I'm fascinated that all the vitriol and useless dismissal of other people's fun goes all the way down.

Thanks for sharing the stories. I had no idea.

Quote from: Settembrini;940657This list makes a lot of sense as they are all Sci-Fi or Fantasy, which the wargaming community had some problems with. At least my reading of Playing at the World suggests the enmity was larger than I had imagined.

The Games Hobby has always been like that. Back in the 90s, RPGers in my area were all getting bent out of shape about how popular Magic: the Gathering became, and looked down on Magic players like they were lepers or something.

Or on this site, look at all the butthurt "real RPGers" give to "Storygames" (whatever they are).

It's one of the primary reasons I no longer make much of an effort to interact with the gaming hobby at large, and mostly just play with friends, and friends of friends.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;940882I'm fascinated that all the vitriol and useless dismissal of other people's fun goes all the way down.

Thanks for sharing the stories. I had no idea.

Oh you havent seen the half of it. Board and Wargamers sometimes make RPGers and Storygamers look downright friendly in comparison. Wargamers in particular.

Mmmm, I think the animosity between wargamers and tabletop roleplayers is overblown. Sure it existed but for most it was all grist for the mill. People forget that the late 70s were a golden age for wargames. In my small rural northwest PA town, we freely switched between tabletop RPGs and wargames. For the most part wargames occurred when there was just the two of use. There were only a handful of really good multiplayer board/war games at the time.

Like I said it was all grist for the mill.

Quote from: estar;940905Mmmm, I think the animosity between wargamers and tabletop roleplayers is overblown. Sure it existed but for most it was all grist for the mill. People forget that the late 70s were a golden age for wargames. In my small rural northwest PA town, we freely switched between tabletop RPGs and wargames. For the most part wargames occurred when there was just the two of use. There were only a handful of really good multiplayer board/war games at the time.

Like I said it was all grist for the mill.

I think that this is a pretty accurate and realistic summary of the situation. Locally, here in the Twin Cities, the gaming scene was just like what you had; we went from any game to any game all the time. It was when we started getting involved with the HMGS people at that time, primarily in what's now HMGS East, that the vitriol started flying fast and furious. Gary and Dave, who were both big supporters of miniatures gaming, got called all sorts of nasty things and more or less drummed out of 'the hobby' for being "traitors to the hobby". As you point out, it was - all in all - a tempest in a teapot; we're still here, and still playing what we like. I just stopped playing with people like that.

On the other hand, both of them were pretty hurt by what was being said to them by people that they had considered friends. It did leave a mark on the both of them.

Quote from: estar;940905Mmmm, I think the animosity between wargamers and tabletop roleplayers is overblown. Sure it existed but for most it was all grist for the mill. People forget that the late 70s were a golden age for wargames. In my small rural northwest PA town, we freely switched between tabletop RPGs and wargames. For the most part wargames occurred when there was just the two of use. There were only a handful of really good multiplayer board/war games at the time.

Like I said it was all grist for the mill.

This is a good point. My memory is that two staples of 1977 were Panzerblitz and Holmes D&D. Basically everyone I knew owned and played them both.

Quote from: estar;940905Mmmm, I think the animosity between wargamers and tabletop roleplayers is overblown. Sure it existed but for most it was all grist for the mill. People forget that the late 70s were a golden age for wargames. In my small rural northwest PA town, we freely switched between tabletop RPGs and wargames. For the most part wargames occurred when there was just the two of use. There were only a handful of really good multiplayer board/war games at the time.

Like I said it was all grist for the mill.

Strangely enough, the same sort of thing was happening in my neck of the woods (SF Bay Area) in the 90s. Most of the guys I played RPGs with got their start with RPGs. When Warhammer and 40K became popular, we started fiddling with them (I initially bought Warhammer Fantasy to use the world as a setting for RuneQuest, when I'd grown bored of Glorantha). Over time, this led to us branching out to other games, and I recall a few years where minis gaming was pretty much equal to the RPGing. We could only get the group together every few weeks to play an RPG, but whenever two of us had a free evening and wanted to play a game, we'd bust out a war-game. Mostly it was fantasy and scifi, but there was at least a year or two when we were really having fun with various historical games (WGA, Tactica, etc.).

Quote from: Herne's Son;940888The Games Hobby has always been like that.

Every hobby is like that. Back when I was into model trains the only thing the N scale and HO scale guys could agree on was that the G scale guys were all pansy-ass casuals.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;940908I think that this is a pretty accurate and realistic summary of the situation. Locally, here in the Twin Cities, the gaming scene was just like what you had; we went from any game to any game all the time. It was when we started getting involved with the HMGS people at that time, primarily in what's now HMGS East, that the vitriol started flying fast and furious. Gary and Dave, who were both big supporters of miniatures gaming, got called all sorts of nasty things and more or less drummed out of 'the hobby' for being "traitors to the hobby". As you point out, it was - all in all - a tempest in a teapot; we're still here, and still playing what we like. I just stopped playing with people like that.

On the other hand, both of them were pretty hurt by what was being said to them by people that they had considered friends. It did leave a mark on the both of them.

I think a lot of it stemmed from the 1976 Origins D&D tourney drawing 250 people and no other event drew more than a dozen to 20, and similar scenes elsewhere.

