The Worst Thing You Can Bring to Game Night

daveroswell wrote:

Black Barney wrote: Munchkin.

Your own house rules for something everyone is looking forward to playing.


I disagree about the bad attitude thing. What's the guy gonna do? Call ahead and say, ''guys I'm not feeling it. I won't make it out tonight'? Our game groups aren't big (3-5 guys) and if one guy at the last minute decides to bail when everyone else has planned this ahead of time with their wives and children, it sort of sucks. People can be in bad moods sometimes, it`s life and you shouldn't hide in your basement when you,re in a bad mood

We have a solution to this. Cannabis. It will always turn someone's frown upside down.

Nah man, Subway sandwiches are worse than Taco Bell. I swear I have games that still smell like Subway. Plus, you inevitably have this asshole hunkered over a fucking sandwich, the wrapper flying all over the place, lettuce and meat dripping everywhere. "Is it my turn". Fuck that guy.

I don't like any kind of junk food snacks, but they don't really bother me. At the Hellfire Club, we usually have some finer cheeses, enterainment crackers, nuts, sometimes a homemade cake or cookies. Last time we had a bundt cake that Pierre's wife made. Awesome.

The phone thing is something people REALLY overreact to. Sorry, but nothing going on in your little fucking board game is more important to me than if my wife texts me and needs something, sends a picture of what the kids are doing, or just wants to see if I made it OK. I've been in games where these relationshipless, childless middle aged men get all harumphy when I answer a text or something. Those people can fuck right off.

It's different if someone is doing something on their phone the entire game, not really engaged. That I understand. But if my phone rings, I'm going to leave the table to go answer it. One guy I know, his wife calls during a game and he gets PISSED. I've heard him get into screaming arguments with his wife over it. "I'm in the middle of something!" Ha, really? A fucking board game is worth all that? Take a minute to answer the call, come back and keep playing. It's not hard, and the players should be respectful enough that no one's time is somehow ruined or wasted.

I did have one game once a couple of years ago where one of the people I was playing with asked me if I could turn off my phone. My wife was pregnant. I told the guy this, and he said "can't you just tell her you're busy?" All-too-typical boardgamer lack of social grace.

Me after eating four deep fried tacos for lunch.
Which by the way is what I'll be bringing to gamenight tonight!

lol, Mike. And they knew your wife is pregnant?! That's so awesome. I do that as a joke to anxious father co-workers all the time. ''Hey! Can you pay attention to me for a sec?! I'm trying to tell you about my gastro-intestinal distress!''

I thought I was the only one who hated the stink of Subway in a game store. We have an Indian restaurant next door to the game store I go to, and the smell of Indian take-out is actually less strong than Subway.

Eating snacks around the table has never bothered me, but eating a meal around the table kind of bugs me to death. Just eat before coming for crying out loud.

One buddy of mine frequently makes a pot of chili and invites people over for long games. It's pretty awesome to get halfway through a game of Die Macher, and then take a break to go upstairs and eat before we finish up. He's about to have a kid...I bet we'll do a lot less of that.

One thing I do that I'm sure drives people crazy is that I have a tendency to get restless and stand up and walk around a little at game nights, when it's not my turn. I very rarely miss a move this way, and I only do it when I know I won't be needed for a while. I'm sure it bothers some people, but no one's ever complained.

There was one particular game session that I still remember vividly that involved three things that don't need to be at a game night:

1. drugs
2. cutlery
3. a handgun

A couple of friends came over to play boardgames at my place late one Friday night the year after I finished college. Mike was coming over straight from work and brought along a co-worker from the restaurant where they both worked. My other friend Hank was a security guard at the time, but not on duty that night. He did bring his handgun anyway, out of habit.

We sat down to play Nuclear War. Everybody was focused during the first game, as they were all new to the game but very interested. Hank seemed especially intense, even after a couple of beers. We playing a drinking rules variant.

By the second game, Mike's friend finally caught on to the concept of the deterrent force space on the old school playmats. He didn't have any intimidating cards in his hand, so he went down to his truck and brought up his tool box. He opened it up and got out some fearsomely large knives and went to work sharpening them, as his own unique form of deterrent force. He worked that whetstone with dramatic flourishes. Meanwhile, Hank got even more intense, swearing and playing very aggressively, with lots of emphatic hand gestures.

We were also using another house rule, where anytime a 100 megaton bomb was deployed in a single strike (i.e. not using an MX missile), you would skip the usual die roll and instead use the old school spinner. Hitting the nuclear stockpile for triple yield meant destruction of the entire planet, instant end of the game, and a mandatory shotgunned beer for every player still in the game at that point.

Mike dropped a 100 megaton bomb on somebody, spun the spinner, and hit the triple yield result, causing me to laugh maniacally while rushing to the fridge for four more cans of beer. Hank threw his cards down, flipped out and started shouting about us laughing at nuclear destruction. His eyes were looking bugged out, and I started to worry a little about the handgun. We finally got him to calm down some and drink his beer, which helped interrupt his tirade. After a bit, Hank admitted that he did a speedball before coming over. I didn't even know what that was at the time, until Hank and Mike explained it to me.

Eight months later, I was roommates with Hank and another old friend. Fortunately, Hank was just smoking pot by then. The cutlery guy never came back to play games with us again.

I pullled a switchblade on Steve Avery once.

LOL Shellhead. What a wanker that guy is. To be all worked up over a board game is ridiculous to the hilt. That said, as someone who has witnessed, first hand, what meth/crank/coke can do to a guy's personality, I'd have to say that YES, drugs like that are bad.

