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 Skinflint Games wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
That'd be when I got into GW games (my first White Dwarf was issue 130), although I didn't go into the store until a few years later. There's a Clydesdale Bank on the site now.

I still see the shop manager from that period at wargames shows, although he's distanced himself from all that sci-fi nonsense now.

138 was mine- odds are we probably crossed paths at some point

Probably; the Thursday late opening nights were my gaming venue until the shop moved to the top end of Hope Street. Did you ever attend the club they used to run on Saturday afternoons, down in the basement stockroom? I'm surprised they never got shut down for H&S violations.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
"neither"? I think you're forgetting about Betrayal at Calth, Execution Force, and Deathwatch : Overkill at a minimum.

Those are Specialist board games, separate to the core Warhammer and Age of Sigmar lines. Its disingenuous to point to them as evidence that the core games are good.

They are GW games with miniatures that are designed compatible with GW's primary game. It is dishonest and inaccurate to pretend they don't exist.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
They are GW games with miniatures that are designed compatible with GW's primary game. It is dishonest and inaccurate to pretend they don't exist.

Nobody is pretending that they don't exist. Going back to the original comment, Rainbow dash was quite clearly referring to GW's two core Wargames - their two flagship products - not to all the minor spin off specialist board games.

I'm contesting that the existence of a few good quality, well written spin off board games in some way compensates for the design flaws of the core Warhammer 40,000 system. They are seperate and distinct rule sets. Yes, the miniaturesare compatible with 40K, yes, some data slates have been written to allow players to use them in games of 40K. But they do not in anyway compensate for the design flaws of 40K. You cannot point to a board game and say "this game is well designed, therefore 40K is also well designed".


I can enjoy a game of Deathwatch, or Space Hulk, whilst simultaneously disliking the Warhammer 40,000. They are separate games.

That is an inference that you are adding. Rainbow Dash posted in such a way that it implied GW only had a sum total of 2 games. I simply noted that there were more than 2. I didn't get into quality at all - that's another inference that you are adding.

 Imaginos wrote:
Back about 12-13 years ago, I used to work part-time at a game store in Nashville, TN. The store owner was a really nice guy and he ended up hiring one of the locals that hung out there ALL THE TIME as the general manager. The guy was the general manager before I started working there.

The general manager was the reason I finally quit, because he was extremely immature (roughly same ages - early 30s), insulting and demeaning to people. The owner understood my explanation completely.

Flash forward to a Friday morning a couple of months after I left, I was walking into my main job and my wife called me asking if I caught the news before I left for work that morning. I had not. Turns out, the general manager was busted as a pedophile the night before. The store ran Youngblood Thursdays, IIRC. The general manager was using it to get close to young boys.

My own perception at the time was that he was actually trying to use it to get close to the mom. The manager was, as indicated earlier, immature, so it wasn't a surprised that he didn't have friends our age. And looking back on it, hindsight is 20/20 and you say "Why didn't I realize that?" He was extremely verbally homophobic, but that appears to have been a smoke screen.

I was still in his cell phone contact list, so I got a call from the detective investigating the allegations. Again, I wish I had considered that was happening, but I was shocked. When questioned, I gave the honest answer that we thought he was emotionally undeveloped so that's why he was hanging around with the kid. We also thought he was trying to smooth in on a single mother that way.

IIRC, he ended up with 300+ years of contiguous sentencing.

The game store is still around. It's kind of amazing it survived that, but they managed to make it through. I haven't been there much since I quit, but I don't think the owner hires employees anymore.

Jesus wept. See, my stories are funny because everyone walked away. Even if it was mildly disturbing.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me fear for having children.

Though I'm actually surprised it's not more commonly reported.

Best (or rather worst) was the day this person decided to bring their crystal dildo into the store thinking it would be a hilarious joke for the guys on staff...
Unfortunately, there was a mother with her young son maybe 10 feet away, and then the realisation of where this implement had repeatedly been.

