Who taught you how to game? Chimpanzees? (This rant is rated: Mild and Geeky.)

The BBQ Pit
1

Some of the finer points my recent gaming companions seem to have missed out on:

1) If you are unable to play, do not delay the game by trying to be cute.

Do not wail, “Man, this hand sucks!” Do not blow a raspberry. Do not mime stabbing yourself in the chest, shooting yourself in the head, or strangling yourself with a noose. Do not roll your eyes. Do not moan. Do not make an inarticulate gagging sound in the back of your throat. Do not remain silent and expect everyone at the table to infer that since you passed last time, you’ll pass this time, even though the rules allow you to play after passing.

Say, “Pass.” Say it promptly and clearly so that play can proceed. Then you may put on whatever childish display you wish.

Exception: If you’re playing cribbage, you do not say “Pass,” unless you want to sound like an untutored cretin. You say “Go.”

2) If you are playing an RPG, you may roll dice under exactly two circumstances: [ul]a) The GM has told you to make a specific roll.
b) You have asked the GM for permission to make a specific roll and the GM has granted permission.[/ul]You do not roll dice when the GM tells someone else that they can try a roll, and you think your character is in a position to do the same thing.

You do not roll the dice, and then tell the GM what you roll were attempting.

You do not roll dice constantly and for no reason, unless you want your percentile dice crammed so far up your nose that you sneeze numbers between zero and ninety-nine for the rest of your life.

3) No, you may not keep that roll. If you roll (let’s optimistically assume that the GM sanctioned the roll) and it turns out that what you were trying to roll for is not possible, and you want to try something else instead, you roll the dice again, and don’t whine about it. I don’t care if you’ve “wasted” an automatic success. If you’d failed on the stale roll, you’d never ask to keep it, and if you cannot understand how that would skew the results and make them non-random, then you need to wander off and find a game of Chutes and Ladders and let the adults continue their grown-up game.

2

I would object to #1- when used extremely judiciously, it can be quite amusing.

At one point, my friend Dave was playing bridge. When it came his turn to bid, he promptly threw down his hand, picked up his “Goren’s Complete Book of Bridge”, threw that on top of his hand, crossed his arms, and set his elbows upon the book. He then looked up, gave a split-second pause, and calmly stated, “Pass.”

We were too hysterical to continue bidding for a few minutes.
Of course, he only did this once, which was made it funny. Had he done this every time, it would have gotten trite and annoying. The first key to comedy is timing; the second key is judiciousness.

3

Sing it, Pod, sing it.

And let me add:

3) Yes, you are indeed required to shower before your attendance at the gaming session. There is no excuse for not being squeaky clean upon your arrival. If I get one, just ONE, whiff of your B.O. while we’re playing, I will personally take you outside and dribble your fat smelly ass up and down the sidewalk like a basketball.

4) Just because my character reacts to your character a certain way, that doesn’t mean anything about how I think about you PERSONALLY. You’re playing Nosefinger Dribblethump, the annoying halfling thief and I’m playing the Realms equivalent of Dudley Do-Right. (Okay, a DWARVEN Dudley Do-Right, anyhow…) Of COURSE our characters aren’t going to get along. Don’t get all pissy with me personally. Outside of the game, I like you just fine. IN game, however, your character pisses me off to no end. Don’t be surprised if my character reacts to that.

5) Next time, you’re rolling up your character in front of the rest of the group. I will NOT accept that you ‘just happened’ to roll an 18 and two 17s, and none of your other scores are under 12. Not to call you a cheater but – you’re a cheater.

That is all. (Well, not all, but all I can think of at the moment.) :smiley:

4

I have seen a GM nip that in the bud by saying, “Next number you roll is how much damage you take.”

5

Sort of like Magic: The Gathering’s Mana Burn, huh?

My own personal gripe about RPG’s is as follows: Please keep your real-life self out of the game, and please keep your game self out of real-life. It’s quite obnoxious to have you start shouting out “Fuckin’ shit!” with a Scottish accent whenever you spot something that your character would have found amusing.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy outside-the-game playing, but jumping Jesus on a trampoline, use a brain cell or two about it.

6

I must mildly object to #2. At the start of a session, I must roll dice involved several times, and then say in an aggrieved tone of voice, “These dice are random!” It’s sort of like knocking on wood.

Also, this is allowable:
c: After a multiple string of 1’s has been rolled, resulting in great pain for character and party, several meaningless rolls are allowed to knock some randomness back into the dice.

7

Heh… There was one person who I used to play with in some of our RPGs… He’d get all excited and insistant that we let him play, pestering us for days on end, untill we finally let him.

