Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Over the years we have all heard, or witnessed personally, problems within various gaming groups. Whether it is a breakdown in communication, a difference of play styles, cheating, poor sportsmanship, or simply a difficult individual.

I am doing some research for an upcoming show. I am interested in stories where you have had a problem with one or more players in your regular gaming group. This is NOT stories about terrible experiences during tournaments or events. Gaming group issues tend to involve long standing friendships and have more complications.

Without naming names or upsetting any friends you may have on this forum, can you tell me:

What was the problem you experienced with the group or individual?

Can you provide at least one example of how this played out in your group?

What did you, or someone else in the group do about the situation?

What was the end result of the actions your or another took?

Thanks!

At an older gaming group I went to, typically poor sportsmanship was incredibly common.

Everybody's armies were poorly painted and taken care of, and proxies were normal. If I politely asked for a gaming using WYSIWYG or fully painted models (two things that make 40k far more enjoyable in my experience) I would be flamed, and refused a game for the rest of the day, and usually weekend if I came in more than once.

Whenever I brought something that I might consider to be a strong list (and by strong I mean a list with synergies and a common goal in mind), I would get attacked by people calling it 'overpowered' and flaming me for that. Once I had an opponent who called a dreadnought overpowered, because it blew up his rhino with a multimelta. Situations like these were followed by thrown dice and occasionally literal tears from the parties affected by my models who did their job.

Additionally, once I had the audacity to play a campaign with the guys there. The GM was playing his tyranids allied with IG (this was before GC were represented), I played my Space Wolves. In the end, his patriach had a primarchs statline and the genestealers had a 3+ invuln.

I've got something brewing at my club.

Basically, one guy had a bad breakup with his GF, said GF started dating another 40k player, and they want to come play at our same club night with the former BF.

She and her new BF showed up for about an hour, and didn't even exchange words with the ex, from what I could tell, but after they left he had a pretty massive hissy fit on FB, both in public and in private to me (I'm one of the senior group members, and I sold the GF some bits, so I guess he thought I was somehow responsible).

So, now they want to come play, and he is taking a great affront to it.

I personally couldn't care less for this kind of middle skool bs, but still, it's the situation where two people who really don't like each other want to come play, and I honestly have zero idea how to address it, or even if I should.

Part of me wants to sit back with some popcorn, but the more practical part of me wants the club to be a fun and easy place for everyone to play.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
I've got something brewing at my club.

Basically, one guy had a bad breakup with his GF, said GF started dating another 40k player, and they want to come play at our same club night with the former BF.

She and her new BF showed up for about an hour, and didn't even exchange words with the ex, from what I could tell, but after they left he had a pretty massive hissy fit on FB, both in public and in private to me (I'm one of the senior group members, and I sold the GF some bits, so I guess he thought I was somehow responsible).

So, now they want to come play, and he is taking a great affront to it.

I personally couldn't care less for this kind of middle skool bs, but still, it's the situation where two people who really don't like each other want to come play, and I honestly have zero idea how to address it, or even if I should.

Part of me wants to sit back with some popcorn, but the more practical part of me wants the club to be a fun and easy place for everyone to play.

Great feedback - thanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
At an older gaming group I went to, typically poor sportsmanship was incredibly common.

Everybody's armies were poorly painted and taken care of, and proxies were normal. If I politely asked for a gaming using WYSIWYG or fully painted models (two things that make 40k far more enjoyable in my experience) I would be flamed, and refused a game for the rest of the day, and usually weekend if I came in more than once.

Whenever I brought something that I might consider to be a strong list (and by strong I mean a list with synergies and a common goal in mind), I would get attacked by people calling it 'overpowered' and flaming me for that. Once I had an opponent who called a dreadnought overpowered, because it blew up his rhino with a multimelta. Situations like these were followed by thrown dice and occasionally literal tears from the parties affected by my models who did their job.

Additionally, once I had the audacity to play a campaign with the guys there. The GM was playing his tyranids allied with IG (this was before GC were represented), I played my Space Wolves. In the end, his patriach had a primarchs statline and the genestealers had a 3+ invuln.

How did you go about trying to resolve the situation - and what happened in the end?

We had a player at our gaming club who would routinely cheat.

Some people would call him out on it, others would make excuses for him (he would claim ignorance of the correct rules when called out - however he would then go back to playing it incorrectly again and he only had one army) to avoid conflict.

It came to a head when we declared that all army lists for the club tournament would be vetted in advance.

After three failed attempts to create a legal army list he quit in a huff and we saw much less of him.

3 incidents two I heard about first hand the other happened to me

The first is in reguards to a power gamer that plays tau and always magically gets games that are maker and anvil deployment. Just a general that guy.

To counter it the group came up with a turbo counter list and just utterly steam rolled him any time he started acting up.


Another was at a FLGS my friend used to go to, apparently there was another guy that was a major that guy and it was actually to the point of it was causing other people not to want to play there. My friend ended up telling the store owner why he stopped playing there all the time. Store owner basically said, "what?!? That's why you loosing business?!?" Pointed to the that guy, "you! Get your gak and get out your banned from this store." Business picked up again.


