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Author Topic: Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?  (Read 16770 times)

jeff37923

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #15 on: April 04, 2015, 11:11:11 PM »
Quote from: Simlasa;824013
There was a group of Vampire fans who pretty much took over a coffeehose I used to go to. They annoyed the crap out of everyone but I associated their disfunction more with the fact that the bulk of them were 'thespians' in the Theater dept. at the university across the street.


I remember being at NorWesCon in Everett when I was going to college in Seattle (around about 1994). The Camarilla was there LARPing and the participants decided that you could gain points by annoying the mundanes (mundanes being defined as anyone not involved in the LARP). I'm trying to get to the video room where they were playing the current season of Red Dwarf being broadcast from the UK and the hallways were packed. This guy steps in front of me and crosses his arms while saying, "I'm obfuscating!" with a dopey grin on his face. I said excuse me and tried to walk around him, he stepped in my way again. I tried walking around him a third time and he stepped in my way again. Now I don't know what he expected me to do, but I put him in a bear hug, lifted him off his feet, and moved him over to the other side of the hallway. Then I went to the video room.

Saw the guy a couple more times that weekend, but he always shied away from me after that.
"Meh."

jeff37923

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #16 on: April 04, 2015, 11:12:44 PM »
Quote from: Nexus;824017
My friend who's trying to run GURPS: Transhuman Space has run headlong into that. It drives her out of her tree.


Tell her that when she advertises the game, call it cyberpunk instead of transhumanist so she will get a different type of Player.
"Meh."

Simlasa

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #17 on: April 04, 2015, 11:39:59 PM »
Quote from: Snowman0147;824021
I seen people who cut open the tips of their fingers to shove magnets into them and stitch back their fingers.  I am not fucking lying about that and I wish I was.  That is some mess up people in real life.  How is that for transhumanism wankers?
Sure... but my question was about whether those are fans of the RPGs or non-gamer transhumanist fans.
I've seen some pretty wacky vampire-wannabes who aren't gamers... swapping blood and getting fang implants. Survivalist nutters with hard-ons for the apocalypse... stockpiling weapons and paranoia. None are gamers and didn't have much influence on my game interests.

Panjumanju

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #18 on: April 05, 2015, 12:14:57 AM »
I don't know if we're a little behind cultural movements in Canada - because it seems like this happened a lot earlier to other people, but around the end of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and the beginning of Pathfinder, a splat-book-heavy power-gamey "I'm better than you because my character is superiour, and I express my superiority over you (even while I feel like a failure in real life)" culture took over a few of my gaming circles, and soured me on Dungeons & Dragons for years.

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Thornhammer

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #19 on: April 05, 2015, 12:16:27 AM »
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;823991
1) During the Clinton Administration the White Wolf WoD games crushed all other role-playing around my Illinois college town. I very quickly grew very sick of the whole damn thing. It didn't help that the local LARP was very serious, very hardcore, almost "Cultish". The local WW fans all chain-smoked too, (It was part of this whole insufferable "We're the cool nerds" attitude) which made playing with them unpleasant and later, as my health declined, impossible.


Which Illinois college town was this?  It sounds awful familiar.

Doughdee222

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #20 on: April 05, 2015, 12:35:56 AM »
99% no, as I don't care what the fanbase says or does. However that 1%... I too have run into Vampire players who turn me off of the game. Although half of that is just the game itself, I'm really not that hot on playing a vampire and such.

What turns me off even more is going to a convention and seeing teenagers who have been into RPGs for two or three years and they think they are God's-gift to gaming. A whole lotta WoW players were like that too.

On second thought... there were those "2nd American Revolution" guys who were so right-wing they truly believed a second Civil War is what America needs. Yuck, I hope I never encounter their kind again.

So maybe that's 95% no, or 90%.

Bren

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #21 on: April 05, 2015, 01:05:11 AM »
Quote from: Panjumanju;824034
I don't know if we're a little behind cultural movements in Canada - because it seems like this happened a lot earlier to other people, but around the end of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and the beginning of Pathfinder, a splat-book-heavy power-gamey "I'm better than you because my character is superiour, and I express my superiority over you (even while I feel like a failure in real life)" culture took over a few of my gaming circles, and soured me on Dungeons & Dragons for years.

//Panjumanju
While it's possible that this occurred later in the great white north than it did down here below the 48th parallel, those sorts of players have been around since at least the 1970s. Consider yourself lucky you didn't experience them sooner.
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Panjumanju

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #22 on: April 05, 2015, 01:07:50 AM »
Quote from: Bren;824045
While it's possible that this occurred later in the great white north than it did down here below the 48th parallel, those sorts of players have been around since at least the 1970s. Consider yourself lucky you didn't experience them sooner.

Then it was probably just the tides of regional taste changing. I try to stay mindful of larger cultural shifts - maybe this wasn't the reaches of a wave towards that kind of play.

I'm glad I didn't experience it much, and it seems to have calmed down, now.

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Bren

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #23 on: April 05, 2015, 01:24:20 AM »
Quote from: Panjumanju;824047
Then it was probably just the tides of regional taste changing. I try to stay mindful of larger cultural shifts - maybe this wasn't the reaches of a wave towards that kind of play.

I'm glad I didn't experience it much, and it seems to have calmed down, now.

