And who gets to determine the results of the litmus test? You? Me? Plaxor? Sig? Voting does.
Even if you refrain from voting yourself, setting up the votes, deciding on the particular questions that get asked (or which don't), the options, and the way the questions are phrased, is an enormous power in itself. More influence than any single vote, certainly. Vaaish already wrote well about the trouble with this.
One example I can think of is a recent vote on the Jovian (to flog a dead horse), where the options were basically
'Include the Jovian as a reserve everywhere' or
'No, it needs more work'. But in this case
'No' could be (and obviously was) interpreted to mean
'It needs more work before it can be included'. There was no conservative choice which clearly said:
'No. Just don't touch anything. Leave it the way it has always been!'Basically you can see the worry some have: There is an inherent bias towards change, if any ship or list can fall prey to a vote in which there is no clear choice
not to make any change, pages and pages of discussion about which change is the best gets people in the mindset that they must choose one change or another. And every little change beyond what's obviously necessary alienates some player somewhere a bit more.
(I understand your objection above: How can we decide what is obviously necessary? Of course we need to find a balance between the will of the voters and the faithfulness to the original. A great facilitator of the voting itself is important there.)
Sorry to sound so critical. I'm saying this stuff because I want the process to work, and BFG:R to succeed. I just don't yet know what success is supposed to look like: Is the purpose of BFG:R to appeal to as many players as possible, or is it something else?
Everyone has their own idea about how to make the game 'better' but what they really mean is 'better for them' if they're honest with themselves.
I think some people take a longer view of what's 'better for them' than others do.
In my own view, BGF:R being 'better for me' means that with the end result, I can find the maximum number of players who can still get on board with the superior BFG:R ruleset,
even if I can't field exactly the list that I want. It's a compromise.
What's your idea of
'better for BaronIveagh', if it
isn't the same as my view of
'better for Casus belli'?