Skirmish Games – Page 2 – Tabletop Alchemy

I Play Skirmish Games To Lose!

January 29, 2024January 27, 2024 by tabletopalchemy_ignatius

Transcript

ENTJ. ISFP. ISFJ. The Enneagram. The Myers-Briggs. The Color Code. There are all kinds of ways to measure or gauge or categorize our personalities. Mine apparently is INFP. According to Myers-Briggs. That stands for Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Prospector. And it’s probably why, when I play skirmish games, I go into matches with the assumption that I’m gonna lose. And I’m totally fine with that, it’s my default setting.

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we take the most esoteric and seemingly unrelated concepts and try to force them to relate to our tabletop hobby!

All right, let’s talk about personalities and wargaming. And about what we want to get out of wargaming. Or playing skirmish games. I never know what the right term is for skirmish wargaming or what the meta term is.

Anyway, let’s get one thing out of the way right up front: I am not a competitive gamer. Just like Uncle Atom. I’m not actually a competitive anything. And if I’m brutally honest with myself, it’s probably because of fear. Fear of having my spirits crushed. But more to today’s point, I don’t play these games to test or grow my strategic abilities – I mean, that’s sort of a side effect of just playing games – but I’m not on the Warhammer 40k try-hard circuit. Nothing against people who paint hard and play hard, that’s the cool thing about these games, there are lots of ways to enjoy them. I’ve just never been a highly competitive person, although I’ve been a tad jealous now and then and maybe I would have benefited from being more competitive in particular instances in my life, but we’ll get to that.

I play skirmish games to have fun and hang out with friends and put some of the terrain and miniatures I have to their intended use. You know, as opposed to their actual use of decorating the insides of boxes and closets. And I probably have what a certain controversial media figure might call an “agreeable” nature. Meaning, I dislike conflict. Specifically inter-personal conflict. Well, I guess that’s the only kinda conflict there is. But the bottom line is, it’s not entirely healthy to be so conflict-averse, but it’s not entirely terrible either. There are definitely situations in life where being comfortable with conflict is not only desirable but often necessary. And that’s fine, but for me, tabletop gaming is just not one of those.

When I’m gonna play a tabletop game, I want my friends, or in this case, opponent, to feel comfortable, to have fun, to generally just have a good time. Not like whoever’s in that siren going on right there. So I always go into a game assuming I’m gonna lose. Now that doesn’t mean I intentionally throw a game or not try to win, it just means that I set my expectations in a way that allows my losing a game to literally be no big deal. The win/lose portion of the game is not what I’m there for.

This is also why I like narrative campaign gaming, because even if you lose a match in a narrative campaign, your army or war band is still progressing, still gaining items and experience, there’s always a sense of being part of the game, win or lose. One-off matches are fine, it’s just that the narrative campaign workflow involves more cool game stuff after or between matches. Some folks might call me a Nerf player vs a paintball commando but hey, paintballs to the face are simply uncomfortable. I’m just not a Kushiel’s Dart fan.

If you get that reference … keep your chains and whips for yourself – no judgments! We just have different wirings in the ol’ pain pleasure center.

And yeah, you heard right, I just used the same gag reference in back to back videos. And no, I ain’t hiring a writer. Do writers get hired for things? Maybe I’ll hire GPT-3. Someday AI will just create all the entertainment and watch all the entertainment and we won’t need to be here.

Anyway another thing I tend to stay away from is rules lawyering. If my opponent and I encounter a rule we disagree on, the first thing I’ll do is try to parse the rule out with them to see if I’m misunderstanding something. And sometimes it’s not me, sometimes it’s definitely the other person who’s wrong! Either they’ve misread or misunderstood a rule and that’s totally fine because we all do that sometimes.

But when something like an argument over a rule interpretation starts to brew, I’ll typically just back off and let the game roll. Like, for me, getting hot over something like a board game is pretty silly. But I also know sometimes emotions just get the better of us. Now, again, I understand that a competitive match is entirely different. Not that emotions should run rampant just cause it’s a competitive match, I just mean that, in that arena, knowing and agreeing on the rules is basically its own skill subset.

