Aniodia posted:

Bro, seriously, name and shame. There's points where the Geek Social Fallacies come into play, and then there's this poo poo. Call the bastard out for being an insufferable prick, so that way others don't have to go through the same deal.

Savidudeosoo posted:

I don't know anything about WH Fantasy but I loving love that frog king thing.

rumble in the bunghole posted:

That's a Slaad. They're basically filling the place of a bunch of ancient god-kings of the lizardmen that hosed off, and they're following the plans set for them to the letter, which has often disastrous consequences, like when they reversed continental drift because it messed with their old maps. They're also really loving powerful wizards, to the point of the most powerful of them dying and still hanging around in his mummified body through sheer will. Lizardmen are cool as hell in general. Put Lizardmen in your games 2017

gentle pete posted:

I Think My GM Wants to Eat Me

Alright, I know the title might turn you off, but I'm really worried and I was hoping I could get some advice. We've been meeting for Star Wars biweekly for about a few months so far and everything's been going really well! We blew up a Star Destroyer, did some reconnaissance on Hoth before the big battle and hunted down and revealed an imperial spy on the base on Yavin. That kind of stuff. Really good character stuff going on in between. The GM's a real good friend of mine and I've known him for a long time. But things got really weird after our last game. I had a thing going on before the game and I showed up a little late. Like 20 minutes or so by my reckoning. Everyone filled me in on what had gone on and we kept playing like usual. But then, in the game we got an urgent message to meet with a Hutt boss who wanted to make a deal with the rebellion. It was kind of out of left field but we figured we were probably going to get something good out of pursuing this quest line so we went.

Obviously, it was a trap and the Hutt betrayed us and was trying to sell us out to the ISB. After a short battle we all got captured and the other player characters were stuck in a floating repulsor harness. Then the Hutt character proceeded to eat my character. Like I didn't get to roll for anything or nothing. That would've been weird enough if he didn't spend like 3 whole minutes of uninterrupted description about how the Hutt's digestive system was squeezing down against me. The GM also had an orange in his hand that he was squeezing as he talked about it. There was a small cut into the orange which caused the juices to wrap around his hand while he very specifically described the Hutt gumming through my character.

It got to a point where I had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom. I went and just sort of sat there for a while wondering what the hell was going on. After the game, the GM had somewhere he needed to go, which was fine because it would've been really uncomfortable for me to broach the subject with him.

After that, I really didn't feel like going back to the game. I was really uncomfortable, I didn't have a good time, and I just didn't wanna deal with any more weirdness, so I made up some excuse and quit the game. That would have been okay, and I could have just chalked it up to an incompatibility in playing style, but I see him regularly and things have changed between us. I see him around campus at the school I go to and I wave at him to be friendly and all that, but he just gives me this stare. At first, I wasn't sure what he was trying to convey, but I thought about the game, and I realized it was exactly like the look of hunger that he described the Hutt having before he jammed my character into his mouth. I eventually began to wave at him less and less, but he kept giving me that stare. Recently, he's begun carrying a bag of potato chips around with him, and as soon as he sees me, he just pulls one out, looks at me, then the potato chip, and just slowly slips it into his mouth, not even chewing. He just crushes the chip with his gums, getting it all over his face. It's disgusting. I don't even talk to him anymore, but I sometimes get texts from him about coming back to play, with scheduled times and everything. The weird thing is though, I asked my other friends who were in the game if they were still playing, and they said that the campaign ended a while ago.

Kwyndig posted:

I would have walked at per hour. Anybody who charges for play space in a game store on an hourly basis is either overcrowded or an rear end in a top hat.

Joe Slowboat posted:

Are you by chance playing an XCOM 2 themed campaign? Because that's eerily familiar.

Bubblyblubber posted:

The weird thing is though, I asked my other friends who were in the game if they were still playing, and they said that the campaign ended a while ago.

