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 Vaktathi wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Jidmah wrote:That is probably because these days, it's more of a general insult for nerds than an accurate description of a sub-culture.

...

Subculture?

Subculture - an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within an embracing culture or society. Examples include hippies, preppers, goths, trekkies, bikers, juggalos, greasers, skinheads, etc.

I know what subculture is, I was expressing disbelief at using it to justify or legitimize cultural appropriation.

 Just Tony wrote:
I know what subculture is, I was expressing disbelief at using it to justify or legitimize cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation isn't a real thing.

CaptainWaffle wrote:
I'll second this. A good friend of mine loves history, especially military history, and fields Germans in Bolt Action and has German and old Austrian themed armies in 40k. He really likes Germans in WWII and we can banter about Axis vs. Allies and counterparts in 40k all the time. Back in university he was heavily involved in the international clubs, has many friends from there still, and is happily married to a non-white woman who is wonderful. I think the "racist" term (among others) is thrown around FAR too often, and in doing so it ignores many of the other layers of human existence that people experience. Someone like my friend could easily come across as a weird player with weird experiences, but in reality he's quite normal and such behavior is extremely normal now and through history.

He's not a bit German.

Overread wrote:
I think he means racists.
Personally racism is perfectly fine to me - in universe in the game. Heck most players are highly speciest to start with and will insult other armies based on species - meanwhile Tyranid players keep mentioning how good everyone tastes and the chaos players keep trying to tempt you to join their dark gods and demonic rites.

However some people don't know how to stop the game spilling into reality; meanwhile others have difficulty separating game and reality in terms of the opinions of others.


That said 40K is fine, I mean heck people play full on WWII games all the time as both Axis and Allies sides and no one bats an eyelid at that. Even when you're playing as Soviets or Germans and enjoying when your Panzer smashes through the weak allied Churchill tank armour.

Churchills are stupidly well armored. If only my Panzers could easily smash through them .


But anyway, I have US, USSR, and German Flames of War armies [and nobody to play with ]. The important part is separating reality from the game. It's perfectly fine to play the Germans in wargames and in RTS games and whatever. At the very least, somebody has to be the bad guys for you to have a game. I my playgroups, I am the person who can prattle on for hours about german tank company doctrine or soviet defensive tactics in 1943 or the merits of the M4A3 until people start to take three steps away hoping it stops, but there's a difference between being into WWII history and crossing the line. The problem is when it starts to leak out into reality and/or you lose sight of the context of it. If you start supporting the nazis and what they fought for, then there might be a problem.

The context is important, especially for historical games. Real people fought and died in those wars for real ideals. It's important that, as much as it's fun to be like "Boom! My IS-2 blows a hole in your Panther!" or to read a manual telling Private Fritz to throw a jerry can with a hand grenade tied to it onto a T-34, that we're portraying something that goes beyond a clash of toy tanks on the tabletop where real people did horrible things.


And it's also important to understand that 40k is satire. You're supposed to know that this world is not a good future, and that the people in it are not good people, and that the ideals they're fighting for are not good ideals. It's played for humor in 40k ["look at how funny the stupid fascists are!"], and if you find yourself truly believing in the Imperium of Man or the Chaos Gods or whatever, you might have a problem.

the_scotsman wrote:
This is why I tried to phrase my post in as delicate and sensitive a way as possible so as not to offend.

Its all well and good to talk about opponents who scream and throw models and dice and flip tables and cheat in ways a five year old would find outrageous on the playground, but theres a special bespoke layer of internet skepticism reserved for stories that involve people displaying the same level of childishness toward someones gender or skin tone.

It's the internet. It's ironically more of an isolated microcosm than the outside world, since everyone you're interacting with is generally self selected by belief and interest. In addition, there's the whole issue that some people just don't have the same life experiences as other people. Believing the prejudice is real can be hard if you don't experience it yourself. Fortunately, people tend to be a lot more civil in person. The person standing right there in front of you makes a big difference about what you're willing to say.

