You don't sell computer games? You'l be out of business in a year! (long)

[cinema guy]

[COLOR="Purple]
Has anyone played "Tales of the Floating Vagabond"? I hear it's really funny, even if it's out of print. [/COLOR]

Yep. It was fun, but our GM wasn't the funniest guy in the world, so it kind of ran like a standard RPG with a slightly offbeat feel to it. It was a long time ago, so I can't remember much about it at all, except my character carried unstable explosives around.

[CaroPhoenix]

*is a speshul snoflake 'cos she knows the guy who wrote the entire Floating Vagabond Series*

As I'm an old-time gamer, I make the distinction of there are gamers and then there are gamers. Actually, I'm pretty mild about it. I know old-school gamers who refuse to contemplate the computer games/gamers, magic players, etc. I think it's called class-ism within the gaming community.

I like boardgames. I have Descent. $80 game, and haven't played it yet. Can't find anyone who wants to play it besides me & my husband. I have a Scrabble board missing the letter tiles. What I did that was fun was when I held a boardgame day at the Library, it was for all ages, and that was hilarious.

So I'm thinking of grabbing some of my games and trekking to the Gaming Store and grabbing a table and setting up my games to see if I can have an impromptu game.

Oh yeah ... one of the best things about the Gaming Store? You can bring food/drink into the store and eat. You can even have food delivered for yourself! The only thing not allowed is beer as there are children who come into the store. Otherwise, everything else is green lighted.



ETA: My second Chuck Norris "fact" in my sig is going to be my new Scrabble rule. I think it'd be awesome!

[Gravekeeper]

*cheers that an american put a U in Armour :P*

I'm Canadian, damn you. We spell it right. =p

WoW is pretty slutfestish. Night Elves are just the most obvious offender. Don't forget the Succubus too. I felt guilty toting her around back when I played a Lock so I actually reskinned her to cover her up some. ><

But yeah, I stopped playing WoW between the kiddies and the terrible grindfest. Me and my friends played it for a few months, got to 60, realized there was jack and shit to do in the end game and quit. I came back to check out the expansion but it was 10 more levels of the exact same shit with new races.

I mainly enjoy PvP in mmos which is why I really only play DaoC off and on now. Yeah its not fantastically balanced ( You have to avoid the gimp classes. ) but its still the best PvP system on the market. Which is sad since its 5 years old.

WoW PvP is Quake with elves. That and the only thing that matters is how much gold and free time you have. Skill means nothing. Nevermind the twinking, Jeebus Christ. I use to like PvP in WoW but twinking became more and more common in WoW until every one and their dog was running around at level 19 with dual crusaders. I have no idea how tiny your penis must be to enjoy running around one shotting everyone. Then they took out the exp for pvp'n. Which sucked because I liked leveling off it too between questing.

Then the map exploiting caught on with the dual crusader crowd and you could never get a GM to respond to anything inside of 3 months.

Blizzard of course just ignored it all and hoped it would go away. Damned if I know why. It only takes one twink to ruin the whole game for everyone involved. But that seems to be the trend with a lot of mmo developers. Ignore the griefers and hope they go away. Yeah, because thats worked so well in the past. =p

So yeah, fark WoW. -.-

[Acolyte]

I only play male characters in WoW now. I started out with a male Dwarf Hunter, then decided to make, like every other WoW player in existance, to make a female Night Elf priest.

Within the first 10 minutes, before I even got out of that little starter grove, I got two 'hay, wanna cyber?'s.

I promptly deleted that character and created a male one.

My roommate only plays female characters, though, and has never gotten a 'hay, wanna cyber?'. He's in the 'I'd rather be staring at a nice pixellated butt for 70 levels' camp.