It was about the second or third time he played… We got attacked by some hellhounds, and one pounced him, knocking him to the ground. So I go up to kill the hellhound, which jumps away at the last moment, and my sword-blow carried through and hit him (For only a minor ammount of damage). He got absolutely furious that I had hit him (Out-of-character furious, that is), even though it was clearly an accident, AND he had pestered the GM durring character-creation so much for just one advantage so he healed the damage in less than TEN SECONDS! So he’s fuming for the rest of the night, then abruptly decides to attack the group, starting with a character that wasn’t even there (And ironically, with my character being the furthest one away from him at the time). The GM of course, being quite tired of this, was none to forgiving, and he was dead in moments (Not that the GM had to “tweak” anything, he was probably the poorest fighter in the group).

So here’s a lesson to would-be RPGers. If you want to play, develop some mental stability first. Don’t be like this guy. Randomly attacking other players just because you don’t like how things go does not make people want to invite you back again…

8

A-fucking-men!

9

I agree completely, John. I don’t even mind as long as you get through your little demonstration and say pass while the night is still young. It’s the people who just make all sorts of grunts and funny faces, which this turn you’re supposed to telepathically interpret as meaning “pass” but next turn might mean, “Wait, I’m thinking.”

No offense, man, but dice superstition annoys the hell out of me. (The follwing rant is not directed toward Drastic personally, whose habits seem mild and under-control, but toward annoying-as-hell gamers I’ve met in the past or have the current misfortune to game with.)

Given the fairly low standards of the industry, a goodly proportion of polyhedral dice are not fair, but they tend to be not fair in a random manner–a particular die will not tend to “roll high” or “roll low”, it will roll a disproportionate number of fours and sevens or something like that. Ever notice how if you add opposite sides of a dN, they equal N+1? Pairing high numbers with low is an attempt to prevent a poorly-made die from tending to roll high or low. And even if you do have a die that you think tends to roll one way or another, isn’t bragging about it tantamount to declaring, “Look at me! I’m totally cool because I’m using an unfair advantage to cheat!”? So people who have “favorite” dice make me nuts, as do people who switch dice fifteen times a game. I don’t think it makes any difference in game terms, since I don’t think it makes a hell of a lot of difference what dice you use, but the time and effort and hot air wasted on these exercises drive me up a wall.

But at least that has some basis in physical possiblity. Believing that you can change the way that the dice will roll by performing rituals or satisfying your personal version of the gambler’s fallacy just screams to me, “I’m a nimrod!” I know, dice represent all the unforgiving and perplexing randomness of the universe boiled down to a handful of shiny plastic playthings, and the urge to deny randomness and seek patterns and try to control the outcome is strong in human nature, but for love of Finagle and His prophet Murphy, try to pretend for a moment that you are a rational creature. sigh At least in RPGs there isn’t any money on the line.

Last but not least, rolling dice is not a skill. I know this one guy who brags about his die rolls. ARGH! How can you be this stupid and still be capable of conducting simple monetary transactions? Your dice generate random numbers! It doesn’t matter how much you succeed by! Whoopee! You rolled 15 over the target! If you’d rolled exactly ZERO over, the result in game would be completely identical! If you constantly roll really high, that means either a) you’re enjoying a run of good luck which is totally random and has nothing to do with any talent on your part, or b) you are cheating, which I tend to suspect because you’re the primary inspiration for #2 in the OP. If you aren’t cheating, you’re stupid because rolling high doesn’t make you smart or dextrous or creative or virtuous, and if you are cheating, you’re still stupid because you’re drawing attention to it.

Overall, in my experience, people who obsess over their dice are 1) narcissists who feel they must be the center of attention while the pontificate about their dice-related delusions and 2) rotten role-players. YMMV.

I’m so glad we’re playing diceless, now.

10

Yeah, diceless rules.

I’m one of those people hated by the dice gods, no matter how I try to appease them. :slight_smile:

11

Hold your fucking cards where I can’t see them.

Don’t gloat.

Don’t kibbitz if you’re dummy. And don’t trump your partner’s ace lead unless you know what you’re doing.

If you’re one of those oddities who doesn’t play Stayman, tell me before I bid two clubs.

Don’t argue with the GM about the rules. His game, his fucking rules. Corollary: If you’re GM, and you fuck up your internal consistency, you deserve what you get, up to and including having all your players walk out on you.

And no, deus ex machina is not an acceptable plot device.
And for Kdapt’s sake, fucking quit whining. You don’t want to play, go the fuck home.