There's always been space for all kinds in RPGs. The weak-minded and morally lax, the milquetoasts and throat-clearers, have their D&D, while intelligent and virile men have Runequest. Nothing wrong with this natural division.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;940908I think that this is a pretty accurate and realistic summary of the situation. Locally, here in the Twin Cities, the gaming scene was just like what you had; we went from any game to any game all the time. It was when we started getting involved with the HMGS people at that time, primarily in what's now HMGS East, that the vitriol started flying fast and furious. Gary and Dave, who were both big supporters of miniatures gaming, got called all sorts of nasty things and more or less drummed out of 'the hobby' for being "traitors to the hobby". As you point out, it was - all in all - a tempest in a teapot; we're still here, and still playing what we like. I just stopped playing with people like that.

On the other hand, both of them were pretty hurt by what was being said to them by people that they had considered friends. It did leave a mark on the both of them.

The long interview with Maj. Dave Wesely made it sound like the Twin Cities wargaming scene was untypically open to SciFI and Fantasy, hence Braunstein -> Blackmoor.
But then I was not there.

Quote from: Settembrini;941014The long interview with Maj. Dave Wesely made it sound like the Twin Cities wargaming scene was untypically open to SciFI and Fantasy, hence Braunstein -> Blackmoor.
But then I was not there.

It's accurate; a lot of us 'gamers' were also F/SF fans and suchlike, and there was a lot of cross-pollination. See also "Playing at the World", 'Mn-stf Dungeon'. Looking back on it, we were pretty insulated from what was happening on the East Coast. For which I think I am pretty grateful.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;940908I think that this is a pretty accurate and realistic summary of the situation. Locally, here in the Twin Cities, the gaming scene was just like what you had; we went from any game to any game all the time.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;940908It was when we started getting involved with the HMGS people at that time, primarily in what's now HMGS East, that the vitriol started flying fast and furious. Gary and Dave, who were both big supporters of miniatures gaming, got called all sorts of nasty things and more or less drummed out of 'the hobby' for being "traitors to the hobby". As you point out, it was - all in all - a tempest in a teapot; we're still here, and still playing what we like.

I dealt with a lot of gamers with "quirks" and when enough them get into a group it becomes one hell of a quirk.  It unfortunate that happened. In my experience the situation results from a confluence of factors. The first one is an extreme interest in the topic that the game is about. In this case I believe it was historical wargaming.  I associated with plenty of gamers who are nice people but just not interested in tabletop RPGs. However were pleasant company on the days we played board/war games

The second one is a rigid attitude about the topic they are interested in. For me this is where the red flags start popping up. The mild cases can be tolerated if you are playing a particular game by the rules. But in general I avoid the extreme cases as they are invariably unpleasant to game with. These days I only encounter them at X night at game stores. X being the game in question. Oddly I can't remember the last time I met somebody that anal retentive at a convention. Probably too social of a setting even in the smaller ones.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;940908I just stopped playing with people like that.

That why strategy guides for this topic don't sell. The solution really boils down to that.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;940908On the other hand, both of them were pretty hurt by what was being said to them by people that they had considered friends. It did leave a mark on the both of them.

Yeah it can get tricky and it sucks when it happens. One of my best friends of 30+ years, has distinct quirks about RPGs. Basically he was a big GURPS fans and gravitates towards RPGs that have no levels and allow free-form character generation. Around the time the OSR became a thing, we started playing various edition of D&D. Something he did not like, after a campaign, he dropped out of the RPG campaign although we continued to do one-shots and boardgames with him.

Recently that was "fixed" when we tried Dragon/Fantasy AGE from Green Ronin. It has levels and D&D style hit points but it uses 3d6 and despite the levels had a lot of flexibility in how you could make your character. So he started to play RPG campaign again with the main group.

Another thing I've noticed as I've been re-reading OD&D and the first ~10 issues of The Dragon is how quickly people started cranking out material that would be fairly criticized today as 'grade inflation' (e.g., the first version of the samurai class), un-play tested nonsense that probably no one ever used (the hit location damage rules in Grayhawk), or stuff that reads like a pet writing project that hasn't seen a gaming table yet (most of Gary's first pass at the planes of existence). What is it about this hobby that makes people re-write the rules, usually for the worse, every time you crack out the pen and paper? It seems to always have been the case!

Quote from: Larsdangly;941047What is it about this hobby that makes people re-write the rules, usually for the worse, every time you crack out the pen and paper? It seems to always have been the case!

Well maybe it because RPGs tend to encourage DiY gamers especially referees. Remember the point is to run a campaign. No company can hand you a campaign on a plate. There is some amount of work a referee has to do by himself to make it work for him and his players before the first session is run. What sucks for you and appears to be total nonsense is what works for that referee.

The magic doesn't happen on paper the magic happens at the table. Whatever allows the referee to make that leap from idea to practice is what works. Where there is a problem in RPG Writing is not bad writing or good writing but not writing about how that piece of paper helped in refereeing or playing in a tabletop RPG campaign.

Jeff Rients' Broodmother Skyfortress has some utterly stupid shit in it. But what makes it a great book is the care and thought he puts into explaining how he used it in his campaigns. Which turns to the book into a great RPG resource especially you like to run crazy off the wall gonzo stuff like he does.