I wonder if any players at like Adepticon or Las Vegas Open go full on John McEnroe at a table. In fact, I wonder if any 40k player has ever flipped a table. I think I’d pay to see that.

We’re all Jerry Springer fans at heart, you know it as well as I do.

Anyway this attitude I adopt for skirmish gaming I think is a pretty cool one to have just in the pursuit of having a great social experience, aside from the actual fun of pretending to be a general and making strategic decisions in this custom made little miniature world.

But this attitude can also definitely be a bad habit to form in life in general if used too frequently. I am 100 percent guilty of not trying my absolute hardest at certain things because of that fear of failure. I often assume I’m going to fail simply in order to not feel bad when I fail. And if I didn’t try my hardest, I get to tell myself, hey, it’s all good, you didn’t even try your hardest. ‘Cause, you know, it sucks to try something your hardest and not succeed or win or whatever. But over time, growing older, I’ve come to understand how that attitude – which is basically lying to oneself – can be pretty detrimental. I mean, right off the bat, you’re guaranteeing you won’t succeed if you don’t even try, right?

There’s a saying I came across probably 10 years ago, maybe longer, but it struck me with such resonance that I’ve never forgotten it and I wish I’d heard it a lot sooner: if you ain’t winning, you’re learning. And that is a mantra-worthy statement in my opinion. It also puts losing in the correct perspective so that you don’t just feel bad, but you can feel better because you know that losing is part of growing – in skill, in knowledge, in personal character.

Earlier I talked about personality types, and mentioned that I’m pretty introverted. I don’t know if there are data out there regarding how many extroverts vs introverts play tabletop games, my anecdotal experience suggests to me that there are probably a higher percentage of introverts involved in tabletop hobbies but that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, you’re gonna play and interact with your opponents in a way determined by your personality. And for me, the main goal of playing these tabletop games – I mean, any game, really – is to have fun. But “having fun” is never a direct result of “not putting in any effort” right? I mean, for something to actually be something, there’s gotta be some effort or some intention behind it. So one of the things I put effort into for playing games is trying to make sure my friend or opponent or whoever’s involved is having a good time too.

And yeah, this is weird but I basically feel a little bit embarrassed when I win a game. I know that’s ludicrous, because I don’t want my opponent to feel embarrassed if they win, I want them to feel good! I also don’t want them to feel bad if they lose, but of course I have a tendency to feel a little bit anxious if I think they’re feeling bad. And that, my friends, is a road … poorly travelled? Best not travelled? Not driven down? There’s a saying somewhere that I am not remembering. Welcome to my world.

Anyway, my point is that I know it’s a bad idea to feel like I have any control over how another person feels. I mean after I’ve done what I can to create a warm and welcoming personal environment. Even if it seems like it’s hard-coded into my personality for me to tend to not feel at ease until everyone else around me feels at ease. You just can’t control how someone else feels or thinks.

Now I mentioned this type of thing, this dislike of conflict or drive to be accommodating, can be detrimental in certain scenarios in life. One of those *could* be wargaming. We’ve all heard internet stories about “that guy” at the gaming table – maybe they’re a bully, maybe they’re a narcissist (says the YouTuber), maybe they weren’t taught any manners by their parents – maybe they just had something terrible happen in their life and stuff needs to get sorted. In this type of scenario, you know, a gaming or social scenario, I probably would advocate for just leaving a space if it wasn’t welcoming versus going to guns over some silly miniatures game. And this is not strictly about dealing with assholes, either. I mean, we’re all assholes at some point. Probably a lot more than we’re aware of. Conflict is always gonna happen, the universe seems to run on an engine of conflict, or maybe friction, but conflict is not always some kind of antagonistic argument, it’s often just two different perspectives or ideas meeting head on.

