This thought occurred to me during the recent GP in Louisville, but it slipped my mind to ask anyone. I'm not entirely sure if this is the right forum for my question, but I can't think of anywhere else it could go.

When a player calls a Judge for oracle text on a card, we pull out our phones and use our handy-dandy MTG Judge Core App / MTG Familiar / similar Judge app and pull the card up for the player to read. In this day and age, it seems to be almost automatic. It got me thinking: Before the advent of smartphones, when a player needed an oracle text reference, what did Judges do?

Ghost_Stache

There were two methods that I would use:
1) Go to the scorekeeper (or other person with a computer) and look up the
Oracle text online.
2) Have a printout of the current Oracle

Before smartphones there were other handheld devices that could also serve
the same purpose. 15 years ago I was using a Palm device to look up Oracle
text at events. Before those were used, I remember going up to the SK and
asking for Oracle text that the SK would print for us to give to the
player. It was not as fast as today's smartphones but it still served the
same purpose.

Also, back then fewer cards had such differences among their printed text
and the Oracle text.


Alejandro Raggio
araggio@gmail.com

There was a point where during the GP briefing the HJ would say “Who here
has a device on them with Oracle access”, and have all those people stand
up/raise their hands.

You could route to one of those on the floor.

Otherwise, what Shawn said.


—
Rob McKenzie
Magic Judge Level III
Judge Regional Coordinator USA-North
Minnesota

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:19 AM, Shawn Doherty <forum-32734-e1a6@apps.
magicjudges.org> wrote:

In early years of judging, I referred to the offline databases of Apprentice or MWS, ancient softwares to play magic.
In 2003-2009?-ish, it was very uncommon to have an internet connection in my tournament locations.
Also, I had a binder (huge) with comprehensive rules and oracletext of (format legal) cards at some point.

Edited Philip Böhm (Jan. 13, 2017 06:54:56 AM)

In the 90's, rules documents. Oracle text, and the D'Angelo Rulings Summaries would often be printed, hole-punched, and put into a binder prior to major events. One of the last Rulings Summaries can still be found on Wizards' website. Updates were basically every month. Often, the binder would have several months of documents in it.

I remember one of my “Thursday before a GP” activities being “print the latest tournament rules, floor rules, and penalty guidelines” which would then be faithfully stored at the judge station. Oracle references were normally handled by asking the scorekeeper. At the largest events there was often a laptop and printer available for just such a purpose.