Supplemental Round Rules

The NPDL Board has adopted the following supplemental rules for the NPDL-Fall Online Invitational, to augment the NPDL Online Round Rules.

SUPPLEMENTAL RULE 1:

Debaters shall not cite published sources as support for their arguments.  Judges should not give evidentiary weight to cited sources, and should assume the citation may be inaccurate, misquoted or misleading. 

(Note that this rule is not protestable. A judge should disregard a citation to a publication, as they would disregard a new argument in rebuttal called out by a point of order.)

SUPPLEMENTAL RULE 2:

After each constructive speech, the opposing team may cross-examine the speaker. Each side has a total of two minutes cross-examination time (no grace period), which it may allocate as it wishes after the other side’s two constructive speeches, but which may not be used once rebuttals begin.  

SUPPLEMENTAL RULE 3: 

The judge should award a win to the team that did the better debating. The judge should award a loss to the other team.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

The tournament will use single topics for preliminary rounds, and three topics with topic strikes in all elimination rounds.