Non-Video Gaming

[Black Starre]

Okay, I know you're out there. This many geeks in once place, you have to be.

You know why this comic (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/12/10) is funny.

You may even own a few d20s. Or be thinking about buying a "booster pack" of something right now.

It's okay- you can admit it. This is a safe place. And we can all let the healing begin.

My own confession:
While not big into the whole D&D stuff, I have been involved in it a couple times, though never seriously. We always ended up doing ridiculous things and laughing until it hurt. I am moderately into MtG, though, as friends getting into it the past year rekindled the interest I had in the game in high school. A friend persuaded me to try out Mage Knight, although the game is pretty much dead now so we only played it a handful of times.

Anyway, I was just curious who else out here was into the various forms of gaming that don't involve burning out our retinas, and what your hidden vices were. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is... Roll for initiative, monkeyboy (http://www.hoodyhoo.com/kodt.htm)!

...Or boys, as the case may be.

[The Damned]

I never play table-top/pen-and-paper RPGs. And whenever my friends (how not only play, and also create them) ask me why I don't play, I can't tell them, "In the unlikely event of a virus that only targets RPGers, I will be immune, thus healthy enough to go get help."

They don't ask me much anymore... Sort of like my response to people who ask me when I'm going to have kids.

[Pi_R_[]ed]

Ashamed to admit it, but I have a pretty kick-ass Pokemon deck sitting in my room with cards from older and newer series. I haven't gotten to use it, though, because official tournaments don't allow cards from some older sets. *Sigh...* one day, one day.

[Kitsuta]

A good friend of mine makes jewelry out of roleplaying dice. They sell like hotcakes.

Also, I participated in an online GreyHawk campaign once.

And uh... I like Planescape: Torment.





Yeah, that's about it. A friend of mine is really into this kinda of stuff though.

[Back_Lit]

D&D eh? Our crew is into D&D, not seriously hardcore but we are running 3 campaigns currently. We started playing on and off back in HS and have rolled up dozens of characters because we always lost sheets or we didn't play enough and we forgot everything that was going on...blah blah blah. So we casually play D&D, maybe once or twice a month if we're lucky. That being said none of us have had above a lvl 2 character.

[supremespleen]

Games I play
EVE Online: CCG
Star Wars Miniatures


uhh, I thought there was more, but I guess not. The EVE CCG is great though. Amazing looking cards and sweet gameplay. Star Wars miniatures are hella fun, but wayyyy too expensive.

I also paint fantasy miniatures.

[Fire in the Hole]

Okay, any discussion of non-video games had damn well better approach German board games. Carcassonne is still one of the funnest games I've ever played. If you have not tried it do so.

[Murmeli Walan]

My fad with the Pokemon TCG passed years ago. For me, I'm more into board games.

I'd say the geekest game I own is Risk: Lord of the Rings Edition, with Risk: Star Wars: Clone Wars Edition coming in a close second. Me, my brother, my dad, and another friend of ours play Star Wars Risk about twice a month.

My family's very big into Trival Pursuit. We bought the new 80's editon for Christmas, and it's got a lot of those "Hey, I remember that!" questions. It even came packaged with a Rubik's Cube.

[Black Mage]

Love the Heroscape, that's one kick-ass game.

http://www.reich-der-spiele.de/images/rds/nuernberg2005/heroscape-drache.jpg

Used to be into the PokéMon card game, too. Still have all my cards, actually, though I haven't played in years. I still wish I had sold my Charizard when I had that chance, could have gotten a good $50 for that damn card.

[The Phalanx]

I'm an unabashed tabletop gamer. D&D, Rifts, and Warhammer are my top geeky pleasures. While I've tried MtG a few times, I could never really get into it. That kinda goes for any card game, really.

I demand that people share their tabletop experiences! Retarded MtG moments, insane dice rolls, whatever; lets here'em, folks. Hell, I'll even start.

We're playing D&D, the party consisting of: a tiefling rogue/barbarian, a true werebear druid, a half-giant psychic warrior, and myself, the sole human bard. We're about 11th level at this time, roughly the second session in this campaign.

