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Grandmother of Five posted:Not a gaming-store story, but it is close enough to be on topic imo, and a lovely enough experience to make up for that. what the flying gently caress Somfin has a new favorite as of 11:08 on Sep 1, 2017 |
# ? Sep 1, 2017 10:12 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:30 |
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Yeah seriously I'm pretty sure convincing a 12 year old to explain to a table of adults how she/he would give one of their "characters" a blowjob would be legally punishable by something
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 11:12 |
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I bought some Magic cards today and spoke to the cashier about the MayMac fight for a while then he had to answer the phone and I mouthed goodbye and left. The time before that I'd mentioned I'd recently decided to try Magic and awkwardly explained why and I thought I babbled a bit much. Tough oul life tbh.Grandmother of Five posted:Not a gaming-store story, but it is close enough to be on topic imo, and a lovely enough experience to make up for that. Having fun isn't hard when you have liahaarhghhhhhhhhhhhhhh what the actual gently caress.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 11:28 |
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Back in 7th-9th grade (13-15 years old) I did some work experience stuff in bookstores. Unfotunately it was long enough ago that I don't remember many specifics. First was when I was 14 in a New Age bookstore which probably had a load of weird customers. They sold typical NA stuff like colored rocks, spiritual music, fortune-telling books, mythical creature encyclopedias and other bullshit. I remember that they lent or rented a part of the storage space in the back to a tarot reader one day, which I barely knew what it was at the time. Some other time someone the owner knew was visiting and wanted to show her new website (the internet was still pretty new and exciting at the time) and she couldn't work a trackball, dragging the entire thing across the desk in frustration. The store was ran by two guys - one of them the owner. He was fairly normal if a bit odd. But the other guy was the kind of guy where if I met him today I would assume he was a sexual offender, most likely a pedophile. Long, unkempt moustache, patchy beard, a thin gold chain around his neck and a shirt unbuttoned two buttons too low. I don't recall any traumatizing experiences though so who knows. A few years later I went back there to ask for a part-time job and the owner said he couldn't pay me but wondered if I was interested in working with him on a "project" to develop a website for the store. I politely declined. Apparently the store is still around though. The other time was when I was 15 and was at the city's only real anime/fantasy/nerd paraphernalia store. It was honestly less weird, the only odd thing I recall was one of the guys working there needing 20 minutes of "alone time" (not to jerk off though, he was just sitting in the back room storage) to write a postcard to his penpal and was absolutely not to be dsturbed. Also the owner didn't like it when I played Daft Punk over the PA. Later, in high school, I was the weird kid. My friend and I were pretty bored after school so we went to check out one of the Game shops in the city (called GAME, I think it is or was a UK chain) and just kinda loiter about there. We got to chatting with one of the clerks and he was pretty nice so we went back the next day, and the next etc. So we'd spend a few hours a few days a week just hanging out next to the till chatting to the clerks about videogames and oher stuff. I think we were fairly inoffensive and didn't creep on customers or anything but who knows what the guys working there thought. The guy we talked to the most held onto a copy of World of Warcraft for me when they sold out in hours though, so that was nice. Tangetially related, I've seen a real weird guy hanging out at one of my favorite pizzerias. I know the owner slightly since we used to live right next door so I usually talk with him a bit whenever I'm there and this guy is just standing around near the counter, looking at stuff. I have no idea what he's doing there, I've never him eat anything or do anything other than reading a paper or watching the TV/pizzas.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 12:17 |
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Foxhound posted:Later, in high school, I was the weird kid. My friend and I were pretty bored after school so we went to check out one of the Game shops in the city (called GAME, I think it is or was a UK chain) and just kinda loiter about there. We got to chatting with one of the clerks and he was pretty nice so we went back the next day, and the next etc. So we'd spend a few hours a few days a week just hanging out next to the till chatting to the clerks about videogames and oher stuff. I think we were fairly inoffensive and didn't creep on customers or anything but who knows what the guys working there thought. The guy we talked to the most held onto a copy of World of Warcraft for me when they sold out in hours though, so that was nice. I always like stories of positive experiences in game shops. It took me years to realize why people hated GameStop so much, because the one that I frequented was full of incredibly friendly, helpful and informed people, even if sometimes the ultimate motive was to get their numbers up or something. One guy, when I asked whether they had used copies of the then relatively new Burnout Revenge, convinced me to instead buy Burnout 3, a functionally identical but significantly cheaper and arguably better game. Burnout 3 is my favorite racing game of all time, so that worked out well. That same guy also held a used copy of Custom Robo for me after I had asked a few times whether they had any in stock, and he figured I'd be in since my friends and I basically were every week. That guy was basically my hero. There was also the older guy who actually got into a decent, non-confrontational conversation with me about the Legend of Zelda series, and he didn't even make fun of me for my favorite one. He was also a guy who, when I brought in my original DS for trade, which I had forgotten that I had put an aftermarket case on, just went "Oh, is this an imported model?" with basically a wink and a nod, and gave me regular price for the trade in. Then, after a few years, those guys and another woman who worked there left, and the people that replaced them were basically all about company metrics rather than engaging with customers about stuff, so I then understood why people don't like shopping at GameStop.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 15:26 |