Now, I willingly admit that 90% of the video projects I’ve produced would have benefitted from me being more conflict savvy, or just more willing to engage in conflict, to be more obstinate, more resolute in going after what I felt was a better idea. There’s a reason most successful auteurs are often regarded as tyrants. That doesn’t excuse shitty behavior, but there is something to standing up for ones self that is important to learn. Working with, playing with, engaging with people is going to result in conflict at some point. Just the nature of humans. Or really, again, the nature of our universe. Of course there’s a sliding scale to the depth of conflict, and a lotta times, a conflict is just a waste of time or has nothing to do with what might be masquerading as the source of the conflict. Yeah, now we’re heading off the deep end but, let’s wrap this up.

So I play games assuming I’m going to lose. And I’m totally happy with that. I just like playing, the winning is completely ancillary to the game. In fact, I’m just gonna go straight aerosol cheese whiz here – the PLAYING of the game is winning, for me. Tabletop Alchemy, get your spray can cheese here.

So you know what I’m gonna say: go play something!

See ya.

Theoretical Gamers VS Practical Gamers

January 13, 2024 by tabletopalchemy_ignatius

Transcript

There’s a lotta chatter out there, not only in our hobby space but in the social media space in general, about how too many of us might be doing a bit too much jabbering and not enough doing. And while that may be true, and I think it’s been true and always will be true, personally, I just don’t think there’s really anything wrong with that.

Greetings good humans, and welcome back to Tabletop Alchemy! Where we mix things up in the hopes of finding something explosive.

Let’s talk about a book for a minute. The excellent and amazing novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. This 864 page tome features an inspired take on Britain’s Royal Society. The Royal Society, if you’re not sure what that is, is a quote “learned society” unquote. Basically a bunch of scientists who formed a club. That’s a pretty silly summary, but the Royal Society had members like Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, Hawking, Darwin, et cetera, et cetera.

So in the novel, written by fantastic author Susanna Clarke – and we’re gonna talk about her writing and her take on magic and soft vs hard magic systems in another video – in this book, which is set in an early-1800s historical London, or Europe, really, magic is slowly returning after a 300 year absence and there is a declining group of aristocrats who are interested in magic and who call themselves the “Learned Society of York Magicians”. And these guys are self-described as “theoretical” magicians, as directly opposed to being “practical” magicians. At the start of the book, of course, there are no practical magicians because magic has long since vanished. But these guys in the Learned Society of York Magicians really love the ideas and study of magic, and even though they can’t seem to perform it because magic has left the building so to speak, AND they’re also a little afraid of it too, genuine magic that is, they love to get together, eat pork pies and drink ale and discuss it.

Anyway, I don’t want to take this metaphor too far, as the book is it’s own super impressive and fun and just really excellent story, but I really loved this notion of “theoretical” vs “practical” magicians.

Or, in our case today, tabletop gamers.

That’s right, I think there are quite a few of us tabletop gamers slash hobbyists who enjoy a lot of things aside from actual gameplay. I think a lot of us are stuck for time for actually playing games, or finding other “practical” gamers to play games with and even a few of us who don’t really care about the actual gameplay at all. Some folks just like to paint miniatures and the game systems are just peripheral to that specific facet of the hobby.

And I think that’s not only ok but actually great. The cool thing about our hobby is that there are multiple vectors through which one can experience and enjoy it. And you can explore, experience, and saturate yourself with any or all of them at any time.

I obviously like painting miniatures and crafting terrain and world-building, but I also like reading rulebooks, both for rpgs and skirmish games. I like checking out adventure modules for DnD and scenarios for skirmish games, things I’ll probably never get around to playing. I love the illustrations and character designs and maps, I even like paying attention to the layout and graphic design of these books. I like watching YouTube tabletop game meisters like Runehammer, Dungeon Craft and Sly Flourish for insights into rules hacks and gaming philosophy and game design. And I get to do all this without rolling a single die or setting up a single game table.

Now you might be quite different, but some of you might be similar. You might like the creative act of crafting a wonderful piece of miniature terrain. You might like building and painting tiny houses. Or you might like the lore from a particular game that drives the aesthetic for a particular piece you’re building. Or even just enjoy the stories published within that lore. And you might not ever want to actually play that particular game. And guess what? That’s super cool. Do your thing. Enjoy what you enjoy.