Last one is a counter to any that power gamer army. It's more a theoretical have not seen it done but.

If you have a that guy power gamer, you know the one, wraith knights are totally balanced. Play a 1850 game with them and field nothing but cultists.

Sure they are gonna win, but they are gonna hate their lives for the next 6 hours as each cultist turn is gonna take 45 min +

 cvtuttle wrote:
Over the years we have all heard, or witnessed personally, problems within various gaming groups. Whether it is a breakdown in communication, a difference of play styles, cheating, poor sportsmanship, or simply a difficult individual.

I am doing some research for an upcoming show. I am interested in stories where you have had a problem with one or more players in your regular gaming group. This is NOT stories about terrible experiences during tournaments or events. Gaming group issues tend to involve long standing friendships and have more complications.

Without naming names or upsetting any friends you may have on this forum, can you tell me:

What was the problem you experienced with the group or individual?

Can you provide at least one example of how this played out in your group?

What did you, or someone else in the group do about the situation?

What was the end result of the actions your or another took?

Thanks!

I had a friend that I played a bunch of games with; Warhammer 40k when we were younger, and D&D when we were older. The problems happened practically from the start, but the end result didn't really finalise until a few years ago.

#1 - This person was a cheater and a difficult individual. He constantly made fun of others, and made very inappropriate jokes. Most of the time these were just jokes, but it was hard to see where he was joking and where he was serious. Cheating-wise, he would often miscalculate, misstate, or outright fabricate points costs and rules.

#2 - This would often play out as being domineering during a game (which was fine, because he was smart, and it pushed others to play better), but also in having to constantly go back and check rules all the time, often with heated debates. As kids, we joked that we only got into these rules discussions whenever someone walked around, but they were frequent enough that I'm sure it pushed others away from the hobby. The biggest and worst offence that our group makes fun of, and will likely make fun of forever more, was during D&D. I was DM'ing, and his character always seemed to have the right item or spell prepared or money available to do whatever was needed. It was a large enough group, and I really don't have the time or the mental resources to track everything. Rather than using pencil and paper like everyone else, he insisted on using his computer, which was often closed, with his rules and character info in his memory. In this instance, I tell him that his character takes a certain amount of damage. He says "okay". I tell him to make sure to mark it down, as everyone was feeling similarly (the game had devolved largely into what he and one other character did in this 6-person group). He says "I did mark it down.". I said "no, you didn't, we were all just watching you, you didn't mark it down".

#3 - Caught absolutely red-handed, he demanded that he had, in fact, marked it down, despite every single person in the room seeing that, no, he had not done so. After so long of doing it, I just said "You know what? Okay, you marked it down. You get all the gold, and defeat every bad guy. You win at D&D. Want to play again? Yes? Okay, you win again. Congrats. I can start another campaign. You win that too. Is this fun?"

#4 - That pretty much ended our play sessions together in our group. Unfortunately, he then further alienated himself from the group when he made fun of another friend who was facing the very real possibility of having contracted AIDS. After that, the group dropped him completely.

It's unfortunate, because that happened only three years ago when I was in my late 20's, but we had been friends since Grade 6.

 Yarium wrote:

 cvtuttle wrote:
Over the years we have all heard, or witnessed personally, problems within various gaming groups. Whether it is a breakdown in communication, a difference of play styles, cheating, poor sportsmanship, or simply a difficult individual.

I am doing some research for an upcoming show. I am interested in stories where you have had a problem with one or more players in your regular gaming group. This is NOT stories about terrible experiences during tournaments or events. Gaming group issues tend to involve long standing friendships and have more complications.

Without naming names or upsetting any friends you may have on this forum, can you tell me:

What was the problem you experienced with the group or individual?

Can you provide at least one example of how this played out in your group?

What did you, or someone else in the group do about the situation?

What was the end result of the actions your or another took?

Thanks!

I had a friend that I played a bunch of games with; Warhammer 40k when we were younger, and D&D when we were older. The problems happened practically from the start, but the end result didn't really finalise until a few years ago.

#1 - This person was a cheater and a difficult individual. He constantly made fun of others, and made very inappropriate jokes. Most of the time these were just jokes, but it was hard to see where he was joking and where he was serious. Cheating-wise, he would often miscalculate, misstate, or outright fabricate points costs and rules.

#2 - This would often play out as being domineering during a game (which was fine, because he was smart, and it pushed others to play better), but also in having to constantly go back and check rules all the time, often with heated debates. As kids, we joked that we only got into these rules discussions whenever someone walked around, but they were frequent enough that I'm sure it pushed others away from the hobby. The biggest and worst offence that our group makes fun of, and will likely make fun of forever more, was during D&D. I was DM'ing, and his character always seemed to have the right item or spell prepared or money available to do whatever was needed. It was a large enough group, and I really don't have the time or the mental resources to track everything. Rather than using pencil and paper like everyone else, he insisted on using his computer, which was often closed, with his rules and character info in his memory. In this instance, I tell him that his character takes a certain amount of damage. He says "okay". I tell him to make sure to mark it down, as everyone was feeling similarly (the game had devolved largely into what he and one other character did in this 6-person group). He says "I did mark it down.". I said "no, you didn't, we were all just watching you, you didn't mark it down".

