exist for many reasons, it is the same reason why when I was in the Navy I was enforced to ensure every sailor in my line during a ship mooring evolution was not wearing any jewelry or gloves regardless of how hot or cold it was outside. The reason that rule exists is for the safety of the sailors participating in the evolution and if anyone is curious as to why that rule exists just google line handling mishaps, but I am certain you will not enjoy the images you see.
I apologize for such a long post, but this is something that does need to be addressed and would like to see it fixed and resolved, considering I am 1 month away from graduating college and plan to start competing at these different tournaments that take place.
General M2Dave ,
GGA 16 Bit,
Jim,
AK Pig Of The Hut
. If there's one thing I don't miss is the galizzions of rule issues in 40K. Thankfully I've switched to Warmachine/Hordes which is actually designed for and works in a tourney setting.