[unofficial weekender] Gaming outside the comfort zone

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

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First time visitor to OTT? Then please introduce yourself in the New Member Thread and look around in the Project System. Then come back and read on…

https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/introduce-yourselves-new-member-thread/

https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/

Read all of this before you start as it will save you any trouble later.

First thing you must do is make your “pledge”. It can be anything gaming related, big or small, and you don’t even have to finish it. No, in here, happiness is the road. Have fun doing whatever it is, but it is not a race. Accompany your work with pictures or we might think you are do something sinister and just using us for cover.

You are also presented with a few questions. It is to get the conversation started. Try and keep your answers ‘conversational’, no text speak, and certainly no “basically”. This is how we all get to know each other better. While you are here feel free to tell us a story, show a picture, joke, tales of love or woe, or just add your own little bit. This is the whole point…in here it is just us.

If you have never taken part before we may bark and bite, but we also like a cuddle! It is all done in the best possible taste and it is character building. feel free to give as good as you get.

A few other things to note: NO RELIGION & NO POLITICS! Glasgow pub rules are in effect. If you need to make a better point then it is fine, but don’t take the piss. And always keep it civil.

Play plenty of music to go with your work. Loud and through proper speakers. Write us a playlist of things we might not have heard before.

Now, after all of that there is only one ‘real’ rule in here and it cannot be broken: NO DICKS! (Exceptions may be made for little fighting men with little plastic/resin/metal wieners)

And don’t forget the highlights of the weekend: The Weekender on Friday and XLBS on Sunday. And the little show that is the unofficial Hobby Hangout over at twitch.tv

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Question of the week:

• Have you ever played something outside your comfort zone (different scale, different setting, different group of people) and how did it turn our for you in the end? Anything you’ve learned from this?

And now back to the show.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Pledge: exhausted from Terrain Fest and Secret Satan my only pledge this month will be: pack up and ship the Secret Satan.

My answer: I don’t think I have ever gamed outside my comfort zone. I like my comfort zone. It’s comfy. You could say playing with tournament focused people in a tournament is outside my comfort zone because some of them take it too seriously and that takes the fun out of it. But I only had that once with an X-Wing tournament ages ago. My personal take away from this: play what and who you’re comfortable playing with. Life is too short for cunts.

Music: some brand new old stuff.

[danlee 22433xp 1]

This week’s pledge is to paint up the models for cycle 3 of Aeon Trespass Odyssey.

 

1. Have you ever played something outside your comfort zone (different scale, different setting, different group of people) and how did it turn our for you in the end? Anything you’ve learned from this? – I remember when Age of Sigmar first came out after playing a few games I gave up on it and tried my first non-GW game, Bolt Action. It was a watershed moment as from that moment on I was willing to give any game a go.

 

This morning I finished Cycle 2 of Aeon Trespass Odyssey. You can find my thoughts on it here: https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1796204/

[guillotine 16035xp 0]

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.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

TTS really “feels” bad. All the tactile stuff is missing. I think it works as a demo for new stuff that is not produced yet or gameplay testing across the world. But as a regular gaming thing. Nah, not for me.

Saturday evening. What are you lot planning on doing? I installed Skyrim for the n-th time. Official playtime is somewhere around the 400 hours mark but since I had played it to death before I bought it… I think I’m more in the 500 – 600 hours range XD

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

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?

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

Saturday evening – what am I planning? I’m actually getting some work done.
I intend to take some time out during the daytime next week to “do hobby’ so am building some free-time upfront.
Get ahead of myself now, so I can have a few full days to myself painting little resin miniatures!

[guillotine 16035xp 0]

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.

—

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.

 

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 0]

As someone who paints to advanced tabletop, mold lines and prep take a relatively greater amount of time than were I to paint to a higher level. So contrast paints and speedpaints don’t help as much as colored primers, especially when I find a gap or mold line I missed, and should reprime again. I also paint often at night, when you can’t spray prime. Not allowed to use an airbrush in the house, and I like cleaning things even less so than prep. Of course, if any company ever creates a paint that gets rid of mold lines and fills gaps…

AP Quickshade Inks are good, but the sets have two greens, and the flesh never worked for me, except for abominations. They’re also lacking a grey for shading white. Vallejo wash works for grey. Vallejo 200ml brown and black are messy, so I put them into eyedroppers.

Painting is still outside of my comfort zone. These miniatures aren’t going to paint themselves, and, at least I have something tangible at the end of it, unlike video games and creating digital content.

 

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 0]

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…

[blinky465 17027xp 2]

@guillotine – it’s no so much that AP were “surprised” by people not using their paints “correctly”; more that instead of shouting “you’re not doing it right!” they looked to themselves and said “clearly, we’re not doing it right”. I think that’s what I was trying to get at with the original post – that it was nice to see a company responding to customers in such a positive way.

 

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

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

@blinky465 yes I am because I really like the open way they are trying to improve on things and “listen to the community”. There is not much to add to your wall of text other than “playing RPG with minis is wrong mate”. But that borders on religion and politics so we let that slip here XD

One thing TAP are bringing out I can’t really see myself buying is their new wet & dry pallet. Mostly because it’s too big for my space. I wish they would make an add on to the old one that would fit between the lids.

Good tunes on the stereo and reading relaxing stuff (i.e. not news) online.

@guillotine “Not news” is the best way to spend a day currently IMHO.

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

@pagan8th that’s a view I didn’t expect. I always thought our GM (back in the days) would crave to finally be a character at some point. Weird.

It’s Sunday and it’s time for the XLBS. Though I am a but scared about what will happen in the next weeks. The year starts to close and I feel like people are up to no good in the hobby 😉

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 1]

@sundancer when you normally play more than one NPC it feels bit restrictive playing one character… for me anyway… it’s like wearing the same clothes every day when you used to having a wide selection to choose from…

Or maybe I’m just ‘weird’… 🙂

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

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!

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Or maybe I’m just ‘weird’… ?

Let’s say “yes” XD

Playing RPG around here was always without minis. It’s always been sitting comfortable in your chair, snacks and drinks on the table, character sheet in your lap and a tray for dice. The GM tells the story and the players interact. A bit like a Fighting Fantasy book but it’s alive (the GM) and it’s multiplayer. You don’t use minis on your Fighting Fantasy books now do you?

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