Due to a series of indicents involving a pissed-off minotaur and severe property damage, we're run out of town and end up having to hike through the woods, heading towards the dwarven kingdom to rescue some people. We're confronted by a mob of demi-humans--roughly 30 orcs, 2 ogres, 2 ettins, and 2 ogre shamans. Not something we can handle at that level, so I try and Dimension Door us out of there. The shamans counter-magic that, and we're elft in the middle of this massive cluster-fuck.

In a severe stroke of bravery, luck, and fantastic teamwork, we cut a bloody swath through them, killing them all to the last man. The moment of the night came from the half-giant, Baccus, who waded through 5 orcs and an ogre on his own, to stand toe-to-toe with an Ettin and dealing a critical hit for over 90 points of damage.

We're still playing this campaign, and we're getting close to epic level now. We gotta find a way out of Sigil that doesn't involve pissing off the Lady of Pain, though, which is proving to be...difficult.

[Black Starre]

I demand that people share their tabletop experiences! Retarded MtG moments, insane dice rolls, whatever; lets here'em, folks.

K.

One D&D session, we were for some reason I no longer remember, trying to climb down this cliff onto a ledge far below. There was a door on the ledge.

We had a rope. Our party consisted of a half-elf (me), a half-orc, a halfling bard/gnome (played by the little brother of the DM, much younger than any of us present). There may also have been one more elf. That was all for the purpose of this event.

So, we all begin to descend the rope, hoping it doesn't break. I make it down pretty easily. The half-orc, somehow, makes it down fine. Then we come to the halfling bard (the little brother of the DM, it's worth mentioning). He begins climbing down and, of course, the rope breaks on the lightest member of our party. He plummets something like 50 feet and barely survives, comes within an inch of his life. We revive him, and all survey our position. Nowhere to go but through this door, since our rope is no more. The half-orc, being an assertive type, reaches for it.

"I stand to the left of the door," I discreetly say.

"I stand to the right of the door," the elf says.

The bard says nothing. Perhaps he is still a bit dazed after his recent brush with death. Pity.

The half-orc opens the door and our DM kindly informs him that he should roll. He also informs the bard of the same. They do so. We are already beginning to laugh again. Well, we being everyone except for the bard.

The half-orc, apparently the most agile member of his race ever, dodges magnificently to avoid the giant-ZOMG! fireball that was tripped when he opened the door.

The bard? Well, do you really need me to tell you? A bit bruised, a little less limber than usual, he of course fails to dodge and is hit in the face by said fireball. Hilarity ensues.

A bad day for a bard, all in all.

EDIT:
ed;214429']Ashamed to admit it, but I have a pretty kick-ass Pokemon deck sitting in my room with cards from older and newer series. I haven't gotten to use it, though, because official tournaments don't allow cards from some older sets. *Sigh...* one day, one day.

I never played the pokemon CCG, pretty much just magic for me.. I vastly prefer casual environments to tourneys, though. I build primarily the way you mention here- cards from all over. I don't use cards from the banned list so they're all legacy format officially, but playing those tourneys you just come up against crazy broken combo decks or whatever else, and I'm much more of a play for fun type (I'm a johnny/timmy, if anyone knows what that means.. ;)), though I try to make them competitive.

Anyway, the downside of all these kinds of games is they require a group of people to get together with regularly to enable you to have any real fun... I've been lucky in that I actually have 2 groups of friends, total of about 8 people, that are into it so I'm not usually wanting for a game. Downside of THAT is that I've spent a hideous amount of money on fancy paper...

[supremespleen]

God, those D&D games sound so wicked.

Too bad it's just my and my younger brother over here D:
No way we could afford all the books if we wanted to play anyway...


Just for kicks though, if we wanted to try it, what would we need to get?

[Black Starre]

God, those D&D games sound so wicked.

Too bad it's just my and my younger brother over here D:
No way we could afford all the books if we wanted to play anyway...


Just for kicks though, if we wanted to try it, what would we need to get?

It depends on the game- some, the White Wolf stuff in particular (Vampire, Mage, etc), you'd be all set with a core book. D&D, it can be a little more complicated I think- I'll let somebody that knows better point you in the right direction. Cost can be a pain- I know they sell most in pdf form now, so it's a little cheaper I think.

