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Chaltab posted:Are you sure someone didn't switch your die out with a joke die that favors rolling 1s? You've misread. He has to roll a 20, then roll a 1 to crit fail now. So he's got a 1/400 chance to fail now, as opposed to a 1/20. Of course if he keeps rolling four 1's in a row, it won't matter! 
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Dec 16, 2014 04:55
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Golden Bee posted:So, our 13th Age game is coming to its conclusion. It started in May of 2013, and in our second adventure, we met Augustus, a regional rep of the Archmage. He gave us a few quests but we didn't hear much from him after that. I just want you to know I've been chuckling all day about this.
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Dec 16, 2014 10:20
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Captain Bravo posted:You've misread. He has to roll a 20, then roll a 1 to crit fail now. So he's got a 1/400 chance to fail now, as opposed to a 1/20. Of course if he keeps rolling four 1's in a row, it won't matter!
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Dec 16, 2014 10:22
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Ran a pseudo-oneshot for my last Pathfinder game, and I think it went well enough to warrant posting here! Little backstory - running the Age of Worms campaign in greyhawk, using Pathfinder, and so far my players have just hit level 10 and finished the Free City Arena module. To allow some time to spend loot* and relax after the hectic couple of days where they shortcutted through the last two modules. Alina is a NE Drow BloodKnight, refluffed Crusader, with all the frowns and undue attention that entails. Since blood magic is cool as poo poo, I introduced Duke Balagarde, a bloatmage**, to act as a potential mentor to her, or perhaps just as a source of some blood magic tomes. But why pay for something whenever you can murder the owner, and drain his magical blood to fuel your addiction? So Alina searches out some people who might have a grudge against Balagarde, finds Blain Wintergard, an ex-mercenary/adventurer who had his inn/brewery destroyed after an argument with Balagarde. Blain has been searching for people of his own, and pulled in some old adventuring buddies - Frostbite the enigmatic-gender shadow being, and Shi'Ley (of the Wastes) a Rune Mage. The plan was for me to hand over control of Blain, Frostbite, and Shi'Ley to the other 3 players, so that I could run the raid on the estate as a mini-dungeon, and have a neat bossfight to try out some mechanics and let my players have fun with temporary characters (and maybe also use those temporary characters as expendable examples of high-level combat). Unfortunately, only 1 other player could make it, and took Shi'Ley, but the raid must go on. First off, the party broke into Balagarde's favourite winery and slipped some anti-magic poison into his favourite wine, then waited for him to pick up his next weekly ton of it. His magic neutralised, or at least dampened, they approached the estate from the North-East, since that path had the most isolated guards that could be murdered silently. Aside from one series of flubbed stealth checks, and the subsequent gibbing/freezing of two guards, it went off without a hitch. Arriving at the Duke's chambers, Alina cast Darkness into it, which Frostbite took advantage of to horribly murder the guards alá Pride from FMA. He then proceeded to spend the rest of the encounter teleporting around and murdering guards, since the fight was kinda crowded and the less NPCs I had to control the better. Blain, Alina and Shi'Ley all wailed on Balagarde, and since he was big and slow managed to bring him to bloodied before his first turn, which let me pull out my first setpiece - Balagarde had been bleeding far more than even a giant bloodbag like he should have held, and his first action was to expel yet more blood, and shape it into a giant titanic blood golem, which he wore like armor. Balagarde could still be hit inside of the titan, the downside to such being that each time he was damaged the Blood Titan would gain that much HP and make an extra attack, to balance out the action economy somewhat. After Alina actually took significant damage for once, Shi'Ley popped a big Runic Bubble which halved all damage taken by the party, and they decided the best tactic was to nuke Balagarde down and hope the Titan dissipated after his death. Since this was all part of the plan, the next round the Titan vented all of the excess HP it had gained in an acidic spray towards Shi'Ley, doing 1d6 damage for each HP excess, 120 total before reflex save and bubble both halved to a survivable level. The other thing to mention here is that in true Roll20 fashion, all of the enemies rolled obscenely well. I think I got 4 crits to the parties 1 crit threat, and rolled near-max damage on most of the hits. Duke Balagarde was slain, though since it'd be a bit anticlimactic the end the fight there, I had Balagarde dissolve in the acidic blood (except for bones), shifted the Blood Titan to use the 3rd picture in the link above, halved it's remaining HP, took it down a size and gave it -4 to all stats. Still managed to crit tackle Alina and scream at her before Blain finally hit with an attack, and Suplex'd it. Complete with a yell of "BEAR SUPLEX". Shi'Ley then froze it into a bone-filled bloodsickle. I think if I had left the Blood Titan untouched my players would have cried and/or killed me. There was then a brief argument over division of loot, with the beautiful line "You just like him because you're murder buddies.". Resuming next week with a brief trek into Arborea to find the elven gods, to cure an elf of a Wendigo curse. Mostly since there's a portal to Arborea right there, and none of them fancy trying to break the curse with magic or trying to kill the original Wendigo. Those things are scary man. (The Cleric figured out what happened by looking into the elf's mind, had a horrifying mental trip, and failed a Will save. Fun times.) * I accidentally gave them far beyond what I intended, but that's not really a big deal and is just more fun. Calculating diamond dust by volume ended up being 280,000gp in a Type I Bag of Holding, rather than the 75k or so I had been thinking of for a fun variety of loot from a Cleric ** a sorceror who realises blood=power, so more blood=more power. For his token I used a picture of Fat Bastard from Austin Powers
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Dec 17, 2014 15:50
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Dungeon world! Early on in the game, my players fluffed a Spout Lore roll on a particular area of the map, so I asked them: "Okay, what do your characters erroneously believe about this region?" They described in detail the happy, friendly villages of halflings who lived in peace and harmony with nature, the scenic pyramids which were completely uninhabited, and the way that the soil was so verdant that food just hung off tree branches, so nobody visiting would need to pack provisions. Tonight they realised it was the best place to go to find a portal to Fae. The halfling village was full of jolly rural yokels with names like Wimbim Merrycheeks, and welcomed the with open arms and quaint rural music and invited them to a feast. It was about midway through that they realised they were eating human flesh, and when they refused to eat any more the merry country folk peeled their lips back to reveal rows of razor-sharp piranha teeth and attacked. The fight went quite well until one of the PCs rolled badly and, out of ideas, I asked him what he saw the halflings doing that looked like bad news. "They're bringing out their pet!"Okay, I asked, what does it look like? "Well, it's huge, green, scaly, has six legs, and has huge eyes--"I had an idea, and suggested that its eyes might be hypnotic. "Yeah! And its mouth is full of teeth that it can spit out at you, and..."Fucker nearly killed the entire party.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:32
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Carrasco posted:I just want you to know I've been chuckling all day about this. I'm honestly very proud that my character's genuine, unrehearsed reaction to the circumstances was enough to single-handedly stop a dramatic twist in its dramatic tracks. I mean our party is a generally obtuse group of characters but we can USUALLY bounce back to serious time.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:07
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Whybird posted:
We really need to learn that "what went wrong" is a single question, not an essay prompt. Also, is the perfect smiley for that player. It never did use it's projectile bite. Probably for the best.
