The COMPLETE Rules of Acquisition

megasilver

I need to know where I can find a COMPLETE list of all 285 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. There's a website I used to go to where the complete and accurate list was posted. But that website's been down for an unknown amount of time.

Anyone know where I can find them?

where2r1

I was looking at some on a Wiki the other day (looking for ideas for a name for my Ferengi's new Nandi)... not sure if it is "complete" but it has a lot of them:

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisition

cruzist

Memory alpha. http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

megasilver

Sorry, guys. But they don't have a complete list either. I long tried those.

alexmakepeace

Rule #397,374: If there isn't a rule for your situation, make one up and say it was always there!

where2r1

Well, I hope you find the exact page, with the perfect list of Rules.
Hopefully, they just moved it to a different URL location and Google hasn't found it, yet, either.

(Or, it could be more likely, the copyright police caught up with them.....
people who actually own intellectual property get a bit touchy about their stuff on the internet, these days)

Anyways.....Good Luck to you.

smeeinn1t

Memory Beta seems to be complete, or at least as complete a list as I have seen anywhere.

My Nandi is the Rule 285.

Found this somewhere ages ago, can't remember where though.

megasilver

Again, I appreciate it, but that's still not a complete list, Smeein1t

Still, it's something to go on, at least.

alexmakepeace

I'm going to guess that the writers never actually made a complete list. They left blank spots so they could make things up as they went along.

megasilver

@alexmakepeace

It couldn't have been impossible. Again, that site had all 285 rules. No gaps, no missing rules; everything was there.

This was the old site. http://www.seedsofsuccess.com/ferengirulers.html

Figured I'll tell you. Just in case.

mhall85

The rules were never fully given, so there is no canonical "complete" list. Any site that purported to have the complete list probably made up rules.

You can try to find the book by Ira Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Legends of the Ferengi, I think). My guess is, too, that Memory Alpha and Memory Beta would have the most complete collections.

cruzist

Wayback machine made in snapshot in July, 2013.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130623073331/http://www.seedsofsuccess.com/ferengirulers.html

Just the one.

megasilver

@cruzist YES! THAT'S THE ONE! Cruzist, I freaking love you!

hawku001x

Did the Seeds of Success webmaster invent the missing ones?

jonsills

hawku001x wrote: »

Did the Seeds of Success webmaster invent the missing ones?

Yes, he/she/it/they did. 67 and 68, for instance, are restatements of the fictional US Army regulations in Heller's classic novel Catch-22.

markhawkman

Probably. If you look on the Memory Alpha page it lists sources for many of them. the added rules are mostly from Legends of the Ferengi. It's notable that most other sources are excluded completely, and the missing gaps seem to have come from nowhere, mostly.

smeeinn1t

Thing is there is no actual book of rules, all the information available throughout canon is on Mem Alpha and Beta. Seeds of success was filled out by page author. ​​

championshewolf

There is no complete, official list, of the Rules of Acquisition, because all of them have not been said on the air. Of course there are many fan made versions, many of which do not match, and of course there are always rules being added on to.

Short answer, you won't find a complete, official list of the rules of acquisition.

cruzist

megasilver wrote: »

@cruzist YES! THAT'S THE ONE! Cruzist, I freaking love you!

That is so... wow, soon. And unexpected. And soon. And wow.

markhawkman

After looking closer, I realized that that "complete" list isn't. The TV show listed "Expand or die." as both #45 and #95. Also in several episodes a rule was mentioned without giving it's number. ALL of those are not on that list.

championshewolf

markhawkman wrote: »

After looking closer, I realized that that "complete" list isn't. The TV show listed "Expand or die." as both #45 and #95. Also in several episodes a rule was mentioned without giving it's number. ALL of those are not on that list.

This is why worrying about it is pointless. None of the lore matches up, no matter what fans believe, there are many inconsistencies, such as several items being the hardest substance known to man (dilithium, some alloy used for starship hulls, etc) and at least two General Orders that supposedly are the only law on the books that involve the death penalty (General Order 4 and General Order 7), and of course the inconsistency with the Rules of Acquisition.