Some people seem to have a vested interest in making cultural appropriation a real thing. I like to play 'how far back do you want to go?' - if wearing a kimono is appropriation, so is wearing trousers.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I know what subculture is, I was expressing disbelief at using it to justify or legitimize cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation isn't a real thing.

You are wrong, but this isn't the place for that discussion.

Quite right, let’s stay on topic please. Thaks!

I guess the part that truly amazed me was that I did think that way, that real people in real life would be more reasonable and functional than what gets displayed online.

But nope. The second you become the designated Childishness Containment Specialist you realize that peoples personalities online are just what their real personality is underneath.

as for people playing Nazi themed 40k armies I can very much understand why someone might be a bit... taken aback by that. I mean playing the germans in a WW2 game is one thing, they had some cool hardware, but when you base an army totally aside on Nazi's people are going to wonder "is this some sort of joke I don't get, or is he glorifying them?"

BrianDavion wrote:
as for people playing Nazi themed 40k armies I can very much understand why someone might be a bit... taken aback by that. I mean playing the germans in a WW2 game is one thing, they had some cool hardware, but when you base an army totally aside on Nazi's people are going to wonder "is this some sort of joke I don't get, or is he glorifying them?"

Yeah. Like okay, Ork freebootas look good in officer caps and trenchcoats.

But do they really need the deaths head on their caps, the red, white and black swastika armbands and the SS symbols painted on their wagons?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

And it's also important to understand that 40k is satire. You're supposed to know that this world is not a good future, and that the people in it are not good people, and that the ideals they're fighting for are not good ideals. It's played for humor in 40k ["look at how funny the stupid fascists are!"], and if you find yourself truly believing in the Imperium of Man or the Chaos Gods or whatever, you might have a problem.

Is 40K satire any more, though? If we look at the majority of the fiction put out by GW then it certainly doesn't seem so. They are playing it straight down the line with the Space Marine bolter porn and its like.

Sure, we still have stuff like Ciaphas Cain but that is one series surrounded by a load of works that genuinely do not appear to be in on the joke.

Where is the 40K equivalent of Tom Sharpe's Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, which viciously ripped the police of Apartheid South Africa apart? Where are the books that actually have us in fits of laughter at the stupidity of the Imperium?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

And it's also important to understand that 40k is satire. You're supposed to know that this world is not a good future, and that the people in it are not good people, and that the ideals they're fighting for are not good ideals. It's played for humor in 40k ["look at how funny the stupid fascists are!"], and if you find yourself truly believing in the Imperium of Man or the Chaos Gods or whatever, you might have a problem.

Is 40K satire any more, though? If we look at the majority of the fiction put out by GW then it certainly doesn't seem so. They are playing it straight down the line with the Space Marine bolter porn and its like.

Sure, we still have stuff like Ciaphas Cain but that is one series surrounded by a load of works that genuinely do not appear to be in on the joke.

Where is the 40K equivalent of Tom Sharpe's Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, which viciously ripped the police of Apartheid South Africa apart? Where are the books that actually have us in fits of laughter at the stupidity of the Imperium?

Well, there's still the Regimental Standard which makes like 90% of it's humor or more based on "fascists are stupid and funny"

Maybe, but at the risk of of driving this into politics you def gotta admit that more and more people do seem to be glorifying facism these days

You guys are drifting waaaaaaaaay off course. Keep it to weird stories and not a discussion of whether it’s appropriate to play a nazi army in 40k

The group I used to game with everything in 28mm and even 15 mm and the guy who often played Wehrmacht was different to the guy who was wanting to play Nazi Space Marines. Having seen a couple of those online as well I think they'd fit in this topic well even though the Imperium is Xenophobic as hecking.

Back when I started playing with them I had a random selection of IG units cos they were cool (Maining an Ultramarine 2nd Company). My selection included a Vindicare and some Rattling snipers. One guy borrowed them. During the game I killed the Vindicare and my opponent revealed the Vindicare was proxying for Manvolio, the legendary rattling sniper.

We got into a fairly protracted heated debate on WYSIWYG and proxies.

