In the past few months I've been noticing more and more controversy around playmats. It would happen that judges from all around Italy would post on facebook some playmat asking the italian community if they think those kind of playmats should be allowed in tournaments. Sometimes it's a bit of exposed skin, sometimes it's something more controversial, like this one:
(Yes, I am well aware about the story of this playmat, I don't intend neither to explore the will of the author nor the rights, I'm just talking about content)
Whenever someone asked about playmats the answer would be something along the lines of “I wouldn't allow it because I think it's inappropriate” and “I can't see any problem”, which are perfectly good answer in an opinion based ruling, but create some confusion in players. I couldn't find a guide line and in all the posts concerning this matter we arrived to the conclusion that it would be the TO's call to make.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm on the liberal side of this matter, my opinion is that we should pretty much allow everything that doesn't involve splatter imagery, pornography or hate, but now I have come to the conclusion that we actually can't allow or not allow things. If it's really the TO call we are looking at a huge hole in the rules.
(My english is a bit rusty, so I sometimes need to circle around some concepts to express them, which is why I feel the next few examples would give a better understanding of what I'm trying to say rather than actually trying to say it)
We have some degree of power to sanction a player that is swearing (this is an all italian problem since those kind of blasphemy aren't usual in other countries) or insulting his opponent, and we have rules about what a player can have on the playing table and what he can't. Those rules are made to prevent cheating in certain degrees and overall enhance player's experience, and even if we may need the TO to enforce them (by, for instance, removing a player from the venue) they come from us, there is little to no chance that different judges would give different ruling about UC, and that is mainly because we have some precise guidelines.
When talking about artwork card, for instance, we have all the guidelines we need. I can most definitely tell my players that a card is playable, and there are very few corner cases. That makes having a shared sense of what the rule is much easier. Players won't say things like “the other judge said differently”.
That's what we need to achieve here. We need precise guidelines on naughty* playmats.
It's not the fact that it's a TO's decision to make per se, it's the fact that we can't give our opinion. We can't counsel players, and on top of that if asked we would pretty much allow everything as we have no way of doing otherwise. I feel that it can be a problem.
PS I'm not sure if this is a question or a statement, but I was advised to make this post and I really feel that the matter is worth the discussion.
PPS this is my first post on the forum please don't eat me pretty please
PPPS it goes without saying that I searched the forum for a similar discussion before posting this, but couldn't find anything
*the italian word I would've used is “birichino” which has a comic flavour to it. It can't be translated so you get this wonderful explanation instead.