My Hobby is a Sickness

[Deleted User]

This little story says more about me than the hobby.

I woke up this morning with the bright idea of incorporating some RPG rules into a game I’ve been preparing for. Instead of using stats, etc, I’ll use simple traits instead. I couldn’t remember the exact rules but vaguely remember there were three traits, for Strength, Agility and Wisdom but using words like Brawny, Speedy and Erudite (from my memory).

From what I remember its from a rule-lite RPG similar to Lasers & Feelings and might have been a whole seried of reskined games.

Cue 4 hours of Hollywood type montage of me searching the internet, DrivethruRPG and my own library to find said rules. 4 hours!

After hours of nothing, I remembered creating some characters to test the rules at the time. It’s in an .rtf file and typical of me I have no idea what that file is called. Finally I simply searched my libray for ‘RPG’ and got an image of a Laser & Feelings game. It led me to checking out that folder out of frustration and found another image of a game obviously not based on Lasers & Feelings. Jackpot! That was what I had been looking for.

The game is based on Tricube Tales. Funny how misfiling that image helped me years later. The sad part was I had spent 4 hours looking for something I didn’t need. I already knew the mechanics I wanted and had been searching for the actual wording of the traits knowing I’d use my own descriptions. The actual names they used was Agile, Brawny and Crafty.

4 hours off my life for those 3 words.
I’m “…a Man of Focus, Commitment and Sheer Fucking Will”

[Mike Headden]

Four hours?

Pah! I’ve just spent three days looking for figures I’d bought a while ago. After searching fruitlessly through the many and various boxes scattered around the house I eventually checked email, intending to see what else I bought at the time in case that narrowed the search.

Guess what.

I found an email from the company apologising for the fact that despite their website’s assertion to the contrary they didn’t actually have them in stock.

And yet I have a vivid memory of holding the figures in my hand.

It’s not just my PC that needs a memory upgrade!

“A blind man in a darkened cellar at midnight searching for a black cat that isn’t there” 😀

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Tony S]

I bought a new set of naval rules, in the age of sail.  They seem quite interesting, so I thought I’d dust off my Napoleonic fleets, and put on a game down at the club.

Do you think I can find them?  I distinctly remember putting on another game ages ago, wherein I demonstrated my complete mastery of all things watery, by getting my British fleet absolutely thrashed by an alliance of French and Venetians.  Venetians!  They boarded and captured my flagship.

Was it an implanted memory, like Mike’s memory of holding non existent figures?  Or did I throw them away in sheer disgust at failing me so badly?  (Naturally my admiralship had nothing to do with the loss).

I’ll see if I can find them in under four hours…

[Deleted User]

Mike Headden wrote:

And yet I have a vivid memory of holding the figures in my hand.

Tony S wrote:

Was it an implanted memory

Yeah, I know the feeling, do you think its the heavy metal content that’s messing with our brains?

Have you guys ever dreamed about playing a game? I question my sanity SOMETIMES.

[Geof Downton]

Mike Headden wrote:

…vivid memory of holding the figures in my hand.

I wish I retained such memories, it would reduce the likelihood of buying things twice…

One who puts on his armour should not boast like one who takes it off.
Ahab, King of Israel; 1 Kings 20:11

[Benjamin Cato]

But Thomaston, what else did you undercover in your four hours of searching? Plenty I bet 😁

[Deleted User]

Benjamin Cato wrote:

<p style=”font-size: 16px !important; line-height: 20px !important;”>But Thomaston, what else did you undercover in your four hours of searching? Plenty I bet

I did find 3 shopping lists made at different times for pretty much the same stuff.
I also found oout I have a weird obsession with collecting rules.

[Shaun Travers]

I also found out I have a weird obsession with collecting rules.

That is not weird  – I find it weird that other gamers don’t collect rules, lol!  And PDFs makes it so much easier than used to be.

I too spent hours once trying to find some space ship rules I remember had a simple approach to ship design.  I tried file searching, text search, web searching, even looking through my backup drive.  I did find them eventually, cannot remember how.   The rule were called “Simple Starship Combat”.  Not knowing any of the name did not help 🙂

https://freewargamesrules.fandom.com/wiki/Simple_Starship_Combat

 

 

 

[willz]

Last year I spent two days emptying my workshop looking for some SYW figures I wanted to paint.  I thought I had thrown them out.  Moved everything out , could not find the figures.  Moved it all back in checking each box as I restored it all, the final box (which was the first box I moved out and did not look in it as the label said medieval) I found the figures I wanted.  Go figure several days I will not get back but still I was chuffed I had not thrown away the figures 😀.

[Tony S]

The Gods of Lead and Plastic must have read this thread and taken pity on me.

As mentioned, I misplaced my Napoleonic fleets, and went through everything in my wargaming room.  And, Benjamin noted, stumbled across some long forgotten projects which was a nice side effect.  (Ottomans!)

Figured it must be in my locker down at the club, which I went to this morning. Nope.  Nothing.  Sigh.  Perhaps they got thrown out in the Great Basement Flood of 2020.

However, as I didn’t have a game planned for today, which is somewhat unusual, someone offered to play a pick up game, letting me choose an army I hadn’t used in a long time.  For some reason my Welsh jumped out, probably because I had just been rummaging through various boxes in my locker and was reminded that I had them.