Just want to say in my case, I wasn't opposed to the guy having a Nazi themed army on it's own merit. It was the fact that he had a Nazi themed army combined with him making snide comments about the "ethnic diversity" of my army. One of my other hobbies is airsoft, and I know a few people who wear WW2 German kit for games. The ones I know aren't racists or fascists. Quite a few of them even collect and use Soviet gear too. It's important to distinguish between those into history and reenactment or just the aesthetic, and those who do genuinely have an affinity for the ideology.

The fact that 40k is satire does seem to go over a lot of people's heads. I think that has a lot to do with being based in British humour which is more deadpan and subtle. I think that's why more people overseas tend to take 40k at face value (though that's not to say there aren't such people like that in the UK). Same goes for Judge Dred, a British comic (even though it's set in America) which satires the police state but is taken as a serous endorsement of police brutality by some.

 Manchu wrote:
Quite right, let’s stay on topic please. Thaks!

This also goes for the discussion about Nazis, fascism in 40k and rise of extremism in real life unless that actually constituted "Your weirdest experience with a player" in 40k (which is not an excuse to make stuff up to continue that line of discussion).

The weirdest experience I had with a player was a kid which kind of always was at one of the stores I used to play at.

He would get dropped there by his parents around noon and they would pick him up just before the store closed, basically abusing the staff as baby-sitters.
He had some issue with on one of his hands (translator tells me the English term is clubfingers?), which was always in bandages, but that wouldn't have really have mattered if he didn't keep making weird jokes about being a cripple all the time.
I've been told to watch my models around him since he allegedly would pocket some when no one was looking. While I never saw any proof of that, I still was constantly keeping an eye on him whenever he was close to my stuff/game. He would also pick up models without asking to look at them and drop them in different places than they were, which was mildly annoying.
He would also always barge into games and discussion and be a loud and annoying kid in general, but not vastly different from how many boys at that age are.

So I was there playing 5th edition orks against some army I can't even remember (might have been GK) and we were running some sort of special mission where you would be fighting in a no-atmosphere environment with all non-vehicles having a chance of your suit ripping and instantly dying when getting shot at.
During the third turn he suddenly starts deploying a squad of blood angel terminators, a few sanguine guard and assault marines on the table edge and declares that he now joins the game - apparently all other people at the store had successfully dodged playing him and he was the only one without an opponent.
He starts rolling dice while doing pew-pew and explosion noises, but doesn't actually kill anything while my opponent gives him a death stare and I'm wondering about how to suddenly switch to three players. After he failed to do anything, his attention span ended and he wanders off join a discussion a few tables to the right. I shrug, carefully pick up his models and move them off the table.
We continue playing and after an hour or so he return and looks at his models and screeches
"Oh my god, are all of them dead?!"
to which I just responded "Yes" without really thinking about it because he was anoying.
"How did that happen, they are terminators!"
"Well, we are fighting on the moon, and the ork's shooting ripped through their suits." I lied.
He believed me, begrudgingly packed up and went on to complain to every single person that didn't get away fast enough about how orks on the moon are unfair and how blood angels sucked, some with visible question marks in their face.

In the other story I am the weird player.
So, when I started playing orks, it was custom to declare your Waaagh! at the top of your lunges. In fact, when you didn't do it that way, quite a few players argued that you didn't do it proper and would not let you use the rule. For the story, also keep in in mind that I'm very much an ork in real live, 6.4' tall, deep and very loud voice.
Fast forward a few years, some time during sixth edition. My battlewagons unload, I want to give my boyz fleet and declare my Waaagh! like I have always done, as loud as I could.
At the table behind me a necron player in his late teens was so shocked, he dove for cover under the table, jumping into his and his opponent's army cases and knocking off one of the table's six legs. He really hurt himself - so needless to say, that was the last time I declared my Waaagh! in that manner

 Jidmah wrote:

In the other story I am the weird player.
So, when I started playing orks, it was custom to declare your Waaagh! at the top of your lunges. In fact, when you didn't do it that way, quite a few players argued that you didn't do it proper and would not let you use the rule. For the story, also keep in in mind that I'm very much an ork in real live, 6.4' tall, deep and very loud voice.
Fast forward a few years, some time during sixth edition. My battlewagons unload, I want to give my boyz fleet and declare my Waaagh! like I have always done, as loud as I could.
At the table behind me a necron player in his late teens was so shocked, he dove for cover under the table, jumping into his and his opponent's army cases and knocking off one of the table's six legs. He really hurt himself - so needless to say, that was the last time I declared my Waaagh! in that manner

Not gonna lie, I did something similar in a small tournament up at Warhammer World during 5th ed 40k.