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Dec 18, 2014 11:01
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Shadowrun 5e Group consists of: TalonDemonKing: Physical Adept, nicknamed Wombo CyanEyed: Physical Adept, nicknamed Combo Myself: Rigger CashanDraven: Face, calls himself Stylish We also have a mage in the normal group, but she wasn't able to make this one. The job: Our Johnson contacted us by email, saying he had a simple pickup. One of his people was holed up in a tool store in Everett with a package delivery that was overdue. This individual was being pursued by the Kickers, and we got word they were moving on his location. We took the ferry out from the greater Seattle area and drove up. I parked the truck across the street from the tool store while the others checked out the bar down the block. There were a few motorcycles outside in Kicker colors, so we knew we had the right place. A youngish woman was lounging outside in green and gold, apparently waiting for someone. Now, Wombo got it in her head she wanted a motorcycle. The biggest and baddest one outside that bar, for example. While Wombo was checking that out, Stylish was on the comlink with the dude we were here to recover. We went over a few possible plans, Mr. Johnson basically said we just needed to distract the Kickers so he could get out, and we settled on "When you hear gunshots and screams, run to the truck outside." I pulled the tarp off my Steel Lynx and turned on the camo coating. Inside the bar, we had a security guard and three civilians, plus what appeared to be a cybered-up human, an elf, an unspecified old dude, and extremely cybered human triplets, all in Kicker colors. Wombo got tired of waiting, pulled out her bow, nocked an arrow, and shot the middle triplet through the bar window while screaming a challenge to a duel for his motorcycle. It hit, didn't kill, but that really didn't matter, as it was only the surprise round. We rolled initiative, Wombo and Combo rolled 25 and 26, Stylish and I 12. Triplet 3 immediately ate a punch to the face from Wombo and went down. Triplet 1(arrow-boy) and 2, plus the elf, ate a whirlwind attack from Combo's sword and dropped. Stylish rolled Leadership to give everyone +2 initiative, and I missed a called shot (split damage) on the gal outside. She failed the perception check to spot the drone thanks to the silencer, so she pulled out her own sniper rifle and tried to shoot Combo. She missed, firing into melee, and obliterated one of the civilians in the bar. The cybered-up human turned out to be a cyber-poser mage with incredibly poor judgement and cast a Force 4 fireball at Combo. This did absolutely nothing to either Adept, but managed to light everyone else in the bar on fire, to include himself. Top of the round, Wombo's up again. Shoots the old guy in the face with her bow, dropping him in a single hit. Combo takes a step back and charges the mage. One insanely poor defense roll later, his arm, legs, and torso are all separated from each other. Combo then flubs the perception check to realize it's not cyberware (it was glued on). Stylish rolls Leadership again for +1 initiative. I line up a shot and drop the sniper. At this point, there are eight people dead, seven of them are from the Kicker gang. It's been about 1.5 seconds since Wombo's challenge, and the dude we're trying to rescue finally comes out and sprints for the truck. Stylish, myself, and the contact book it back to the ferry for the return. Wombo and Combo looted the gangers for the keys to a Harley-Davidson Scorpion, 73 nuyen, and the sniper's Ranger Arms SM-5. Since they're carrying horrendously illegal stuff now, they split off to pawn the rifle, paint the motorcycle, and clear its tags. We suck at this whole "Shadow" thing. The running part is going fantastic.
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Dec 18, 2014 11:55
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The party in magic wild west campaign is realizing that some sort of war with the BBG and the other factions is all but enviable and that they need to get as many allies as they can. Goblin Necromancer: "Uh, Doc, you're going to hate me for this idea" Doc, Dwarf Cleric: "You're going to say recruit my dad" (a murderous bastard who Doc thought he'd killed, that sent mercs after the party twice. The party then beat him down, leaving badly wounded as a warning to leave them alone.) Goblin: "No, worse than that." Us:  Goblin: "The 'Ring Master'" ( a Q-like trans-dementional being who pitted them against fights that represented their worst fears.)  Of course, characters were face palming, and this caught me off guard, but this is an awesome idea. I'm considering some sort of ogre-battle style combat thing for the final bit of this "Season" where the PCs will get to basically command the troops.
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Dec 19, 2014 07:25
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Hannibal the Cannibal (Story may contain some spoilers for Haarlock Legacy: Damned Cities) We've been playing through a slightly modified Haarlock's Legacy campaign recently, in Dark Heresy second edition instead of the first one, with mostly the same group as the one that played that Rogue Trader campaign I used to tell tales about. The Dark Heresy campaign has mostly been more serious, even if humor has still been present in pretty decent amounts, sometimes through the stuff that happens because of the dice, sometimes because of stuff the players do, sometimes because of the stuff the GM does. Anyway, we had the finale session of Damned Cities lately (which we played through as the first major part of the campaign), and we'd managed to get a couple of Arbite flunkies with us to the final battles of the adventure, with three present as the pen-ultimate combat begun. They were meant as a bunch of flunkies who really wouldn't do all that much, but boy, did they deliver, especially two of them that we called hero-Arbites. Now at the start of the fight the three arbites were fighting against these undead monstrosities in front of us, keeping them tied up so we wouldn't be instantly overwhelmed by our opposition. Now, the GM had probably intended that this was going to be all they were going to do, but the arbites fought like madmen. They didn't kill any of the monsters, but they just refused to die and kept a steady stream of damage up at them, rolling well most of the time, and when the Big Bad of the campaign showed up with this horror-ghost in tow, two of them died of horror, but one rolled 01 on his willpower save and survived the entire combat, despite spending most of it overwhelmed by enemies way more dangerous than he was. The GM decided the guy's name was Hannibal, and soon there were jokes about Hannibal the Cannibal (which was later confirmed to be his nickname). Hannibal just would not give up no matter what, and he did kill a smaller mook if I remember correctly, but more important than that was how he was really good at surviving. He got hit with a shock baton three turns in a row, and every turn, he made his toughness save to avoid being stunned. It was amazing. Then, he performed decently in the SECOND loving BOSSFIGHT gently caress YOU FFG after the first boss fight, and all the PCs had grown fond of the heroic Arbite by now, with all of them commending him in their reports. Hannibal the Cannibal's story almost came to a sad end, with the Inquisition reinforcements who arrived afterwards wanting to execute him and a few other surviving Arbites as a precaution for having been near demonic forces, but we managed to convince the more senior agents who wanted to do that to consider otherwise, so they gave the Arbites basically to us. So now our group has six arbites as backup, with one of them being their sergeant Hannibal the Cannibal, the Arbite who saw a daemonic ghost and didn't give a gently caress. Hannibal did more in the first boss fight than half our party through sheer force of will even, so there was no way we were going to let some overzealous Astropath have him executed, and as a bonus we saved a few other Arbites as well.
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Dec 19, 2014 16:08
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Is it cool to post about historicals? I just don't want to get too grognardy about things.
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Dec 20, 2014 17:41
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YF19pilot posted:Is it cool to post about historicals? I just don't want to get too grognardy about things. 