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You must have gotten the rare Funcoland/Babbages/Software Etc. store that held out the longest before Gamestop completely took over, then somehow retained most of its staff/management until the mid-00s.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 15:54 |
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Sometimes the bad experience is had on the employee end. I just had to break up with a customer because he was so goddamned lonely and needy. Three weeks ago he hung around the store for three goddamned hours and every time I tried to help someone else he'd interject and get in the way. But he crossed the line recently. We have an employee call sheet for emergencies and it was still on the counter when he was there and he loving swiped it and started calling my cell number. And when he came back in he played the victim and tried to tell the boss that I gave him my phone number. It got to be too much and I just flat out told him to go check out the other shop in town because he was hampering my ability to do my job. Is that still a mentality, that a comic/game shop is a place to go hang out at for hours on end?
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 16:24 |
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Well over a decade ago I was at a Suncoast Video getting something and I heard some weeb say out loud that Fuu from Samurai Champloo was his dream woman
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 18:34 |
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Of course a vulnerable teenager is his dream woman.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 18:39 |
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Rhyno posted:Is that still a mentality, that a comic/game shop is a place to go hang out at for hours on end? Given that nerds still have trouble with the idea of boundaries, yes.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 19:03 |
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Rhyno posted:Sometimes the bad experience is had on the employee end. I just had to break up with a customer because he was so goddamned lonely and needy. Three weeks ago he hung around the store for three goddamned hours and every time I tried to help someone else he'd interject and get in the way. But he crossed the line recently. We have an employee call sheet for emergencies and it was still on the counter when he was there and he loving swiped it and started calling my cell number. And when he came back in he played the victim and tried to tell the boss that I gave him my phone number. It got to be too much and I just flat out told him to go check out the other shop in town because he was hampering my ability to do my job. The store I go to, and many others, encourage it, because people hanging out spend money. The shop is huge though, it can easily fit 150+ people in there and it's the go-to hangout for roleplaying, wargaming, card gaming, etc. Being right between two big colleges helps that. I'd imagine that situation gets a little uncomfortable when it's a small shop and there's just some guy hanging out in there alone all the time because he has Issues.
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# ? Sep 1, 2017 19:49 |
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I had lots of good times at my local nerd store back in high school, spending all my money on Star Wars books and comics, and later manga and board games. The staff were all cool people and I never saw any really bad customers. Except one time. The store had a few weekly events going on in a room above the store, one of which was a board game night, which me and my friends usually showed up for (they'd let us stay for hours after the store closed, on one occasion we were there until morning playing Diplomacy). There was one guy who was pretty autistic and loved talking about his diagnosis and therapy sessions, making himself out to be some dangerous psycho, he was kind of annoying but we'd still play with him. One night we were playing Munchkin and it got a bit tense, this guy was really concerned with winning but we basically united to prevent that and I ended up winning. He snapped, punched the girl sitting next to him in the arm, started angrily shouting and then stormed out. He was banned from game nights and I haven't seen him since. I also worked in a normal book store at the time, when manga was just starting to come to Norway. We carried translated Dragon Ball, One Piece, Love Hina, that kind of stuff, all in the kids section because that's where comics belong. Fair enough, kids probably won't be brain damaged by seeing a boob or Dragon Ball violence. However, one day I found that we had for some reason imported another manga series, which was also placed in the kids section. That manga was Dance in the Vampire Bund, which you don't want to google if you're at work. I convinced the manager to at least move those to the YA section. To this day I have no idea why someone decided that series was worth importing when we didn't have any other imported manga.