Now that probably sounds anathema to a lotta people out there who do the doing, but don’t get me wrong – ultimately to learn and grow in any topic, one needs to do the thing. Watching painting tutorials and discussing painting techniques is a far cry from slinging paint itself. The same goes for writing, just as another example. Reading a hundred “how to write” books ain’t gonna put a book on your shelf that’s written by … you. Everything’s about being honest with yourself.

For me – and I think maybe a lot of other folks out there – the simple fact is that actually playing a game is kinda tough to execute. Scheduling is always an issue and just setting up and playing a game, even a supposedly “quick” game of WarCry or Frostgrave, tends to always eat up a significant chunk of time. And this might be weird but for me, actually playing games – Dungeon Mastering a D&D session is at the pinnacle of this effect – actually playing games is both mentally and physically taxing. Which is of course beneficial. You’re working out basically, in a certain context – and that’s not a bad thing! Not at all. I mean, playing tennis, even just for fun, is physically taxing. And that’s also probably the main benefit, it’s exercise and working out your mind and imagination and creativity is a benefit of playing games too. Expending energy is how you get results in our universe, but finding clever ways to conserve energy is kinda one of the things all creatures in this universe have an evolutionary predilection toward. Meaning, we’re programmed to want to be lazy. Obviously that’s a bit facetious but you know what I mean – we have to consciously work against our natural proclivity to NOT do a thing because we have this fundamental survival instinct to conserve energy.

But all those things I mentioned earlier can be so cool to indulge in. Especially the reading portions of that, for me. Check this out, I love reading Joe McCullough’s rule books – all of ‘em. Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, Stargrave, and this latest one I picked up just because I saw it on the shelf in my friendly local game store (shout out to Lost Planet!) and I was instantly captivated by the cover design. Then I saw who wrote it and it was an instant purchase for me. I had an excellent time reading it and I’ve been ruminating about it – I mean, it’s about Napoleonic-era commandos with muskets and sabres out hunting werewolves and vampires, c’mon! And it’s spurred my imagination into churning up ideas and notions regarding paint schemes, and thematic miniatures and terrain builds, and atmospheric storytelling, and even rule book design and game mechanics. This particular game uses a base 2d10 rolling system vs the typical d20 system. And I’ve told quite a few friends about The Silver Bayonet – most of ‘em not even tabletop gamers. I just like to share stuff I think is cool.

So the question is, is it fine for me to read and enjoy that book The Silver Bayonet without ever playing it? Go on, drop a comment, we’ll – Oh are you tired of this silly YouTuber gag? Most of us are. Anyway, the answer for me is: of course, yes.

There is an exception to my sorta general enjoy-the-things-you-want-the-way-you-want notion. And that’s when folks purport to be experts on something or argue practical realities from a purely theoretical experience. If I’ve read the D&D players handbook a few times just for fun and then I try to put forth advice or argue with someone about the practicality of certain rules, I need to understand that I have almost zero soap box on which to stand. Because if I were to run a few games, I would be able to experience the rules in action, which is the actual way they are meant to be experienced, and there are a lot of variables that affect how a game plays and works while being played vs the vacuum environment of purely theoretical headspace.

So while I do encourage people to play new games, do new things, et cetera, I also don’t really think it’s the end of the world if someone just likes to chill out and think about playing games or enjoy all the cool stuff peripheral to a certain game.

The only problem that really comes up, beyond that theoretical magician trying to call out the practical magician thing, the only other real issue for an individual is if someone hasn’t done the thing but really really wants to. In that case, that person’s gotta be honest with themselves and they gotta give themselves a chance, despite any fears or apprehensions about having a new experience. It’s either do the thing or be okay not doing the thing. Cause it sucks to be resentful. And in this life, we’re typically resentful of ourselves 99% of the time.

So, in the end, if you’re one of those folks whose got fourteen Barnes and Noble sized bookshelves stacked with boardgames and rpg books and skirmish rule sets and you like to kick back in that high-backed Victorian lounge chair beside the roaring fire and crack open one of those books just to immerse yourself in someone else’s creative endeavor, or paint a mini just cause you thought it was cool and have no idea what game it comes from, here’s to you. That’s a glass of cabernet. Expensive. Notes of cherry … and barrels. Here’s to you. Enjoy your thing.