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Dec 20, 2014 19:09
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In White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade, checks/rolls/tests/whatever to accomplish something require you roll a pool of d10s determined by one or more of your traits; e.g., firing a rifle might be Dexterity + Firearms, applying damage with a knife might be Strength + Melee, and so on, with the degree of success determined by the number of total dice that are 8 or higher (a success). Any dice that roll a 1 subtract a success, any dice that roll 10 are rerolled until they no longer roll 10s. Critical failure was possible, called a "botch," if the result is a failure and the combined dice pool has more 1s than successes. In addition to the static pools every character has (determined by their attributes, abilities, skills, whatever), characters have a Willpower pool they can use to augment their dice pools; vampire characters have a pool of blood they can invest to augment physical attributes; and, some supernatural powers add dice to certain dice pools. The point of this is to point out that it is possible for someone to greatly increase their dice pool for a given attack if they so choose, with the expectation that this will increase their degree of success; however, in oWoD rules you actually increased the chance of a botch by doing so. You can probably see where this is going. So we have an incident where a vampire who has not been properly introduced to the Prince is brought before the Seneschal and the Sheriff of the city (basically the Prince's executive officer and top goon) for managing to piss off one of the clans. Since the vampire has not been properly introduced and recognized, there is no law against killing him so the Seneschal and Sheriff want to make an example out of him for any other random drifters who might want to come to their city and start trouble. The Sheriff's player dumps as many points as he is allowed into an attack and damage roll, intended to kill the guy in one hit. Important to the story is that vampires are normally very resilient to physical damage, so the Sheriffwas using a power from the Protean discipline to bypass most damage reduction: he grew claws, and these supernatural weapons could deal full damage. So the Sheriff's player dumps as much of his blood, his Potence, and his willpower into the rolls as he is allowed, with a comment like "I hope this doesn't bring down the entire building". He botches the attack roll. As in most systems, critical failures are determined by the person overseeing the game, who rules that he breaks his claws off in the wall. The guy hauled in for execution still ended up dying later in the scene, but not before managing to dodge several more attacks, all the while mocking the Sheriff when he'd get stuck for a round having embedded his claws or fist in the floor or wall.
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Dec 21, 2014 02:04
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Cuchulain posted:Nerds Being Evil So, my players managed to survive the trip to the village of Stonebrook. Once there, they do what every group of adventurers do no matter the alignment: They go to the tavern. At this point they still have no idea what they are supposed to be doing, but I did make it clear that the village has a militia and that going for open season murdering in broad daylight might get messy. I intended it to get messy, get the ball rolling on the "bad guys kick rear end all around the globe" theme. Instead, everyone gets some food, shops around town, chats up the locals. Finally Asilack's Necromancer, Illrisar, asks if there is a church nearby. Clearly up to no good! Great. He makes nice with the head priest for the village, introduces himself as a kindly undertaker, and says he lost his cart fording the nearby creek. He asks to purchase a new one, some coffins, and be on his way. He doesn't actually do anything suspicious, so I don't have the priest get aggressive, but he does question his story. Illrisar manages to Bluff past his Sense Motive with ease, having spent most of his Flaw trade in feats and skill points, the little weasel. So the Priests says he'll need till the next morning to get together the goods, and that the total for everything requested would cost him 3 gold. 3 Gold is chump change, even for a low level party. Illrisar thanks him, and heads back to the tavern, where the Pirate is playing for the crowd to make some coin, Virgi's Sorcerer Xenos is playing up his Dark Broody Stranger act to seduce the barkeep, and everyone is generally acting like well adjusted people. I call for a dinner break and tell everyone to plan their next actions carefully, as the contract doesn't allow them to idle for long without consequence. The town had some magical goodies in shops for Too Much Money, a sign that they were supposed to get the drop on the town guard and ransack the place. I ask what they'll be up to tomorrow.  "Don't worry, I have plans for tomorrow, big plans." "And I'm going to help."Finally! I assume they'll be ransacking the church in the night or something. So we all finish getting food and come back to the game. Dawn breaks, a festive night was had by all. Asilack asks me to clarify the "Take 10" and "Take 20" skill check rules. Blah blah, nerd talk, he nods, circles something on his page, we move on. The party of ruffians splits up; the Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger and Rogues head off the the weapon shop. Illrisar and Xenos head to the church, and the Pirate stays at the bar, regaling people with her tales of adventure on the high seas and various stories about why her skin is kinda purple. Focus shifts to Illrisar and Xenos. Xenos says he'd like to go inside and pretend to be a troubled sinner, looking for an inexperienced cleric to talk to. He also specifies that he wears his robe open to show off his abs, and uses prestidigitation to give his skin a "sweaty body glitter" look.  Outside, Illrisar shows up to collect his cart and coffins. The Priest is pleased to make some coin for the church, until Illrisar hands him a "Writ of Wealth signed by the High King of Arlon, worth Three Gold Pieces." He then goes into long and storied detail about how, due to the Kingdom abhorring the base sin of Greed, gold was being phased out as currency. Besides, the stuff's a Dragon Magnet and that's just dangerous for the common folk. At this point I had him roll a Sense Motive with a massive buff because seriously that's ridiculous. Natural 1 against the Forgery. Failed the Bluff too.  So the Priest just nods like an idiot and goes "Yeah, ok, cool. I can totally see where His Majesty is coming from." Illrisar collects his lovely cart and free coffins, and I ask why he felt the need to fleece the guy out of 3 gold. "Oh I didn't just make one, I spent all night popping these things out with Take 10's. We aint payin' for poo poo. I'm taking this town down from the economy up." He has apparently decided to become some kind of fantasy Bernie Madoff. He then proceeds to take his cart around town, buys himself a horse, and get the party all kinds of poo poo they can't afford with these things because every NPC fails to beat the Forgery. The only one who gets close is Intimidated by Ian's Rogue into shutting up.Meanwhile at the church, Xenos proceeds to blow through all of his highest level spell charges for the day casting Detect Thoughts to figure out if anyone in the church thinks he's hot. Finally he finds one, and through a series of rolls I can only excuse through actual sorcery, manages to seduce a priest, get him to admit he's not really into the faith that much, and convince him to go have some fun in the confessional. I make the mistake of asking , again, why he went through all that trouble to hook up with a clergymen, he does jazz hands and says "I'm startin' a cult!" It was at this point I fully realize that this game is not going to be the kind of game I was planning for Ian's Rogue ran recruitment and kept things quiet, the Fighter/Rogues/Barb/Monks did adventurey stuff for cash and loot, and the mages got up to... shenanigans. They spend all their downtime luring peasants into the underground Cult, with branches devoted to Death or Hedonism. Also: They slowly replaced the entire town's economy with useless scraps of paper. During these few weeks, Jose's Ranger tried to quit the party and was smote. They met a Half-Ogre farmhand who they lured to the darkside and became Jose's new character, an extra Barbarian. The Pirate Lady was slowly turning the primarily N-G townsfolk Chaotic with her endless tales of Adventure and Fighting the Man. Xenos was using the farmer's abandoned farm animals as sacrifice for minor demonic summonings, getting his Hedonistic adherents started on the path to Sorcery. Illrisar was burying the corpses in the town's graveyard and acting as an actual undertaker, tricking out his skeletal minion with gear and picking up feats and spells to let him juice it up. Poppy decided that if everyone else was going to do RP stuff she would too. She spent every single skill point she could for the rest of the game on Cooking. She morphed from ninja to Hibachi Steak Chef. Finally, the jig is up. Traders from the village not part of the cult return with no goods, raving about the Writs being worthless. Ian can't shut them up in time, the village Priest finds out, and sends a faithful Cleric to rally the militia and purge the heretic uprising. Ian informs them of this and the beat the Militia Captain to the Church. They kill a cleric or two, subdue the rest with the help of their cultists, and go to confront the first major boss, an 8th level Cleric. The fight was designed to start with him proselytizing about them destroying the town with their lies and corruptions, then have him use the book at his altar to summon in some celestial backup to stall them till the Militia arrived for a nice big brawl. They strut into the hall, a party of 6 at this point, with Jose's Barb carrying the special coffin with Morladim(Illrisar's Pet Skeleton, named after the WoW character) with him. He start's his speech, fire and brimstone, corruption of the youth, blah blah. I'm bored of him. We run this town. Open the box and let Morladim get a crack at him, I'll save my action for Counter-Turning.Jose nods, I start describing him opening the box, the skeleton animating and walking out...  "Nope, gently caress that. I wanna kick the coffin across the room at him. I want it to slam into that little altar so hard Morladim pops out like a goddamn movie vampire at him" "Sweet, he can make Charge Attacks with his Scythe now. That would count as a Charge, right?" "Well I mean... jesus, roll a strength check." "26 enough?" "I'm gonna have Morladim go for a full Power Attack while I'm at it."So just as the Priest is getting to the end of his speech, the Half-Ogre slams the coffin down and kicks it like a goddamn Koopa shell across the floor. It explodes against the podium, out pops Morladim like some kind of demented jack-in-the-box, and Asilack rolls a twenty. And then confirms the hit. So the Priest eats a Full-Power-Attack-Charging-Scythe Critical and just loving splatters into the floor. Nobody else in the party even got to take an action. Morladim slams into the wall and falls prone afterwards. At this point, the Militia leader pops his head in the door and asks what that sound was. "The Priest has lost his mind! He's going to 'Purge the Unclean!', he means to burn down the whole village!"Obviously I roll a Natural 1 on the Sense Motive.  "Seems legit"He runs off to find the priest, Hibachi Steakhouse follows him out, and one Sneak Attack later they're in charge of the first village they were supposed to loot two months earlier. They call the cult to the church and begin preparing for the final conversion of the village. The Three Shadows are pleased, and send each Shadowsworn a gift. Most got a magic item, some learned a new spell, but Illrisar Cuchulain fucked around with this message at 08:32 on May 23, 2018 |
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Dec 21, 2014 07:00
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Fantastic. Pleasantly surprised to see an 'OO-RAH EVIL FUCKS' game turn into such a hilarious rp clusterfuck, at that.
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Dec 21, 2014 07:56
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Shady Amish Terror posted:Fantastic. Great story Cuchulain! More please.
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Dec 21, 2014 08:38
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Cuchulain posted:Why the Skeleton lost his Scythe Amazing, can't wait to read more!
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Dec 21, 2014 10:03
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Nietzschean posted:with a comment like "I hope this doesn't bring down the entire building". So this is a bad experience because the critical failure didn't bring down the entire building. I mean, c'mon.
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Dec 21, 2014 10:26
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These are all recent Flames of War related stuff from the LGS I played at before I moved back in Sept. There were two newbie players, one a high school freshman, the other a twenty-something manchild. I'll call them Alex and Dan for the purposes of this exposition. Now, they're not totally new, they've been playing the game for over a year, and slowly building their own collections. Alex goes back and forth, but has settled on German armor (PIVs and StuGs), and Dan on American armor (usually Shermans and Pershings). Charge of the Light Armored Division So, playing a 2v2 battle before I learned better, Dan has decided to run an all-Chaffee army, his teammate running an infantry list. Alex is my team mate, and we are both running German armor, with a mix of PIIIs and PIVs. Turn 1, Dan double-times his entire army in one big glob towards a single bridge. This bridge is overlooked by one platoon of 2 PIVs + 2 PIIIs and my 2iC, one of my teammate's platoons of five PIVs, and a platoon of PaK40s. We tell him this is a bad idea, but he doesn't buy it. After all, you're suppose to run light armor fast! That way you can get around the flank of the enemy! We explain to him that this only works if you stay in cover, and that if he does this he will have a total of 40 shots coming at his Chaffees from just the tanks (double timing allows the enemy to fire at double their normal rate). He says he'll chance it, after all, we probably won't hit that many times, because Alex usually sucks at rolling dice. Our first turn ends with all 12 Chaffees dead before the PaKs could join in. Let's try that again. So, another battle, 1v1 against Dan. I decide to take it easy because, hey, he's still learning. I'm running German paratroopers, he's running American armor, mostly Shermans and Easy Eights. One one side of the board there is a hill in my deployment area. Across, on Dan's side, there is a tree line and a hill separated by a gap about 10" across. I park my only armor, three Panthers, on the hill, to play area denial and keep him off my flank. He deploys a squad of 5 tanks, plus the 1iC and 2iC behind the tree line. Turn 1, he decides to double time his Shermans across the gap. Where they started from, only one tank can safely make it behind the hill, all the rest are left exposed, in the open, to my Panthers. (Only reason I have Panthers was because I thought the owner might want a go at it and the LGS owner plays a dickish list).  "That's probably not a good idea. My Panthers will get 12 shots on your Shermans, and at close range. They will probably kill your Shermans." "But I've got to get them behind cover. I want them to snipe your Panthers." "Why don't you just move up along the tree line and then make the gap on your next turn? Or just park them in the tree line?" "I need them behind that hill." "Do you remember what happened to your Chaffees when you double timed them? That's what's going to happen to your Shermans." "My Shermans have FA 6, and the Easy Eights have FA 7!" "Panthers have AT14. Trust me, don't double time your tanks, just move them back and run the gap next turn, or just go through the woods so you have cover." "No, I want them over here, besides your Panthers are in the open, too, so next turn I'll get full RoF on them." "Your Shermans won't live that long." "You'll probably miss half of them! I'll leave them there."Yeah, no, I didn't miss that much. The only Sherman that wasn't dead was the one I couldn't see. That's a nice...village. One of my favorite things about FoW, is making the tables. I just feel there's more you can do than in 40k. I always try to make a board that is both balanced, but can "tell a story" as to why the opponents are fighting here. I try to empress this on the new guys to help them learn to make better boards. One day I show up, and Dan has made the board. It's okay, except part of the board is cut off by a rail road, and there is a village in that corner. "Nice board. What's with the village over here?" "That's a concentration camp." "Um, what?" "Yeah, it's a concentration camp! You play your Germans, so you'd be defending from there while my Americans attack!"I pull the poor guy aside and try to explain to him why that's a bad thing to declare something a "concentration camp", never mind the irony that I had chosen that day to bring my Israelis for an AIW/6-days War game. I told him to just call it a village, it looks like a village and it's not offensive to call something a village. 15 minutes later Alex shows up: "Cool board, did you do that, Dan?" "Yeah, and that's a concentration camp, so the Germans can try to defend it!" "Cool!"One more Dan story: You can't lose for trying Otherwise, if anyone wants to hear me recount the last few months of my gaming at that LGS, and learn how to identify a bad gaming situation let me know. Basically, how I became the rules lawyer and discovered how much of a dick the LGS owner really was. Don't worry, I don't go to that store anymore. Or live in the same city. Or county. Or state. Or country.