This gives me flashbacks of a recent event when I worked the night audit shift. I am a hotel front desk clerk. I had this woman similar to the one you described here come up to the front desk to ask to "borrow some batteries for the night" for her quite large vibrator that looked and smelled like it had never been cleaned. Though I am not sure what smelled worse. Her or the vibrator. I do know it was still a little shiny and was dripping stuff as she waved it around talking to me. At one point she was rolling it on the counter-top. She thought she was being sexy, but I just wanted to throw up. Finally had to ask her to go back to bed so I could "Finish the Night Audit reports and procedures". We ran out of bleach and lysol that evening, and the room she stayed in was out of order for three days. This is related to gaming because among her bags when she checked out early was a Battlefoam pack bag. I did not bring up that I was a 40k player.

I'm kinda surprised that nobody beat the guy to death. As the store manager, he's probably closing the shop alone, late at night. It wouldn't have been hard for an aggreviated parent to come up behind him with a lead pipe...

Still, as long as he's outed as a pedophile in prison, I think it'd work out.

 NorseSig wrote:
This is related to gaming because among her bags when she checked out early was a Battlefoam pack bag. I did not bring up that I was a 40k player.

Just to make the story that much worse, it could be that that's how she transported the object you had the misfortune of seeing

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
They are GW games with miniatures that are designed compatible with GW's primary game. It is dishonest and inaccurate to pretend they don't exist.

Nobody is pretending that they don't exist. Going back to the original comment, Rainbow dash was quite clearly referring to GW's two core Wargames - their two flagship products - not to all the minor spin off specialist board games.

I'm contesting that the existence of a few good quality, well written spin off board games in some way compensates for the design flaws of the core Warhammer 40,000 system. They are seperate and distinct rule sets. Yes, the miniaturesare compatible with 40K, yes, some data slates have been written to allow players to use them in games of 40K. But they do not in anyway compensate for the design flaws of 40K. You cannot point to a board game and say "this game is well designed, therefore 40K is also well designed".


I can enjoy a game of Deathwatch, or Space Hulk, whilst simultaneously disliking the Warhammer 40,000. They are separate games.

Yeah I adore Dreadfleet and Blood Bowl, but neither make 40k or AoS any better...

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

 Imaginos wrote:
Back about 12-13 years ago, I used to work part-time at a game store in Nashville, TN. The store owner was a really nice guy and he ended up hiring one of the locals that hung out there ALL THE TIME as the general manager. The guy was the general manager before I started working there.

The general manager was the reason I finally quit, because he was extremely immature (roughly same ages - early 30s), insulting and demeaning to people. The owner understood my explanation completely.

Flash forward to a Friday morning a couple of months after I left, I was walking into my main job and my wife called me asking if I caught the news before I left for work that morning. I had not. Turns out, the general manager was busted as a pedophile the night before. The store ran Youngblood Thursdays, IIRC. The general manager was using it to get close to young boys.

My own perception at the time was that he was actually trying to use it to get close to the mom. The manager was, as indicated earlier, immature, so it wasn't a surprised that he didn't have friends our age. And looking back on it, hindsight is 20/20 and you say "Why didn't I realize that?" He was extremely verbally homophobic, but that appears to have been a smoke screen.

I was still in his cell phone contact list, so I got a call from the detective investigating the allegations. Again, I wish I had considered that was happening, but I was shocked. When questioned, I gave the honest answer that we thought he was emotionally undeveloped so that's why he was hanging around with the kid. We also thought he was trying to smooth in on a single mother that way.

IIRC, he ended up with 300+ years of contiguous sentencing.

The game store is still around. It's kind of amazing it survived that, but they managed to make it through. I haven't been there much since I quit, but I don't think the owner hires employees anymore.

Jesus wept. See, my stories are funny because everyone walked away. Even if it was mildly disturbing.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me fear for having children.

Though I'm actually surprised it's not more commonly reported.

I see why you would think that, coming from the UK. I imagine Europe in general has a better infrastructure for these things. In America, they get media coverage, but that's about it.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
That is an inference that you are adding. Rainbow Dash posted in such a way that it implied GW only had a sum total of 2 games. I simply noted that there were more than 2. I didn't get into quality at all - that's another inference that you are adding.