Samizdata posted:

My ex-FLGS had a giant table right up front for RPG action, and a huge room with big folding tables in the back for minis. He figured the noise and hubbub from a good game was PR enough to offset any lost revenue from table rental. He also had really cheap soda and snack machines.

We were so loyal we bought ALL our gear there. Thanks to him, I also had a chance to play a beta game of Dangerous Journeys with Gygax.

Kumo posted:

That is amazing work. Tell your wife it is very well done.

JUST MAKING CHILI posted:

Comic book guy isnt worthy of your wife's artwork. That's awesome.

the_steve posted:

Seriously, mad respect to your wife's skills.

Coward posted:

Also, those are wonderful pieces to brighten up even the dingiest gaming store.

Savidudeosoo posted:

There's a lot of pictures of the games room on their facebook and yeah, the murals are what's making it look like a super cool place to be.

Kurieg posted:

The art on the magic cards is awesome but the font messes with my head every time I look at them.

Kwyndig posted:

Well yeah, a good store doesn't charge for play space. It's just an exceptionally bad one that charges by the hour or per person. Places that charge at all that are reputable should have a flat fee per table and maybe access to play aides like terrain and adventures.

That's assuming you're just borrowing the space and play aides, if you're getting a GM out of it that's different and something the hobby has not been able to determine a fair pricing for as of yet.

Bubblyblubber posted:

I Think My GM Wants To Eat Me

gradenko_2000 posted:

No, it's a D&D campaign - Yawgmoth just pulls a lot of particularly dire poo poo to keep us on our toes.

For example, the party is currently stuck on the plane of Xoriat after we failed to stop Lovecraftian cultists from opening a rift into it. We're trying to get out of there, but the problem is that there is a large time-dilation effect on Xoriat compared to Eberron: every minute we spend here is days from back where we came from - a few years have probably passed already, and now we still have one other McGuffin to retrieve but our Psion is flat out of Power Points, meaning he can't really contribute anything anymore if we get into another fight.

But if we take a rest for him to recover the points ... that could be decades passing on Eberron, during which time these cultists and these rifts may well have been further destroying our home with us away from it.

Hard choices ahead.

Railing Kill posted:

Yeah. My wife found it hard to approximate the font while painting it by hand. I suppose she could have found the MtG font, printed it on a large sheet, and stenciled it onto the wall. But each of the cards on the wall is 4 x 6 feet, so that would have been tricky.

JUST MAKING CHILI posted:

Either way I need to take a nap and see what kind of new nightmare horrors I have.

Kwyndig posted:

Well yeah, a good store doesn't charge for play space. It's just an exceptionally bad one that charges by the hour or per person. Places that charge at all that are reputable should have a flat fee per table and maybe access to play aides like terrain and adventures.

That's assuming you're just borrowing the space and play aides, if you're getting a GM out of it that's different and something the hobby has not been able to determine a fair pricing for as of yet.

Kwyndig posted:

Well yeah, a good store doesn't charge for play space. It's just an exceptionally bad one that charges by the hour or per person. Places that charge at all that are reputable should have a flat fee per table and maybe access to play aides like terrain and adventures.

That's assuming you're just borrowing the space and play aides, if you're getting a GM out of it that's different and something the hobby has not been able to determine a fair pricing for as of yet.

Railing Kill posted:

WH40K (in progress)

Railing Kill posted:

Mister Bates posted:

Yeah, I was...not actually expecting them to do that. They're hitting weak, outlying Imperial facilities in attempts to steal weapons and gear for their desperately under-equipped cell. Since they're trying to preserve equipment (you can't steal poo poo you've vaporized), I thought they'd plan an ambush or assault it or something. But they've insisted on stealing every single unattended ground vehicle they come across, so they're amassing quite the motor pool at this point (mostly random civilian cars), and they had stolen a bunch of explosives during a raid on a supply depot in a previous session, and eventually one of them was like 'why don't we just combine these two things?'

So, with some pretty good rolls on their part, what would have been a fairly challenging combat encounter instead ended up with them sending an unoccupied speeder-truck full of plastic explosives hurtling at breakneck speed into a guard post, obliterating it.