12

Better not join our Amber game, then. Our GM decided that the players were getting too cavalier about hopping on the Pattern and made us roll dice to find out if we succeeded–or died, or dragged our sorry asses to the middle beaten down, in need of a few weeks’ convalescence, and shy twenty or thirty points. Ouch.

Quoth andros:

Oooh, that’s a good one. My rule is that (in a friendly game) I’ll say “Duck your cards!” three times. After that I start looking at their cards in a very obvious manner. If that fails, I start commenting about their hand to the rest of the table.

I really ought to learn how to play Bridge some day so I’ll get all the in-jokes. :slight_smile:

13

Dice in Amber!? Gah!

Wujcik would roll over. He was giving his opinion on a GM he knew that insisted on doing that exact same thing just this weekend

14

Unless you’re playing the Star Trek RPG, in which case it’s required.

15

Wanna see my blackwood? C’mon, you and me can grab a quick rubber and get the show on the road.
They say that bridge is just like life. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.

My rules:
Don’t hem and haw at your bidding, partner. You can think, but for God’s sake put on a poker face. I’m trying to be ethical here, but if you grimmace and moan it’s quite difficult for me to ignore when my turn comes.

In chess, if you’re kibbitzing, don’t ever ever ever ever ever tell someone their flag is down. Ever. It’s their job to notice. I mean, it’s not like you’re affecting the outcome of the entire game or anything.

In Magic, we ALL get mana screwed. Even Dan Bock. Stop bitching about it. Either embrace the randomness or add some more land AFTER the game/tournament. Nothing you can do about it now but shrug and mulligan.

16

I don’t mind the dice magic. It’s funny, if done well, and my gamers are literate and witty. We’ve had dice abuse, dice mantras, and had some microwaved dice at one point (not recommended). As long as it’s done as a tension-breaker, funnily, it’s okay.

Especially since my dice have a reputation as complete and total killers. They roll what I want them to. My dice scare people.

To me, it’s part of the game.

You know what not to do in the game, though? You know that tough opponent that you’re having a hard time beating? The one that’s kicked your butts a couple of times, mostly because of some stupid tactical errors? The one that’s pissing you off?

He’s not me. You see, I’m the DM. My job is to create situations that are challenging, and yet not impossible. Challenging means that occasionally, you’ll get your ass handed to you. If your character is not dead, that means that you have to step back, reasess the situation, and find a new method to approach your foe. (Hint: Your fighter currently has no way of getting to an airborne target. No missile weapons, no flight. Might want to do something about that.)

Don’t get mad at the DM.

17

The classic:

You don’t win an RPG

It OK if the whole party dies horrible screaming deaths, unless of course you want to claim that oyu blew your entire creative wad on that half-orc fighter with an attitude problem?

Corrolary: the funnest parts of RPGs are when someone acts less than efficently. Do not accuse someone of “screwing the party” because they cast fireball even though lightening bolt would have had a statisticly higher chance of doing damage to the preferable target. We do not get a grade at the end of the session. Furthermore, critical failures are the start of all the funniest gaming stories. try to be a part of one for once!

Other pet peeves:

We all have our momment to shine. Don’t step into mine, I won’t step into yours. When my Ranger flubs an animal lore role big time, let me roll with it, don’t say “Well, my gnome mage wants to make an animal lore roll then, I might get lucky!”. See above about winning.

Podkayne, I totally agree with you about hte dice things, and I esp. get annoyed at “dice martyrs”, the guys that are convinced fate sends them bad roles, and who actually expects sympathy from the rest of the group because of this unique burden. It’s the worst sort of self-centered illogic.

However, we do have one die that seems to role 20s at an astonding rate (comes from a Paranoia box set, hmmmmm). The GM controls that one, becaues, of course, GMs are allowed to cheat.

18

While we’re at it, don’t go ‘nil’ if you’ve no idea what you’re doing. If you go ‘blind nil’, and blow it, don’t expect me to partner with you anytime soon.

When someone acts in character, and gets the entire party wasted through brilliant role-playing, remember that you still have your character sheet, and congratulate the player. Don’t stalk him.

19

Happily, I have our GM right here. His response?

Wujcik has never been highly regarded in our clan (The Black Sheep Squadron of Iowa City, if anyone’s keeping score). He wrote the game book; that doesn’t make him the boss of us. :stuck_out_tongue: : )

20

My pet peeve: don’t brag to me about how you’ve totally min/maxed your character. I don’t care.

…Unless I’m the DM. Then yer just a moron as I say “Oh really? Huh.” then make you fight stuff that grapples and has ungodly strength (like Gray Renderers…3rd Ed. is luv). Min/max that ya beotch. :stuck_out_tongue: