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I'll post this here, since apparently the two threads are combined. I can't promise any cat-piss people, but reading this story may be treasonous. Paranoia: An Actual Bad Experience Okay, so this is probably all my fault, but is #2 on my list of bad experiences role playing. I was still a relatively greenhorn GM at the time, with this being the second or third time I'd ever ran a game. Having played Paranoia a time or two, and with the previous GM of that game having graduated, I took it upon myself to run the game. So, I read all the rules, and invited about 5 of my friends to play, and read through the rules to get an idea of how to run it. I even wrote up a quick one shot to warm us up. So, on the day of, about 12 people show up. Somehow it went from 5 people to 5 people and their girlfriends and roommates, all of them wanting to play. I knew I should've kicked people off, but uh, yeah I didn't. Well, naturally the game went from "get to the briefing room" to "everyone trying to out shoot and out shout each other, traitor commies be damned." (These were people I soon learned were constantly trying to out backstab each other in their normal, daily lives) Yeah, I lost control of the players and try as I could I couldn't regain control. At that point I just gassed them all, did a complete clone wipe and called the session. They were still trying to out shout each other as I was walking away (this was in the Student Hall, and I swear they were louder than that place ever was during a weekday lunch hour). The next day, one of the players (one of the original 5 I invited to the game) complained that he shot another player in the head, but didn't kill him, but was shot in the chest and was killed. I tried to explain how that was part of the 'wackiness' of Paranoia, but he wouldn't have it. Complained that the rules didn't make sense (yes, I told him he's not suppose to know the rules). Anytime after that, when I asked him if he was interested in playing Paranoia agian, he would always complain of that one incident and swore off playing any Paranoia ever again, try as I might to explain it was my poor skills as a GM that caused that game to go belly up in the span of an hour and a half. I learned a bit there, but unforntunately could never get another Paranoia campaign going again. Worst gaming experiance #1 was playing a shape-shifter native american in Shadowrun, and then being sold to Renraku by two of the other PCs and my fate being described in full detail by the GM.
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Jan 16, 2012 03:33
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I managed to kill (as in total clone wipe) my entire Paranoia party, plus convince the computer to give me a promotion. The mission was to go investigate one of those secret societies, to see if they were communists. Oddly enough, this particular group were not fond of communists. And I was a member. My party had no clue of either these facts. My group "discovers" their next meeting place is in one of the big food processing plants, full of giant vats of, well, food being processed. They decide the best course of action is to frame the group as being commie traitors, record the "evidence", then ambush the group and kill them all. I state that we will need someone in our party to go to the meeting in person. They unaminously volunteer me for the task since I came up with the idea. They then formulate the plan of attack, where the other cameras would be, where our 'sniper' and 'mech-pilot' would be hiding so as to spring a surprise attack. All of this information and planning I was there for in character. So, obviously, I sabotage the whole opperation. The PC with the camera gives his camera to me. I smear something on the lense so no body can see what I'm doing. I get to the meeting earlier than my party expected me to, and pass on word about the ambush. The sniper? Gets sniped. The mech-pilot? EMP bomb and drowns in his own piss. The commie? Well, after realizing I was now the enemy, decides to walk up to the meeting in full commie dress and shout "Hello, comrades!" Vaporized by the lazers of 30 angry not-commies. The last party member not killed? Harkening back to a previous in game moment of briliance (and hilarity), activates the Halon fire supression system in hopes of suffocating everyone in the plant. He successfully kills off the last clone of the sniper and former mech-pilot guy, but escapes. The secret group? Escaped unharmed, all of them. He himself escapes, and tells the responding fire crews that it was the secret group meeting that set off the halon system. Well, I make it back to the Friend Computer, by myself, and submit my evidence. Proof that the Commie was a commie. He had one clone left and was promptly killed by the computer. Proof of who activated the Halon system. He had three clones left. His treason was so egregious (ruined all the food in the plant), the computer wiped them all out at once. And of course, I double cross my own secret society, revealing they were in fact commies plotting to overthrow the computer. My valuble information grants me two extra clones and a promotion to Yellow, and middle management. My fellow PCs? All dead, no more clones. I beat [my party at] Paranoia. CovfefeCatCafe fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jan 16, 2012 |
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Jan 16, 2012 22:06
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LongDarkNight posted:This was about 6 or 7 years ago so it was topical at the time. I've actually used that line before and the worst it's netted me was a scoff. Can't say I've ever been chased about with a knife. Please tell me you stopped playing with the guy. Was Ted a penquin, by the way?