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# ? Sep 2, 2017 20:21 |
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Dance in the Vampire Bund was probably my first experience with bumbling into a nerd thing I was absolutely not okay with. I was a 13-year-old weeaboo, and I'd sort of vaguely heard the name and saw the first volume at Barnes & Noble, and went "oh, vampires? sweet, it might be like Hellsing, a cool and fun series." I opened to a random page and saw kiddie porn. I then kind of just closed it and put the book back with a expression on my face and, from that point on, side-eyed the gently caress out of anyone who says it's good. e: it wasn't even loving shrinkwrapped. Berserk was shrinkwrapped, but not actual child porn.
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# ? Sep 2, 2017 21:24 |
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Oh yeah we had that at Borders too. I never looked in it, but I remember the covers being creepy. Jesus I didn't know.
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# ? Sep 2, 2017 21:38 |
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I only know that title because of decidedly non-creepy manga (at least from what I recall) Young Miss Holmes where the vampire character shows up in a crossover, probably Hound of the Baskervilles. The character design made me a tad uncomfortable and now my suspicions are confirmed. Ugh!
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# ? Sep 2, 2017 23:03 |
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tyblazitar posted:I also worked in a normal book store at the time, when manga was just starting to come to Norway. We carried translated Dragon Ball, One Piece, Love Hina, that kind of stuff, all in the kids section because that's where comics belong. Fair enough, kids probably won't be brain damaged by seeing a boob or Dragon Ball violence. However, one day I found that we had for some reason imported another manga series, which was also placed in the kids section. That manga was Dance in the Vampire Bund, which you don't want to google if you're at work. I convinced the manager to at least move those to the YA section. To this day I have no idea why someone decided that series was worth importing when we didn't have any other imported manga. He probably thought "Oh, there's a little girl on the cover... it must be for kids".
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# ? Sep 3, 2017 01:04 |
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Say Nothing posted:He probably thought "Oh, there's a little girl on the cover... it must be for kids". despite the little girl wearing almost no clothes (I was not a smart tween and did not pick up on this as a giant red flag)
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# ? Sep 3, 2017 01:45 |
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About 8 years ago, my friends at the time and I were avid Yu-Gi-Oh players. The store we would play at consisted of half normal people and half complete spergs. There's little originally to Yu-Gi-Oh and whenever a new set would come out, EVERYONE would build a deck around whatever the new "win combo" was. Except me. I liked to make cheesy burn decks. During the first round of a tournament, I faced one of the most disgusting humans I've ever witnessed. Fat, greasy hair, gnarly unbrushed teeth (he breathed really heavy, and it smelled like he was nibbling on turds earlier). Pretty much everything one would imagine when they think of a stereotypical basement dweller. The guy looked to be about late 20's and judging by the deck he had, he had easily spent $400+ on the 40 cards. Out of the three rounds however, I had beaten him twice with my cheesy burn deck. Instead of freaking out, he just had a look of total disbelief like "How did this happen..." It wasn't until I got up to go to my friends that I heard him swearing under his breath (there were kids near him too) saying how much he hated me. He glared at me like Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining when he starts to freak out. I just smiled and laughed and continued the tournament. Fast forward about a month. He ended up getting banned from the store for stealing someone's binder full of expensive cards. The rumor was that he went to jail. I hope the rumor was true.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 04:01 |
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When I was 12 I got really big into Yu Gi Oh and tournament play. This was around the time the game had first hit the US but my game shop of choice was called The Wizards Tower. It was run by a super cool older lady but was sketchy as poo poo. Anyways one time I buy a booster and I get the Head of Exodia which at the time was like the rarest card. No sooner than sixty seconds later did I have a dozen gross dudes in their late 20s offer 12 year old me whatever I wanted, including buying me alcohol, for a loving card. I also tried out Heroclix around the same time and had 30 year olds belittle me over not knowing every rule, and saw two guys get in a fist fight over someone lying in D&D. The Wizards Tower went out of business but the sign is still there and it's now a police mobile base of operations for the downtown area of my city.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 04:54 |
