Sentence one is "silly" because you cannot expect other people to think like you. Expecting everyone to inherently "get it" is..preposterous As such it is not a good argument to fall back on as it is inherently flawed.

Sentence two seems to be much more fair and balanced. Although its difficult to quantify how much as my preceding sentence disrupts this one.

I can. And, as I said, consensus is easy enough to seek. Just ask people. If there is not one clearly silly option and one clearly not-silly option, then the prerequisites for following this rule haven't been satisfied, and you can't use it. I certainly didn't say, 'in *any* ambiguous situation, there's *always* a silly option', etc.

Problem is it all comes down to Personal Outlook, you can never "ask" enough people to get something resembling a coherent answer, and then there is the nasty problem of people changing their minds. Hence why its, IMHO, better to have a central adjutant who ,for lack of a better term, lay down the law. That way its coherent and the same across all spectrums

… I certainly can. You're acting like consensus doesn't constantly happen, everywhere.

But yes, the final word (by appointment) is the GM; I never said otherwise. The GM draws on his shared human experience with good, bad, reasonable, and silly to make these decisions. What he doesn't draw on is an absolute understanding of unambiguous rules, because that never exists. It seems like you're trying to reject subjectivity… while specifically asking for GM-fiat. That doesn't compute.

Im saying you can't say its silly and expect that to be correct, as it is obviously no true. Something along the lines of what you have previously said such as.."I take the less powerful option" is not only easier to stomach but also makes much more sense.

Im not specifically referring to the GM, I was talking about the company that produces the rules and the accompanying FAQ. No one can argue with these, If i travel across the country and people will be playing with these rules, I can can seamlessly join the game with no problems.

And I'm saying I can definitely say something's silly and have a good expectation of having the majority agree with me; and if not, then the silly/not-silly rule isn't appropriate in that case.

They're not mutually exclusive rules. They have different conditions for use.

Okay, that's just ridiculous. Dumpshock has proven about a million times that the RAW and the FAQ can certainly be argued with, and that many people get wildly different interpretations from them. They can also both be flat wrong, broken, etc.

Ah but you have to get stability from somewhere, otherwise its terribly hard to travel and play with other people. Ya know, with all the disagreeing veiwpoints. Like it or not you need that anchor so you can reasonably plan ahead.

I agree: consensus is needed. I just disagree that you'll ever get it from RAW, and certainly not the shaky-at-best SR4 RAW. Despite planning ahead, any table (even Missions, I'd think) is going to have mismatches.

I'm not really sure perfect portability is a worthwhile goal. I assume most players not only play at the same table most of the time, but that they also make their characters specifically for a table's campaign (again, with the specific exception of Missions).

I agree, if you have time to sit down and make a character it shouldn't be a issue.

I'm just saying that jumping in with a fast character is probably a niche feature. Ideally, it would indeed be fully possible (excepting major house rules).