How you play games

[Angel Barracks]

I saw this on TMP.
I don’t care how well or badly someone plays a game.
If they have enjoyed it and want to share their enjoyment of the game isn’t that good?
I feel no need to criticise someone’s ability in such a fashion.
If they asked for feedback then maybe, but not so harshly.
True, if you don’t want to get feedback (good or bad) then maybe don’t post on the internet, but even so…?

What are your thoughts about it?

(remember this is not about bashing TMP)

[Mike]

Angel Barracks wrote:

(remember this is not about bashing TMP)

Nor about bashing people either.
No name calling.

🙂

[Cerdic]

Rather uncalled for, I would say!

 

One or two pointers along the lines of “how about trying ‘this’ next time”. Might be a bit more encouraging….

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Not Connard Sage]

“You’re not playing toy soldiers properly”

 

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

[Angel Barracks]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

“You’re not playing toy soldiers properly”

Time for the baby.

I appear to have let it get under my skin, sorry.
Just bothers me when people say how best to play, especially when it is a game with magic, psionics, demons, aliens, monsters, etc.
It is even more pretend than other games.

Anyway, I will shut up about it now.
Just feel sorry for the OP.

[Not Connard Sage]

Some people, to misquote Bill Shankly, appear to think that playing with toy soldiers is not a matter of life and death, but something much more serious.

 

I wouldn’t care to guess where many of these people reside, in either a virtual or physical sense. I would take a punt though that they’re attempting to veil  playing with toys with a façade of  intellectual respectability**.

 

It ain’t working chaps. No-one’s being fooled. Give it up.

 

 

**mangling me metaphors/scrunching me similies

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

[JozisTinMan]

I started miniature gaming in 1994 (at Ft. Hood) with a group of guys who worked at the Sim Center and played DBM twice a week.  I lost horribly most of the time, but was given encouraging pointers, not bashed about the head.  If I had been, I might have left the hobby.  (There was appropriate trash talks of course, such as “Warriors! Com out to PLAY!!!”)

I tend to lose a lot of games, but I get a great deal of satisfaction out of them anyway, and I do not think it appropriate to disparage someone’s playing ability.  If they ask for it, phrase it politely and keep it along the lines of “Have you considered…” or “Based on what I have read…”

The important thing is to PLAY and derive enjoyment from the hobby, weather it is via painting, crafting terrain, writing rules and scenarios, or pushing lead. Or just for the congenial camaraderie.

Of course, I don;t have this problem when I play solo, I always win!

http://jozistinman.blogspot.com/

[Paul]

Wow. Things like that will really make new-comers to wargaming feel welcome.

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

[Spurious]

Writing … like this … Using … ‘…’ in replacement for ‘.’ made reading that horrible. And then I worked out what it was saying!

Now, I may not be the nicest, most charming and all round awesome person in the world yet I think there’s much better ways to convey a sentiment of ‘git gud’. Because sometimes people really should be getting better as it’s the solution to their problems in tactics and the like, getting the research done and making sure to apply it. Having greater skill of course can lead to more fun games for both parties. It can be quite frustrating to have to hold back from pulling smarter moves if you don’t want to discourage a new opponent that is not making any effort to get better at the game. It’s a fine balance of putting up with personal frustration (because we’re not all wonderful super-accepting people capable of giving demo games at conventions for hours) verses trying to get the other (or self even) to improve.

There’s also the problem of a lot of people reacting quite badly to being informed that they should be improving. Diplomatic language is key, always encouragement, not lambasting, teaching through explanation and example, being willing to point out where something could be done better during a game, and taking extra care when communicating via text where body language and tone are invisible.

[Not Connard Sage]

A canard

I really couldn’t give a flying f…art if my opponent is good, bad or indifferent as long as we’re both having fun. Screw research, it ain’t a doctotate we’re after achieving. No bugger has to ‘research’ golf, or snooker, or darts in order to get stuck into the game. Takes us back to the veneer of intellectual respectability again, but it’s a table game we’re playing here. Like chess, but with prettier pieces.

I don’t demand my peers ‘improve’ in any other social situation, why should playing with toy soldiers be any different? At work it’s different, but I and my colleagues are be paid for that.

 

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

[Patrice]

I never played 40K but I’ve always been a bit surprised by the artworks on the boxes which show masses of infantry walking boldly in the open under heavy sci-fi gun fire… So it’s not surprising that some players do it in the game; I don’t think it’s logical, but that’s what the artworks suggest.

On the other hand, I’m also very uneasy with players commenting a game as if it was some sort of chess game: “you must use this here and not there because it’s stronger than this and weaker than that and you gain +1.000 to shoot in this situation but you lose √3.14 hit points if you don’t, etc”. When I’m in a game I like to believe I’m in the role of the miniature on the table and I do what I think it (he) would do even if it isn’t the best choice and without too much thinking.

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

[DM]

My primary goal in wargaming is to have fun. I’m not a “win at all costs” kind of chap (as Mike can confirm), if I get to the end of the evening and I look back on the events of the game and think “I enjoyed that” then my objectives have been achieved. if done so in good company then so much the better. Obviously winning is the icing on the cake, and it gets  abit more important when the game is played as part of an ongoing campaign, but even then the fun aspect is paramount.

 

I have played some games where I’ve lost horribly but the day was fun.

I have also won games where the experience was dreadful (often due to other players attitudes)

[Ivan Sorensen]

The people I game with are pseudo-RPG types so we tend to sometimes do less optimal things because it seems it’d fit the commanders in question or just make for a more interesting story overall.

