Buddy/Ignore List
11-03-2024, 02:03 AM
Figured both I would introduce myself and apologize.
To the players still in 7000, 8003, 6014 and 5837, my apologies. I took a trip to the emergency room and that thru me off from completing the turns for those games. In a cascading series of fun, my phone died out last weekend and I do not yet have the new one up to speed, so I have to do all my turns when I am at my computer.
Thank you to Brekk and everyone for welcoming me and others from the Hyborian War crowd. I am an old wargamer, like 1960s wargamer. It was an interesting development from the discussions with my dad and grandfather about warfare. So one wargaming group asked me to buy a copy of Chainmail from TSR as we were trying to develop a rule set for the period of the Viking raids, and I would be passing thru Wisconsin. Which got me into a discussion about Tolkien and warfare in the Middle Earth with the seller, which led to Gygax selling me a copy of his new game back in 1974, D&D. So I have been running some form of that game, and arguing with its creators, on the phone or in person, ever since. Yes I know that Gygax and Arneson are both dead, thank you very much.
Another group I was in just happened to be asked to playtest Royal Armies of the Hyborian Age, which is the miniatures wargame Hyborian Wars is based on for their warfare system. So when a member of the group told us they were playing the game by mail and wanted us to help him run a kingdom, I got sucked into playing that one. And we just kept playing. I dropped out of that group in '88 when I got deployed to Germany. Just quit playing during Desert Storm as mail was just a no-go. Started playing again in 2013? when my leg finally shattered and I looked up the old game and it was still going.
So since somewhere in the 60s I have played, playtested, helped write and rewrite wargames and RPGs. Something I was always good at in the old days was finding holes and problems and supplying solutions for them. There are literally thousands of elements to balance in a game, it is not easy to do. Finding a problem is often just a matter of poring over data until your eyes water. Analyzing and reanalyzing. Just playing a game is more fun. Unfortunately my brain will not let me not analyze a game I play.
This is good and bad. I do not really care all that much about winning, as long as I crack some aspect of the game I did not understand before. Which may easily create some very odd behavior in my games. On the other hand, I am happy to share what I learn with other players. This is because, to my mind, it is better to play against players who know what they are doing. It makes you feel better about losing to someone and better about beating them, if you do not feel it was a lucky fluke. So I will happily share information about a game with another player that they did not know, even if it costs me the game. Because there is always another game. Getting another player interested in continuing to play is priceless.
To the players still in 7000, 8003, 6014 and 5837, my apologies. I took a trip to the emergency room and that thru me off from completing the turns for those games. In a cascading series of fun, my phone died out last weekend and I do not yet have the new one up to speed, so I have to do all my turns when I am at my computer.
Thank you to Brekk and everyone for welcoming me and others from the Hyborian War crowd. I am an old wargamer, like 1960s wargamer. It was an interesting development from the discussions with my dad and grandfather about warfare. So one wargaming group asked me to buy a copy of Chainmail from TSR as we were trying to develop a rule set for the period of the Viking raids, and I would be passing thru Wisconsin. Which got me into a discussion about Tolkien and warfare in the Middle Earth with the seller, which led to Gygax selling me a copy of his new game back in 1974, D&D. So I have been running some form of that game, and arguing with its creators, on the phone or in person, ever since. Yes I know that Gygax and Arneson are both dead, thank you very much.
Another group I was in just happened to be asked to playtest Royal Armies of the Hyborian Age, which is the miniatures wargame Hyborian Wars is based on for their warfare system. So when a member of the group told us they were playing the game by mail and wanted us to help him run a kingdom, I got sucked into playing that one. And we just kept playing. I dropped out of that group in '88 when I got deployed to Germany. Just quit playing during Desert Storm as mail was just a no-go. Started playing again in 2013? when my leg finally shattered and I looked up the old game and it was still going.
So since somewhere in the 60s I have played, playtested, helped write and rewrite wargames and RPGs. Something I was always good at in the old days was finding holes and problems and supplying solutions for them. There are literally thousands of elements to balance in a game, it is not easy to do. Finding a problem is often just a matter of poring over data until your eyes water. Analyzing and reanalyzing. Just playing a game is more fun. Unfortunately my brain will not let me not analyze a game I play.
This is good and bad. I do not really care all that much about winning, as long as I crack some aspect of the game I did not understand before. Which may easily create some very odd behavior in my games. On the other hand, I am happy to share what I learn with other players. This is because, to my mind, it is better to play against players who know what they are doing. It makes you feel better about losing to someone and better about beating them, if you do not feel it was a lucky fluke. So I will happily share information about a game with another player that they did not know, even if it costs me the game. Because there is always another game. Getting another player interested in continuing to play is priceless.