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Jan 20, 2012 15:25
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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AlphaDog posted: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. From what I understand, this houserule is so common that there is actually a semi-official name for it. I forget what that name was, though, because I learned about it after I had stopped playing Mt:G. All I know is that I was surprised to learn that wasn't actually how you played the game.
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Dec 22, 2014 15:40
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Man, ya'll need to stop fighting over this stuff. It's simple: owner played a tourney level list in casual play, and expected everyone to bring a list to deal with his army. He'd use this list to curb-stomp the newbies, and anyone who came with a "casual" list, and then gloat about it. On top of this, a lot of the rules that were being misinterpreted were done in a way that benefited his army and his play-style. I don't attribute malice to playing a powerful list, nor to getting rules wrong. What ended up happening was every week, for two months, having to "have it out" every time I brought up a rule that we had been getting wrong. Like his whole bit with "you have to bring up every rule before the start of the game," basically hinting that if there was a rule that we did wrong, unless I laid out a litany before the game, we should keep playing it wrong. Before my little "enlightenment" most rules arguments ended with "owner fiat" rulings, rather than people actually looking up the rules. On top of that, it was in this period of time, since I was actually able to be a regular player again instead of on-again-off-again that I saw how he was, as a person -- a jerk at best, an rear end in a top hat at worse. Now, I agree with the sentiment of "I shouldn't expect my opponent to cater to my army." That's unfair, especially considering in most casual FoW play, you really don't know what your opponent is going to bring. However, this guy, the owner, was expecting us to play to his army. That the armies we brought every week needed to be armies built to beat his army, otherwise we shouldn't complain when we lose. We needed to cater to him. Here's a quote: quote:I bring the same list every week so that you will know what I'm bringing. You should be prepared to play my army every week. If you bring the wrong army, that's your own fault, and nothing I can do about it. In a vacuum, this quote is innocuous. An owner who brings the same list so players, especially new players, can know what to expect is a good thing. Unfortunately, I cannot convey the smugness with which this line was delivered, every time he delivered it. He wasn't implying some benevolence of "I'm the friendly game store owner who helps people learn the game," rather he was saying "You need to play my game." I think between my building the paratrooper list, but mostly with my rules hounding, I started to find the chinks in the armor of this list. But, I never "beat" the list. Nobody has ever "beaten" him. He does not "lose". Either he wins a game, or it's a draw "that could go either way, but my side would've won eventually." I can't say he was a sore loser, because he never "lost". He would also display a certain level of animosity whenever I wanted to play a 1-on-1 game with someone else. Now, I don't begrudge the owner playing 2-on-2, either, as it's helpful when he's trying to play and run the store at the same time (but that still bogs the game down either way if his partner doesn't know what it is he's trying to accomplish). I was getting burned out on the high-points, multiple army stuff being played every week for four months, so this is more just me than him. Unfortunately, this is a situation that was created by the owner in how he relegated tables out, we would end up with one table and four people wanting to play a game. So, I will concede this, a few of these things, as TheSmilingJackal pointed out, are innocuous, in and of themselves. I dealt with power lists and trying to field sucky armies before, but still had fun (I ran Sisters of Battle for a time when they weren't really that great). Ignorance of rules vs. malice; again, usually what I presume, and usually what happens; look how many of us goons have just admitted to thinking a common house rule in M:tG was an official rule, because that's how we were taught to play. 2v2, high points games: sometimes it's just fun to break out the big toys, I personally was just getting tired. But, I guess what's hard to convey to me is the smugness of the owner, and just his general attitude about it. It wasn't "oh, oops! you're right, this was wrong." It wasn't "we have these house rules," as there were no house rules. It was "we should keep playing it the way we have been, because that's the way we've been playing," in which rules arguments are settled not with a rule book, but by owner fiat, and anybody who disagrees is shut out. This is a point I should emphasize, as the owner wanted most rules arguments to be settled with his ruling, which would lead to him contradicting a rule that is easy to look up, but that's not how we play it. We didn't have house rules, we had house rulings (and the house always wins). There's a litany of other things I can go into, things that just clicked after this whole incident, and me realizing just who the owner was. Things like, not ordering products from companies other than Battlefront because he deemed them "inferior" sight unseen, even if he could get them through his supplier. Dragging his feet to support a new game everyone is interested in playing. Bad mouthing regular customers (who were actually nice people, not "horror stories of retail") behind their backs, when they leave the store. There are layers to this onion, too many to get into here. So while I'm already posting a wall of text, let's finish this puppy: Stage 3: The People's War (Actually it'd be the mobile war, when the tanks and armor are finally amassed for the final push) So comes the end of our story. I already shared the quote I wanted to start out with, but whatever. After the whole "table" incident, I resolved to look for a new gaming group. The owner has been reasonably successful with his business, and the nearest two gaming stores belong to him. Besides, they close early on Saturday, in an attempt to force any other Flames of War players to come to the "main" store to play (such was John's story). However, Jay is getting ready to ship off to the army and wants a big send off, and he's a nice kid, so I'll stick around. Also, a few players who have been absent for a while would show up, and it'd be cool to hang out with them for a while. So, I figure, in a month, I'll just bite the bullet and go to the next city over and find out who is there. Most of the major rules "fighting" had ended, but there was still a spat or two here and there. I stopped playing 2v2 battles, and tried to focus on 1 v 1, and playing people other than the owner (and having actually sat out, refusing to play once or twice). Shortly before the big send off, I get some awesome news, I'm moving, too; got the job offer for where I am now. I don't have to bother looking for a new LGS, at least not for now. The big day comes, a huge 3 v 3 battle. Nothing serious, just fun and shits and giggles, that sort of thing. Naturally, the owner brings his usual list. I brought my paratroopers, because I'd started to like them, and I knew the store owner would bring his same army. So, we get started and almost right away the owner flubs a rule that I had told him about before. It is in this moment that I learn, I am not the first person in this group to realize we've been playing wrong, or to point it out to the owner. In fact, one of my teammates, a player who had stopped playing regularly about a year prior to this, was much quicker than I in pointing out the owner's misstep, and the whole scene played out almost verbatim to what I had to deal with for the past few months, including the owner's insistence that he give his fiat ruling instead of looking it up in the rule book. The owner has been fielding this list for years. And nothing else, always this list. And he's always had issues with the rules. The only other person who wouldn't shut up about it, or allow himself to be brow beaten had stopped playing the game altogether, because this arguing was not fun. There were several arguments, owner was being liberal with his measurements, and there was a hill that was "cross country" for the owner's team, but "difficult going" for our team when we got to it (the owner wasn't consistent about terrain types, which seemed to change depending on whose team was in the terrain). Naturally, the game came to a draw. Actually, my team had captured more objectives than the owner's team, but you see, we hadn't beaten them, and there was one objective that they would've taken in the next turn, and had things continued their side would've won. That sort of weasely bullshit the owner always pulled to show that he didn't actually lose and he was still the alpha player, because he would've beaten you eventually and here's how he would've done it, in detail. Again, something he would do every game that he didn't outright win. I felt better after that game. I felt better because I realized I wasn't the only one to figure things out. I felt better because now I had no obligations or ties to this store or the group of players here. My friends were going their separate ways, and so would I in a few short weeks. I was free from this, it was finally over. The next three weeks, I only played one more game against Dan, but acted as observer/judge to the games that Dan and Alex played - on the "grown ups table", because they were the only players who showed up, and no way the owner was going to swallow his pride to play with them. Though for the Day: (upon learning of my new job) "They're going to kidnap you and you're going to get raped by goats! Yeah, that's what they do over there, you'll be raped by goats!" (upon me telling one of the other players where I'll be moving to) "Yeah, they're going to tie him up and he's going to get raped by goats! We'll never see him again because he's going to get raped by goats!" (last weekend actually in the store) "Looking forward to getting raped by goats? Oh, don't forget if you want to order something I can ship it to you. Like, there's some guys in Brazil who order Heroclix all the time from me. Just give me your address and I'll let you know what the shipping is and I can send whatever you want over there." (as I'm about to leave for the last time) "Have fun getting raped by goats!"