If a player is interested in improving their “game”, I find that the best way is to have a talk afterwards over tea. The “Debrief” as it were. What went well, what didn’t, what could have worked etc.
Those are usually pretty enjoyable sessions.

[Mr. Average]

Personally, I’m so nervous that I might be railroading my opponent in some way that it kills me to think I might do so.  I often give opponents advice on how to beat me as the game goes on, even. “You know, you could move your tanks there, and have me in a crossfire. Or if you pull your infantry forward, then…”  But even that can go too far.  In a recent game I recall reacting with frustration to what I thought at the time was an overly conservative and “rules-lawyery” move by my opponent, following an edge-of-the-earth tactic. But he then responded to my frustration by running right onto my guns, so to speak, and I felt terribly guilty for days afterwards, feeling like I might have bullied him into handing me a win I didn’t by rights deserve.

The “there’s one right way to do this” mentality is really irritating to me. Almost as much as rules-lawyering. It comes out the same for me – being more interested in a win than in a good experience.  We have an undiplomatic name for it at our club, which I will not rep. eat, but it ties back to a member who was particularly known for this behavior: teaching someone just enough of the rules that they could then be clobbered with them. “Oh, didn’t you know that I have an ‘I Automatically Succeed and You Automatically Fail’ card in my hand?” Sigh.

The thread referred to in the OP has a bit of this mentality in it, I think – driving a bit too hard to the victory over the aesthetics of the experience. Winning is good, sure, but not at the expense of all else. I mean, it’s a game, not real war. It should be a mutual experience and not a throat-grabbing struggle.

[Ivan Sorensen]

-Mr Average:
Since I am often teaching a game, I tend to fall into that as well 🙂

“Don’t forget you have this option…”

[kyoteblue]

I play to have fun. I have lost games and enjoyed the hell out of it. I have won some games that I wish I had never had to play. I always encourage new players /younger players .

[Norm S]

Anyone who gets as far as getting a game up on the table and enjoys it is a plus,

Anyone that does that and then takes the time and effort to photograph, record and post an AAR is a double plus, especially when enthusiastically done.

The respondent’s post was not helpful in tone, but pretty quickly that thread recovered itself and the respondent took a step back – so that was good.

One of the things that I think is also easily forgotten is that our hobby via the internet is global, plenty of posters are not posting in their first language and each of us have our own financial and practical limits that will determine what can go onto a table. The people who are creating free download material for others, are often under-appreciated by the ‘consumer’.

I will always have respect for the gamer who actually games and then  wants to share that experience. It all adds into the pot of inspiration from which we draw.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Sure. Plenty of our games when I was a kid was with 10 actual space marines, a bunch of card board cut outs with “space marine” written on them, and soda cans for terrain.

BUt without those games, I wouldn’t be writing today.

[Shandy]

Patrice wrote:

When I’m in a game I like to believe I’m in the role of the miniature on the table and I do what I think it (he) would do even if it isn’t the best choice and without too much thinking.

That’s what makes a wargame for me. And that’s also the reason I don’t like chess, or many other strategy games, because they don’t deliver a narrative. I even frown when people start to calculate probabilities on the gaming table.

Also, I used to play Epic when it was still called Space Marine and sold in a separate box from Adeptus Titanicus. And boy did I play it badly. But it was my first proper wargame and I remember hours of fun losing against an Ork army which wasn’t played much better.

My blog: http://wargamingraft.wordpress.com

[Bandit]

I’ve observed people who get really competitive during wargames cause the most trouble in my experience but I largely write that off because such people are highly competitive regardless of the format, you could be playing basketball or checkers with them and they’d likely be the same. So in that regard I do not see it as any different than anything else, i.e. not a unique problem to our hobby.

There are also people who are constantly condescending about the idiosyncrasies of XYZ aspect of a game or period – not the button counter, but the rude, opinionated button counter who appears more interested in telling you what you are doing wrong than running their own troops. I also don’t think this is unique to our hobby, those guys have equivalencies in all other mediums too, hence “backseat driver”.

So in essence I don’t think this sort of problem is unique to what we do.

As for how to address it in what we do…

On rare occasion I play a complicated simulation game with a group of guys where one of them is very intense. He is constantly talking through every possible outcome of every decision, and looking up every corner case – and in the game they play there are traditionally a lot of those. Some people find that really frustrating but I try to take a zen approach to it.

I find that by playing that particular game at a high grand tactical level and ignoring the tactical disputes – which is about the only place disputes ever happen, I just don’t get irritated. If a general has a good grand tactical plan, a lot of horrible tactical setbacks must occur before it will fall apart. But if you get hung up on wanting to target a specific unit with your artillery and get wrapped up in thinking the game will pivot on that salvo – I think it becomes counterproductive. We can only control ourselves, but by controlling ourselves, we may influence others.

Cheers,

The Bandit

[grizzlymc]

Living at the end of the world Ihave none of these problms. I only game solo. I tend to take time off at the end of the turn to admire the table, think out the tactical position, drink things, nibble things what have you.

Twice a year I get to play real human opponents and it is a completely different experience. Some of them would last one game if I had a regular gaming group and they were showing up, but the experience of a real life unpredictable opponent is irreplaceable. It is like sex has to be pretty bad to be worse than good masturbation.

As people have observed, wargaming is a social event and the normal rules of social interaction apply. If somebody is a bit tiresome try to play opposite someone else; if he is a real twunt, tell him; if he is particularly obnoxious, point at the wall behind him yelling “Look at the size of that cockroach” then hit him with a sharp tap behind the ear.

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