I've never personally run a game, though I have a couple Vampire books kicking around. I played that a bit at college, but we had an inexperienced DM so he let us get away with murder, literally. My character was more or less singlehandedly responsible for the slaughter of an entire village. Good times!

There wasn't a reason for it, just because he thought it was funny. Yeah, he was kind of a dick.

[Kakumei]

"I bend down and look through the keyhole."

"Okay, you get a splinter in your eye because there is no fucking keyhole."

D&D with my brother and his friends was awesome; though I abhor the game now. Roleplaying with numbers is boring.

[Blueearth]

Okay, any discussion of non-video games had damn well better approach German board games. Carcassonne is still one of the funnest games I've ever played. If you have not tried it do so.

Settlers of Catan & variants FTW. I have a colleague who hosts gaming nights every so often and our favorites are usually Settlers and Puerto Rico.

[Black Starre]

"I bend down and look through the keyhole."

"Okay, you get a splinter in your eye because there is no fucking keyhole."

D&D with my brother and his friends was awesome; though I abhor the game now. Roleplaying with numbers is boring.

I believe that last is the philosophy behind a lot of the aforementioned WW games like Vampire: The Masquerade. They make you roll for a variety of things out of necessity, but the basic rule is if the DM thinks your character can do it, there's no need to roll; you just do it. This way you don't get sucked out of the game to add up dice rolls every 10 seconds.

What's interesting to me is that when you look at D&D a little bit, it's a lot clearer how VG RPGs came together- essentially doing the exact same things, just in the background.

[Kakumei]

I believe that last is the philosophy behind a lot of the aforementioned WW games like Vampire: The Masquerade. They make you roll for a variety of things out of necessity, but the basic rule is if the DM thinks your character can do it, there's no need to roll; you just do it. This way you don't get sucked out of the game to add up dice rolls every 10 seconds.

What's interesting to me is that when you look at D&D a little bit, it's a lot clearer how VG RPGs came together- essentially doing the exact same things, just in the background.

My brother tried to get me to play with him using that argument--"we roll less and not too often!"--but as far as I'm concerned, if you're rolling dice, using stats, numbers, all of that, you're not really roleplaying, you're just...playing a game.

[sgx]

I played Hero Quest and some Magic the Gathering...2nd edition to around 5th.

[Black Starre]

My brother tried to get me to play with him using that argument--"we roll less and not too often!"--but as far as I'm concerned, if you're rolling dice, using stats, numbers, all of that, you're not really roleplaying, you're just...playing a game.

Hm. I suppose that's true, but if you really want to roleplay, you're pretty much just going to act, aren't you?

For my part, I don't know that I ever actually roleplayed. I had a character and all that, and I had a sense of the personality of the character, but it was mostly just an excuse to be silly. I don't think I could do it with a serious group.

[Fire in the Hole]

I played Hero Quest and some Magic the Gathering...2nd edition to around 5th.

Hero Quest was amazingly fun.

Also, I'm not a particular fan of Settlers (a little too complicated to play and yet more restrictive than similar games), but Puerto Rico is great.

[Crazyonr1]

Heh, I was never much into D&D, but one summer durring a computer animation class, me and a few buds would play it durring lunch... after the teachers banned us from playing slapjack cause we were too loud

Good times though, good times

[Dhsu]

I had a friend who was at one point buying a new Euro game practically every week. We started with Settlers, and then began going through the BoardGameGeek list from the top. So over the year we burned ourselves out on...

Puerto Rico
Tigris & Euphrates
Power Grid
Caylus
Railroad Tycoon
Ticket to Ride
Shadows over Camelot
Robo Rally
Citadels
A Game of Thrones (+ expansions)
Twilight Imperium (+ expansion)
War of the Ring (actually never played this one, since it's pretty much 2-player)

Not to mention the occasional round of Apples to Apples. :P And right now we're in the middle of a PBEM game of Diplomacy (I got Italy ;_; ).

Before that, we played a few games of Battletech and Axis & Allies. We tried to run Star Wars and Shadowrun campaigns as well, but never got too far due to not having an experienced GM.