I'm running a mixed Chaos Daemons army and I'm facing down a Nidzilla list. One of the Hive Tyrants gets a bead on The Masque and shoots her with his 2x twin Devourers (so 12 shots rerolling everything). The Masque now has 12 3++ saves to make and I make them all, so I decide to do a little dance and sing out "Can't touch this!" after making all the saves, much to the confusion of my opponent.

Hoping this doesn't clarify as following on the off topic posts, but I got into Flames of War (back in version 2) after a discussion from a road trip back from a GW Games Day in Cali. I wanted to build a "German" themed Guard army that was all Afrika Korps, 88s as basilisks etc, thought it would have looked great. There is a BIG difference between a German themed list and one that represents the other aspect. As it turned out, never came to fruition, I just went out and bought some Grants and british Motor company boys, panzer IIIs and Afrika Korps infantry. That started my long hiatus from 40K as I preferred FOW, only returning to 40K toward end of 7th.

I wouldn't bat an eyelid at a force that was built that way.

wasn't 40k, but had an interesting game of warhammer when that was a thing.

Facing a player with a dwarf army, nice custom bit of terrain that had a bit of "the western wall" to it, nice cannon dug outs etc, didn't bother me too much, it was very nicely done.

anyway he sets up, what can only be described as an amazingly well defended hill, and asks smugly what I will do now..

I shrugged, he knew I had Bretonnians when he set up so felt zero issues doing this given the game he went for.. I set my entire army up in the opposite corner, he asked what I was doing.

I noted my Trebuchet out ranged his cannons and asked him what he was going to do, since I only needed to kill one of his units to call it a win.

the rage was awesome

I was looking to game locally, and a friend of mine put me in touch with a local he knew (vaguely). After our first game in a different genre, I decided to give it one more go (he was a bit odd). I show up for a game he's set up to host. We're playing as scantily clad lady barbarians...fighting scantily clad evil ladies..backed up by more scantily clad evil lady barbarians, etc.

The entire table was nothing but sword and sorcery style bikini-clad, sword wielding ladies. Now, I'm about as non-PC as you can get, but the vibe was very weird...everything this guy owned was naked-women-esque. This coupled with some other...quirks, led me to not game with the fellow again.

 Elbows wrote:
I was looking to game locally, and a friend of mine put me in touch with a local he knew (vaguely). After our first game in a different genre, I decided to give it one more go (he was a bit odd). I show up for a game he's set up to host. We're playing as scantily clad lady barbarians...fighting scantily clad evil ladies..backed up by more scantily clad evil lady barbarians, etc.

The entire table was nothing but sword and sorcery style bikini-clad, sword wielding ladies. Now, I'm about as non-PC as you can get, but the vibe was very weird...everything this guy owned was naked-women-esque. This coupled with some other...quirks, led me to not game with the fellow again.

One time a guy came in who was doing that whole "stand around peoples game making random interjections and moving to another table when his great reference based humor was not riotously hilarious" chestnut.

He came over to our table and mentioned he had an army that was slaanesh but hed put big penises on all of them.

"Do you think that would offend people?"

"Probably, I guess." Seemed like that was what he wanted to hear from his tone.

"Oh real PC place huh, that sucks."

Then he left. Never saw him again.

Sometimes I wonder about the line of thinking that would lead a person to enter a store, say that, and leave to never return. I dont think I'll ever get it.