I guess. I'm sorry for the misinterpretation.

 NorseSig wrote:

Best (or rather worst) was the day this person decided to bring their crystal dildo into the store thinking it would be a hilarious joke for the guys on staff...
Unfortunately, there was a mother with her young son maybe 10 feet away, and then the realisation of where this implement had repeatedly been.

This gives me flashbacks of a recent event when I worked the night audit shift. I am a hotel front desk clerk. I had this woman similar to the one you described here come up to the front desk to ask to "borrow some batteries for the night" for her quite large vibrator that looked and smelled like it had never been cleaned. Though I am not sure what smelled worse. Her or the vibrator. I do know it was still a little shiny and was dripping stuff as she waved it around talking to me. At one point she was rolling it on the counter-top. She thought she was being sexy, but I just wanted to throw up. Finally had to ask her to go back to bed so I could "Finish the Night Audit reports and procedures". We ran out of bleach and lysol that evening, and the room she stayed in was out of order for three days. This is related to gaming because among her bags when she checked out early was a Battlefoam pack bag. I did not bring up that I was a 40k player.

I would've likely used a flame thrower at that point...

I just don't get why it seems that geeky/nerdy, fantasy/sci-fantasy style hobbies seem to attract such repulsive individuals.

Hell, there was the one time I volunteered to help work at the painting station at a local LotR convention where GW had most of an entire room...
The coolest part was getting dragged off by Craig Parker (Haldir!) to join in a reading the he and a couple of the other actors were doing - I voiced Gollum.

The worst part was the themed Medieval Times event, which had a costume contest prior to the tournament/dinner part, and we were all left retching and clawing our eyes out as a 300+lbs Elf 'Belly Dancer' took the stage. (the convulsing masses of liquid flesh - even Slaanesh would have run screaming for the nearest exit!)


Note: I apologise right now to every member who suddenly finds that their "fun" side of life no longer has any drive for the next 3 weeks.

To be honest, I don't think that geeky hobbies do, particularly - I think it's something that geeks/nerds end up letting ourselves get beat up over.

I think every hobby and interest has their share of terrible people partaking in them. - There's some big news in the UK today about a footballer (presumably a major-ish one), being arrested for allegedly doing much the same thing as in that post.

Maybe it's more because geeky hobbies tend to be a little more introspective, or maybe it's because they still have the 'weird' label by the old fashioned types, that more attention is drawn to when the terrible people become more visible in geeky communities.

Haven't been in the game that long so I don't have any real horror stories, per-say, but there was this one time a guy dropped a can of black primer and it hit a stool in just the right way to rupture the can. Paint exploded everywhere and the guy literally picked up the can and ran out of the store with it. When he came back inside his hands were completely black. Some people had to go outside because they were getting light-headed from the fumes. Thankfully nobody's models were hurt.

Oh, and we were okay, too. But we were honestly less concerned with our own well-being as much as our models.

 Vitali Advenil wrote:
Oh, and we were okay, too. But we were honestly less concerned with our own well-being as much as our models.

Sounds like my attitude. If my apartment were on fire, I'd probably put high priority on saving my 40k minis, even before clothes, my computer, etc., even at the risk of my own body being horribly burned.

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 Vitali Advenil wrote:
Oh, and we were okay, too. But we were honestly less concerned with our own well-being as much as our models.

Sounds like my attitude. If my apartment were on fire, I'd probably put high priority on saving my 40k minis, even before clothes, my computer, etc., even at the risk of my own body being horribly burned.

As expensive as these minis are, it is entirely legitimate to want to save them first. It's also a lot harder for fire insurance to accurately cover them, much easier to replace a computer

Experiment 626 wrote:

I just don't get why it seems that geeky/nerdy, fantasy/sci-fantasy style hobbies seem to attract such repulsive individuals.

I think this is the best explanation. Expunge them from your lives, make no time for people who would shame tramps.

Not a horror story more a "This is why people think we are wierd" story.

A couple o f years ago before my "new" job situation. I visited my local GW at least once every month during work breaks. Thier store was very close to the toy store I work in.
Had lots of little building projects going and was browsing the shelves for Eldar/Dark Eldar kits for parts.
The first thing I noticed was the smell as in a I have not washed for a couple of days and don't know what deoderant is smell. Than the looming shadow besides me.
I assume that the guy want's to browse the same section as me so I think nothing of it at first. Than the first thing that come's from his mouth is this sentence:
"You should get the Dark Eldar witch set. All of the woman in there got double D tits. Thats why I get them."
No greeting or nothing. He just walked up to me and says that a complete stranger. I have met socially awkward people before, but none this blatant as this guy.
Luckily I found the box I wanted, rang it up and left before I had to start a conversation with him.
This is why we cant have nice things.

The reason I don't give people my Facebook profile unless I trust them (forgot this one):
Added a guy I played a pick up game of Clix with, and he'd then message me once a day or so, clearly very lonely. He was sole carer for a family member, so online talk was his only outlet.
Then it was a few times a day. Then almost hourly. Then constantly. He kept track of my location on the messenger GPS thing. If I got up at night to piss and caught my phone, he obviously had my name on the sidebar, and would start up. I generally just replied when I was awake and gave a feth.
He stopped asking for games and started asking for unnecessarily detailed dating advice ("This girl I like keeps doing crack, wat do??")

One day I wasn't replying fast enough (okay, at all), so he started sending cat .gifs
"Sorry mate, I'm on the train, catch you later" - me
"[Large sequence of gifs of a crying young woman being mastubated onto]" - him
"No."
"gak gak gak I didn't mean to!!!!!"
"Yeah I'm blocking you now."

See, I can be taught.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
The reason I don't give people my Facebook profile unless I trust them (forgot this one):
Added a guy I played a pick up game of Clix with, and he'd then message me once a day or so, clearly very lonely. He was sole carer for a family member, so online talk was his only outlet.
Then it was a few times a day. Then almost hourly. Then constantly. He kept track of my location on the messenger GPS thing. If I got up at night to piss and caught my phone, he obviously had my name on the sidebar, and would start up. I generally just replied when I was awake and gave a feth.
He stopped asking for games and started asking for unnecessarily detailed dating advice ("This girl I like keeps doing crack, wat do??")

One day I wasn't replying fast enough (okay, at all), so he started sending cat .gifs
"Sorry mate, I'm on the train, catch you later" - me
"[Large sequence of gifs of a crying young woman being mastubated onto]" - him
"No."
"gak gak gak I didn't mean to!!!!!"
"Yeah I'm blocking you now."

See, I can be taught.

your life could be a sitcom. You really need a close mate who'd watch out for you and vet your acquaintances - "Right, don't add him. He'll be camping out on your lawn within a week".

To clarify, the content was neither here nor there; whatever lights your candle. My concern was more that he thought it was appropriate to share with me randomly.
No "Hey, you like Slaanesh..."
Just bam, right in there with the inner contents of his spank bank and no comment until I objected.

Maybe this is how the younger generation flirt? I'm not very contemporary.

I don't have any real horror horror stories, but I have plenty of interactions with the utterly socially inept. Here are some of my favourites.

So, I'm just casually browsing the 40k shelves, looking for that box of Ork Boyz I'm sure I saw the other day (The boxes at my store are arranged in no way on the shelves, so you have to dig around to find the stuff you want). When suddenly, this huge, greasy, 'I don't know what deodorant is' guy shows up next to me and just says "Hey man, what are you looking for?", pretty normal question for an employee and heck, even not so bad for some random guy. So I tell him I'm looking for some Orks, and then he says "Don't you play Eldar?", okay so maybe he's seen me around before and knows about my massive amounts of Elves, not so bad and it's just hobby talk. Then he asks he asks for my phone number, I politely declined. Then he asked for my address. not my email address, my where I live and sleep address. I just had to leave then.

Same guy, some two or three months later sent me a text. He had asked the store for my phone number, saying he had some of my models or something (which he didn't). I don't blame the store, because they deal with a lot of the community and they had no reason to think it was malicious. But I digress, right now I'm kind of freaked out because I never told him my name, but managed to get my number. At the time I was 15 and I was genuinely worried, so I told him not to contact me. Have since had him stare at me creepily. However he is now not allowed back anymore because everyone had serious complaints about him (including the lovely individual in my next paragraph of rambling).

Once just playing a game at one of the tables with a buddy of mine, and then he makes a joke about how his Chaos Marines have no moral issues with killing my 'civilian' Eldar Guardians. Weird short dude who appeared from nowhere suddenly makes a comment about killing children in Skyrim, so that was kind of weird. Then he starts to shout to the whole shop this random rant about not being able to kill children and the mods that let you and all sorts of weird stuff. He also has a tendency to join other people's conversations entirely unsolicited to make his strange comments and then just doesn't leave. Kind of creepy.

Here's my contribution, I hope you cringed sufficiently.

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:

Same guy, some two or three months later sent me a text. He had asked the store for my phone number, saying he had some of my models or something (which he didn't). I don't blame the store, because they deal with a lot of the community and they had no reason to think it was malicious.

I'd have gone fething spare. They had no business at all handing out your personal details. Fethwits (edited, because swearfilter let that one through!)

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:

Here's my contribution, I hope you cringed sufficiently.

I did. Ugh...

 zedmeister wrote:

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:

Same guy, some two or three months later sent me a text. He had asked the store for my phone number, saying he had some of my models or something (which he didn't). I don't blame the store, because they deal with a lot of the community and they had no reason to think it was malicious.

I'd have gone fething spare. They had no business at all handing out your personal details. Fethwits (edited, because swearfilter let that one through!).

Well, I've done a lot of trading and bartering in the community, so I was used to getting calls from people interested in exchanging models or money or both in either direction. They have since changed the system to something much more functional, so I'm just glad of that.

 Compel wrote:
To be honest, I don't think that geeky hobbies do, particularly - I think it's something that geeks/nerds end up letting ourselves get beat up over.

I think every hobby and interest has their share of terrible people partaking in them. - There's some big news in the UK today about a footballer (presumably a major-ish one), being arrested for allegedly doing much the same thing as in that post.

Maybe it's more because geeky hobbies tend to be a little more introspective, or maybe it's because they still have the 'weird' label by the old fashioned types, that more attention is drawn to when the terrible people become more visible in geeky communities.

These kinds of people exist everywhere. When you start a thread about 'tell us your hobby horror stories-,' you're going to get the worst of them so if you don't think about it too much, you might go, 'what's wrong with our hobby?!' When the actual answer is, 'nothing.'

If you started a thread, 'tell your worst sports club stories,' you'd see exactly the same stuff. The guy who never washed his kit, the one with no sense of personal space who was always 110% about the game, and you know it's going to be an EPIC story when a post opens, 'the home team just lost to their big rivals...'

 korbenn wrote:
Not a horror story more a "This is why people think we are wierd" story.

A couple o f years ago before my "new" job situation. I visited my local GW at least once every month during work breaks. Thier store was very close to the toy store I work in.
Had lots of little building projects going and was browsing the shelves for Eldar/Dark Eldar kits for parts.
The first thing I noticed was the smell as in a I have not washed for a couple of days and don't know what deoderant is smell. Than the looming shadow besides me.
I assume that the guy want's to browse the same section as me so I think nothing of it at first. Than the first thing that come's from his mouth is this sentence:
"You should get the Dark Eldar witch set. All of the woman in there got double D tits. Thats why I get them."
No greeting or nothing. He just walked up to me and says that a complete stranger. I have met socially awkward people before, but none this blatant as this guy.
Luckily I found the box I wanted, rang it up and left before I had to start a conversation with him.
This is why we cant have nice things.

This reminds me of the days of the Diaz Daemonettes...

