Pledge this week is to clear put my hobby desk. I either finish the stuff or they go to a box.

Answer: certainly have gone outside of my comfort zone. Pleasant experiences are when I’ve joined in on a new to me board game because my friend needed an extra player, or participating in demo games. The worst experience I’ve had was trying Table Top Simulator when the pandemic hit. We had a campaign going on when suddenly couldn’t play face-to-face, I didn’t want to ruin it for the other participants and agreed one game with the simulator. My opponent insisted finishing the game despite all the issues and me having completely shit time. Never touching that programme again.

Have you ever played something outside your comfort zone?

I played D&D once. By a friend who insisted on “theatre of the mind” – he too, it turns out, was playing it *incorrectly* by banning tabletop miniatures 😉 . I tried it maybe a few times,, even despite my initial reservations. I was talked into it, and tried to keep an open mind. But I hated it. It’s really just not for me. Nothing untoward happened – none of the kind of weird shit you hear about players swapping genders or anything like that. I just didn’t enjoy the experience at all. Give me little miniatures and terrain and some hard-and-fast rules and an objective, any day.

At the risk of de-railing the thread, I wondered who else is “cheering on” Army Painter these days?

I’ve been a long-time fan, ever since getting my first mega set nearly ten years ago. Quickshade dip was an absolute game-changer for me. Their paint range was never “the best” but it always served me well enough to block-colour minis before dunking them in their brown goopy stuff.

Contrast (and slapchop) in recent years has been like another revelation. And while Contrast Paints are very good, I found the Army Painter Speed Paints just felt “nicer” on the brush – smoother, more responsive; looking at my minis, I couldn’t tell you which were done with contrast and which with speed paints, the results are so similar. But the experience of using Speed Paints was just overall better, from a tactile point of view.

And yet, because some people didn’t like the way their speed paints worked (cough, reactivation, cough) Army Painter went and completely overhauled their entire speed paint range, to address the issues raised. Don’t forget, they were initially introduced as a “one coat solution” – you’re supposed to just whack on one thick coat, let it settle, then varnish/lacquer and done. Reactivation wasn’t an issue during product development, because nobody was expecting to paint over it with multiple layers (the clue was in the strapline – “one coat solution”). But users didn’t use it they way AP intended. And instead of going “hey, you’re not using it right” they looked at how people were using their paints and completely changed the formulation to accommodate them.

For this alone, I want to support Army Painter as a company.
And now they’ve completely redeveloped their entire warpaints line again.
Because they acknowledged that their initial paints were only “good enough” not “brilliant”.

For me, that’s absolute dedication to the cause.
And I wish them well for it.
A few weeks ago, we were asked “how long do you usually save up for your hobby spending?” and I was quite offhand in dismissing the question – if I can’t afford it when I want it, I simply don’t buy it.

But I think I *will* be putting some cash aside, specifically to buy the new Army Painter range when it comes out.
I think I want to buy their paints.
But more than that, I know that I want to support the company!

Anyone else have a “cause” they really want everyone to get behind?

Saturday night — just a having a relaxed time with the missus. Good tunes on the stereo and reading relaxing stuff (i.e. not news) online.

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I also do like Army Painter as a company. I use paints from many ranges and like to experiment with new stuff, I don’t have particular brand loyalty. Army Painter works well for me. Recently I tried the AP terrain sprays and in particular the Matt Sealer. Brilliant stuff, used them in my TerrainFest project to a great result.

Army Painter surely must be feeling the competition. There’s a lot of paint ranges out there now and lot of innovation going on in the market. GW/Citadel got quite a head start with the Contrast range, and must have caused quite an urgency for the competitors to get their alternatives to the market. This easily could have contributed to the reactivation issue they had with the first iteration.

I find it curious the paint manufacturer are surprised with painters using the products differently than intended. It apparently was the same with GW/Citadel — they were caught off guard with people finding other methods for Contrast. As painters we experiment with stuff all the time, partly on purpose and partly by accident.

I’m more often than not GM and when I’m not I feel out of my comfort zone.

It feels weird to have only one character to play and I often get bored of that one role… so I get reckless… and if my character dies… no big deal… I can make another…

Need a GM break… so I’m stepping out of my comfort zone tonight…

playing RPG with minis is wrong mate

I mean, we’ve already seen that the original D&D rules included tabletop minis, so we don’t need to re-fight this battle 😉
But I am wondering if this is part of my issue with RPG – and why I feel more comfortable with miniatures-based gaming.
I really didn’t get on with RPG. It just felt a bit weird. And it’s only now, many, many years later, trying to understand why, I think this very discussion might finally be shining a light on it.

I got absolutely no enjoyment from RPG. It felt like I was expected to “become” the character. I had to experience the game as if I was the character. And I really struggled with that. Whereas with miniatures based games, it’s very easy to confer a character onto an avatar. It’s not “me” moving around the dungeon, or running through the grassy glades or whatever – it’s me controlling the character who has to perform these actions on my behalf.

Almost like a god-complex, I guess!
To some it might feel like an abstraction that makes no sense, or has little to no consequence.
But when I’m playing my tabletop games, I think I prefer the “god-view” looking down over all the characters (third-person) and deciding their fate, rather than playing the game and “looking through the eyes of the character” (first person).

You’re probably quite right about playing RPGs with minis being “wrong” for introducing this layer of abstraction. But that’s my comfort blanket. I’m really out of my comfort zone without it!