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Dec 21, 2014 12:54
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I've always preferred stories about bad experiences to good ones so .
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Dec 21, 2014 14:03
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YF19pilot posted:Otherwise, if anyone wants to hear me recount the last few months of my gaming at that LGS, and learn how to identify a bad gaming situation let me know. Basically, how I became the rules lawyer and discovered how much of a dick the LGS owner really was. Don't worry, I don't go to that store anymore. Or live in the same city. Or county. Or state. Or country. I haven't had the LGS wargame experience for a long time, so echoing poster above:
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Dec 21, 2014 14:05
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ibntumart posted:I haven't had the LGS wargame experience for a long time, so echoing poster above: Okay, I'll try my best not to be a meandering yarn about this and keep it simple. It's said the North Vietnamese adopted a three-stage plan based on Mao's "People's War" principles. I'll see if I can stick to those three stages, in three posts. Stage 1: Insurgency This LGS hasn't been all bad for me. I had been going there since 2011, when I first moved into the area, and had been playing on and off until about February of this year when I started becoming a regular player again. There was a decent sized gaming group, but it had been whittled down a bit since I started coming, and especially after V3 dropped. One day I come in and it's just me and the owner. The Red Bear supplement was freshly redone, and I was wanting to play my American engineers from the Battle of the Bulge supplements. We decide 1500 points a side. Now, like I said, I had been on-again-off-again because of work, and did not know at the time that the owner had one list that he would play all the time. It was Soviet Guards IS-85s. Now, let me explain this list, to those unfamiliar with FoW. Soviet tanks in FoW normally have a rule called "Hen and Chicks", which hurts their ability to move and shoot. Guards don't have this rule limitation. IS-85s are big tanks, with heavy armor, that is hard to crack with medium tanks, you need heavy tanks, or guns designed to deal with heavy tanks, which are expensive options, or sometimes not even available for certain armies. They also have extra defenses which make them extra hard to take out with an infantry assault. The artillery is what is often referred to as "God of War"; it has a lot of guns and can lay down very large templates or allow re-rolling of misses. Only the British can come close to matching the numbers that a Soviet player can bring. Finally, the aircraft, the famed IL-2 Tip Shturmovik, which is a can opener against armor, and has a special rule that makes is hard to shoot down. What you get is a brilliant list, that is synergistic, easily scales from 1500 to 2000 or more points, which means it's easy for the store owner to just say "how many points?" and plop down an appropriate number of tanks/guns to suit. It's also a tough list to run against if you're not an experienced player, and an impossible list to beat if you don't plan for it. Which I didn't, because I didn't know what list he was bringing. So this is my first real exposure to this list and what it's capable of. I bring engineers who are loaded to the gills with 57mm AT guns, and one platoon of 3" AT guns. The 57s would make anyone in a medium tank think twice, and the 3" guns are guaranteed tank-killing machines. The 3" guns were the only true threat to those tanks, and they died in the second turn, having only bailed one IS-85. The rest of the game was spent with my infantry unable to do anything except get slowly ground under the guns of the IS-85s and the artillery. It was a horribly one-sided match, which is the only way it could have turned out with the list I brought. It wasn't a game I gave a second thought to. I had more battles with other players, our newbies, "Alex" and "Dan" I mentioned earlier, up until about May. The new Italian books drop, I'm a giddy little fascist again, happy to put my Bersaligari on the table once more. We do a quick campaign, which all told, only four of us participated in. After the campaign ended, the store owner decides that the two newbies, Dan and Alex, can't play on the grown ups table anymore, and relegate them to the back table. This means only one table for us "serious" gamers, and results in forcing everyone to do 2v2 2000 point battles, etc. etc. Our group is growing thinner, too, so not as many 'reliable' players anymore. More and more I get to see the same list come out and play. Except now it has an extra edge - a second player to fill in any gaps or weaknesses that the IS-85 list has (which is few). I'm still running my Italians, but I'm noticing they're not very effective. I try switching between them and HG Panzers and still not getting the upper hand in any of these fights. The combination if IS-85s + other guy make things a slog. Finally, it hits me. In a battle, 2v2 2000 points a person (that's 4000 points a side), I buy the biggest guns I can. Biggest artillery, biggest anti-tank. My artillery is still pretty ineffective against his tanks. My AT platoon gets wiped off with only one kill to their credit. I spend the rest of the game completely useless. I realize, this is how the last month of games have ended. I cannot beat his army with the army I want to play. This is not fun. I express my disappointment to the owner, whose response is that I should take bigger guns or tanks. "I can't. Those were the biggest guns I could take. And it's either take guns or take tanks, I can't do both. My army cannot beat your army." He of course discounts this outright. Of course my army can beat his army! We're both fielding 2000 points of army! Our armies are balanced, so we have an equal chance of winning! (I can hear you groaning and rolling your eyes). It doesn't matter that my army does not have the tools to deal with his army. I go home disheartened, if I'm going to be playing against this list every time, then I can't play any of the "fun" lists I wanted to play. I have to once again shelve my Italians, not because they're outdated, but because they can't deal with IS-85s. Italians are a fun army, and I have to put away my fun.  It's also about this time I start realizing we're having a lot of rules arguments. V3 has been out for three years, and I'm noticing things that we're getting wrong. It's actually thanks to a rules debate here in SA's own historicals thread that got me into reading the rules. Arguments usually go like this at the store: Person A does thing. Person B says the rules say 'abc'. Person A disagrees, says rules are 'xyz'. Owner chimes in, everyone agrees he is correct. He owns the store, so obviously he knows his product better than anyone else. Except I start finding out that a lot of our "rules" are based on rumors about V3 before it was released that aren't true, or hold over misinterpretations of V2 rules. So now we're at the beginning of the end for me as a patron of this LGS, which includes a fair bit of me whining to goons about it, but you can read that in the wargames thread. I'm going to put more detail and specifics into things, as now I don't care if I get found out by the owner or anyone there. To end for tonight, the first awakening: YF19pilot posted:[...] it seems like everyday I find a rule that we've been playing wrong at my LGS. Things that completely change how we've been playing, not small upkeep stuff; stuff that could've changed who won or lost a game. FoW is suppose to be simple, streamlined; but I'm finding we've basically been playing the game completely wrong for the past 3 years. Something as simple as how direct fire smoke is suppose to work generates 15 minutes of arguments, nobody actually looking up the rules, and if someone does, the owner of the store says that's incorrect, not what the rules *actually* say, and what he describes is actually what the rules say, and a vote of democracy from the rest of the table because it's easier to keep doing what we've been doing than to change and nobody wants to be that rear end in a top hat rules lawyer. No wonder why all of our players are newbies who can't seem to grasp the inconsistencies of the game. Anyone who actually knows the rules have been run off or brow beaten. Next time: I become the rear end in a top hat Fallshirmjager Rules Lawyer as we paratroop down the rabbit hole. Thought of the Day: "I'm smarter than an engineer. And I didn't go to school and get into all that debt! The only reason they didn't buy my idea was because the economy tanked, and the government was cutting back on their budget." --LGS Owner.