We've all vowed never to touch Warhammer though. :P

[Wintermute]

I DM a Forgotten Realms D&D campaign for my close friends at college. Some of the funnest times I've ever had have been around that table, mostly because I DM a game that's very casual and oriented around having fun rather than number crunching.

[Kutrayn]

Haha! Another Settlers of Catan player in our midst!

Anyway, I am yet another non-serious D&D player. I have an infamous character that people that know me cringe at. "Yeah, there's this strange dwarf dancin' with a cow by the shore. I don't know what odder; that he's dancin with a helpless cow or that the cow is the same ogre that's been terrorizin' the town."

"I am Mee. Can I have your pig?"
"...I don't have a pig."
"... ... ... Can I have it now?"
"I DON'T have a pig."
::mutters words::
"Yay! A pig!"
"Oink Oink Oink [I hate you]."

He seems to randomly show up in all of my campains in some way.







Great. Now I need to get another campain started up. That or I should continue the old one.

[kamoh]

I love board games...

...but not the complex stuff like D&D, Heroscape, even Settlers. I run the chess league, that should tell you something...

I'm a big sports nut though. I'll play just about anything once if it's free or payed for by my parents. I'm taking a year off of rugby right now, but will still play Australian football once the US season begins (we were 2005 Div. 2 National Champs - 2006 we tied for 3rd place in Div. 1). Sports department guru at my radio station, too.

[Amayirot Akago]

My brother is completely into Warhammer. I followed his example once, but quickly gave up cause of the (IMHO) complicated rules and hefty prices.

Also used to play Pokemon for a while; had quite a collection at one point, but since A) I could never beat my bro and B) out of neglect and boredom that phase quickly passed as well. I tossed all my Pokemon cards out to be recycled.

Lately tho, partially because of sometimes seeing ppl playing it at school, and partially cuz of my obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series I've expressed a slight interest in both YGO and MTG. Guess I should check out the Atomik (games/comics store) near where I live sometime.

Except of course I don't have anyone to play with...

[wormguy]

Settlers of Catan is an awesome game. Me and my friends play regularly. I have also been known to play some epic Diplomacy games.

[Arek the Absolute]

I had a friend who was at one point buying a new Euro game practically every week. We started with Settlers, and then began going through the BoardGameGeek list from the top. So over the year we burned ourselves out on...

Puerto Rico
Tigris & Euphrates
Power Grid
Caylus
Railroad Tycoon
Ticket to Ride
Shadows over Camelot
Robo Rally
Citadels
A Game of Thrones (+ expansions)
Twilight Imperium (+ expansion)
War of the Ring (actually never played this one, since it's pretty much 2-player)

Not to mention the occasional round of Apples to Apples. :P
How can you be missing pirates?! Ever since my trip to Berkeley, I have been exposed to every game on this list. All great fun, but god damn are each game *sans apples to apples* expensive.

[Black Mage]

Settlers of Catan is an awesome game. Me and my friends play regularly. I have also been known to play some epic Diplomacy games.

I've heard Catan is a good one, but I've anly really seen it at the mall in those board game kiosks that go up around Christmas.

[Dhsu]

How can you be missing pirates?! Ever since my trip to Berkeley, I have been exposed to every game on this list. All great fun, but god damn are each game *sans apples to apples* expensive.
Pirates is another game they bought that I watched but never really got the chance to play.

And yes, that's several hundred dollars' worth of games there.

[Bahamut]

Settlers of Catan is an awesome game. Me and my friends play regularly. I have also been known to play some epic Diplomacy games.

I played that game once - it was kinda fun. I've also played LotR Risk, and own the Nintendo Monopoly game (although that game is for meetup traveling).

I'd say the biggest thing I was into before though was competitive M:tG. My friends and I poured a ton of money into it and we'd have the cards to compete in Type II and Type 1.5. The only bad thing is that some of the people in the area had all the big Type I stuff so it was impossible to compete on their level :( .