I did go ahead and rule that the explosion destroyed most of the weapons they were trying to steal, but I threw them a bone and let them scavenge a few blaster rifles out of the wreckage before backup arrived and they had to skedaddle.

Railing Kill posted:

Agreed. The game store my buddy owns (Crossroad Games in Standish, Maine, now that I've already named Spellbound and Game Citadel) has always had a policy of free table space. He actively encouraged people to sit down and play, even if they hadn't bought anything. He didn't ever harass anyone to buy poo poo, didn't charge table fees, and didn't have a policy of playing only games that he sold. When I was in high school, I would spend whole afternoons there, playing things like Munchkin (back when it first came out ). I probably sold at least a dozen copies of that game alone for him, just by playing it with folks in the store. Good game stores know that a healthy game store is an active one. The people in the store will buy poo poo, now or later. A lot of gamers might get to try a game for free at a store and buy ti online, but just as many will be willing to pay the extra few bucks for the sake of loyalty (or to get it sooner).

Sometimes the free table policy would burn him, but things always worked out in the store's favor. For example, there were a group of RPG players that the Crossroads folks lovingly called "The Orphans." They were four elementary and middle school-aged kids who's parents dropped them off at the store and basically used it like a daycare. They would cloister themselves into the RPG room and play GURPS and BESM for hours on end. They never bought anything besides candy and soda. They took up that table for the entire day. That's kind of obnoxious, but they would move if need be. They usually understood that they spent a great deal of time at the store, and that other people's use of the room took precedent, not because of their age or how little money they spent, but just because of the time they had already spent there. This is one of the worst-case examples I can think of from that store, but those kids did buy poo poo, and the situations was easily manageable with a small amount of diplomacy. (The owner was more mad at The Orphans' parents for using his store as a daycare, but he never took it out on the kids.)

Skellybones posted:

I really like the space marine standing there in slack-jawed horror.

HardDiskD posted:

This guy is a huge dick and your wife's art is pretty amazing, especially the Magic cards. Have you posted this story on SA before, though? It feels very familiar to me.

LongDarkNight posted:

+1 on you're wife's art work being great. I've exchanged emails a few times with your buddies shop (don't know if I spoke with him or staff) and they were very pleasant and helpful. Hopefully I'll get to visit it some day.

Mister Bates posted:

Yeah, I was...not actually expecting them to do that. They're hitting weak, outlying Imperial facilities in attempts to steal weapons and gear for their desperately under-equipped cell. Since they're trying to preserve equipment (you can't steal poo poo you've vaporized), I thought they'd plan an ambush or assault it or something. But they've insisted on stealing every single unattended ground vehicle they come across, so they're amassing quite the motor pool at this point (mostly random civilian cars), and they had stolen a bunch of explosives during a raid on a supply depot in a previous session, and eventually one of them was like 'why don't we just combine these two things?'

So, with some pretty good rolls on their part, what would have been a fairly challenging combat encounter instead ended up with them sending an unoccupied speeder-truck full of plastic explosives hurtling at breakneck speed into a guard post, obliterating it.

I did go ahead and rule that the explosion destroyed most of the weapons they were trying to steal, but I threw them a bone and let them scavenge a few blaster rifles out of the wreckage before backup arrived and they had to skedaddle.

Voyager I posted:

It's basically some Hurt Locker poo poo, except you aren't playing the Americans.

Kwyndig posted:

Yeah but we don't have a Moon-sized planet destroying laser.

Voyager I posted:

At least Insurgency technology in Star Wars has advanced to the point where carbombing a checkpoint doesn't involve one of the PCs rolling up a new character.

Razorwired posted:

Yeah when running a Rebel Cell campaign it's helpful to remember that people like Native American activists and the Taliban love Star Wars for largely the same reasons.


They think the Empire is the US government.

Kwyndig posted:

Also our helmets don't conceal people's faces.