And let's not get into the simple fact that Star Trek has slowly and continually ignored their own Prime Directive, until the plot makes it a point, then they become so draconian with the Prime Directive its very point is warped. It's such a crutch that it even appears in STO, which HAS NO PLACE to being invoked, at all, in the situation it is in. This was one of the few issues I took with Into Darkness actually, the first thing to happen is that Kirk saves a species from extinction, but the Prime Directive is brought up, despite the fact that the Prime Directive only infers direct involvement, such as teaching pre-industrial societies how to make phasers, warp cores and the like, not to go out of your way to prevent the extinction of people or maybe saving someone's life if anonymously. Again these rules only seem to apply when the writers want, basically, a bullcrap point of drama that isn't even a valid point of the argument.

markhawkman

Please.. tell us how you really feel. But yeah. Both are plot devices, that were not used as precisely as they probably should have. The Rules of Acquisition were not an actual codified law in universe. Well, not really. I personally suspect the Prime Directive was written by Vulcans. Aside from the Borg they're the only race that cold and calculating.

championshewolf

markhawkman wrote: »

Please.. tell us how you really feel. But yeah. Both are plot devices, that were not used as precisely as they probably should have. The Rules of Acquisition were not an actual codified law in universe. Well, not really. I personally suspect the Prime Directive was written by Vulcans. Aside from the Borg they're the only race that cold and calculating.

I just hate the Prime Directive being used as an tool to create false drama and tension when it isn't needed. Hell, it's one of the many, many, many things that makes Voyager so insufferable. That and Captain Janeway being a maniacal, power mad person that any normal crew would have mutinied against after the first episode.

jonsills

Loath though I am to defend anything in Into Dorkness, the Prime Directive violation in there was supposed to be Kirk revealing the existence of the Enterprise to the locals; once Spock got stuck in the volcano (because apparently the transporters don't work through the surface tension of water or something), they were supposed to abandon him and let the local sapient life forms go extinct rather than reveal themselves.

Which is why I rant and rave against the version of the PD promulgated in TNG and later. In its original formulation, it was supposed to forbid interference with the normal development of a viable pre-spaceflight society. And I'd hardly call being threatened with extinction via volcanic eruption either "normal" or "viable".

(And what kind of volcanic eruption causes planetary extinction, anyway? The characters repeatedly said that if the volcano erupted, the "planet" would die - but TRIBBLE, Yellowstone could erupt and it wouldn't kill Earth. Yes, life would be rather difficult for a time, and a large number of species would meet extinction, but the planet wouldn't die.)

championshewolf

jonsills wrote: »

Loath though I am to defend anything in Into Dorkness, the Prime Directive violation in there was supposed to be Kirk revealing the existence of the Enterprise to the locals; once Spock got stuck in the volcano (because apparently the transporters don't work through the surface tension of water or something), they were supposed to abandon him and let the local sapient life forms go extinct rather than reveal themselves.

Which is why I rant and rave against the version of the PD promulgated in TNG and later. In its original formulation, it was supposed to forbid interference with the normal development of a viable pre-spaceflight society. And I'd hardly call being threatened with extinction via volcanic eruption either "normal" or "viable".

(And what kind of volcanic eruption causes planetary extinction, anyway? The characters repeatedly said that if the volcano erupted, the "planet" would die - but TRIBBLE, Yellowstone could erupt and it wouldn't kill Earth. Yes, life would be rather difficult for a time, and a large number of species would meet extinction, but the planet wouldn't die.)

TNG era Prime Directive use has twisted it and bastardized it plain and simple. And only in Star Trek can something so insignificant cause the extinction of an entire planet, solar system, galaxy, whatever. This has been going on since Star Trek first happened, since it's a basic trope; Writers have no sense of scale.

Hell, laying mines out in a 2 dimensional plain, evidently, was good enough in Deep Space Nine to prevent use of the worm hole, even though the worm hole operates in 3 dimensions, meanwhile super novas have been capable of destroying entire solar systems that are no where near the super nova since at least the Generations movie. That was always my favorite how much of the science is made so wrong.

But scientific accuracy and Star Trek are two things that have never been together, and the sin of TNG is it introduced the BS technobabble speak to hide this fact. Or Treknobabble since it gets really bad in late TNG, in DS9 and definitely in Voyager.

markhawkman

jonsills wrote: »

Loath though I am to defend anything in Into Dorkness, the Prime Directive violation in there was supposed to be Kirk revealing the existence of the Enterprise to the locals; once Spock got stuck in the volcano (because apparently the transporters don't work through the surface tension of water or something), they were supposed to abandon him and let the local sapient life forms go extinct rather than reveal themselves.

Which is why I rant and rave against the version of the PD promulgated in TNG and later. In its original formulation, it was supposed to forbid interference with the normal development of a viable pre-spaceflight society. And I'd hardly call being threatened with extinction via volcanic eruption either "normal" or "viable".

(And what kind of volcanic eruption causes planetary extinction, anyway? The characters repeatedly said that if the volcano erupted, the "planet" would die - but TRIBBLE, Yellowstone could erupt and it wouldn't kill Earth. Yes, life would be rather difficult for a time, and a large number of species would meet extinction, but the planet wouldn't die.)

My interpretation was that it would have killed off the planet's biosphere, or most of it anyways, thus wiping out the race living there. This is sometimes referred to as killing a world in sci-fi since afterwards it's called a "dead" planet.