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Dec 21, 2014 16:26
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YF19pilot posted:Thought of the Day: "I'm smarter than an engineer. And I didn't go to school and get into all that debt! The only reason they didn't buy my idea was because the economy tanked, and the government was cutting back on their budget." --LGS Owner. I assume this is referencing the American government, with its national debt and deficit increasing at breakneck speeds? 
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Dec 21, 2014 17:29
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Nietzschean posted:I assume this is referencing the American government, with its national debt and deficit increasing at breakneck speeds? What you just said is not true. There have been massive cuts in the US budget over the last few years, and the deficit has decreased by hundreds of billions of dollars since 2009.
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Dec 21, 2014 18:57
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Jurgan posted:What you just said is not true. There have been massive cuts in the US budget over the last few years, and the deficit has decreased by hundreds of billions of dollars since 2009. 
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Dec 21, 2014 19:25
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Yeah, I want to hear more about the LGS owner and his true facts about the world. For example, is he aware that Obama gave his would-be job to some overseas worker?
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Dec 22, 2014 00:49
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Oh, no, this was better than that. That quote came from a story he told about being in the UK. You see, it rains all the time in the UK, which makes patching roads difficult as the torches they use for the hot patch don't like water. So he "invented" a torch that would work in the rain and tried to sell it to the UK gov't/MOT. They didn't bite. So he continued his life back in the states as a Radio Shack manager until he had the dough to buy the hobby shop he turned into the LGS. The quote seemed particularly pointed, beyond his smugness about it, because I'm an engineering graduate with a lot of debt and poor job prospects. But, at least as an engineer I can tell you why his invention was stupid, but that's neither here nor there. I'll try to have another part up before I go to work.
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Dec 22, 2014 02:49
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 Looking forward to it!
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Dec 22, 2014 03:32
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Nietzschean posted:
Seconded. 
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Dec 22, 2014 03:39
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I wouldn't mind hearing a brief summary of why his idea is stupid, for that matter, if it's possible. Describing in great detail a person's failure to grasp their own stupidity just seems to be good window dressing for this kind of story.
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Dec 22, 2014 03:57
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Stage 2: The Infantry War Or, how I learned to become a rules lawyer, in three acts. So a quick bit about who the LGS owner is. On the surface, he's a friendly enough guy. After all, he's worked retail management and knows the ins and outs of working a specialty retail shop. I worked specialty retail/wholesale as well, and I understand the kind of person you need to be to keep customers and make sales. But, behind that shiny veneer, there is his true id. He loves to talk behind people's backs about how he doesn't like them. Magic players? Hates all of them and pushes them into the basement. Retired history teacher who loves to spin a yarn? Can't wait more than five minutes after he leaves to complain how he talks too much. Newbies Alex and Dan? Loves to gloat about how he "banished" them to the back table, and if he does have to play them, how he over powers them and crushes them outright. The true irony is, these people are a constant source of income for him. Now, I know, you don't actually have to love your customers. But it sets a bad precedent when you start bad mouthing one customer to another customer, especially when both are regulars. So basically, what happens is, he builds his clique of certain players, and others he just "acts nice" when they're around. At the start of July there are seven FoW players, Alex and Dan the newbies, myself, the LGS owner (we'll call him Mick), John the farmer (who the LGS owner calls "Farmer John" when he's not around), Jay the just graduated high school senior, and Tom who isn't as reliable anymore since he moved to the next town over. Enough of that, let's get going. So, I did some research and asked for advice. I read the rules thoroughly, marking pages where I've noticed rules we've been playing wrong. If you want to see a short litany of what we were doing wrong in assaults, here's a post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3248082&pagenumber=131&perpage=40#post431983128 The end result is a lot of broken rules, and a lot of rules broken in a way that benefits Mick's army or whoever his teammate is that week. The inconsistencies in his owner-judge rules fiat declarations are becoming more obvious to me. Fellow goons helped with advice which I used to build a new army: German Paratroopers (Fallshirmjagers) Which leads to: If you can see me, I can't see you. One of the most important rules for determining line of sight in Flames is, "If you can see me, I can see you." It helps to cut down on BS abstractions that would allow, say, a tank to shoot at an anti-tank gun, but not let the anti-tank gun shoot back with both units having stayed put. Also, line of sight is measured from anywhere on the base that a model could reasonably stand. The way we had been playing (incorrect) was to spot from the model of the gun. Now, to see that gun, all you had to see was part of the base, more than the bevel. You don't actually have to see the model. That, we were playing correctly. As you can see, this introduces a problem, where I can be seen, but can't see. It's another 2 v 2 2000 points a person game. I and John are on one side, Mick and Jay on the other (Alex and Dan having fun on their own table). Mick shows up late, so it's a late start to the game. The game goes brilliantly well for my paratroopers. I bring an undermanned platoon of pioneers to which Mick decides to throw the weight of his IS-85s against, because they're in part guarding the most direct route through a corn field to the objective. The pioneers pay for themselves several times over, killing off 3 IS-85s, and blunting his offensive. He's effectively left using his IS-85s as gun emplacements, as I've destroyed both platoon leaders, and the anti-tank weapons can now do their job. Then, in the last turn, Jay pushes his Shermans into my flank, hoping to make a mad dash for the objective, or to break my army. I see an opportunity, as one of my 8.8s can draw line of sight to his tank. Where I draw from, the model itself cannot see, but if I had modeled the gun with someone standing at the point I'm looking down, he could see the tank. Basically, a not insignificant portion of the base is positioned so I can draw line of sight to the tank. In this position, his Jumbo would be allowed to shoot at the 8.8, as there's enough of the base showing, even if the model itself is hidden. So, as the rule says "If you can see me, I can see you." Now, throughout the game, I'd been correcting things we'd been doing wrong, which usually was met with a quick snap of "show me where in the book it says that!" from the owner. When I set up this shot, things came to a head. Mick: "You can't do that! You have to measure from the gun!" "No, I measure from the base, I can see his tank from this point on my base." Mick: "Show me where in the rule book it says that!" Aha! Lucky me came prepared. I pull out my sticky note covered rule book. Mick: "That's not how we play it! That's not how we've been playing it! You know that's not how we've been doing it!" "We've been doing it wrong." Mick: "But that's the way we've been doing it!" "Okay, look, his tank can see my gun, right?" Mick: "Yes, he can see the base, but you can't see him. You have to measure from the model! That's how we've been doing it!" "This is what the rules say, just because we've been doing it that way doesn't mean it's correct. There's a lot of things we've been doing wrong. If he can see me, I can see him, that's what the rules say." The first time I thought I was going to be kicked out, or at least banished to the back table. It didn't happen, but boy did I ruffle his feathers with that one. I will admit, probably a cheesy hill to climb, but also look at it this way: in that situation, with the way the owner's rules worked, the