#3 - Caught absolutely red-handed, he demanded that he had, in fact, marked it down, despite every single person in the room seeing that, no, he had not done so. After so long of doing it, I just said "You know what? Okay, you marked it down. You get all the gold, and defeat every bad guy. You win at D&D. Want to play again? Yes? Okay, you win again. Congrats. I can start another campaign. You win that too. Is this fun?"

#4 - That pretty much ended our play sessions together in our group. Unfortunately, he then further alienated himself from the group when he made fun of another friend who was facing the very real possibility of having contracted AIDS. After that, the group dropped him completely.

It's unfortunate, because that happened only three years ago when I was in my late 20's, but we had been friends since Grade 6.

Thanks for sharing this story. Sorry it ended that way.

If you don't mind me asking, when you "dropped him from your group" - did you have a frank discussion with him about the problem and why he was no longer welcome? or did you simply stop inviting him?

If you did have the discussion with him - how did that go?

 cvtuttle wrote:
Thanks for sharing this story. Sorry it ended that way.

If you don't mind me asking, when you "dropped him from your group" - did you have a frank discussion with him about the problem and why he was no longer welcome? or did you simply stop inviting him?

If you did have the discussion with him - how did that go?

Quite honestly, no we didn't. I'd love to say that we sat down with him and hashed things out. I'm really good at discussing things with people without getting upset, and normally it would be a point of pride for me to say that this situation was no different, but unfortunately, it was different. This guy... he was a bully. Yeah, we were friends since Grade 6, but we first got to know each other because he bullied me. I think I was one of the few people that would put up with enough bull that I could see through it to the other side. Most of the time I was the guy defending him. "He's a bit rough, but when you really need him, he's the first one there for you." is what I said.

It hurt to separate him from the group, but over the years, and I've wracked myself with guilt and second-guessing many times over it. However, over time, I've seen it being the right choice. Everyone's been happier, more supportive of each other, and more able to bring new people into the group too. Many of us have found significant others who were, frankly, fearful or intimidated being around him and so wouldn't attend our group's get-togethers because of it, and they do come around now because they know they don't have to deal with him.

I saw him again this past year at another gaming thing, and I tried to say sorry and to say that it was water under the bridge, but he said he didn't understand. That either means that he didn't realize that we avoided him, or he was completely unrepentant. I have another friend, a nurse at a psychological institution, that says all of this guy's tendencies fit the definition of a psychopath. If I see the guy, I'm not worried, because he will ignore what happened, but yeah, it's tough and strange to see someone like that whom you've known for half your life, and see them like you don't even know them.

A recent one, but not terribly severe.


Big siege battle of 4 vs 4. The attacking team (expecially one guy) had a fit due to the sheer number of fortifications the defenders had (3 Firestorm redouts, 1 Aquila Strong point, 2 bastions, 1 void shield generator and plenty of trenchs ).

It was getting so bad that many (including some on the defending team) were wanting to call the game off due to the... "outburst".


One guy simply couldn't wrap his head around the fact that Bunkers, and Firestorm Redouts (as well as the Fortress of Redepmtion and its pieces) all had 14 armor, not to mention the fact he went nuts when we told him the Aquila Strongpoint has armor 15. "How does a bunker have more armor than a tank!" he cried.... we tried to explain what a bunker was..... but that didn't work.

Eventually we had to just yell at him to shut up and move on. The game went on and ended a draw.,

 cvtuttle wrote:
Over the years we have all heard, or witnessed personally, problems within various gaming groups. Whether it is a breakdown in communication, a difference of play styles, cheating, poor sportsmanship, or simply a difficult individual.

I am doing some research for an upcoming show. I am interested in stories where you have had a problem with one or more players in your regular gaming group. This is NOT stories about terrible experiences during tournaments or events. Gaming group issues tend to involve long standing friendships and have more complications.

Without naming names or upsetting any friends you may have on this forum, can you tell me:

What was the problem you experienced with the group or individual?

Can you provide at least one example of how this played out in your group?

What did you, or someone else in the group do about the situation?

What was the end result of the actions your or another took?

Thanks!

The trouble we had in our group quite a while ago was when we attempted to form our gaming club. I guided the discussion but it was another player who originally came up with the idea. Because he kind of was the genesis of our ideas initially he felt he ought to have some leadership role in it despite what many of us felt was a distinct lack of common sense and he talked badly of the game in any event at times so it was a bad fit for a leader but we felt compelled to allow it. So he, I and two others who were his friends were ultimately elected to lead the group and organize things.

