But what if I die?

[Angel Barracks]

With the completion of my 6mm sci-fi character crowdfunder and the painting of my very own 6mm family, I thought about making some rules to use them with.
Then I started having doubts about playing with little versions of my family.
I actually don’t like the idea of them dying in a game, of us dying in a game.

They are just little models of us.
It is totally irrational and makes no sense.

I have no problem with the leader of RDF being killed in a game, which is who I imagine I am when playing.

Does anyone else have issues about models of themselves dying in a game.
Does anyone else actually game with models of themselves?

[Not Connard Sage]

Angel Barracks wrote:

Does anyone else have issues about models of themselves dying in a game.

 

Does anyone else actually game with models of themselves?

 

Never thought about it

 

No

 

🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[kyoteblue]

Um I die often in games so it doesn’t bother me. GeoffQRF has said he is going to sculpt a 15mm figure of me but have yet to see it.

[Paul]

I thought about putting together 28mm versions of myself, my wife, my son, and our (now departed) chihuahua (and doing a model of our house!) for a zombie survival game, but got distracted by other interests and never did it. So haven’t actually done it in a wargame, but wouldn’t have a problem with it. It is, after all, just a game.

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Lagartija Mike]

No problem at all. It’s not sympathetic magic.

[Rules Junkie Jim]

I’ve gamed with figures representing myself and my mates in the past and was a bit iffy about seeing them killed off/horribly injured. Just goes to show that no matter how niche the neurosis, there’s always someone else with the symptoms

But hasn’t this kind of thing (deaths of figures presaging dead people) been made into a film? And if it has, when is JJ Abrams doing it again?

[Etranger]

They’re very small Voodoo dolls AB!

[Earther]

Do they have to die? Or can they just be knocked out until next time like in action telly shows?

 

Lie down and count to ten? 

[Alvin Molethrottler]

Angel Barracks wrote:

I actually don’t like the idea of them dying in a game…

Clone Insurance. “It’s just like you, but on a good day”. Brought to you by the Tleilax Trading Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Flesh U Like.

[Patrice]

Never thought about it. I died many times in historical re-enactments, and that was me not a model.

However I can imagine that the RPG feeling would not be the same if you really imagine all your own family immersed in the game situation (which is why the miniatures have been done I suppose)…

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Guy Farrish]

Don’t think I’ve ever thought about it.

I’m not me in a game, I’m whoever that commander I’m representing is.

I think gaming (war or other) for me is partly entertainment and partly exploration of a period/history/situation.

It’s also partly a way of creating an environment I am (theoretically at least) in control of, unlike real life. If it goes wrong its okay anyway because its not real. If I were in it, even in effigy, I think that may remove the comfortable distancing effect I’m looking for!

[Rhoderic]

I wouldn’t have issues over my own “avatar” dying, but I admit, it gets more morbid when it’s not just you but your family being represented in the game too.

I suppose there are some scenarios you could game that don’t involve lethal force. Maybe, for instance, a “stealth” scenario where the family have to sneak into some sort of facility to steal something. If any of them get caught, the guards use non-lethal weapons to incapacitate and capture them. That could then lead to a new stealth scenario where remaining members of the family who are still at large, along with appropriate allies, have to liberate the prisoners.

Designing stealth scenarios for miniature skirmish games can be a difficult art, though. There are other kinds of non-lethal scenarios too.

Maybe something where the family have to scramble to grab various items scattered around the board before wild animals or opportunistic ne’er-do-wells get to them. The animals or the ne’er-do-wells wouldn’t be killers, but if they get to the items first, you lose.

Or maybe a scenario where the family are being chased by guards / cops / hired thugs in the streets of a bustling settlement, and they have to duck and weave through the crowds. The bad guys, again, would use non-lethal weapons to capture any members of the family they catch.

Or how about a cantina brawl where the family have to navigate their way through the brouhaha to perform various tasks (steal money temporarily left unguarded at the gambling table, grab that weaselly informant before he can scarper, plant a tracking device on that unsuspecting bad guy, protect that valuable piece of technology from being accidentally smashed, and so on) while over-enthusiastic cantina patrons are trading punches all around them.

There are plenty more ideas to be had along those lines, I’m sure.

[Sane Max]

I remember being utterky bereft when I lost my first RPG character, but I was only 13. I cannot imagine being upset about something like that now.

[Angel Barracks]

I guess the difference between this and any RPG I ever played was that when playing RPG’s I never played myself.

The models are dressed like us, same sort of shape as us and would have the same motives/skills as us.
The model of my daughter even has one of her teddy bears poking out the back of her rucksack.
I was initially debating getting some Z scale train stuff and making our street and house to do a PA game.
But then the empathy kicked in and I thought about what it would be like if the scenario was real and my family did come under attack.

It is making me uncomfortable, which is interesting, as quite clearly they are teeny weeny models.

Maybe I will try an experiment at a show and put on a game with a PA style scenario and get the players set up, but just before they begin, tell the people that are using the figures of us the fact the figures are based on us, and point to my daughter and then her figure and ask for the player not to let my daughter die.

It would be an interesting experiment I think to see how when the models relate to someone they can see and talk to, if that effects how they play.