I don’t know what i’m doing either, yeah, I don’t know.

Anyway, it’s just an opinion – one among millions. So go enjoy something! See ya!

Relevant Links

Criticizing Games Workshop Prices Is Silly!

January 13, 2024 by tabletopalchemy_ignatius

Transcript

Here’s a hot take for ya: whining about Games Workshop prices and business practices is silly.

Welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we bait the trolls with gusto!

All right, all right, all right, let me burn a fifth level spell slot and cast protection of, uh, protection from comment section hate. If you’re just a Warhammer player, that was a D&D reference. Okay, yes, obviously today’s title is meant to be click-baity, but it’s also the legit topic of this video. Let’s start with disclaimers:

First off, I don’t think wanting a company to lower their prices or do something different than they’ve been doing, I don’t think that’s silly. We all react to things, we all think things. We all think things? Yeah, I’m a good writer.

I do however think it’s silly to waste a lot of mental energy complaining about something that doesn’t really have any solution and also just goes against plain logic. I’m not here to preach or lecture, you know that – I’m just here to shoot the [bleep] with you about tabletop gaming stuff.

So. Games Workshop. Let’s call them the Apple of the tabletop wargaming hobby. Oh, but if they’re Apple in this metaphor, then who’s Microsoft? I don’t know, I don’t think things through, where do you think you are? Miniac’s channel? Goobertown? Nah-uh, you ain’t there, you here. With me. Re-evaluating life choices, that sorta thing.

Anyway, let’s talk about capitalism. Ostensibly we are supposedly living in a capitalistic society. We don’t truly, but that’s a different video and probably different channel altogether. So IN this wonderful society, YOU, that’s right, you, sitting right there, other side of this screen, YOU can start a company. Start one today. Start one tomorrow. Whenever you want. Point is, you can literally just start a company. Pick out a name, provide a service or a product – or, you know, pull an Enron and just make shit up – but then file some paperwork, and boom – you’re off to the races.

So what’s the point of your company? I mean like the base-level, fundamental point of the company? Unless you’re a non-profit organization – and even that’s a little iffy – but unless you’re a non-profit, my guess is one of the fundamental reasons for starting your company is to make a profit. Yeah, I know, super revelatory, right? You didn’t see that one coming at all. You wanna make some money! Put food in the fridge, a car in your garage, ducats in your bank, crypto-wallet, under the mattress, whatever.

Now of course there are probably secondary goals, like creating something useful for people, making or providing something people love to engage with, etc. but we also live in a world where pharmaceutical companies are for-profit – in SOME countries … okay, maybe one country – anyway, the point is, they charge blatantly exorbitant fees for life-saving medication. Welcome to the world we’ve decided to build for ourselves. Have a good time!

In the overall scheme of things, Warhammer is a luxury item, just like an iWatch. And just as completely unnecessary. Warhammer – and iWatches – are solely for entertainment. There’s a whole lotta people who might wanna play Warhammer that simply can’t afford it. Luckily, there’s a whole world of tabletop games out there that they might be able to get into with less financial investment and there are thousands of videos from excellent content creators discussing exactly how one can get into the wargaming hobby for as few ducats as possible.

Just an aside here: “ducat” means “gold coin”. So for our purposes it just means money. Gimme them ducats!

So this perpetual complaint floats around the ether: why is GW so expensive? Why can’t they be cheaper? Why can’t I buy an iWatch for $200? It’s just so unfair!

Here are some things that I, personally, keep in mind: Games Workshop is selling an experience – a fully designed and immersive experience, from website to table. They are the Disney of wargaming, the Apple Store of game stores. And that experience, as well as their high-end product, is expensive to produce. And one thing I’ve learned from … living … is that almost every single thing out there is more difficult to do than an outside perspective would initially lead one to believe.