Well... in our meetins to organize the club, he had some pretty unrealistic ideas including how much he wanted our club shirts to cost (he wanted $50 shirts) and who would control the club funds. Three of us definitely did not want it in his hands, but he didn't want it in mine (mostly being petulant because i was not allowing him to charge club mmebers essentially $70 to participate including their shirts) so we opted to put it in my control and one of his friends. With my own money, I bought the club shirts just to end the debate, so we could sell them for less, as I was ultimately put in charge of the shirts and a korum could never be reached. it was a nightmare scenario, and as long as he was in the organizing group it was never going to go well. Making matters worse, the website we use for our forum changed owners to keep it active as the old owner didn't want to deal with maintaining it. So the new owner gave our crazy member admin priveleges which he promptly abused, going as far as to alter peoples posts! He was just out of control.

So I made a unilateral decision to speak to the members and basically just asked them to make me the President and do away with the "Council of Four" we originally created. In the process, of course the other three rebelled and disappeared. it was very acrimonious and ultimately doomed as soon as he was involved but we tried to make it work for a while. His obstinant and sometimes very irrational behavior and the difficulty of getting ahold of him just made it impossible.

I've got a little situation brewing locally.

First, a little backstory:

Our FLGS has just recently come under new management and the new management is VERY excited about the 40k, Sigmar, and Blood Bowl franchises and wants them to be played at the store. They've invested A LOT of money into tabletops and terrain for 40k specifically and are trying to get Sigmar more present in the local gaming community as well.
I've been volunteering to run the events, which to-date have only been a couple of Kill Team tournaments for the newer players to get their feet wet in the game. This month (next weekend, actually) I'm hosing the first 'real' (as in non-Kill Team) tournament, but with an eye toward our new playerbase and knowing many do not have large collections, it's going to be a 500 point, Sunday afternoon affair. After the first of the year we're going to expand into larger tournaments with regular Kill Team games and events as well.

Our last kill team event had 8 participants, with me being a ringer for a 9th player had we had one more show up. The store is also very happy to provide store credit for those participating and even brings in free pizza for the participants to munch on. Overall it's a pretty swanky place to play and we have a great blend of veteran and new players participating.

Now, with that out of the way, we encounter the wrinkle.

One of the more veteran players is, how to put this, off-putting. He is friendly enough, on the outset, but he's just got an air of overconfidence (far more than he needs to have) and tends to just have TFG behavior qualities.

He and I both work in similar fields, (I'm Law Enforcement, Police specifically, and he's in Corrections/Jail side) and he loves to compare our work and insinuate that his job is more dangerous and thusly he is 'more badass' than anyone else in the room. It's, in a word, grating. I've had two of our new players (both brand new to the hobby) come to me and say they really didn't enjoy playing him, and found the games with him frustrating and just not fun. He's fast and loose with the rules, especially with new players who are still learning, and when they ask what something is or what rule he's referencing, he brushes them off and keeps on trucking. This has been the main source of frustration I've been hearing about from folks.

Secondly, he has a rather unusual habit of inserting himself into a conversation that does not include him. This isn't a terribly big deal on occasion, especially to interject something in general conversation, but it happens more frequently than what would be considered normal. This includes going off on tangents such as trying to explain to a new player the difference between a glancing and penetrating hit by pulling up video on youtube on his phone of the movie Fury (WW2 Tank film for any unfamiliar) and spending 15 minutes going over the nuance of something that shouldn't take more than about a minute to explain to someone. Again, this example being what I mean when I use the word: Grating.

Speaking from personal experience, the first time I played him (a while back) I brought my Vostroyan Guard with no Lords of War featuring a smattering of allied Blood Angels built to be battleforged and a take-all-comers list. I had told him what I was bringing (Guard + Allied Blood Angels) and told him to bring a 1500 point list of his preference, knowing he had Tempestus Scions and a few other fun things for allies, but mentioning that I would not be bringing any Lord of War/Superheavies to the game and asked him to abstain from Lords of War also if he wouldn't mind.

On the afternoon we meet to play, he plops a few squads of Scions and a couple of Taroxes (Tauroxi?) and then proudly sets a Knight on the tabletop. I give his a rather incredulous look and comment that I was under the impression that no Lords of War would be brought in, and he triumphantly says it's not a Lord of War but an allied detachment of one Knight. I shrug, as he is correct, and we proceed to play. I had no real answer for a superheavy in my list, consisting mostly of 4 Leman Russes, some Chimera Veteran Squads and light artillery, backed up by a few Blood Angels Tacticals in a Rhino and a Command Squad + HQ. I managed to pull a very close win thanks to some lucky Malestrom objectives. Overall it was a grating game, as he was very quick to throw his knight at my lines and laugh as it carved tank after tank up, preening over his 'tactical acumen'. I managed to knock it down to 3 hull points which gave me the winning victory point and which irked him far more than he wanted to let on as he was expecting an easy victory while his knight carved and stomped its way through my force. Thankfully the run away and feed chaff to the big thing while you kill everything else on the board and take objectives worked out for me.

This weekend, if he shows up and begins his antics, I'm going to pull him aside and explain to him that he needs to straighten up and fly right or he's going to find out what it feels like to not have anyone want to play him.