Anyway, this is all getting a bit odd, I will away to paint some space hunters (also based on real people…)

 

 

[Earther]

Sane Max wrote:

I remember being utterky bereft when I lost my first RPG character, but I was only 13. I cannot imagine being upset about something like that now.

Fibber. 

 

Angel Barracks wrote:

Anyway, this is all getting a bit odd…

A tad. 

[Rhoderic]

I recall reading an article somewhere (don’t remember where) about a group that was planning a Pegasus Bridge game for a show, and an awkward silence falling over them all when the author suggested they should research the identities of all the actual British soldiers that participated in the assault and have each British figure on the table be a specific, named soldier from the real historical event. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s reminiscent. I don’t think they went through with it in the end, but the author was shaken enough by the idea (which he instantly regretted) to write about it.

[Lagartija Mike]

Isn’t this the ultimate meaning behind, at least, RPGs? To put glamorized versions of yourself into play in a world several conceptually spastic steps removed from reality?

[Mike]

What do you mean by spastic?

[Noel]

When I played 40K Chaos marines I had a unit of possessed marines.  Each one was named after an ex-girlfriend.

I had no problem when they died in the game… 

[Lagartija Mike]

@Mike: I mean there’s a limit to how much connection to reality a post apocalyptic, say, scenario is going to have…any simulation with any pretense toward reality would be pretty lame in practice: How long before you die of radiation poisoning etc…

[Mike]

Ok, well may I advise not using the word spastic again as I doubt many people think of it as meaning divorced from reality or unrealistic.

In this context it looks very much like you tried to use it as an insult.
Clearly anyone suffering from any sort of debilitating condition is not a subject for mockery.

[DM]

It has never bothered me

[Paul]

I’m going to violate my policy of not getting involved in disagreements online. I hate to generalise, but Americans and Brits seem to have different views on the word. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on the word “spastic” and you will see similar incidents involving it’s use by Americans like Tiger Woods and the writers of Friends.
Just my 2 cents worth.

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Guy Farrish]

Definitely not a word to be used lightly in the UK as an insult – rude to the recipient and offensive to people suffering from cerebral palsy to whom it was applied medically but then became misused by some people as a term of abuse. So decidedly no to- ‘you’re a *******’.

However, I think LM used it correctly (and in my view acceptably) as an adjective where it means subject to  spasm -still used medically in this sense to refer to muscle spasm and in some people’s general vocabulary meaning any process lacking smoothness. However it is Michael’s forum and if he doesn’t want it used I wouldn’t use it – hence my coyness about spelling it in the example above.

I confess to resenting  restrictions like this on perfectly good, inoffensive words which are hijacked by some people who twist the meaning.

One example of the ‘development’ of language which is not a positive one.

[Mike]

I thinks spasmodic would have been better.

[Mike]

Anyway…. back to AB’s issues with his own mortality.

[Paul]

Agree that if Mike feels it shouldn’t be used, best we don’t use it. I’m just trying to say that this is a “cultural misunderstanding” and I don’t think LM meant any offence: there is no “wrong” or “right” (at least the way I see it), but we should respect each others sensibilities and those of any other audience. This is, after all, a place where grown men come to talk about toy soldiers. Any unpleasantness is unnecessary.
Edit: apologies Mike, started typing this post before your latest posts, not trying to drag this out. As you say, back to the contemplation of mortality…

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Etranger]

Rhoderic wrote:

I recall reading an article somewhere (don’t remember where) about a group that was planning a Pegasus Bridge game for a show, and an awkward silence falling over them all when the author suggested they should research the identities of all the actual British soldiers that participated in the assault and have each British figure on the table be a specific, named soldier from the real historical event. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s reminiscent. I don’t think they went through with it in the end, but the author was shaken enough by the idea (which he instantly regretted) to write about it.

FYI Stephen Ambrose’s Pegasus Bridge gives all that information, as does the ‘Pegasus Bridge’ website.

It changes things when you personalise (& identify with) the figures. It didn’t stop Richard Todd from taking a role in The Longest Day though, despite having been there ‘for real’.

[Sane Max]

Lagartija Mike wrote:

Isn’t this the ultimate meaning behind, at least, RPGs?

 

not for me, the LAST person I want to play in an RPG is me. I play RPG so I can be someone interesting.

[Cosmotiger]

In the various Two Hour Wargames use a “role play lite” approach, where they designate your leader or hero figure as the “star” character (like a movie star, I guess).  This figure is described as representing you, the player on the table. But they give stars a “cheating death” rule. When a star character gets a killed combat result, they can cheat death and come back in later games in the same campaign.

They explain it away by words to the effect that it turns out they were just knocked unconscious or somehow taken out of action temporarily, but not really killed after all.

[William Jones]

Decades ago I had a “personal figure”.   He was a CSA general with a whiskey jug and a bowie knife.  It never bothered me if he got killed or not, as I think minis exist in a state similar to Valhalla, and the next day they are good to go again.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

I’d be more worried about certain fishy persons using them as erzatz voodoo dolls, myself. 🙂

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Guy Farrish]

Sane Max wrote:

Lagartija Mike wrote:

Isn’t this the ultimate meaning behind, at least, RPGs?

not for me, the LAST person I want to play in an RPG is me. I play RPG so I can be someone interesting.

Yeah – wot e sed^

[Author]

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