Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[angelfromanotherpin]

The subs and the tiny men are different problems that need different solutions. Radiation will keep the people at bay, but the subs don't care. Dyeing the water with chemicals will impede sight, but not sonar.

Historically, the most effective anti-submarine technique has been stealth. That doesn't seem to be an option. Instead, you want to prevent their deployment at all. You probably can't mine the area around the sub bays, but maybe you could set up high-speed torpedoes to collapse them? Failing that, you could stage feint crises in several places at once to distract and divide their forces.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Who is at fault when a player pulls out a video game during a game session? What if it's during combat and RP?

[Stahlseele]

Society.
Need to teach people respect, patience.

[Whiysper]

No fault, but time for 'the talk' - what about the game is switching them off to the extent that they're needing to be entertained during their hobby time?

That's usually the root cause, work on that, rather than fucking about blaming people.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

What about when it's the GM?

[Mord]

What about when it's the GM?

It's certainly more alarming when it's the GM, but Whiysper's advice still applies. You have to talk about it and actually ask the problem player why they're doing what they're doing. I don't know your table dynamic; was the GM shanghaied into running the campaign?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

No, he played video games during my games so I talked to him about it and he eventually stopped showing up, then asked me to play FATE and OSR games with him... where he also plays video games during our turns or when we go to the bathroom for a couple minutes. It's terribly strange, especially since he told me he would stop. Is Civ 5 that good?

[Mord]

Some people like it, but Civ V didn't do it for me.

Doing something else while other players are on a bathroom break seems to me to be a bit antisocial but not really disruptive. I don't know how it can be anything other than rude and disruptive to play Civ while other people are taking their turns, especially if you're supposed to be MCing.

Sounds like your friend lacks either the ability to focus or the will to apply his focus to the TTRPG he's playing. That's really unfortunate for everyone else at the table. If he doesn't want to be doing this, why is he doing it? If he just wants to be in the room while a game is going on purely for the social aspect there's no reason he has to play, much less MC.

A lot of people are more interested in the idea of RPGs than the actual play experience of an RPG. Maybe your friend hasn't yet realized that he's one such person?

[angelfromanotherpin]

There's a similar person in my gaming circle, and he just has wicked ADD. If that's the case, I don't know if there's much to do but be compassionate and patient (and maybe accept that he shouldn't MC).

[Hadanelith]

Also could just be maximum level ADD. One of the hallmark problems for ADD is a need for constant stimulation to maintain focus. If the game on the table is insufficiently stimulating, it can lead to boredom (people with ADD have a wildly lowered boredom threshold compared to NT people), which leads to seeking stimulation. Vidya gaems are, by design, constant stimulation engines.
Personally, unless the people I'm playing with are *glacially* slow, I find the game on the table and the personal interaction sufficient stimulation to keep me engaged, but my ADD is pretty low power comparatively. If this player can't keep engaged even during an RP scene, though...if it's ADD, that's definitely something that could use professional assistance. If it's not...then this person just might not fit your table.

[Whatever]

Who is at fault...

Whoever goes online to ask internet strangers to take sides in the blame game.

Try asking "what (NOT who) needs to change" instead.

[Stahlseele]

No, he played video games during my games so I talked to him about it and he eventually stopped showing up, then asked me to play FATE and OSR games with him... where he also plays video games during our turns or when we go to the bathroom for a couple minutes. It's terribly strange, especially since he told me he would stop. Is Civ 5 that good?

Civ 5 . . is my most played game . . literally a thousand hours of it . . to people who like that stuff, it is akin to crack and cocaine mixed with sugar.

It has "just . . one . . more . . turn . ." as an option when you try to quit.
It is the kind of game where you wake up at 11 in the morning, sit down on your computer for a quick few turns of civ and then you look out of the window and the sun is rising.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Oh, he does have ADHD. I've been friends with the guy for years and we get along great, I just find his tabletop habits baffling. He expressed interest in rejoining my game, and when I sat down to make a character with him, we got approximately 10% of the way into the process before he said it was too much and we should go play Crawl instead. We did, but I was kind of put off and confused the rest of the night. He admits that he's bad at RPG rules, but says he has a big imagination... yet all his characters are variants on "bland fighter dude" or "bland blaster mage dude" with little background, personality, or input. I think he wants to show up to hang out and play games with us and likes the idea of playing RPGs, but actually putting any of it together seems like too much for him.
I ask all of this because I'm wondering how seriously I should take him when he starts going off about "rulings not rules" and shit.

Civ 5 . . is my most played game . . literally a thousand hours of it . . to people who like that stuff, it is akin to crack and cocaine mixed with sugar.

I've been there, but with Civ 4 and SMAC... but I don't play those games around other people unless we're doing some kind of weird council thing where we argue about what to do.