I'll pause and note that I don't personally dislike the guy, I have nothing against him, and do respect what he does for a living and who he is. I just want to see him step down off the proverbial pedestal he's standing on and try to be a little less TFG/Grating and a little more genuine and easy going. He is fairly respectful, but it's one of those things where you just have to say "You have to have seen the type" to fully understand his personality.

If there's any update in the future I'll be sure to let folks know. In the mean time, take it easy for now folks.

-Red__Thirst-

I remember when I was first starting out, I was part of a gaming group that always sent teams to the adepticon team tournament. It was their big thing, something that they prepared for all year and loved. The first two teams were "A" teams that were super competitive and focused on winning. They were fun guys, it was just well known that they were there to win so you only got in on those teams if you were ready to throw down. This was back in 5th, so lots of GK's, IG leafblower, etc.

Well, that year a few of us less skilled members decided we were going to make a team 3. We knew our odds of winning were low, as none of use were very good at the time, but we knew we'd have fun, the two other teams were fun to hang out with, and we knew once we lost a game or two we'd funnel down into the weaker bracket.

Except for one problem. Nobody could make up their minds about anything. We couldn't figure out what armies we were taking. We couldn't figure out who was going to do what. There were points where we weren't even sure who was going to be on what team (If I remember right, a 4th team tried to start up at one point and I got caught up in a bidding war as the 4th man between them)

It absolutely fell apart, and I didn't end up going at all. Some of the others went and played single events, but team 3 never even made it to the slot reservation. I never got to go to Adepticon and I still think that event has something to do with why I've never gone. It also never helps that I can't get time off to go most years and I couldn't afford it if I wanted to.

Shame, it sounds like a lot of fun too.

Only a very small thing, but one guy cant ever seem to get a scatter right. My group does this thing where the shooter rolls the dice and the defender holds the template for them - kind of a trust thing I guess. Only problem is one guy is rather difficult to communicate with that it should land smack-bang on two of his tanks instead of a close miss.

Something along the lines of "left a bit... More... More... More..." Etc.

Only thing is I'm not 100% sure if he's doing it on purpose or just has terrible depth perception. Doing your own scatter doesn't 100% works as he'll disagree (not aggressively) with my placement of the scatter.

 hippyjr wrote:
Only a very small thing, but one guy cant ever seem to get a scatter right. My group does this thing where the shooter rolls the dice and the defender holds the template for them - kind of a trust thing I guess. Only problem is one guy is rather difficult to communicate with that it should land smack-bang on two of his tanks instead of a close miss.

Something along the lines of "left a bit... More... More... More..." Etc.

Only thing is I'm not 100% sure if he's doing it on purpose or just has terrible depth perception. Doing your own scatter doesn't 100% works as he'll disagree (not aggressively) with my placement of the scatter.

Roll the dice next to the unit. It removes a lot of the parallax error.

We have one player who has a number of issues with respect for his opponent's enjoyment. He isn't the most competitive player at the club, and a number of the more experienced tournament players have a very high winrate against him.

It's a combination of annoying modeling practices (he will regularly model for advantage in obnoxious ways, such as gluing all the HBs on one side of an imperial bastion, or modeling his sentinels crouching and his custom-built promethium pipes really tall to get them hiding out of line of sight.), annoying listbuilding practices (his default list is full competitive gladius, but he'll happily also heavily tailor anytime he knows what his opponent brings. An ork or tyranid player will face 20+ imperial guard flamers behind a promethium relay) and annoying attitude (hes one of those players who complains profusely about any die roll not favoring himself, even when its completely even or in his favor. If he rolls 6 3+ armor saves and fails 2, he will groan, roll his eyes, and mutter "of course" before begrudgingly picking up two guys and trying to sneakily swap the one with the special weapon farther back)


The solution was a pretty natural one: Most of the players at this point have some sort of "personal beef" with the dude that they aren't going to bring up, but which just means they'll not play him in the future. He dosn't have a game probably 2/3rds of the time. The only lingering problem is that he has turned off new players from ever coming back once or twice, when he's pulled the same crap on them.

Had one player who we all new routinely brought more points, "misinterpreted" the rule to his benefit, picked up dice before anybody else could see the results, and just generally cheating.

Things finally came to an end after a Necromunda game (his campaign rolls had already come under suspicion multiple times) where one of his gang members hand been out of actioned. Later during the game he said he'd got confused and that two of his gang were meant to be swapped around. This was the out one and one about to be downed. Effectively he wanted to put his model bacl because he should have had an extra wound and the downed one to be replaced with his combat monster and redo the fight. The six other people there all agreed that it was his mistake and the game was to continue no changes. It was his fault he can't keep track of whos who. He then wanted to stop the game, so we all agreed that I'd get the win bonus because he bottled out. He said no, no of it would count (several of his key members were needing injury rolls) but every body said that was fine as long as I got the bonuses for winning. He wouldn't have it and we all decided to bring up his cheating and that in a sort of intervention. It ended up him threatening to fight me over a dice roll. And he doesn't game with the group anymore.

 hippyjr wrote:
Only a very small thing, but one guy cant ever seem to get a scatter right. My group does this thing where the shooter rolls the dice and the defender holds the template for them - kind of a trust thing I guess. Only problem is one guy is rather difficult to communicate with that it should land smack-bang on two of his tanks instead of a close miss.