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The last time I played magic during my teenage years I was playing mono green stompy. The deck was worth maybe $100 at the time. Aside from 4 gases cradles worth probably $20 at the time it was all c/uc cards but fast as hell. I went 9-1 against 3 guys in their 20s. playing blue control decks that were worth several hundred each (lol that won't even buy you a land base today). After the tournament I heard them bitching about losing to a high schooler even though it was a terrible match up for them and perfect for me. I pretty much stopped playing after that day because I was sick of playing against people I knew were total losers and I didn't want to become like them in 5-10 years. A few years later it was a week long heat wave and the mall had AC so I decided to bust out the old deck with a few cheap cards borrowed from friends. I saw a bunch o the same people from years before but they had gotten balder and fatter and had newer football jerseys. They'd also become 30 and probably realized that winning magic tournaments was the only possible positive thing they were going to experience in life. Their decks were probably worth $1/$2k at that point (duel lands were only like $60-$100 then). I won and the prize was 2 duel lands I promptly sold on eBay and used to pay for a vacation to California. I was a different kind of loser 5 years later but I was much happier spending the last 2 years of high school hanging out with girls and drinking cheap beer on saturdays. Tldr: Competitive magic: not even once.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 07:18 |
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Rhyno posted:Sometimes the bad experience is had on the employee end. I just had to break up with a customer because he was so goddamned lonely and needy. Three weeks ago he hung around the store for three goddamned hours and every time I tried to help someone else he'd interject and get in the way. But he crossed the line recently. We have an employee call sheet for emergencies and it was still on the counter when he was there and he loving swiped it and started calling my cell number. And when he came back in he played the victim and tried to tell the boss that I gave him my phone number. It got to be too much and I just flat out told him to go check out the other shop in town because he was hampering my ability to do my job. Had a similar customer when I managed a game crazy in the mid 00's, except the dude was loaded. Creepiest motherfucker I've ever met. His dad owned a shitload of run down housing complexes in poorer areas of the city, and employed Capt. Creep as his handy man. Guy had was getting close too $200k a year (seen his pay stubs, as he waved them in my face to show me what a fucker i was to treat him "badly" when the poo poo jumped off) to be a glorified janitor, had a house that his dad bought him, and had nothing but expendable income. Capt. Creep looked (and smelled) like he never showered, spent countless hours just bumming around the store, and had close to $1000 in game preorders at all times. We put up with him for a while because his massive amount preorder always put our store way above quotas for the district, and kept the regional manager off my rear end. Things Capt. Creep did in the 6 months he shopped at my store: 1) Tried to fight a cop over getting beaten in guitar hero. 2) Tried to take money out of the register "as a joke". 3) liked to tell me how he could hook me up with a "$5 BJ" from some of his tenants. 4) Particularly loved to hit on any Woman who walked into the store, particularly if they had kids with them. The final straw was that he managed to find out one of my employee's (Natalie) home address and told her that she was going out with him that night, and "if she wasn't ready, he was going to come in and take her out regardless". Natalie had just recently come back to work after a violent sexual assault. I asked Capt. Creep to leave, and told him he was only allowed to be in the store when I was there. He responded by calling corporate and trying to have me fired, coming in over the course of several days and removing all his preorders while on the phone with the regional manager telling him how much of an rear end in a top hat and shithead i was, because the customer is always right. These days, I would have just cold cocked his rear end, but back then I thought I really needed that job. For months afterwards I would come up to the store when Natalie was closing and make sure she was okay and drive her home. Eventually Capt. Creep got banned from all stores in the region for starting a fight with another customer. I eventually got fired because our quotas were so skewed that we could never make the numbers. I guess, in the end, it was a stalemate. edit: on the flipside, there were a handful of customers who I didn't mind that would hang out in the store. We usually worked solo shifts during the day and man, sometimes just having someone around to chat with made the day better. In fact, over a decade later, most of those customers are still friends.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 09:00 |
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Comic book store mixed with a computer room. BO. Got worse as I passed the mop bucket on the way to the bathroom. Pretty sure they used the mop on the floors and tables.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 13:14 |