tank could open fire on my 8.8s, but I couldn't fire at him. My 8.8s are big guns that can't move, so he could park his tank and just keep taking pot-shots until I die, and I'd be unable to respond in kind with that unit. This is the sort of thing the rules try to eliminate with "If you can see me, I can see you." The game was called due to time, and Mick declared it a draw that could've gone either way, but he probably would've won. That's how all these games end, with owner fiat of "Yes it's a draw, but we would've won, even if you had us on our back foot." Basically, Mick never loses. He either wins, or grinds the game to a halt and declares it a draw that he would've eventually won, had the game continued. This table is a field of corn! or Only Phil from Battlefront knows the rules! So, a week later, and I'm having a game with Jay. Actually had two. 1 v 1 1500 points. Ah, the game is fun again, thinks I. Mick is running late, so I don't have to deal with his bullshit, because he's not playing. Ha, ha, was I wrong! In the first game I had mentioned to Jay about how area terrain works, basically, how we've been doing it wrong, and how it is suppose to work. Which is simple; if the terrain is taller than both teams, then you can only see 6" into it (i.e.; two infantry teams in a corn field). If one team is taller than the terrain, they can both see each other, but are concealed (i.e. a tank and an infantry team). A team in the middle of area terrain, which it is taller than, is concealed to all who can see it, and all units it can see are concealed. Concealed just means a +1 modifier to make it harder to hit your target. So, say for example, a Panther is sitting in a corn field. It is not on the edge, it is in the middle. There is a platoon of angry American infantry coming towards the Panther, but they're in the open, not in any terrain. The infantry are still concealed to the Panther, and the Panther is concealed to them. Which is more or less the situation that arose, the rules were giving my opponent an advantage and I informed my opponent of this. The way we had been playing was, if you were in the open, you were not concealed to that Panther sitting in the middle of the corn field. The game ended, between the two games we each won one. As we're packing up, Mick decides we should debate this rule, right now, because the rules aren't as clear as they could be. Mick: "Look, the further away from the corn field you get, the easier you can be seen." Me: "Have you ever been in the middle of a corn field? I mean like in the middle of a section of corn? You can't see poo poo." Mick: "I'm not talking about standing, but like if you're on a tractor." Me: "Okay, I'll check online with the FAQs, and ask the [FoW] forums." Mick: "It has to be Phil from Battlefront otherwise it doesn't count." Me: "What?" Mick: "Phil from Battlefront. If he doesn't say it, it doesn't count, it has to be him." Me: "Okay, what if I can't get him, but someone who runs tournaments?" Mick: "They won't know the rules, it has to be Phil from Battlefront Me: "What if I get someone else from Battlefront?" Mick: "It has to be Phil from Battlefront, he's the only one who knows the rules. Nobody else knows the rules." Oh, what a silly thing to say. At least the argument is over and I can go home, right? Nope! We needed to hash this out right now! Mick: "See the further away you get the easier you can see. Pretend this table is a field of corn, and I'm standing in the middle of it, now you go over there and sit on the floor and I'll show you what I mean!" Me: "No, I'll just go online and ask about the rules." Mick: "Okay, fine, I'll do it, you stand right here and watch me." So, he sits in the middle of the store, and scoots around trying to show what it's like being "in the middle of a corn field" and being able to see his dumb rear end sitting on the floor. He doesn't understand or flat out dismisses anything I say about what it's like to actually be in the middle of a corn field trying to look out. Because, what the gently caress do I know I guess, I mean, I'm and engineer who once lived in the middle of a corn field in NoDak, not like I could actually know what I'm talking about. He does this about four or five times, despite me trying to end the argument, and quickly trying to pack things up and get out of the door. He finally declares a house rule! See, cover will only be granted if you within a distance to the corn field as the tank is in the cornfield, or something equally convoluted. I know what he wants, he wants to be able to have his tanks concealed, but shoot at targets in the open, so he's "compromising" with this childish bull crap. Then John, the farmer, walks in. Mick: "Okay, let's settle this. John, when you're in the middle of a corn field what can you see?" John: "Corn?" Mick: "No, i mean, like if you look into the other field you could see another guy, right?" John: "I mean, I could see another tractor, maybe." Mick: "But, what about a person?" John: "Probably not." Mick: "Well, here, let me show you." Proceeds to do his little table sit scoot thing again. "I'm right, right? You could see me over there." John: "Well, I mean, I can see you here, yeah. But that's not what corn is like." Mick does his thing again, trying to win over and convince John that he's right. So I say, "But if you're in the middle of a section, could you see some guy standing in the middle of a plowed field in the next section over." John: "No, the corn's too tall. I could see another tractor, maybe a truck, but I probably couldn't see someone unless I was near the edge." So, does the "expert" opinion sway Mick? No, he doubles down. "Well, I think this is a good house rule, this is how we are going to play it." Me: "You can play it that way, I'm not. I'm going to play by the rule book. Mick: "This is a house rule. This is how we will play it. People make house rules all the time! This is our house rule!" Me: "I'm here to play Flames of War, not Flames of Mick. I'll just look it up online and get back to you later." Mick: "Okay, but it has to be Phil from Battlefront, nobody else." I finally have all my stuff together and I leave. You want to talk about someone trying to make a confrontation for the sake of confrontation? It took me less than five minutes when I got home to look up the FAQ and see the clarification that he was missing. Oh, and I forgot the owner's classic line from this argument: "If you're going to bring up something we've been doing wrong, you have to bring everything up at the beginning of the game, before we start, so that he could hear it, and not, you know, when the rule actually comes up. (Except that I had actually told my opponent about this rule before the game, and the owner showed up late so he didn't hear me and Jay discussing this) So basically, I guess from then on I'm suppose to recite the entire rule book every time we play a game. This one went long and I need to get food before I go to work. Next one, the final battle! And we get to explore the store owner's reasoning for fielding the same army of IS-85s every game. Thought of the day: "You only brought a 1500 point army? We're playing 2000 points. You're suppose to come prepared for anything! Or you could rent a locker!"
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Dec 22, 2014 06:29
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Who is Phil and why is his opinion sacrosanct?
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Dec 22, 2014 06:45
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YF19pilot posted:I cannot beat his army with the army I want to play. This is not fun. I want to sympathize qith you here, because the other things you've told us about the owner make him sound like a real tool, I have to say that this is clearly the fault of the game and that you come across as kinda whiny. If two armies of equal points are not and cannot be balanced, that is the fault of the game. They loving should be. Yes, some of it is up to the player, but if there is literally no way for an Italian army to beat a Russian one, the game designers hosed up. I don't care about historical accuracy, it is a game first and there should not be a clearly "better" army to play. Also, the game wasn't fun for you because your favorite army is poo poo, sure I get that, but how is that they other guy's problem? Should he be forced to play an army that he doesn't want to so that you can play an army you do want to? He should be forced to suck so that you can also suck and that would be fair? Part of the game is picking and planning a good army. He did that. His army might be overpowered and cheap, but as long as he wasn't cheating* and wasn't curb stomping noobies for shits and giggles, he was playing the game right, and he was playing the game better than you. *You mention later that he gets rules wrong a lot, but it came across as him being a dumbass more than someone who is actively cheating. So I assume stupidity over malicious until told otherwise.