Something along the lines of "left a bit... More... More... More..." Etc.

Only thing is I'm not 100% sure if he's doing it on purpose or just has terrible depth perception. Doing your own scatter doesn't 100% works as he'll disagree (not aggressively) with my placement of the scatter.

I was going to post this as well. I have a friend who just CAN NOT seem to align his scatter correctly. Sometimes it's so far off that I'm afraid he doesn't know what he's actually supposed to be doing. There never seems to be rime or reason to it...he's incorrectly scattered (in my opinion, anyway) to safe spots as well as onto other units (causing mishap, obviously), so I don't feel he's cheating, per say...he just has no clue what the heck he's doing while rolling scatter dice.

Once, it was so far off that I asked him if he was trying to triangulate the direction using the location of the dice (which were 3 feet away from the unit) on top of the direction it was pointing. He became angry and almost walked out.

At this point, I just let him scatter however he'd like...he's one of my best friends and it's just a game. I'd rather have a good time than get bent over his Bloodletters deep striking 20 degrees off direction.

 Voidwraith wrote:

 hippyjr wrote:
Only a very small thing, but one guy cant ever seem to get a scatter right. My group does this thing where the shooter rolls the dice and the defender holds the template for them - kind of a trust thing I guess. Only problem is one guy is rather difficult to communicate with that it should land smack-bang on two of his tanks instead of a close miss.

Something along the lines of "left a bit... More... More... More..." Etc.

Only thing is I'm not 100% sure if he's doing it on purpose or just has terrible depth perception. Doing your own scatter doesn't 100% works as he'll disagree (not aggressively) with my placement of the scatter.

I was going to post this as well. I have a friend who just CAN NOT seem to align his scatter correctly. Sometimes it's so far off that I'm afraid he doesn't know what he's actually supposed to be doing. There never seems to be rime or reason to it...he's incorrectly scattered (in my opinion, anyway) to safe spots as well as onto other units (causing mishap, obviously), so I don't feel he's cheating, per say...he just has no clue what the heck he's doing while rolling scatter dice.

Once, it was so far off that I asked him if he was trying to triangulate the direction using the location of the dice (which were 3 feet away from the unit) on top of the direction it was pointing. He became angry and almost walked out.

At this point, I just let him scatter however he'd like...he's one of my best friends and it's just a game. I'd rather have a good time than get bent over his Bloodletters deep striking 20 degrees off direction.

Try using the Assault Dice app on iPhone. It's scatter die draws a line which is easy to lay your tape measure against and see the trajectory of a deep strike. I love the app and its an official GW app....

 Voidwraith wrote:

 hippyjr wrote:
Only a very small thing, but one guy cant ever seem to get a scatter right. My group does this thing where the shooter rolls the dice and the defender holds the template for them - kind of a trust thing I guess. Only problem is one guy is rather difficult to communicate with that it should land smack-bang on two of his tanks instead of a close miss.

Something along the lines of "left a bit... More... More... More..." Etc.

Only thing is I'm not 100% sure if he's doing it on purpose or just has terrible depth perception. Doing your own scatter doesn't 100% works as he'll disagree (not aggressively) with my placement of the scatter.

I was going to post this as well. I have a friend who just CAN NOT seem to align his scatter correctly. Sometimes it's so far off that I'm afraid he doesn't know what he's actually supposed to be doing. There never seems to be rime or reason to it...he's incorrectly scattered (in my opinion, anyway) to safe spots as well as onto other units (causing mishap, obviously), so I don't feel he's cheating, per say...he just has no clue what the heck he's doing while rolling scatter dice.

Once, it was so far off that I asked him if he was trying to triangulate the direction using the location of the dice (which were 3 feet away from the unit) on top of the direction it was pointing. He became angry and almost walked out.

At this point, I just let him scatter however he'd like...he's one of my best friends and it's just a game. I'd rather have a good time than get bent over his Bloodletters deep striking 20 degrees off direction.

Our group keeps the whippy sticks from GW starter boxes to help with this. We roll close to what we're shooting. If it scatters, we place a whippy stick on top of the die. The other player (we don't have trust issues), holds the whippy stick until both parties feel they are parallel, and then slides the blast template the required distance.

 kronk wrote:
Our group keeps the whippy sticks from GW starter boxes to help with this. We roll close to what we're shooting. If it scatters, we place a whippy stick on top of the die. The other player (we don't have trust issues), holds the whippy stick until both parties feel they are parallel, and then slides the blast template the required distance.

That did not go the way I thought it would. When in a thread titled “conflict within the gaming group” and whippy sticks get brought up, I expect stories of table-side discipline.