[Iduno]

I love that all of these answers are well-thought-out, mature, and helpful.

That's not sarcasm.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Thank god nobody told me to throw a rulebook at him.
I have to say that I'm kind of surprised nobody blamed the actual game yet. With how often "going off to play smash brothers" is thrown around here in reviews, I assumed that would've been first.

[Prak]

Could consider getting him a fidget cube. It would allow him to self stimulate without getting absorbed into an entirely separate game.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Oh... those look neat. He might actually like one of those. Thanks, Prak!

[Prak]

No worries! I got one for myself a while ago, and it was actually sorta nice to have in my car as just a thing I could fiddle with at red lights instead of picking up my phone (I suspect I have ADD. Or am on the spectrum. And those are comorbid, so....)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

For those of you who play with little plastic men on a grid, have any of you fucked around with combat facing? Is it an unnecessary optional rule nobody uses because it's too hard to keep track of, or is it only really for boring fighters and rogues who don't have much to do in combat anyway?

[Iduno]

For those of you who play with little plastic men on a grid, have any of you fucked around with combat facing? Is it an unnecessary optional rule nobody uses because it's too hard to keep track of, or is it only really for boring fighters and rogues who don't have much to do in combat anyway?

I would assume nobody uses it because nobody uses a grid. Once you're on a grid, it's already getting tracked when you choose which way to set your piece down.

[WiserOdin032402]

Reading through it, it's interesting to say the least. Facing is and always will be a fiddly mechanic, but this isn't a bad take on it. It adds a lot of layers to the game that you wouldn't normally get because everything is normally treated as a 360 degree attack radius. Now choosing where to stand has real benefits beyond flanking and a rogue getting behind you may or may not be instant death. In addition, you can make a psuedo-working stealth system with this.

Edit: Forget what I said about the great wyrm full attack, the system sort of misled me into thinking that those attacks could only hit those squares and took penalties for use outside of them. It only implies that those attacks hit those squares without penalty

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I would assume nobody uses it because nobody uses a grid. Once you're on a grid, it's already getting tracked when you choose which way to set your piece down.

... what? I think you misunderstood my post or something.

Reading through it, it's interesting to say the least. Facing is and always will be a fiddly mechanic, but this isn't a bad take on it.

I thought it was interesting as well, but it really incentives moving behind a dude every turn you attack him so you get into his blind spot... but I'm not 100% certain how bad that is. It might look silly on the table, but it doesn't strike me as terribly unrealistic or unintuitive. Might take a while to commit to memory, but that can be said for a lot of rules, and I was wondering if the increase in combat complexity is worth it. Obviously the answer to "is it worth it" depends on how complex the rest of the combat system is, too, but I think it would facilitate thinking about movement more than we currently do.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I thought it was interesting as well, but it really incentives moving behind a dude every turn you attack him so you get into his blind spot... but I'm not 100% certain how bad that is. It might look silly on the table, but it doesn't strike me as terribly unrealistic or unintuitive.

It's real bad. Nobody wants to be told that some dude walks around and behind them and they have to sit there and take the backshank despite being nominally active enough to make AoOs and such. The default is better simulation and play experience despite being more abstract.

[WiserOdin032402]

Rogues, Spellthieves, and the like are going to constantly want to move behind people, yes. They all have Tumble and they're going to be doing it constantly. If you let the Sudden Strike classes get Sudden Strike when hitting the rear area those classes are going to see a slightly larger buff to their ability to put people on the ground.

It'll also make a Malphas/Andromalius Binder stronger because then they don't always need to rely on their 1/5 rounds invisibility to kick in for their full damage.

I thought it was interesting as well, but it really incentives moving behind a dude every turn you attack him so you get into his blind spot... but I'm not 100% certain how bad that is. It might look silly on the table, but it doesn't strike me as terribly unrealistic or unintuitive.

It's real bad. Nobody wants to be told that some dude walks around and behind them and they have to sit there and take the backshank despite being nominally active enough to make AoOs and such. The default is better simulation and play experience despite being more abstract.

You could argue that it makes Knockdown more necessary for fighting types who have AoOs or make it so AoOs hamper movement. The system isn't necessarily built for facing rules. I would argue that this would work better as a basis for a sort of stealth system or for a more thematic game where most of the players are stealthy classes.

However, the only reason so far outside of that that I like it is the concept of limiting what natural attacks hit where, mainly because natural attacks are non-interactable normally.

[Iduno]

I would assume nobody uses it because nobody uses a grid. Once you're on a grid, it's already getting tracked when you choose which way to set your piece down.

... what? I think you misunderstood my post or something.

You mentioned having plastic men on a grid. Facing while using a grid is very easy. Facing while not using a grid is bullshit.