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That does make me wonder which card game attracts the worst people. Which is probably the kind of contest that no one ones, but I did notice that Yu-Gi-Oh! players seem to stand out for horribleness. Possibly because they're more tryhard than the Magic the Gathering players and most of the Pokemon TCG players can't pretend they're not playing a children's card game so you might as well be good sports about it.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 15:18 |
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Many game stores will outright ban Yugioh tournaments, something they do not extend to other card games or miniatures.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 15:35 |
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Inescapable Duck posted:That does make me wonder which card game attracts the worst people. Which is probably the kind of contest that no one ones, but I did notice that Yu-Gi-Oh! players seem to stand out for horribleness. Possibly because they're more tryhard than the Magic the Gathering players and most of the Pokemon TCG players can't pretend they're not playing a children's card game so you might as well be good sports about it. Near as I can tell, and from a very brief time of playing casually with friends, it's basically because the "Buy strongest card and hope you draw it before your opponent draws theirs" is a valid strategy in Yu-Gi-Oh, which doesn't quite work the MTG or Pokémon because of mana or energy costs. So people think they can get good at the game just by buying strong monsters, but then get beat by someone with regular monsters that plays their traps and magic well.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 15:43 |
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SpacePig posted:Near as I can tell, and from a very brief time of playing casually with friends, it's basically because the "Buy strongest card and hope you draw it before your opponent draws theirs" is a valid strategy in Yu-Gi-Oh, which doesn't quite work the MTG or Pokémon because of mana or energy costs. So people think they can get good at the game just by buying strong monsters, but then get beat by someone with regular monsters that plays their traps and magic well. So basically, the anime is correct? That explains a lot.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 16:40 |
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My story is probably a little different from most, since it isn't about a stereotypical nerdy store clerk, actually the opposite. I got into MTG in the mid 90s as a middle-schooler, and the only place to buy cards in my tiny New Hampshire town was a small comics & collectibles store that happened to be close to the middle & high schools. The owner and sole employee of this store, rather than the typical uber-nerd you'd expect, was this massive, ex-marine looking guy in his 50s who was angry all the time. He seemed like he should be fixing lawn mowers or selling fishing equipment. I remember the first time I went to the store, knowing next to nothing about how to get started in magic, and having this giant man sneer at me and more or less throw a crappy starter deck at me. The guy had no interest in comics or gaming or anything like that. I'm not even sure who put the starter decks together for him. Growing up, it became almost a kind of right-of-passage amongst my nerd friends to have to deal with this mean old man to buy anything gaming-related. As I got older, I began to realize one of the reasons this guy was so angry all the time. Essentially, a lot of parents (not mine) in town got into the habit of using him as free babysitting. They would drop off their kids in the morning, and pick them up hours later, often without buying anything. And there wasn't much this guy could do- he couldn't exactly kick an 8 year old kid out of his store along a busy highway. The mystery to me, though, is how this guy who clearly had nothing but contempt for comics and games ended up owning this store in the first place. My theory was always that he started out wanting to sell general collectibles like coins or sports memorabilia, but once the schools were built nearby, he realized he could make some money by selling some comics and poo poo as well. Over time, comics and magic cards were the only things that were making him money, so eventually he found himself unwittingly running a comics store, trapped in his personal hell.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 19:54 |
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Inescapable Duck posted:That does make me wonder which card game attracts the worst people. Which is probably the kind of contest that no one ones, but I did notice that Yu-Gi-Oh! players seem to stand out for horribleness. Possibly because they're more tryhard than the Magic the Gathering players and most of the Pokemon TCG players can't pretend they're not playing a children's card game so you might as well be good sports about it. It's YGO by far. But at one point being over 30 and playing Pokemon would get you put on a watchlist.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 19:58 |
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Inescapable Duck posted:So basically, the anime is correct? That explains a lot. My understanding is that the anime basically exists to explain the card game and is pretty much the same except that getting sent to the shadow realm is just a metaphor for being banned from the store