Opened up the box, and although the Welsh were there, there seemed to be a lot of square rigged ships as well!  Not labeled, just got put away into a dark ages Welsh army.  No idea; doesn’t even remotely make sense as to how they got there.

But I’m happy nonetheless!

[Patrice]

It often happens to me that, when thinking about a new extension or optional rule for my ruleset, I begin to write some new ideas for it and after a while it looks so familiar that I search again in old folders and I find that I already wrote almost the same ideas years before and had not completed them.

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

[Sane Max]

I once got a keen urge to collect a particular Biblical army. I spent hours deciding which manufacturer to use, and several more carefully selecting the figures. when they arrived I decided I would not want to paint them yet, so I opened my unpainted Biblicals stash and there, looking back at me (and part painted) was pretty much the same army from the same manufacturer.

Have you guys ever dreamed about playing a game? I question my sanity SOMETIMES.

Yeah, quite often dream about getting to a game and and having the wrong army, or else dreaming I am playing a game and the figures are suddenly not the ones I intended to use. I have never had a dream where I am winning, so at least my dreams remain believable….

[Mike Headden]

I don’t dream of playing but I do regularly (once a month or so) dream of discovering figures in a shop.

The shops range from multi-storey, glass and steel edifices to quaint, musty, little places that would fit in nicely in a Dickens novel or Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley and much in between!

The figures are either long OOP items I couldn’t afford when they were available, currently available figures I hanker after but realise I will never paint or play with or figures I would like but nobody makes.

I am always so disappointed when I wake up and find I haven’t bought them after all.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Patrice]

Deleted User wrote:

Have you guys ever dreamed about playing a game?

Never. But I have dreamed a few times that some of my boxes full of miniatures have been left for some reason in a building hall or public corridor where people could steal them. 🙁

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

[kyoteblue]

I dream I’m at a shop and they have tons of miniatures or kits that I want but in the wrong size scale. I have other equally frustrating dreams…

[Mike Headden]

kyoteblue wrote:

I dream I’m at a shop and they have tons of miniatures or kits that I want but in the wrong size scale. I have other equally frustrating dreams…

That’s not a dream, that’s my every visit to EBay and Etsy!!! 🙂

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[willz]

Mike Headden wrote:

That’s not a dream, that’s my every visit to EBay and Etsy!!!

I can relate to that.

Ebay, Etsy are a curse or blessing.

[Deleted User]

Another story from a few months ago.

I have two dark green I almost never use. They are a much darker than the other greens I have so I had the genius idea of toning one of them down to something more appealing. Of the two I chose the darker green and added my lightest green to it. I mixed those paint in the dark green dropper bottle itself, since I didn’t need it. I ended up with a green that is so near to identical to the remaining dark green I could only tell them apart through very close incpection.

Now I’m thinking I should tone it down even further to use it as highlight for dark green.

[Darkest Star Games]

That’s pretty funny!  It does sound like a further tone-down is in order.  Then it will match another paint you already have!

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Deleted User]

Darkest Star Games wrote:

<p style=”font-size: 16px !important; line-height: 20px !important;”>That’s pretty funny! It does sound like a further tone-down is in order. Then it will match another paint you already have!

I’m too afraid of that happening.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Could be worse, mate. Far worse.

You could’ve, for example, spent the afternoon drinking cheap lager and sneaking fireworks into the football stadium to go head-to-head with the away team’s boys.

Or you could’ve spent that time lovingly washing and waxing your car. Or doing upkeep on your suburban lawn. Or watching sportsball on the tube.

Or hobby is at least creative and gets the brain ticking over.

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

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

I also have hobby shop dreams, like Kyote. Anyone else get those?

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

[willz]

Thaddeus Blanchette wrote:

I also have hobby shop dreams, like Kyote. Anyone else get those?

Not shop dreams as such but I dream of running a wargaming museum and retirement home for elderly gamers, which starts out well but with 30+ cantereous old wargamers living under one roof after a while the arguments start😆.

Still we don’t have a wargaming museum in the uk, though we have football, cricket, tank, even a bagpipe museum.

[Tony S]

willz wrote:

Thaddeus Blanchette wrote:

I also have hobby shop dreams, like Kyote. Anyone else get those?

Not shop dreams as such but I dream of running a wargaming museum and retirement home for elderly gamers, which starts out well but with 30+ cantereous old wargamers living under one roof after a while the arguments start. Still we don’t have a wargaming museum in the uk, though we have football, cricket, tank, even a bagpipe museum.

A wargaming museum?  I hate to say it, but I think many visitors would be looking at the displays and thinking “15mm Minifig strips?  I just used mine in a game last week.  Scruby figures?  I think I’ve got some in the boxes under the basement stairs”.

[Jim Webster]

willz wrote:

Thaddeus Blanchette wrote:

I also have hobby shop dreams, like Kyote. Anyone else get those?

Not shop dreams as such but I dream of running a wargaming museum and retirement home for elderly gamers, which starts out well but with 30+ cantereous old wargamers living under one roof after a while the arguments start. Still we don’t have a wargaming museum in the uk, though we have football, cricket, tank, even a bagpipe museum.

 

there is Soldiers in Silloth, Toy Soldier Experience

https://www.soldiersinsilloth.co.uk/

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Patrice]

Tony S wrote:

I think many visitors would be looking at the displays and thinking “15mm Minifig strips? I just used mine in a game last week.

Or some would say: they are nice, but I’d love them better if they were 18mm. 😉

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

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