Now, does producing all this high-end product require all of GW’s profit? No, of course not. Most of their profit goes to their shareholders and that’s a whole ‘nother ball of demented wax that needs to be dealt with. Personally I feel like the shareholder phenomenon is doing a lot of bad things for the world in general, but hey, we all wanna git rich right?

But the shareholders are financing GW’s production costs on future projects. Invest, then ROI – that’s what everyone wants. Even you. You invest your ducats in game products and you expect a long term ROI, that’s “return on investment”, which, in this example, isn’t financial, but rather spiritual and mental. You wanna be creative and you wanna have fun with your friends. Or you wanna play a non-physical competitive sport. Or you’re collecting products ‘cause you’re addicted to buying things. Don’t look at me like that, I know what I am. Anyway, that’s your return on your investment.

Let’s get back to your hypothetical – but very possible – business. You’re running your shop, you’re making things, you’re doing things, and someone walks up to you with Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase. And they say, here you go, take this, go make bigger and better things, grow your business, make more profit. Go on, take it, it’s yours, we believe in you. Well, that sounds great right? But of course, you’re wondering, what’s the catch? They shrug and smile and say … no catch. We just want a share of your future profits. That’s fair, right? We line your pockets now, you line ours in the future.

So. Who’s gonna turn down Marsellus Wallace’s glowing briefcase? You? Doubtful. But down the line, you realize them shareholders, they’re a little more demanding than you thought they were gonna be. And because of all this paperwork you signed and promises you made, you gotta get them some money. Every month. Of every year. Forever. Cause if you don’t, they’ll pull their funding outta your business and then you gotta fire half your staff, slow down production, lose customers, lose marketshare, and watch those digits in your digital bank account shrink like shrinky dinks. I know – I’m a wordsmith. Moving on.

I’m sure up to this point, it sounds like I’m defending Games Workshop as a company. I assure you, dear viewer, I am not. I criticize GW and a bunch of other companies in my head all the time. And in conversation with other people, sure. Criticism is an intrinsic part of society, which is not only totally fine, but frankly, absolutely necessary.

Criticism is definitely one way to affect a company – but there’s effective criticism and then there’s just complaining. And change in a company’s attitude or business practices isn’t gonna happen unless customers put their money where their mouths are, i.e., keeping their ducats in their pockets. Keeping their ducats in their pockets! Ducats in their pockets – what am I saying? I don’t – I don’t even know. I don’t know what I’m saying. Now don’t get me wrong, I personally feel anyone can say whatever they want about a company, free speech and all that, I’m for it, of course, and your feelings are yours, they’re no less or more important than anyone else’s, especially mine.

But I will say this – Games Workshop has exactly 0 incentive to capitulate to most criticism – in fact, they’re usually just getting free advertising from it. The only action that will cause Games Workshop to shift its prices is their customers actually NOT purchasing GW products. And if they ever do lower prices, I’m sure somewhere in the company, existing quality will fall, somehow, some way, something will be impacted. They’ve got so many artists and designers, writers and producers, managers and technicians working for them, it just costs a lot of money to bring you a brand new bitchin’ box of Skaven or Space Marines, it just does.

And touching on their prices, other than those $35 and $40 heroes and commanders, their boxes of multi-miniature units are really not that much more expensive if you compare them figure-for-figure cost-wise to similar quality single miniatures produced by other companies. But don’t worry about GW, we might get what we want sooner rather than later. The 3D printing revolution is just getting started. We’ve got AI that can create illustrations from a descriptive sentence and we’ve got print-on-demand centers in most countries that allow smaller game systems to produce and ship products locally to customers, we’ve got virtual tabletop simulators for people who want to play tabletop games with their friends who live on opposite sides of the planet! There’s a lot of disruption going on, a lotta change and it ain’t gonna slow down. We are all spoiled for choice.

All right, that’s enough for now, drop an angry comment below or a thumbs down, whatever makes you happy, and I’ll see ya when I see ya – go roll some dice!

You like them eyes? Big eyes? Go roll some dice! Know how many times I’ve said that? You know how many times I’ve said the go roll some dice line? I’m not gonna tell you. See ya!