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:27 |
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The Shadowrealm is just a metaphor for still playing Yugioh in your 20's
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:50 |
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In the original, the people actually just died, so yeah, that's fitting.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:56 |
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Rhyno posted:But at one point being over 30 and playing Pokemon would get you put on a watchlist. Is it not still that point? I feel like it probably should be.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 21:10 |
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RagnarokAngel posted:Many game stores will outright ban Yugioh tournaments, something they do not extend to other card games or miniatures. Yu-Gi-Oh is the only one I know how to play, mostly because I was really into the anime when I was a kid and played it with an older cousin a lot. But then, most tabletop games are too slow and/or involve too much math for me anyway. Love the pretty art, though. My bad nerd store story is that there's never been one within driving distance of where I live, but after reading through this thread that may be a blessing. TenCentFang has a new favorite as of 22:18 on Sep 20, 2017 |
# ? Sep 20, 2017 22:16 |
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ReidRansom posted:Is it not still that point? I feel like it probably should be. I played the Pokemon TCG when I was 8 and I'm getting there, so I guess you could have started when it was age appropriate and just stuck with it. Nothing that goes down in game shops is super mature so glass houses and all
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 22:47 |
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TenCentFang posted:Yu-Gi-Oh is the only one I know how to play, mostly because I was really into the anime when I was a kid and played it with an older cousin a lot. Same, but replace older cousin with high school classmates. There were enough of us that we actually got to have it be part of the Boardgames Club until we all graduated. We'd regularly meet up in the library, after school opened but before classes actually started. Even tried stupid things like three-way duels.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 23:23 |
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ReidRansom posted:Is it not still that point? I feel like it probably should be. Not really. With the 20th anniversary and the release of Pokemon Go they aimed the product at people who played when they were kids.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 23:25 |
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Aesop Poprock posted:Yeah seriously I'm pretty sure convincing a 12 year old to explain to a table of adults how she/he would give one of their "characters" a blowjob would be legally punishable by something Nothing came of it, btw. I don't believe that either of us bothered telling anyone else about it. In hindsight it was outright disgusting behavior, but at the time neither of us really understood the extent of just how wildly inappropriate it was, I think, and we just wrote it off as a sort of weird and uncomfortable, but still mundane experience. Never saw or heard from them again.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 23:52 |
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Schubalts posted:Same, but replace older cousin with high school classmates. There were enough of us that we actually got to have it be part of the Boardgames Club until we all graduated. We'd regularly meet up in the library, after school opened but before classes actually started. Even tried stupid things like three-way duels. It seems like it's been in a decline in the west. It was all over the goddamn place when I was in elementary school, which I guess would be the peak of the Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh boom, but it slowly vanished and I never got into Magic, which is what all my classmates were playing when I graduated high school. I should have been more social, but I have a hard time following the rules of more complicated games. Though I guess Yu-Gi-Oh would count for that nowadays anyway, since they've added so many gameplay elements. When I played it there was just attack mode, defense mode, traps, magic, and pretty simple fusion.
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# ? Sep 21, 2017 00:01 |
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My friends and I have played MtG casually off and on for like ten years, and we still have to look up a rule at least once a game.
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# ? Sep 21, 2017 00:07 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:30 |
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Man, this thread. There's a game shop near me that seems cool and hosts a lot of events and introductory sessions, but now I am afraid to go there to learn how to play paper DnD like I've always wanted. Because I am a shy girl goon and the thought of being miladied by smelly sperglords terrifies me.
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# ? Sep 21, 2017 06:00 |