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Dec 22, 2014 06:45
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Shady Amish Terror posted:I wouldn't mind hearing a brief summary of why his idea is stupid, for that matter, if it's possible. Describing in great detail a person's failure to grasp their own stupidity just seems to be good window dressing for this kind of story. The exact details are a little fuzzy, but let see what I can remember. When you repair road asphalt, you have "hot patch" and "cold patch". Hot patch is the more permanent of the two, but requires heat and doesn't do well in snow. Cold patch is what most Northern states use during the winter, hot patch during the summer. Now apparently he gets this idea that the torches the MOT/British road works use are all but useless in the rain. They take a long time to heat up, and the rain makes the hot patch take longer to set. So his idea is to jury rig some cheap materials to create a torch that burns hotter, quicker, than the torches the MOT were using. He didn't get into great detail but the reason this wouldn't sell is easy to see: 1) It's not that the hot patch torches don't work in the rain, rain is just not an optimal condition for hot patching. 2) You don't want to overheat hot patch/asphalt. The temps he was talking about were road melting temperatures. 3) Cheap materials to make something very hot. 4) His idea was to sell this as a supplemental tool, or even a replacement for the entire fleet of torches. And sell for a price higher than what the original torches cost. Using a fuel that is more expensive than what the current torches use. 5) The pitch was basically "Hello! I'm an American! Gee whiz, boy does it rain a lot here in England! Say, I've got something I want to sell you!"
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Dec 22, 2014 06:55
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tbf, this guy sounds stupid and malicious
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Dec 22, 2014 06:56
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TheSmilingJackal posted:I want to sympathize qith you here, because the other things you've told us about the owner make him sound like a real tool, I have to say that this is clearly the fault of the game and that you come across as kinda whiny. No, I understand, I'm trying not to be too whiny, but I suppose it happens. On the face two equal points should work, but don't always. FoW players call it "theater creep", but it's an effect where in being historically accurate, one army in one theater might not be able to deal with armies from another theater. It is a fact of life with Flames of War. Also, I agree that his army is a very good one. I even said as much. It's a good list, it's tough to crack. My only real issue is how he'll continue to use that list against inexperienced players. It did give me a challenge and motivated me to find a better army, and figure out how to beat his. And I will agree that the rules were more ignorance than malice. What became malicious was his brow beating, refusal to change, stubbornness, trying to be contradictory and create a conflict for the sake of one. Nietzschean posted:Who is Phil and why is his opinion sacrosanct? Phil at Battlefront is the forums handle for one of Battlefront's reps who handles rules questions and writes the FAQ. He's held in high regard because he's pretty active, but there are some rules questions where he's either not been straight forward with an answer, not answered at all, or contradicted himself/the rule book.
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Dec 22, 2014 07:11
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TheSmilingJackal posted:I want to sympathize qith you here, because the other things you've told us about the owner make him sound like a real tool, I have to say that this is clearly the fault of the game and that you come across as kinda whiny. Building a shitstomping army or Magic deck or whatever and rolling all over everybody may be, on a certain fundamental level, the fault of the game designer for allowing you to put together such a thing but past a certain point if that's the only army or deck you ever play with then you, the player, bear some responsibility for deciding "I'm going to keep doing this thing that guarantees my victory as hard as possible, gently caress what anybody else thinks or how little fun they have playing against me." Blaming the game designers for designing a bad game then turning around and blaming someone for not having fun playing against unbalanced armies by going "so what's the other guy supposed to do, suck more so he can be on your level?" is disingenuous as hell. If the game is unbalanced and badly designed then yeah, maybe Captain Winsalot should own up and acknowledge that he's winning by exploiting that and not because he's the True Alpha Nerd. tl;dr if everyone's playing casually and not at a tournament, if someone wants to play Magic and busts out a fun, fluffy theme deck and I pull out some tournament-caliber infinite loop bullshit and repeatedly stomp him into the ground then yes, I'm the rear end in a top hat even if I'm not cheating. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 08:39
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TheSmilingJackal posted:*You mention later that he gets rules wrong a lot, but it came across as him being a dumbass more than someone who is actively cheating. So I assume stupidity over malicious until told otherwise. Getting the rules wrong isn't cheating, no. Everyone gets rules wrong or fucks something up from time to time. I recently played half a Sails Of Glory game where I was accidentally using a frigate maneuver deck for my 2-decker (ie, my heavy ship was moving and turning like a light ship) because it got packed into the wrong box last time I played and I just took it out without checking. I offered to restart the game, my opponent said to just switch decks and not to worry, and all was well. I won, but only barely. She beat me the next two games. The scenario YF19pilot is describing would be like me, in that situation, arguing that I was using the right deck all along and being shown I was wrong, then trying to argue that we always do it like that here (and possibly then demanding that the correct deck be verified by a specific Ares Games employee, before declaring that in future all my heavy ships will move like light ships because I'm making a houserule). Like, mistakes happen and it's no problem, but when you can't admit you're wrong you're a bit of a dick. When you're presented with the rulebook but you still double and triple down on "my way is the right way" you're a goddamn loving rear end in a top hat.
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Dec 22, 2014 09:26
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This brings up the topic of house rules in general. Lots of gaming groups have house rules that a blatantly against the RAW for all sorts of things. The ever popular "rule of cool," mentioned in this forum, and various minor and major changes to RPG systems especially have most of us "cheating" a great deal of the time. Anyone have any stories about great or terrible house rules?
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Dec 22, 2014 09:41
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Nietzschean posted:This brings up the topic of house rules in general. Lots of gaming groups have house rules that a blatantly against the RAW for all sorts of things. The ever popular "rule of cool," mentioned in this forum, and various minor and major changes to RPG systems especially have most of us "cheating" a great deal of the time. Anyone have any stories about great or terrible house rules? I don't have a problem with houserules in most games and I definitely don't have a problem with them in RPGs. I have a major problem with finding out about a "houserule" at the point where it fucks me and a minor problem with not hearing about houserules before a game begins. If you tell me "come play D&D" and then hand me a small novel worth of houserules, I'm gonna lose interest though. Back in the '90s, I played M:TG with some guys who had the houserule "once per turn, when you could play a basic land card, you can play all the basic land in your hand". It was silly and fun and let you get lots of huge monsters and spells out (I haven't played magic since ~1999 and this would have been a few years before that, so don't ask me for details). I wouldn't want to try to play "seriously" under those rules, but it was a fun game to play while drinking and chatting. Does the hivemind-esque way that everyone just knows how to play Monopoly (wrong) count? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 10:10
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