//Panjumanju
That would be nice. Nobody but you and the peeps you game with cares what level your character in somebody else's campaign is.

Munchkins who want to harangue strangers with a god awfully boring listing of their character's levels and magic items are one reason that I almost always  avoid my character, your character sharing discussions. On the plus side, for a lot of people I think that is a phase they may one day grow out of.
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nDervish

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #24 on: April 05, 2015, 07:14:03 AM »
Not as such, no. I can't recall ever being in a position of thinking "I would be interested in this game... but its fans are a bunch of wankers who I don't want to have to deal with, so I'll pass on it."

However, there are certain groups of people within the broader RPG community who I find insufferable and whose tastes in gaming are distinctly different from mine, so, when I see that this bunch of wankers are into a certain game, then I can be pretty sure that it's a game which I wouldn't have been interested in in the first place.

TristramEvans

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #25 on: April 05, 2015, 09:03:08 AM »
I have a hard time understanding this position really. I mean, you don't have to play with any of these people. I like my gaming groups. And if I like a game, that's the people I'll be playing it with. And the game will be what we want it to be, I feel no pressure to play "correctly", whatever that means. I've gamed long enough to know what my preference are, I've accumulated like-minded friends (sure there's some compromises, but that's always true), and I evaluate a game in terms of its system and its setting. I cannot see a "fanbase" of any kind affecting these things.
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Nexus

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #26 on: April 05, 2015, 09:45:48 AM »
Quote from: Simlasa;824018
How so? I've seen some far out quasi-religious stuff from transhumanists but not in connection to any of the RPGs.

Going from what she's said the fans she's interacted with have held the whole Transhumanist thing to close to the same level of nearly religious reverence: seeing science as a magic wand that is going to fix everything so it should never be moderated, handled with consideration or any thought given to possible consequences (that makes you Luddite/Frightened Caveman).

Seemingly can't can't stand even the notion that some of the "transhumanist" ideas (Human level AI, the "Singularity", etc etc) might not be possible and act like you're casting aspersions on their religion if you mention it, can't conceive of why anyone might find some of the Transhumanist ideas, at least as presented in rpgs creepy and disturbing (like people killing themselves so they can "upload" a copy of themselves into a computer) and just generally seeming both detached from reality and extremely arrogant.

She's gone on at length.... :D

It practically killed her interest in the game, but she's keeping on as her players are enjoying the campaign at the moment.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2015, 09:50:37 AM by Nexus »
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Doctor Jest

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #27 on: April 05, 2015, 11:59:59 AM »
Quote from: Thornhammer;824035
Which Illinois college town was this?  It sounds awful familiar.


It happened outside of Illinois college towns, as well. It permeated the entire Chicagoland area. It still has a small but determined presence, but pathfinder seems to have supplanted it.

Cave Bear

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #28 on: April 05, 2015, 12:07:55 PM »
Warhammer:
I used to be part of a gaming group by Itaewon (South Korea) with a couple of ARMY guys. I will never play Warhammer or any game associated with Warhammer because of these fuckers.
One. I haven't taken the time to memorize every little detail of this setting. I don't know every single peculiarity of all these Space Marine chapters and I'm not up on all the political and historical events. You're going to have to explain things to me. Or better yet don't, because I don't care any more.
Two. Didn't this game start out as British satire in the eighties? You guys need to stop taking this shit so seriously.
Three. I don't have the money or the time to buy and paint these goddamned little men. Quit badgering me.

White Wolf Games:
I was in a Werewolf LARP during college, and in a Vampire game briefly.
One. You sold me on a game of personal horror and dramatic story telling, and all I got was furry super-heroes with katanas and desert-eagles.
Two. You sold me on a game of personal horror and dramatic story telling, and all I got was three hours of Vampire-Monopoly.
Three. You all look ridiculous playing Rock-Paper-Scissors in those costumes.
Four. Thanks for dumping all this back story on me the last hour. Now what was it that I'm actually supposed to do in this game?

Pathfinder:
One. I've played 3.5 before, it's garbage.
Two. Call me a 4ron all you like when we're on the internet, but leave me alone when I'm in the gaming store. I didn't come into this FLGS to start an edition war; I came in here to buy the new book, and hang up a flier for an upcoming game that needs players. Do not fucking come up to me and start blathering on about how "4E is a dumbed-down board-game and a ripoff of Warcraft for babies" because I didn't come to this store to talk to you, and do not touch my fucking fliers.
Motherfucking Pathfinder cunts tearing down my goddamn fliers despite the store owner telling me it's cool to put these up.

ggroy

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Has a game's fanbase ever put you off playing it?
« Reply #29 on: April 05, 2015, 12:15:56 PM »
Quote from: Nexus;824096
Seemingly can't can't stand even the notion that some of the "transhumanist" ideas (Human level AI, the "Singularity", etc etc) might not be possible and act like you're casting aspersions on their religion if you mention it, can't conceive of why anyone might find some of the Transhumanist ideas, at least as presented in rpgs creepy and disturbing (like people killing themselves so they can "upload" a copy of themselves into a computer) and just generally seeming both detached from reality and extremely arrogant.


I've know some individuals offline who were like this.

The one question which really got on their nerves:  Is P = NP ?  :pundit:

:banghead: