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 Horst wrote:
Man, you guys are way off topic. The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals? The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

Yet most of the toxic horsegak here has been from the competitive side...

Wayniac wrote:

 Horst wrote:
Man, you guys are way off topic. The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals? The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

Yet most of the toxic horsegak here has been from the competitive side...

Only if you ignore the toxic comments by "casual" players.

Peregrine wrote:Yes, and that's exactly the problem! The vast majority of people would consider the winner of a major tournament to be a competitive player since, you know, they just successfully competed in a major competitive event (and probably one that requires a significant commitment of time and money to attend). Your definition is completely out of line with the one anyone else uses because you need to attach your moral judgement to the term.

All these terms tend to be used differently by everybody, not just me. There's not really an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. WAAC describes someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and even steal in order to win a game - and while unhealthy, that's not really what I'm talking about. Tournament player describes a player who goes to tournaments, which isn't, itself, a problem. I've decided to load the term "competitive player" because it implies someone who is primarily competitive, above all else, and in general, being competitive is seen as a negative character trait in others. If I say Ted from marketing is competitive, it generally doesn't imply a healthy and helpful guy. Maybe I should just describe these players as "Teds from Marketing"?

Just as long as you say the same thing about a "casual" or narrative mindset becoming dominant.

I think any singular voice can create an exclusionary community that is unwelcoming to others. That's just sort of the nature of niche fandom. But I'm not convinced that a dominant casual or narrative mindset is unhealthy for the game - as a business, as a community, or as a game system. Like, I would think that a gang of narrative-only players would be able to support a single game system for decades without issue, but I think a competitive-only gang would be 10 minutes to midnight the entire time.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Does anybody know of any games that were in an unhealthy state because they were too casual?

40k and MTG are two obvious examples.

You literally just listed the two games with the most toxic competitive communities in gaming.

Horst wrote:The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals?

I don't know. Let's ask your next three sentences...

The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

To show you how amazing this thing you just wrote is, I will give it the highest compliment I can give to a gak post - this looks like something Peregrine would write.

 Sqorgar wrote:
All these terms tend to be used differently by everybody, not just me. There's not really an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. WAAC describes someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and even steal in order to win a game - and while unhealthy, that's not really what I'm talking about. Tournament player describes a player who goes to tournaments, which isn't, itself, a problem. I've decided to load the term "competitive player" because it implies someone who is primarily competitive, above all else, and in general, being competitive is seen as a negative character trait in others. If I say Ted from marketing is competitive, it generally doesn't imply a healthy and helpful guy. Maybe I should just describe these players as "Teds from Marketing"?

So, exactly like I said: you don't like that "competitive" doesn't carry enough moral judgement for a trait you disapprove of, so you're changing the definition away from one that the vast majority of players would agree with.

But I'm not convinced that a dominant casual or narrative mindset is unhealthy for the game - as a business, as a community, or as a game system. Like, I would think that a gang of narrative-only players would be able to support a single game system for decades without issue, but I think a competitive-only gang would be 10 minutes to midnight the entire time.

Clearly you don't understand business or communities. That gang of narrative-only players often becomes cliquish and unwelcoming to new players, cutting off the supply of new revenue to replace older customers who finish buying their projects or drop out of the hobby. Narrative players often play at home or in private clubs, cutting off the free marketing provided by in-store gaming. And narrative players often have specific fluff concepts in mind when planning their collections, creating an end point to their spending instead of continuing to buy new armies as the game changes. And that's on top of throwing away all the potential revenue from competitive players who are turned away from the game because it doesn't support their interests.

You literally just listed the two games with the most toxic competitive communities in gaming.

They also have extremely toxic "casual" communities.

II was not trying to be toxic and if I came across as such in text I apologise.

What stood out for me was that the common language seems compy...

but I like mathhammer stuff because I think that
someday
it will be used to handicap certain models and
hopefully
help to tune a decent set of rules.

Until that time,
I'll go with common sense realism over GWs typists.

.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:
Personally, I'm fond of a height stat in inches for models. Models never conform to exact heights in inches, but it gets the point across and more importantly, gives people good dimensions to work with when designing or defining terrain. This is 7.3" tall, so it blocks LOS for everything except that height 8 guy there. Being part of the statline makes design space and helps people be aware of how the rule works without needing to know what the table says.

Almost missed this post.
Truth - man when we moved from SK
I shipped my terrain.
Still in the box - busy as @.

But, yup....

Sqorgar, thank you for giving more weight to my argument.

Have a nice day.

Sqorgar wrote:
I'm sorry you feel that way, but let's see if you can follow my thought process and see where I'm coming from.

A "competitive player" is not "a player who plays competitive games". They are "a competitive player that plays games". That is, their very character is categorized by being competitive. It is not that they want or need to win games, but that they feel compelled to compete. Like if you are sitting on a toilet in a public bathroom and the guy from the next stall asks how many pieces of toilet paper you used, and you say, I don't know. Maybe like a dozen. And he goes, "Ha! I did it in nine!" That's not a person being competitive. That's a competitive person.

This is bogus. It is not binary. 'Competitive' is a gradient, not an artificial divide between players you like and those you don't. 'Competitive' ranges from 'not competitive at all' to 'competitive at all costs'.

Sqorgar wrote:
I just spent a lot of words to say that I use "competitive player" as shorthand for a player who creates an unhealthy, unfun game environment because they can not tell the difference between good competition and bad competition. I think it is fair to say that winning a tournament does not factor in one way or another. It's an attitude, not an achievement.

Your words fail.

The second biggest problem is you use a generic, catch-all term, most frequently used to describe an entire subsection of the player base and range of play styles, load it with derogatory and negative intentions of its nasty fringe elements and use it in a derogatory way, specifically to target the 'nasty ones', but seem completely oblivious and almost happy that that term you so gleefully uses tar s everyone else with those sweeping assertions by proxy.

The biggest problem for me though isn't that you don't like competitive-at-all-costs gaming. I'm actually more On board with you there than you realise. It's the 'othering'. It's the dishonesty and ignorance in what you say. It's the construction of that artificial monster that you make of 'competitive players'. It's not enough that you're not into 'that sort of thing'. It's the other stuff. It's how you claim those competitives can't, and don't paint, they can't and won't hobby, they can't and won't socialise, they can't and won't lore. They just want to crush .all the time. And even when people point out you can do both, or that the crushing is often an exaggeration or just your own projections, simultaneously, you stare back in disbelief and incomprehension, and then just dismiss it and carry on with your original assertion that competitives are bad. like how it was shown that your Aos champions are also among the xompetitive players that you despise. Like how, for years now, I've pointed out how competitives in warmachine also paint and hobby - see my numbers of painted models above. Heck, I am far from the only one - I got recommended a warmachine painting group with almost 8,000 members on Facebook the other day. You don't want to believe in anything other that your ridiculous cartoon, no matter how often this is demonstrated to you. It is hugely frustrating to discuss things with you when you are so close minded about this stuff.

I can't for the life of me remember it's name,but there is a scientific term for how people will often have views, and will bury their heads in the sand when presented with evidence or anecdotes to the contrary, simply ignore or dismiss or refuse to accept other perspectives, and other points of view that conflict with their own predetermined judgements. As a man of science, as someone who values rational and objectives discussion, I loathe this attitude. And it's what you do here. Please, stop this, open your mind and change your attitude. You could be an excellent ambassador for our hobby, but your dogma and biases do you no favours at all.

Horst wrote:The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

Can we please not tar an entire community with one brush and be so dismissive of what the other side says?

And can we be clear on something: there's a difference between 'casuals' and 'casuals-at-all-costs'. Saying competitives hate on casuals because of the casual at all costs is not helpful. That's tarriñg an entire community, its not accurate or helpful and just as bad as what's sqorgar's doing.

There have been some 'rants', on both sides, and there has been plenty reasoned discussion on both too. With respect, calling what the other side says 'rants' is not helpful at all. And people are entitled to disagree with how others play, if they're not into that sort of thing. And explaining why someone has issues with x,y or z is not the same as claiming that person can't 'live and let live'. Let's not leap to conclusions or project.

Sqorgar wrote:
All these terms tend to be used differently by everybody, not just me. There's not really an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. WAAC describes someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and even steal in order to win a game - and while unhealthy, that's not really what I'm talking about. Tournament player describes a player who goes to tournaments, which isn't, itself, a problem. I've decided to load the term "competitive player" because it implies someone who is primarily competitive, above all else, and in general, being competitive is seen as a negative character trait in others. If I say Ted from marketing is competitive, it generally doesn't imply a healthy and helpful guy. Maybe I should just describe these players as "Teds from Marketing"?

Please, stop. You are wrong. You are the only one that uses competitive in this manner - every one else understands it's a gradient and is nuanced. Christ, you've put me on the same side asPeregrine here. Think about that! That's how out of kilter you are here. Being 'competitive' is not a negative trait for a start. Thats just you projecting your own bias in assuming this. I know plenty people who are competitive. In sports and in ttgs. They're fine people, shockingly. Ted from marketing being competitive doesn't imply anything about his helpfulness or health. Remember - competitive is a gradient.

Loading the term 'competitive'' is not cool. You're 'othering'. It's like saying 'all Irish are drunks'. You are knowingly making broad, inaccurate judgements and then tarring an entire community with it by proxy, and singlehandedly proving folks like Horst right when he talks about how casuals can't live and let live and must denigrate all the competitives. You are singlehandedly undoing the good work that posters like nou and notonline! frequently do to push a positive impression of casual/narrative gamers. And this is not your first time doing this. You've done it before when you used 'tournament player' as an insult, despite this being demonstrated to you how in the wrong you were and how inaccurate your viewpoint was. And you are doing it here,now.

And there is an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. And it isn't Waac. And It certainly isn't taking a generic term that everyone uses, then using it in a different way and loading it with your own negative bias- you know that It's inaccurate and that it's only good for grinding people's gears and winding them up. If you need a term to describe 'competitively inappropriately' then use the term I use - 'competitive-at-all-costs'. Its a perfectly adequate descriptor of competitive-that-cannot-be-turned-down-or-off, or everything must be sacrificed on the altar of competition and nothing else matters, only the win, and so long as it's legal (or not illegal) it's fair game - and as a mild bonus, itdoesn't actually tar everyone else who likes tournaments or competitive gaming and who also happens to be a decent chap (which Horst, is probably most folks on your side of the fence, so please don't go saying that we narratives and casuals are all about denigrating competitives and can't live and let live) and/or who likes other things in the hobby as well as competing hard.

Deadnight wrote:

This is bogus. It is not binary. 'Competitive' is a gradient, not an artificial divide between players you like and those you don't. 'Competitive' ranges from 'not competitive at all' to 'competitive at all costs'.

The problem is that we are using two different forms of the word "competitive". You see it as some who likes to compete. I'm using it as someone who is defined by it. When someone says Ted from Marketing is competitive, it is a pejorative, and that is the way I am using it here. Just because we are talking, more or less, about competition doesn't make that behavior more acceptable. Ted from Marketing doesn't become a great guy when you are playing Poker with him.

You don't want to believe in anything other that your ridiculous cartoon, no matter how often this is demonstrated to you. It is hugely frustrating to discuss things with you when you are so close minded about this stuff.

Don't confuse "lack of compelling counter evidence" for "closed minded". It's not that I can't be convinced. It's that you simply haven't convinced me. And I've got a lot of experiences to draw from personally, so it'll take more than "well, I paint my models so some competitive players must paint". The evidence you provide must be at least equally compelling to the experiences I've had that made me quit Warmachine forever. That's a high hurdle.

Let's be honest here. The Warmachine community was fething awful. I mean, it was just the worst thing ever. I can't count on my fingers and toes the number of new players that I personally saw get pushed away from the game, or the number of explicitly unpleasant experiences I've seen or experienced. It was a time bomb waiting to go off, and I don't think anybody was really surprised when it imploded with Mk3 - even the people who left the game out of rage. When people talk about "toxic communities", that is my go to example, every time. And I don't think you can separate the behavior of that community from the competitive nature of it. Maybe one led to the other, or vice versa, but in my mind, the two are inseparable. I would do anything to prevent the games I like and the communities I engage in from ever being even remotely like the cesspool that game because. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.

Yes, that makes me biased. But what it also does is make me curious. How does it get that bad? What attitudes and behaviors lead down that path to ruin? These discussions are less about trying to label and attack these kinds of people than it is to simply work out what happened. I'm working backwards from Warmachine's worse time period, but I'm also comparing it to behaviors I see in 40k and other games. No matter what way I attack the problem, it always, always, always comes back to competitive behavior - and not always unhealthy competitive behavior, though that is a major part of it. I think that if we even just acknowledged the unhealthy competitive behavior, we'd only really get about halfway to solving the problem - but that's halfway closer than we are now.

I can't for the life of me remember it's name,but there is a scientific term for how people will often have views, and will bury their heads in the sand when presented with evidence or anecdotes to the contrary, simply ignore or dismiss or refuse to accept other perspectives, and other points of view that conflict with their own predetermined judgements.

It's called "confirmation bias". We all have it to some degree.

Loading the term 'competitive'' is not cool. You're 'othering'.

There's that 'othering' again. You must feel it is a particularly compelling argument that should shame me into changing my ways. I don't really give two gaks about people, only their behavior. So let me ask you this. What are your opinions on the following behaviors? Do they ever have a place in this hobby?

Refusing to play new players?

Refusing to play games with players that aren't tournament level games?

Curb stomping new or inexperienced players?

Telling new players to "nut up or shut up"?

Being a sore winner or sore loser?

Playing games in a professional (or demonstrative) setting (tournaments, YouTube battle reports) with unpainted or unassembled models?

Playing games with a large number of proxied models? Like using a beer can to stand in for a tank?

Playing a game with empty bases standing in for models?

These behaviors are not necessarily that of a competitive player, but because competitive players prioritize competition over all else, these represent behaviors that are chosen deliberately by competitive players. They curb stomp newbies because they are practicing for tournaments, not helping new players. They use proxy models because they are experimenting with army composition, not making the game easier for their opponent to follow. They refuse to play new players because they don't want to compromise the time they could be otherwise spend "training".

There are reasons why other players would engage in these behaviors. Someone with a limited budget might proxy models to try them out, for example. But these usually happen in small groups, and rarely against strangers and never against new players. And while a player may choose, in a limited fashion, to do some of this occasionally, Teds from Marketing often do ALL OF THEM. All the time. Not 100% of the time, but close to it.

And there is an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. And it isn't Waac.

No, that's a different thing. I knew a WAAC player before. Not in miniatures, but with board games. He was a good friend, but we had to stop playing board games when he was around. Believe me, I have some choice words about that kind of person too, but there's a difference. For one thing, WAAC players don't tend to run in groups, though some groups may be more tolerant of them. I think they may blend more successfully in with the competitive groups, but their issues are their own.

There's that 'othering' again. You must feel it is a particularly compelling argument that should shame me into changing my ways. I don't really give two gaks about people, only their behavior. So let me ask you this. What are your opinions on the following behaviors? Do they ever have a place in this hobby?

Refusing to play new players?

Refusing to play games with players that aren't tournament level games?

Curb stomping new or inexperienced players?

Telling new players to "nut up or shut up"?

Being a sore winner or sore loser?

Playing games in a professional (or demonstrative) setting (tournaments, YouTube battle reports) with unpainted or unassembled models?

Playing games with a large number of proxied models? Like using a beer can to stand in for a tank?

Playing a game with empty bases standing in for models?

These behaviors are not necessarily that of a competitive player, but because competitive players prioritize competition over all else, these represent behaviors that are chosen deliberately by competitive players. They curb stomp newbies because they are practicing for tournaments, not helping new players. They use proxy models because they are experimenting with army composition, not making the game easier for their opponent to follow. They refuse to play new players because they don't want to compromise the time they could be otherwise spend "training".

There are reasons why other players would engage in these behaviors. Someone with a limited budget might proxy models to try them out, for example. But these usually happen in small groups, and rarely against strangers and never against new players. And while a player may choose, in a limited fashion, to do some of this occasionally, Teds from Marketing often do ALL OF THEM. All the time. Not 100% of the time, but close to it.

Not 100% but close too it.

So slippery slope and a non argument?

Also othering is a process, and frankly for what's worth, whilest the behaviour that you described ranges from unaceptable to unfortunate, associating it with competitive seems rather artificial and is where your whole argument breaks down.


I have seen plenty of times where veterans of the hobby turned their noses up at the new kid with the Starter box.
Just as I've seen the ultra competitive tryhard build a complete fluff list as a side project and proceeded to teach some newbies with that army.

And generally whilest i feel that the recent focus on competitive, especially the ITC branch, is unfortunate since it is in essence a whole subset of rules that doesn't stop me, a generally more laid back non tournament goer to demand a consice and decent ruleset.

We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Well you would certainly find toxic people in it, just like in any community.
Point beeing that every part of it has their fair share of morons.

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Word.^^
Gonna raise a glass to this.

 jeff white wrote:

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Word.^^
Gonna raise a glass to this.

Lets add to his list of the "playerbase" maintaining the game...

Battle Fleet Gothic.. still alive and well.. you can buy even new and BETTER minis on shapeways and elsewhere that are more inclusive and diverse than the OE GW ones. The lists that were missing ships have been filled, etc.
Epic 40K Armageddon has been community served for years again, with more vehicles (including NEWER variants from newer GW 28mm being backported) available though non-GW sources that improve both on rules and general aesthetics of the OE base game.

Honestly, some of the "community rules" have been lightyears better than the GW Rules sets.

That can be said for WHFB (though I have not looked into see if the community is still gungho about it since AoS has really come into it's prime).
Kill Team (yes killteam was community supported for YEARS before GW brought it back.. and had some neat expansion rules you could set up campaigns with)
...

I am sure I am missing something here but I can't recall.

In some ways the Epic40K Armageddon has gotten better w/o GW mucking it up... like they did with Titanicus.. though I am 100% certain that Titanicus re-release is a pending roadmap (just as it was before) to the release of Epic 40k. Probably with shyte rules based on their current dynamic. Epic was pretty abstract though.. so they will probably mess it up when they get back to doing it.

That's kind of the problem. When as a game company you keep effing up and the community gets their hands on your abandonware and does it BETTER than you.. there can be some disgruntled backlash if you pick your IP back up and release garbage.

Mind you the new Kill Team and Newcromunda were pretty great. New Apoc,no. 8th, no...New AoS.. yes, Titanicus.. no.

So we will see. They've got some hits.. and some misses.

I'd love to see Gorka-Morka brought back. But w/o jam dice and brain injuries it just wouldn't be as much fun. Nothing like some squig juice fueled scrap over some scrap. HAR HAR HAR.. ya filthy grot.

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Counter-argument: those are all extreme niche-market games with so few players that it took GW 15 years to do a one-time Necromunda release with minimal ongoing support. It isn't really an accurate comparison to point to games with so few players because of course you only see the healthiest communities there, any group that isn't amazing disappears. And because the game is so tiny those failed communities are indistinguishable from the significant majority who never get into the game in the first place. It's not like, say, MTG being dead in an area, where the absence of a community is a giant red flag that something is probably wrong. So we'll never know how many of these games had toxic elements and failed because of it.

 meatybtz wrote:


That's kind of the problem. When as a game company you keep effing up and the community gets their hands on your abandonware and does it BETTER than you.. there can be some disgruntled backlash if you pick your IP back up and release garbage.

Mind you the new Kill Team and Newcromunda were pretty great. New Apoc,no. 8th, no...New AoS.. yes, Titanicus.. no.

So we will see. They've got some hits.. and some misses.

I'd love to see Gorka-Morka brought back. But w/o jam dice and brain injuries it just wouldn't be as much fun. Nothing like some squig juice fueled scrap over some scrap. HAR HAR HAR.. ya filthy grot.

Competitive GorkaMorka.is the future.

But absolutely this^^ re GW.
It is almost as if the hobby and player base is split
between loyalists,
who are actually traitors,
and traitors,
who are actually loyalists...

I know which side I am on.

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

Gatekeeping is a part of the process.
But he i am sure you know it all....

 Sqorgar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

Well, about why I did not mentioned D&D - I live in a country that had none of it. In the years following our transformation in '89 we jumped straight in into Warhammers, MtG and pen and papers, without any hobby buildup or history whatsoever. We had scale modelers and some odd hex based strategy games here and there and a polish rip-off version of Talisman, but that's all, maybe some individuals playing lead historicals with custom primitive rulesets, but I know of not one club pre-dating 1990. And among pen&papers it was initally a split between WarhammerFRP and Vampire and soon everyone and their dog was writing their own systems and then storytelling approach emerged (my personal favourite). So for me, tabletop miniature games were always strategic and only recently D&D gained some traction here, mostly among board game players which have been gradually accustomed with the concept of elaborate miniatures instead of simple counters. But it is still a niche within a niche.

To illustrate how it was here: when polish version of Battletech was released in '93 it was distributed in toy shops and failed miserably because there was no market whatsoever yet for complex board games adressed to adults. I bought my copy solely because of cover illustration (I was 14 back then) and was completely stunned by contents and compexity of the rulebook, but had no one to play it with up until after complex gaming became somewhat popularised by WHFB and 40K.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

You can PM me to prevent thread drift. But what do you mean? I've been out of PnP RPGs for a long time and honestly thought many died out.. some did and came back (Palladium.. too bad they lost the rights to TMNT.. that was fun). Just curious because I can imagine many possible toxic things but.. FFS it is a PnP RPG.. do we have divas or something now? Jeeze people whats with everything being toxic (MMO PVP! HAHA) anyways.. just that you made me curious since I don't follow any of that anymore and have not for the better part of almost two decades.

 meatybtz wrote:

You can PM me to prevent thread drift. But what do you mean? I've been out of PnP RPGs for a long time and honestly thought many died out.. some did and came back (Palladium.. too bad they lost the rights to TMNT.. that was fun). Just curious because I can imagine many possible toxic things but.. FFS it is a PnP RPG.. do we have divas or something now? Jeeze people whats with everything being toxic (MMO PVP! HAHA) anyways.. just that you made me curious since I don't follow any of that anymore and have not for the better part of almost two decades.

It’s the same gak that has been turning geeks against geeks for a few years now. Think Star Wars or Ghostbusters 2016. Paizo, in particular, seems to have no problems calling it’s customers nazis. Whatever side of the ideological line you fall on, the PnP environment is more battleground than community.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 meatybtz wrote:

You can PM me to prevent thread drift. But what do you mean? I've been out of PnP RPGs for a long time and honestly thought many died out.. some did and came back (Palladium.. too bad they lost the rights to TMNT.. that was fun). Just curious because I can imagine many possible toxic things but.. FFS it is a PnP RPG.. do we have divas or something now? Jeeze people whats with everything being toxic (MMO PVP! HAHA) anyways.. just that you made me curious since I don't follow any of that anymore and have not for the better part of almost two decades.

It’s the same gak that has been turning geeks against geeks for a few years now. Think Star Wars or Ghostbusters 2016. Paizo, in particular, seems to have no problems calling it’s customers nazis. Whatever side of the ideological line you fall on, the PnP environment is more battleground than community.

Ahh. Thanks I understand. *sigh*

 Sqorgar wrote:
It’s the same gak that has been turning geeks against geeks for a few years now. Think Star Wars or Ghostbusters 2016. Paizo, in particular, seems to have no problems calling it’s customers nazis. Whatever side of the ideological line you fall on, the PnP environment is more battleground than community.

Lolwut. Criticizing poor behavior and people in the community is not the same thing as calling all of their customers Nazis. If you feel hurt by their comments perhaps you should reevaluate your life choices? Because I certainly don't feel criticized unfairly by any of it.


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 Sqorgar wrote:
Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

Because gatekeeping is a thing even if certain people try to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it doesn't happen.

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

That's not really a good comparison because RPGs have a completely different structure. Of course a cooperative game is going to have an easier time establishing a healthy narrative-focused community because the game structure makes playing "competitively" pointless. The whole competitive vs. narrative issue only matters in the context of games like MTG or 40k where you have a zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset and the narrative elements exist in conflict with that basic nature.

 Peregrine wrote:

That's not really a good comparison because RPGs have a completely different structure.

The genre was literally created out of Chainmail - literally the first commercially available fantasy miniatures game! PnP RPGs are what happens when the narrative players eschew competition in favor of cooperation and narrative. Like, there’s no middle man. There’s no progression. No evolution. It goes from Chainmail to D&D in ONE STEP.

Of course a cooperative game is going to have an easier time establishing a healthy narrative-focused community because the game structure makes playing "competitively" pointless. The whole competitive vs. narrative issue only matters in the context of games like MTG or 40k where you have a zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset and the narrative elements exist in conflict with that basic nature.

The fact that it is functionally impossible for you to see 40k as anything but a “zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset” (especially when it is the exact opposite) disappoints me greatly.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The genre was literally created out of Chainmail - literally the first commercially available fantasy miniatures game! PnP RPGs are what happens when the narrative players eschew competition in favor of cooperation and narrative. Like, there’s no middle man. There’s no progression. No evolution. It goes from Chainmail to D&D in ONE STEP.

I don't care what the history of the game was, that "one step" was a massive change in game concept and the game has only evolved since then. Modern D&D is not just players deciding to play Chainmail with a less-competitive attitude, it's an entirely different game that is superficially similar at best.

The fact that it is functionally impossible for you to see 40k as anything but a “zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset” (especially when it is the exact opposite) disappoints me greatly.

Then you'd better get used to disappointment because 40k being a zero-sum game is indisputable fact. You win the game by making your opponent lose, both at the tactical level (killing enemy units) and strategic level (the victory conditions for the scenario). Perhaps you are confusing a straightforward description of game mechanics with the idea that "zero-sum game" means that only one person can enjoy it?

 Sqorgar wrote:

Let's be honest here. The Warmachine community was fething awful. I mean, it was just the worst thing ever.

Yes, that makes me biased. But what it also does is make me curious. How does it get that bad? What attitudes and behaviors lead down that path to ruin?

It's funny, because for the longest time Warmachine had easily one of the best communities out there. I personally didn't think it got that bad until after MK3, but the year or two before certainly seemed to be where it started with that sense that the keyboard jockeys felt they were more important to the game than the company behind it that preludes all the toxic fanbases. I think a lot of it was definitely paved with good intentions as players worked to enforce the rules consistently and fairly, but it mostly increased the learning curve as some of the game's niche interactions became well known through experience rather than intuition. It didn't strike me as wildly toxic until MK3 though, where the online community reacted as poorly as possible at every given opportunity until it wasn't even worth trying to participate in.

Popular games often develop toxic communities because people end up investing so much of themselves into those games, to the point where the game becomes a not-insignificant portion of their personal identities. The game becomes an extension of who they are.

So super fans get really sensitive to changes or criticisms regarding the game, because at the point, a developer or community member isn't just messing with the game, they're messing directly with the identities of its biggest fans.

If you're a longtime 40k fan and GW tells you that you no longer represent the kind of audience they care about, you're going to be offended on some level. Likewise, if you're a die-hard competitive player and a bunch of narrative players tell you your style of play is no longer welcome, you're going to be pissed. And vice versa.

The more popular the game, the greater the number of 'super fans', and the higher the likelihood of toxicity when things don't change the way they want it to.

Peregrine wrote:I don't care what the history of the game was...

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Interestingly enough, the first thing which could be considered a narrative war game was Braunstein, which was a combination of Diplomacy and a war game. The players would take on the role of individuals who had specific objectives in the battle, and apparently, this was so much fun, the first game of Braunstein played never actually got to the war game part.

I can’t believe you think these games are zero-sum, winner takes all games. They never have been, even going back to HG Wells’ Little Wars. Even Kriegspeil, one of the earliest war games, had a game master who would move the units for the players according to how he thought the units would interpret the commands. If the umpire thought your units had low morale, he’d play them that way.

War games, and miniature games, have ALWAYS been narrative games! The idea that they are competitive is a recent invention, and completely at odds with the mechanical margin of error these games have. Did the unit move 6” or 6.02”? Does this unit have line of sight to this other unit? Does seeing a topknot stick up over a wall count? Can I fire on that unit? I’ll just hold this ruler 3” above the field because there are too many models in the way. This guy is 4.5” up the wall, not 4.62” that I technically should have.

Miniature games are, by their very existence, open to interpretation! Actions happen because the players agree on it, not because we have the accuracy to actually measure movement or line of sight! They are mechanically hazy. How can they be competitive when the most fundamental parts of the game are completely inaccurate? These games are literally built upon the fundamental principle of “close enough, I guess”..

LunarSol wrote:
It's funny, because for the longest time Warmachine had easily one of the best communities out there. I personally didn't think it got that bad until after MK3, but the year or two before certainly seemed to be where it started with that sense that the keyboard jockeys felt they were more important to the game than the company behind it that preludes all the toxic fanbases. I think a lot of it was definitely paved with good intentions as players worked to enforce the rules consistently and fairly, but it mostly increased the learning curve as some of the game's niche interactions became well known through experience rather than intuition. It didn't strike me as wildly toxic until MK3 though, where the online community reacted as poorly as possible at every given opportunity until it wasn't even worth trying to participate in.

Warmachine was dying well before Mk3 ever came out, By the end of Mk2, there were basically no new players coming in. The one-two punch of 8th and mk3 took out the older players, but a game with less people coming in than going out is not sustainable for very long. It was on borrowed time. So why didn’t the new players stick around? It wasn’t because it was a bad game (it isn’t) and it wasn’t because the models were crap (they were, but they were crap before).

During mk2, WMH had an explosive growth. It became the second most popular miniature game and had one of the best reputations of any of the minis games out there (especially compared to old GW). By the end of mk2, the players were openly hostile to new players and had an attitude that you’ll lose your first dozen games (and that’s a good thing), only playing steamroller tournament lists. Somewhere, it went from new players are welcome to new players can feth off.

Warmachine was dying well before Mk3 ever came out, By the end of Mk2, there were basically no new players coming in. The one-two punch of 8th and mk3 took out the older players, but a game with less people coming in than going out is not sustainable for very long. It was on borrowed time. So why didn’t the new players stick around? It wasn’t because it was a bad game (it isn’t) and it wasn’t because the models were crap (they were, but they were crap before).

During mk2, WMH had an explosive growth. It became the second most popular miniature game and had one of the best reputations of any of the minis games out there (especially compared to old GW). By the end of mk2, the players were openly hostile to new players and had an attitude that you’ll lose your first dozen games (and that’s a good thing), only playing steamroller tournament lists. Somewhere, it went from new players are welcome to new players can feth off.

isn't that imo just a attitude that manifested and turned new players away at a massive rate?
Considering that MK 1 and most of MK2 were doing ok and assuming we got the Veterans from there coldn't it be that either the Influx of new players at a rather insane rate has brought in rather strange fellows that lacked the general sportsmanship instead?


I feel that GW has a diffrent problem in regards to 40k, mostly that their lackluster rules lend themselves to insulated groups with subrules all over the place.
Basically i assume that the 40k community is far more splintered then what we assume.
I also think the vast majority of non competitive players have a problem with GW's focus on ITC because it is hardly confroming to the base ruleset.
In a way i feel like we wouldn't have that discussion if GW did a propper job on the rules from the start.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Warmachine was dying well before Mk3 ever came out, By the end of Mk2, there were basically no new players coming in. The one-two punch of 8th and mk3 took out the older players, but a game with less people coming in than going out is not sustainable for very long. It was on borrowed time. So why didn’t the new players stick around? It wasn’t because it was a bad game (it isn’t) and it wasn’t because the models were crap (they were, but they were crap before).

During mk2, WMH had an explosive growth. It became the second most popular miniature game and had one of the best reputations of any of the minis games out there (especially compared to old GW). By the end of mk2, the players were openly hostile to new players and had an attitude that you’ll lose your first dozen games (and that’s a good thing), only playing steamroller tournament lists. Somewhere, it went from new players are welcome to new players can feth off.

isn't that imo just a attitude that manifested and turned new players away at a massive rate?
Considering that MK 1 and most of MK2 were doing ok and assuming we got the Veterans from there coldn't it be that either the Influx of new players at a rather insane rate has brought in rather strange fellows that lacked the general sportsmanship instead?


I feel that GW has a diffrent problem in regards to 40k, mostly that their lackluster rules lend themselves to insulated groups with subrules all over the place.
Basically i assume that the 40k community is far more splintered then what we assume.
I also think the vast majority of non competitive players have a problem with GW's focus on ITC because it is hardly confroming to the base ruleset.
In a way i feel like we wouldn't have that discussion if GW did a propper job on the rules from the start.

RE: Warmachine the issue was a people one. For whatever reason, you had neckbeards who took "Page 5" to heart instead of as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying don't complain about something being "cheesy" learn to adapt (which was the direct opposite of Warhammer, 40k in particular, at the time). Instead what you got was cliques of "elite" players who took pleasure in curb-stomping newbs and then telling them to "git gud" because "the rules say to play like you have a pair". Of course not every community was like this and you also had communities with players who would help or give advice and, if they did do some wacky top of 2 caster kill combo, explain exactly how they did it, what you could have done to avoid it and what you need to watch out for next time. And, of course, you had the groups that were so narrow-mindedly focused on tournaments that they would never play anything but Steamroller games (although in this defense the regular scenarios were absolutely terrible), and be unhelpful to new players. That attitude also happened in Warhammer though, and a good indication of that is people who never want to play below 2k (or whatever tournament standard is at the time) because they only have a specific list for that goal or worse a community which tells new players to buy a 2k point army before they start to play because everyone only plays 2k points. That's a surefire sign of a community which doesn't "get" it and it was very prevalent in the Warmahordes communities since there was such a focus on competitive play.

GW's issue is that their rules are so wordy and non-instructive that you end up with houserules or even just agreements on how things work, when someone else can try to argue it works a different way. ITC itself isn't the issue, it's that A) ITC is the most popular "houserules" and B) Their houserules go so far as to define their own meta, different from the meta which doesn't use them, and yet have the nerve to act like their way is superior. It's been shown time and time and time again that the ITC missions favor certain armies and allow you to tailor more than you can without them, yet as long a ITC is held up to some sort of pedestal as being the "perfect" set of rules you'll find arguments because they are still house rules, just house rules that have been pimped out to seem like the norm. How does that saying go? Tell a lie long enough and it becomes truth?

The main issue I feel in general is that like we've said before, your competitive people tend to become narrow-minded. They can ONLY play competitive, and have no "off" button or even a desire to do something other than boring Matched Play, often ITC, missions with as symmetrical as possible situations so it's "fair". And, as we've seen from some folks here, often get very vehement at anything that isn't matched play with points to where they constantly go out of their way to "prove" why it's superior to everything else, irrespective of what someone else might enjoy. ITC is a symptom of a problem but has since become the problem itself.

You have the opposite ("CAAC") but IMHO it's extremely rare and is more a caricature cooked up to sling mud at the other side. Now to be fair "WAAC" is also used incorrectly the majority of the time and is a caricature of what it really is: A competitive player isn't automatically WAAC, it's only the most extreme rules-lawyering, nitpicking, obviously not playing in the spirit of the game because they want to win sort of player who is WAAC and typically even other competitive players don't care for a true WAAC player because it tars all of them with the same brush. My experience has been here and elsewhere over the past 15 or so years that you rarely find people like that. You have people who dislike playing the game competitively and often feel threatened by the almost-inevitable bringing competitive play into a non-competitive group and having it swiftly overtake and subsume everything else, but that's a reaction to having an outside force basically come in and usurp control and less just people who want to "virtue signal" about how they aren't competitive like certain people seem to toss around.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I can’t believe you think these games are zero-sum, winner takes all games.

Then you clearly don't understand what "zero sum game" is. Ambiguity in rules interpretation has nothing to do with the concept.

How can they be competitive when the most fundamental parts of the game are completely inaccurate?

How can football be competitive when nobody can measure exactly where the ball is, and the game is full of "good enough" calls?