Next you are going to tell me you wear socks to keep your feet warm, and use old metal dreadnoughts in aggressive drop lists to teach people a lesson in manners.

My contribution

What was the problem you experienced with the group or individual?

Game: HackMaster RPG, 4th Edition.

Background: New player to the group. The GM met him at the game store and talked with him for a while. He didn't seem the type that would burn the house down or bore people with tales of games past, so he invited him to play. We only had 3 players at the time, and thought a 4th would be a good idea.

Situation: He was a cheat and a liar. Big time. He would roll to-hit (d20 dice), and quickly scoop it up. "I hit with an 18".

Can you provide at least one example of how this played out in your group?

His character had the missing finger flaw, meaning he'd fumble on a to-hit roll of a 1 or 2. My buddy noticed what he said didn't match the die roll, but didn't call it out right away. He talked to the GM about it after the game. The GM and he had been good friends for about 10 years at this point.

What did you, or someone else in the group do about the situation?

The next session, the GM made a point to watch his rolls like a hawk. He played with the GM screen down and the player sat next to him like he always does. The GM caught him do the "roll and scoop" and called him out. "That was NOT a 7, that was a 2! Just for that, you're getting the worst result on the crit table." I think it was the player takes maximum damage from himself. The GM told him to knock it off.

What was the end result of the actions your or another took?

The guy never pulled that particular cheat again. He rolled in plain sight and everyone got to see his die result just like everyone else.


Eventually, we got fed up with other bs he pulled. Highlights include:

- Bought the modules that the GM was running and read ahead. Seriously, most of the fun in an RPG is not knowing the consequences for certain actions, who the bad guy really is, what resources does he have, and so on.

- In HackMaster, you roll straight down the line, 3d6. Str, Dex, Con, etc. He would make a pool of dice results and apply as he saw fit. He was constantly rolling stats for characters and kept them on a sheet. When he first character died, he just grabbed a set off the sheet. BS, we told him. Roll straight down the line right now and toss that sheet.

- Lied like a lying liar with his lie hole. "I have a masters in math and I teach math!" became "I have a degree in math" became "I have an associates degree and work at WalMart." Now, there is nothing wrong with working at WalMart or having an associates degree, but the "I have a masters in math" came about when he was arguing about statistics and probability with the GM who actually has a fething masters degree in Math and is also one of the programming leads at NASA for both the Space Shuttle (he doesn't appreciate my space shuttle jokes as much as he should) and the international space station. Also in the room were three people with BS in engineering.

We told the GM since he brought the fether in, he had to kick him out. Over time, our group grew to 7 players. On the first day of a new player, he got to watch the GM tell this other dude to leave.

Most awkward "It's not you, it's us" I've ever witnessed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nevelon wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Our group keeps the whippy sticks from GW starter boxes to help with this. We roll close to what we're shooting. If it scatters, we place a whippy stick on top of the die. The other player (we don't have trust issues), holds the whippy stick until both parties feel they are parallel, and then slides the blast template the required distance.

That did not go the way I thought it would. When in a thread titled “conflict within the gaming group” and whippy sticks get brought up, I expect stories of table-side discipline.

Next you are going to tell me you wear socks to keep your feet warm, and use old metal dreadnoughts in aggressive drop lists to teach people a lesson in manners.

I wear socks so that if I step on cat vomit, it will get spread around the house more efficiently.

Apparently.

 kronk wrote:
My contribution

What was the problem you experienced with the group or individual?

Game: HackMaster RPG, 4th Edition.

Background: New player to the group. The GM met him at the game store and talked with him for a while. He didn't seem the type that would burn the house down or bore people with tales of games past, so he invited him to play. We only had 3 players at the time, and thought a 4th would be a good idea.

Situation: He was a cheat and a liar. Big time. He would roll to-hit (d20 dice), and quickly scoop it up. "I hit with an 18".

Can you provide at least one example of how this played out in your group?

His character had the missing finger flaw, meaning he'd fumble on a to-hit roll of a 1 or 2. My buddy noticed what he said didn't match the die roll, but didn't call it out right away. He talked to the GM about it after the game. The GM and he had been good friends for about 10 years at this point.

What did you, or someone else in the group do about the situation?

The next session, the GM made a point to watch his rolls like a hawk. He played with the GM screen down and the player sat next to him like he always does. The GM caught him do the "roll and scoop" and called him out. "That was NOT a 7, that was a 2! Just for that, you're getting the worst result on the crit table." I think it was the player takes maximum damage from himself. The GM told him to knock it off.

What was the end result of the actions your or another took?

The guy never pulled that particular cheat again. He rolled in plain sight and everyone got to see his die result just like everyone else.


Eventually, we got fed up with other bs he pulled. Highlights include:

- Bought the modules that the GM was running and read ahead. Seriously, most of the fun in an RPG is not knowing the consequences for certain actions, who the bad guy really is, what resources does he have, and so on.