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Dec 23, 2014 05:22
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I teach English to grade schoolers in Taiwan. Yeah, I don't know how that connection was made, and it was way more off-putting than even Dan's "nice village" concentration camp.
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Dec 23, 2014 07:17
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the_steve posted:Probably because "raped by goats" is just utterly random and hilarious to him, right up there with any combination of monkey, cheese, or weasel. Kurieg posted:What does Taiwan have to do with goats? that's... bizarrely racist because it doesn't even make any sense beyond "Foreign country = bad" Probably a combination of the two. A lot of people would get Taiwan confused with Thailand when I told them about it, and with Thailand having a less than stellar reputation about sex trafficking. So, monkey cheese + casual racism + "them orientals" + ignorance about what is and isn't a third world poo poo hole = kidnapped and raped by goats is funny, lol.
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Dec 23, 2014 15:20
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Can't say I've had a 'good' experience with DMPCs. Usually they're some uber-level PC the GM used in a previous game and always has a flashy entrance in which he always saves the PCs butts. Those games usually died out quickly. The only notable one I can think of, was one of our veteran GMs decided to run 7th Sea. This was a game she liked a lot, and had played a few times herself. The captain of the privateer ship we were on was a (male) character of hers. A day out to sea and we meet up with another pirate/privateer ship, this one captained and crewed entirely by women! Naturally the captain of this ship was another one of her old PCs! Oh, and guess what? Both her PCs were lovers! And we all got railroaded into descriptive sexual acts with the women pirates "so we would be well rested for the adventure." That helped kill the game for me, as well as a couple of players' insistence on announcing every time they wanted to engage in buggery (how they said it) and the GM's eager willingness to follow along, which happened multiple times a session. Basically: Player A: "I man the mizzen!" Player B: "I'm in the crow's nest!" Me: "I'm manning the ropes." Player C: "I'm going to look for the cabin boy for buggery!" (or something like that) GM: Very good! Player D: "Me, too!" Player C: "Wait your turn!" GM: "Okay, roll to see how well you did!" She wasn't normally like this in games (she was a popular GM that I had played with a few times), and she generally avoided "descriptive romance", so I didn't know what the hell was up. I don't think there was ever any actual combat outside of a few players dueling meat swords with the cabin boy.
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Dec 24, 2014 07:23
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petrol blue posted:Happy Birthday Robot is in one of the current bundles of holding - $7 for the basic for the next day. I am totally going to buy this and use this in my upper level classes. Of course, it'll probably devolve into the robot fighting creepers and kissing pigs, as that's how most stories break down in the one class, but let's see how it goes.
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Jan 2, 2015 03:43
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chitoryu12 posted:I go to the local cons. The cosplay scene is predominately weeaboo and Superwholock, and I don't think I've seen a single tabletop RPG-related booth at any convention. On the other hand, there's overflowing anime, Winchester brothers, and British television. When I was still in college, I remember that MegaCon use to have rpgs and some LARPs (I know the Paranoia one was huge); but they'd always be off the main floor, in some side rooms, and the only way to really know where they were or sign up for them was to trawl the forums and sites before hand, or just start exploring random doors at the convention center until you find what you're looking for. Otherwise, last time I went, there was a group of girls huddled around two skinny guys with blue dyed hair with a sign "Will yaoi for $$$", and on the opposite side, about two or three plus-sized gals with nobody paying any attention to them with the sign "Will yuri for $$$". Maybe it's a good thing that it's been almost 7 years since my last convention.
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Jan 6, 2015 06:05
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