I had a buddy back in my crazy Pete days (when I actually did crazy shit rather than just pot stir on the internet) and he was "allergic" to pot. Ehren "The Fighting Irishman" McMicken. Fucking nutter to the hilt. Anyhow, guy gets high for the first time at a party at HIS HOUSE, goes psycho with a Mini-14 rifle and shoots his own house up. People came running out of the place like rats from a burning ship. Fun times, those. Now he's in the army, God help the Iraqi people if he gets a taste of that shit again. World War 3 in a bottle that one!

SuperflyTNT wrote: back in my crazy Pete days

Last tuesday through friday?

Believe me, I've seen my share of people taking games too seriously...run a game shop and hold organized tournaments, you'll see some SHIT ASS behavior go down. For ANY kind of game. 40k, Heroclix, Magic, even fucking D&D people will lose their minds over.

We had one Heroclix tournament where this dude lost and he got so pissed off, everyone was laughing at him. He went to leave and pulled the front door off the hinges he pushed it so hard. I just kind of stood there in shock. By the time I had my bouncer, Pete, go after him he was gone and we never saw him again.

Warmachine dude picked up his warjack and threw it on the ground, shattering it into pieces, when he lost on one of the Heavy Metal Saturday events I put on.

There was a guy that threw his entire magic deck in this kid's face. He got kicked out of the store.

The Vs. guys, however, were ALWAYS top flight. Nicest bunch of people. Maybe because they were mostly black folks and not spoiled,whiny middle class white kids, I dunno. But they always had fun, nobody ever got angry, and we did some big tournaments for them that never ended in tears.

Best store flipout EVER though wasn't game related. My friend Pacer ordered a sub from this place down the road and came back with it. He hates mayonnaise as much as I do. He opens the sub and says "I told them no fucking mayonnaise" and he then proceeds to beat the sub like a bludgeon against the table. I think it took him about an hour to clean it all up.

I've had my Magic deck thrown in my face. That wasn't pleasant. Last time I ever played with (or saw) those friends.

lol @ raging on a Subway sub. That's awesome. That guy is just asking for a mayonnaise prank in the future.

Michael Barnes wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: back in my crazy Pete days

Last tuesday through friday?

I had this conversation with my wife maybe a week ago...she verified that while I am still "unstable and deranged" I am no longer crazy. No longer a threat to the public at large. LOL

It came up when we recounted "the fork incident" where I chased a guy 2 blocks with a grill fork. (Note: He called my wife a bitch, and had it coming.) We wondered if "cool guy Jeff" as we called him (Drove a souped up Mustang, had long white-blonde hair but was balding in the front at 20..that guy..)what ever became of him and his troll girlfriend. Whether she actually could pull her vagina lips over her head to resemble an inverted clam....but I digress.

Last time I did anything to anyone or anything was when I was 25, 12 years ago, when I smashed a guy in the head with a bottle, twice (first time it didn't shatter) to get him to calm the fuck down and stop trying to beat up our "karate master" friend who was pinned down by the dude on the beach.

Pretty much gave up drinking and fighting after that one....but what a night.

But seriously, I've played Heroscape and other games, been to Gencon a bazillion times, Origins twice...I've never seen anyone get shitty. But, I don't go to game stores ever so maybe that's why I'm missing all the crazy shit. I still can't understand why it's so important to win at a game. It's not like it matters in the grand scheme of things.

Just to be clear with cell phones: getting text and phone calls is NOT a problem with me. When someone is just tittering away on facebook or playing angry birds that shit pisses me off. You're sitting at a table with actual people...why not socialize and talk to them during downtime. Everyone understands that people have personal lives and wives/girlfriends/husbands to attend to. There are going to texts/calls during gamenight and I have no problem rolling with that. I'll go take a piss or grab a beer...it's not a big deal.

Egg Shen wrote: Just to be clear with cell phones: getting text and phone calls is NOT a problem with me. When someone is just tittering away on facebook or playing angry birds that shit pisses me off. You're sitting at a table with actual people...why not socialize and talk to them during downtime. Everyone understands that people have personal lives and wives/girlfriends/husbands to attend to. There are going to texts/calls during gamenight and I have no problem rolling with that. I'll go take a piss or grab a beer...it's not a big deal.

A short phone call is one thing, but if the entire game comes to a lengthy halt because one person is on a long phone call, that's rude bullshit. If the call is really important, drop out of the game and take care of business. Otherwise, wrap the call up in a few minutes. This should be basic common sense: pay attention to the people that you are with, not to the people who are somewhere else.

One friend is particularly bad about this stuff. He spends too much time texting during a game. He sometimes will get distracted playing a game on his phone while failing to pay attention to the game on the table in front of him. And one time he tanked a game of Death Angel because he got a complicated tech support call while he was on-call. We eventually had somebody take over his team, but the damage was already done.

So, shellie, your friend was *on-call* (which means "at work" for those not familiar with the concept) and, even though "being distracted" is clearly a crime aganist humanity for you and yours, you invited him to play anyway? How stupid are you?

In my case, there's no such thing as a game night/day/afternoon for me when work might NOT interrupt anywhere from 1 to 3 times over the course of a 6-7 hour stretch of daylight. I truly don't give a shit if your turn is delayed 10 minutes. Get a beer; I'll be back ASAP, but letting it go to voicemail could easily turn into a disaster that takes me 2 days to un-fuck. Depending on the degree of clusterfuck, it could also cost me MY job. This is why I generally don't play games with strangers. If I've got to eat shit because you think your game is more important than my family or my job, I can honestly say, I hope you die screaming and alone. You deserve it.

I have a friend who really doesn't care for Talisman. We all wanted to play so we asked him to try with us. He didn't even try. Played on the iPad the whole time.