Trolls are not restricted to the internet alone - however they are much rarer in reality because, well, it takes actual effort to walk to a game store, enter and try trolling. Plus it requires a much more directly confrontational attitude

 Elbows wrote:
I was looking to game locally, and a friend of mine put me in touch with a local he knew (vaguely). After our first game in a different genre, I decided to give it one more go (he was a bit odd). I show up for a game he's set up to host. We're playing as scantily clad lady barbarians...fighting scantily clad evil ladies..backed up by more scantily clad evil lady barbarians, etc.

The entire table was nothing but sword and sorcery style bikini-clad, sword wielding ladies. Now, I'm about as non-PC as you can get, but the vibe was very weird...everything this guy owned was naked-women-esque. This coupled with some other...quirks, led me to not game with the fellow again.

With that you've just had me remember another oddball, well; not odd in the traditional sense as he seemed like a cool guy but anyways. It was around the release of Mordheim, so circa 2000 and there is a campaign at our local GW. I'm not playing in it (never got into as I was salty some kid nicked my free Aenur mini that you got with WD.... ) but I'm watching this game with this guy I've never seen before. He's a bit of a hippy type, claims he walks everywhere and has this wonderfully self sculpted warband of like Norse looking guys. The leader is like standing with his hands on his hips and has this huge blond moustache. Guy says the leader is called Sven and is a porn star.

I never saw that guy again but that imprinted on me for 20 years...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Trolls are not restricted to the internet alone - however they are much rarer in reality because, well, it takes actual effort to walk to a game store, enter and try trolling. Plus it requires a much more directly confrontational attitude

Reminds me of a story an old GW manager told me when he managed GW Watford. Now, was this guy trolling or was this genuine? We'll never know but it makes for a fun story. Customer comes in screaming with a broken Nintendo Wii (you see where this is going?) demanding a refund. No matter how much he told them that despite being called GW they do not sell computer games. Guy eventually gives up and chucks the Wii at him.

Now manager has a prop. This was at the height of when the Wii came out and people are asking if they have them in stock as they see "Games" in the name of the shop and not notice the rows upon rows of miniatures.... Any time anyone came in asking if they had a Wii in stock he'd get out this broken one.

did have one guy at FLGS, was always one for pointing out when people were playing things wrong or in "non approved(tm)" ways.

was easy to wind up, had a game with someone else, we both agreed any natural "2" could be re-rolled, but didn't have to be.

this guy had steam coming out of his ears by the end of it

leopard wrote:
did have one guy at FLGS, was always one for pointing out when people were playing things wrong or in "non approved(tm)" ways.

was easy to wind up, had a game with someone else, we both agreed any natural "2" could be re-rolled, but didn't have to be.

this guy had steam coming out of his ears by the end of it

Next time play Binary rules. 1s are successful and everything else is discarded as it doesn't exist.

Necron players get to reroll 2s.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Is 40K satire any more, though?

Less so these days. Not so much because the quality of writing has changed (rose goggles really do wonders) but because we humans decided that reality should look more like the satire.

40k was never a satire, as confirmed by the people who created it.

I was playing against this guy, and losing. Went to take a piss.

When I came back the dude was packing up his army, and then blurted out as loud as he could: "You're using loaded dice!" and stormed out.

Shop owner knows this is dumb, but comes over and asks to look at my dice.

Couldn't find them.

The dude took my dice. He'd stolen all the dice I had at the table. Just some cheap chessex dice.

And he never came back.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
I was playing against this guy, and losing. Went to take a piss.

When I came back the dude was packing up his army, and then blurted out as loud as he could: "You're using loaded dice!" and stormed out.

Shop owner knows this is dumb, but comes over and asks to look at my dice.

Couldn't find them.

The dude took my dice. He'd stolen all the dice I had at the table. Just some cheap chessex dice.

And he never came back.

Play game with 500$ of models on either side.

Steal 15$ of dice?

the_scotsman wrote:

Play game with 500$ of models on either side.

Steal 15$ of dice?

To this very day I'm just at a loss at this one.

Tabletop gaming has no shortage of socially maladjusted weirdos that make me cringe, but this one incident still makes me scratch my head.