[RealFolkBlues]

AD&D Second and A Half was a good deal of my genesis. Me and my best friends whiled away many an hour in my homeboy's basement calculating THAC0's, rolling for initiative, and so on. We experimented with some other systems (Imagine, Heroes Unlimited, etc.,) but Dragonlance was our mainstay. Eventually that pretty much ended though, since I was the main DM and got sick of dealing with the BS. Mainly, that is, one of my friends had just become the worst rules lawyer ever, and when I DM, I powertrip something awful and cease to give a flying fuck about the so-called rules. Didn't help that me and another of our regulars were horribly ADD. I do have many, many fond memories, though.

As for CCG's, played MtG waaaaayyy back in the day, and stopped playing after Ice Age. I realized how silly they were at that point (anyone with more money and time to invest in collection will whip your ass every match,) and haven't really tried any others since.

Played Warhammer (Chaos) and 40K (Termanids) for a brief period, then realized what a rip off those games are, too. So much money.

Still love games like Illuminati and Munchkin. If you've got the time for role-playing, you definitely have the time for Steve Jackson games.

Pretty much the only geeky things I think I've never done have been LARPing and going to a con. Good times.

Thus ends my long ass post. Sorry guys.

[Black Starre]

As for CCG's, played MtG waaaaayyy back in the day, and stopped playing after Ice Age. I realized how silly they were at that point (anyone with more money and time to invest in collection will whip your ass every match,) and haven't really tried any others since.

That's the problem with the tourney/non-casual scene. But, they do a pretty decent job of keeping things reined in these days via the different formats. You can go to a competitive event where everyone spends the same amount and builds decks there, and it's a level playing field. Of course, you need to know how to put together a deck that way, so it really isn't quite level- but it isn't about the money at that point. But, if you're trying to play constructed competitively, yeah, you're gonna need to drop a lot of cash. Hence why I don't play competitively. ;)

Course I still have managed to drop a lot of cash, but it's just a trade-off. Instead of a weekly movie night or what, we usually have MTG nights, which over time costs the same amount- sometimes more, sometimes less, but thus far I've been happy spending the amount I have compared to the entertainment I've gotten out of it, so I'm happy. I wouldn't call it silly outright, though, I guess is my point- it isn't entirely about money, though again you do need to be willing to buy some things.

Somebody was saying they were thinking of getting into either YGO or MTG- I haven't played YGO paper, though I've played a GBA cart of it just to see what it was like. From what I can tell, I'd definitely stick with MTG. YGO is less complicated, but it feels like less of a game to me as a result- but maybe things have changed with that. I used to view YGO as sort of an entry-level MTG but it costs just as much as MTG and I don't know if it gives as much in return yet. But that's just IMO. The GBA game was fun, though.

But YGO is less complex, and MTG results in a lot more rules stickiness- but, deviant that I am I actually enjoy figuring that stuff out. If there was money in it, I'd try to get judge certified, but I don't think I could do anything locally so it isn't yet worth my time.

And I'm with whoever said they vowed to avoid Warhammer- for me, though, there's not even a real temptation (thankfully). I don't have much disposable income (further proof that one can do MtG on a limited budget), and I am definitely not going to get into painting figures, though I admit some cool results can come of that. But for me, just can't do it. The collector in me dug Mage Knight, though, what with the work already done.

[The Phalanx]

God, those D&D games sound so wicked.

Too bad it's just my and my younger brother over here D:
No way we could afford all the books if we wanted to play anyway...


Just for kicks though, if we wanted to try it, what would we need to get?

http://www.d20srd.com


All your basic needs for D&D. They've intergrated the 3 core books, and have included a couple of things from the Player's Handbook 2 and probably more of the Monster Manuals. Its all very base, though, and doesn't usually have descriptions of monsters and suchlike, but its good enough to get by.

[suzumebachi]

I used to play MTG back in high school. In fact I was even a "guru" for a while (Wizards gave me free shit to hand out to people to get them involved in MTG-- most of which I kept for myself or just gave to my MTG nerd friends). But I never crossed the line into pen & paper RPing... something about losing the last bit of dignity I had scared me out of it (especially after watching other ubernerds orgasm over it-- good lord).

[Dhsu]

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/4116/tulsagifmap0ic3.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Freaking epic.

P.S. I'm Italy.

[KWarp]

I haven't delved into board games for a while, although I'll probably start making them if I want to be a game designer. >.>