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You have never seen a group of live action roleplayers. You know not the horror of true nerds.

Same with sports fanatics. Some of them are borderline crazy.

The difference is the fanatics are accepted more than the live action roleplayers.

I'll agree with that, but I'm also big into LARPing (I commonly wear a suit of steel platemail while I play), and so is my Fiancee ( I actually got her into it as something to do together). I would think that proves that while it's pretty nerdy, you can still openly play and still hang out with the opposite sex, going against the common beliefs about LARPers.

And really, at it's base it's really just melee-based paintball/airsoft, which are commonly accepted as hobbies despite the fact that they're games about playing "army" in the woods.

Playing 40K/Fantasy is no different. If you actually get ostracized by your friends about your hobbies, you need to think about why you hang with those friends.

Went into GW today...wasn't so much full of powernerds as screaming kids of about 12, mostly chubby and with hundreds of pounds worth of badly painted figures and two massive Citadel carry cases.

Grey Templar wrote:Compared to Magic, Yu-gi-o, Pokemon, and D&D, table top wargames are down right classy. Plenty of perfectly normal people play 40k.

While I would agree with the card games on this list, the amount of people curious about D&D far outweighs those interested in wargaming.

As for whether or not I hide my love of 40k, I've gotta say it doesn't really bother me to talk about it, though I generally don't bring it up, as most people really don't find it interesting.

hotsauceman1 wrote:ITs really hard to explain i have 5000$ tied up in a single hobby.

I would agree with this as well. My girlfriend tries to be supportive of my hobby, but she definitely has a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that I'll happily go out and spend $40 on some plastic men, and my friends who don't play probably would, were it not for the cost.

At my flgs we have around 15ish regulars who play warhammer 9 of them played football in highschool including me and atleast 5 of them are in the military. Youll be surprised who plays warhammer.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Pretty much at my age, I don't hide it at all. I'm getting close to forty, it really has come to the point that I'll tell anyone who asks what I'm up to that weekend, what I'm actually up to.

If they recoil in horror, or actively avoid me for playing with wargamers, feth em, haven't got time for anyone that judgemental anymore.

On saying that, I think I can count the number of people who reacted that way in the past twenty years on one hand, and two of those came around to the idea of it not being odd, or really that weird over time.

You've pretty much nailed on the head my attitude to the whole thing, there. Except for the age difference, I'm apparently about ten years younger than you, as I'm just sneaking up on thirty.

I dont advertise that I do it, but my friends eventually see my mini's or get confused when I go and do stuff for 6 hours at a time.

If people find out I dont care, but I wont walk up to some1 and be like "WANA SEE MY ELDAR ARMY?"

I dont hide it but it doesn't really come up in conversation.

GimbleMuggernaught wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:ITs really hard to explain i have 5000$ tied up in a single hobby.

I would agree with this as well. My girlfriend tries to be supportive of my hobby, but she definitely has a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that I'll happily go out and spend $40 on some plastic men, and my friends who don't play probably would, were it not for the cost.

I felt like this about the hobby when I first got into it. Then I realised its money I usually spend in the pub getting steaming and end up with nothing to show for it but a hang over and a deep sense of shame


Also my girlfriend painted a model or two with me a little while back and now she has bought her own paint set and some models of her own. she as no interest in playing though.

Personaly I don't hide it, but then I don't go around telling everyone constantly, and more than I lecture them about my motorbike or any of my other hobbies.

The problem at school/college is that it is too small a world and what is "good" and what is "bad" is too tightly defined. You will get abuse for likeing the "wrong" music just as much as the wrong hobby. I got more abuse at school for playing rugby than warhammer. They called it "posh"... I played league which is anything but a posh sport, far less so than much football.

Once these people get out in to the real world the soon realise that acting like that just upsets people, either that or they will get caught saying the wrong thing about the wrong persons hobby, e.g. they find out too late the company MD is a warhammer player, or their boss plays D&D.