You knew right away the socially inept, 'living in his parent's basement while being a 40'ish year old virgin' guy, as he was the one who had an entire army of the same "triple breast" Daemonettes, led by the 'Booby Keeper.'
These models were literally the closest this guy was ever going to get to feeling up the actual thing in life, beyond screen time with bad pornos. What made it super creepy was just how shiny his Keeper's "goods" were, as it appeared they had been doused in varnish in order to endure his constant fondling for at least 12+ hours/day.

The greasy, unwashed, food stained cloths & neckbeard where bad enough. Being one of the only two females attending the GT that year, and feeling his eyes mentally raping you from the table just two rows behind you was creepy as feth. *shudders*

That was also the last year I played on the Fantasy side of the GT, as I wanted to at least put half the entire gaming hall between us the next year. (and there were more military/ex military guys on the 40k side who would jump to your defense the second Mr.Creeper took a step in your direction!)


Edit: spelling durp!

Experiment 626 wrote:

 korbenn wrote:
Not a horror story more a "This is why people think we are wierd" story.

A couple o f years ago before my "new" job situation. I visited my local GW at least once every month during work breaks. Thier store was very close to the toy store I work in.
Had lots of little building projects going and was browsing the shelves for Eldar/Dark Eldar kits for parts.
The first thing I noticed was the smell as in a I have not washed for a couple of days and don't know what deoderant is smell. Than the looming shadow besides me.
I assume that the guy want's to browse the same section as me so I think nothing of it at first. Than the first thing that come's from his mouth is this sentence:
"You should get the Dark Eldar witch set. All of the woman in there got double D tits. Thats why I get them."
No greeting or nothing. He just walked up to me and says that a complete stranger. I have met socially awkward people before, but none this blatant as this guy.
Luckily I found the box I wanted, rang it up and left before I had to start a conversation with him.
This is why we cant have nice things.

This reminds me of the days of the Diaz Daemonettes...

You knew right away the socially inept, 'living in his parent's basement while being a 40'ish year old virgin' guy, as he was the one who had an entire army of the same "triple breast" Daemonettes, led by the 'Booby Keeper.'
These models were literally the closest this guy was ever going to get to feeling up the actual thing in life, beyond screen time with bad pornos. What made it super creepy was just how shiny his Keeper's "goods" were, as it appeared they had been doused in varnish in order to endure his constant fondling for at least 12+ hours/day.

The greasy, unwashed, food stained cloths & neckbeard where bad enough. Being one of the only two females attending the GT that year, and feeling his eyes mentally raping you from the table just two rows behind you was creepy as feth. *shudders*

That was also the last year I played on the Fantasy side of the GT, as I wanted to at least put half the entire gaming hall between us the next year. (and there were more military/ex military guys on the 40k side who would jump to your defense the second Mr.Creeper took a step in your direction!)


Edit: spelling durp!

gak, I have heard the stories but I thought that these where just bad stereotypes. Now I am really glad to have never encountered any of these before

I played in a HackMaster tournament at a game store in Houston. I brought my mini case filled with monsters, humans, etc to use for myself and friends, and also offer to the GM. A guy not playing in the event saw the minis and asked to see some. I was concentrating on the game, but I pulled a few out.

"No, do you have any females?"

"Maybe. Here's a female elven archer."

"Do you have any nude ones?"

That's when I noticed he was rubbing his hand in his pocket whlie looking at my elven archer. Total creeper guy.

"No, dude. I'm in the middle of a tournament. Step off." I put away my minis and the case. He walked away.

Later, I found out the guy was a regular at the store and asked for X-rated comics and gak all of the time. I heard later that he was arrested for molesting some kid. fething weirdos out there, man.

Downloaded the Old Boston Radio mod. Now I'm sat in my Sanctuary Hills house listening to Twilight Zone radio stories whilst it rains buckets outside. Meanwhile in the real world I'm also painting a raider Warlord miniature for a Fallout wargame whilst it rains buckets outside my bedroom window.

This game is so meta right now.