- In HackMaster, you roll straight down the line, 3d6. Str, Dex, Con, etc. He would make a pool of dice results and apply as he saw fit. He was constantly rolling stats for characters and kept them on a sheet. When he first character died, he just grabbed a set off the sheet. BS, we told him. Roll straight down the line right now and toss that sheet.

- Lied like a lying liar with his lie hole. "I have a masters in math and I teach math!" became "I have a degree in math" became "I have an associates degree and work at WalMart." Now, there is nothing wrong with working at WalMart or having an associates degree, but the "I have a masters in math" came about when he was arguing about statistics and probability with the GM who actually has a fething masters degree in Math and is also one of the programming leads at NASA for both the Space Shuttle (he doesn't appreciate my space shuttle jokes as much as he should) and the international space station. Also in the room were three people with BS in engineering.

We told the GM since he brought the fether in, he had to kick him out. Over time, our group grew to 7 players. On the first day of a new player, he got to watch the GM tell this other dude to leave.

Most awkward "It's not you, it's us" I've ever witnessed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nevelon wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Our group keeps the whippy sticks from GW starter boxes to help with this. We roll close to what we're shooting. If it scatters, we place a whippy stick on top of the die. The other player (we don't have trust issues), holds the whippy stick until both parties feel they are parallel, and then slides the blast template the required distance.

That did not go the way I thought it would. When in a thread titled “conflict within the gaming group” and whippy sticks get brought up, I expect stories of table-side discipline.

Next you are going to tell me you wear socks to keep your feet warm, and use old metal dreadnoughts in aggressive drop lists to teach people a lesson in manners.

I wear socks so that if I step on cat vomit, it will get spread around the house more efficiently.

Apparently.

Thanks for the story - this was a helpful one.

One way one of our GMs dealt with cheaters was rounding random attacks in their direction. So if 7 kobolds were chucking javalins at a party of 5, the two spare ones went to the guy who happened to be critting well above average. He was obviously the biggest threat!

A little bit passive-agressive, but the GM wanted to make a point without a potentially explosive confrontation. After a while the cheater caught a clue and toned things back. He still tends to get “lucky” in crunch moments, but the casual every-day cheating is mostly done.

My story has to do with a kid that defiantly had overly rich parents...

Now technically this occured at my my local GW, but they ran pickup games every sunday and it was the same ~5 regulars with another ~5 occasionals. So I'm counting that.

Every new release, especially if it was the new cheese, he'd turn up a week or so later with all the really cheesy units, unpainted poorly built.
He cheated, badly. Claiming ignorance.

Examples include:
Imotek the stormlords storm hits every unit, for D6 strength 8 AP1 ignores cover wounds, every turn.
Or GK Dreadknight's psilencer cannon automatically penetrates a vehicle on a 4+

And never brought his codex so you could fact check him.

Although to be fair he did know the WYSIWYG rules, although took a rather literal interpretation as 'I glued every gun in the kit to my rhino, so it has a lascannon, an assault cannon and a heavy bolter, all for the default 35pts because WYSIWYG''

How did I deal with it? When I heard that he was my opponent, I refused to play him. Other people got the idea and he gave up coming.

How did the GW deal with it? They didn't. If I ever asked them to confirm that glueing a lascannon to a rhino does not give it a free lascannon, they just roll it off. If I ever asked to borrow the store copy of a codex they refused, those were for customer perusal, why didn't my opponent have his own? because he wants to pretend his character is able to wipe out armies in a single turn

In hindsight that sounds a little ranty... Apologies.
I'll be trying out a new gaming club soon so wish me luck

Good luck!

But yeah, cheating is no good. Just not playing them is a good solution, though.

How did the GW deal with it? They didn't. If I ever asked them to confirm that glueing a lascannon to a rhino does not give it a free lascannon, they just roll it off. If I ever asked to borrow the store copy of a codex they refused, those were for customer perusal, why didn't my opponent have his own? because he wants to pretend his character is able to wipe out armies in a single turn

That is the sound of someone who really, really does not care about his job, wow.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

How did the GW deal with it? They didn't. If I ever asked them to confirm that glueing a lascannon to a rhino does not give it a free lascannon, they just roll it off. If I ever asked to borrow the store copy of a codex they refused, those were for customer perusal, why didn't my opponent have his own? because he wants to pretend his character is able to wipe out armies in a single turn

That is the sound of someone who really, really does not care about his job, wow.

That or realizes how much they can make off that kid versus the guy who doesn't buy much.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

How did the GW deal with it? They didn't. If I ever asked them to confirm that glueing a lascannon to a rhino does not give it a free lascannon, they just roll it off. If I ever asked to borrow the store copy of a codex they refused, those were for customer perusal, why didn't my opponent have his own? because he wants to pretend his character is able to wipe out armies in a single turn

That is the sound of someone who really, really does not care about his job, wow.

Yeah, it was after a change of management.
The stores closed now, it went downhill and people started going elsewhere because for a number of reasons they really didn't make you feel appreciated. So we just played and payed elsewhere.

I'm all for the 'roll off' approach, but there's a line between ambiguity and explicit rules.