Also, some servers are better then others, in terms of maturity. Eldre'thalis is really nice-everybody I've grouped with has been a decent person, and a few I've gone around to find again whenever I needed a group. Then again, it's PvE, which attracts a more mature crowd (Or, rather, a crowd sick of being ganked every 5 minutes in contested territory). Daggerspine is pretty good for a PvP server, too-I've never encountered rampant stupid, and rarely get ganked. I do get into fights, but they're with Horde toons of a similar levels, so it's less ganking and more duel, and they usually get the hint when I just keep walking. Boulderfist...ug. Makes me want to punch babies.

[Jacen]

As I'm an old-time gamer, I make the distinction of there are gamers and then there are gamers. Actually, I'm pretty mild about it. I know old-school gamers who refuse to contemplate the computer games/gamers, magic players, etc. I think it's called class-ism within the gaming community.

Not too sure I understand you here

Oh yeah ... one of the best things about the Gaming Store? You can bring food/drink into the store and eat. You can even have food delivered for yourself! The only thing not allowed is beer as there are children who come into the store. Otherwise, everything else is green lighted.

Stop teasing me, lol :P

I'm Canadian, damn you. We spell it right. =p

lol sorry. Yay for Canada! :P

WoW is pretty slutfestish. Night Elves are just the most obvious offender. Don't forget the Succubus too. I felt guilty toting her around back when I played a Lock so I actually reskinned her to cover her up some. ><

I play a hunter, so I have no problem as all my "friends" are beasts. But I hate that demon when Warlocks are around. It's more the noise she makes when she whips herself. And her spell, seduce.

I have to disagree through. The blood elves are worse. "No no, I won't do that, but my sister will." "Normally I only ride on epic mounts but... let's talk." Are two of the flirts that I take to have a... sexual meaning.

But yeah, I stopped playing WoW between the kiddies and the terrible grindfest

The kiddies only ruin the game if you let them... and if you play wow right, there is no grinding They also lowered the amount of XP you need per level in patch 2.3 and increased the amount you get.

I agree with your about the twinks. Annoying little gnomes, undead or whatever running around laughing at you cause they can beat you in a few hits, even through your 21 levels higher and can heal. Yes, My level 40 Paladin got beat by a level 19 Gnome rogue... and he laughed at me, calling me a newbie. (Actually, he called me a noob (asshole))

Then the map exploiting caught on with the dual crusader crowd and you could never get a GM to respond to anything inside of 3 months.

Map Exploit?

Within the first 10 minutes, before I even got out of that little starter grove, I got two 'hay, wanna cyber?'s

As far as I know, people can be banned for that.

My roommate only plays female characters, though, and has never gotten a 'hay, wanna cyber?'. He's in the 'I'd rather be staring at a nice pixellated butt for 70 levels' camp

Nor have I, and as I said before, I mainly play female chars. And it's 80 levels now :P

Speaking of which Grave, you complained about nothing to do at end game... What about the dungeons in Outland... or the PVP yet to come in the next expansion. apparently your able to use siege weapons to destroy buildings, only in a certain area of northrend through.

Thaurissan is the best server I've played on. It has it's share of immature players, but I've had fun grouping and questing and the guild I'm in is fantastic

Speaking of duel. Why do the kiddies treat PvP servers as dueling servers? I joined Thaurissan so that I and the Horde would be PvP marked in certain zones. Luckily I found an addon that blocks invites from level 1 newbies, and I can set it to block group/guild and duel invites. and even put them on the ignore list.


Oh and about the staring at the butt for 70/80 levels? I can't see my chars but due to where I normally have the camera, just outside the "start to turn transparent" zone.

Worse thing about WoW is the mind set of a typical horde. The Horde on Thaurissan believe their the best and that they dominate that server, which is not true (I have 2 accounts, so I play bothsides on a PvP server )

Oh and unless your in a city, you'll never see gold spamming. (If you get a group invite, just say no or use the addon "StopInvites") and Spamsentry allows you to block AND report the ones in the city.

[CaroPhoenix]

Jacen - if you have ever known any hard-core, RPG (normally D&D) gamers, you'd understand what I mean. Trust me. They still can't get over the fact that I'm a girl and I play table top RPGs.

If you don't sit in a darkened basement, eating all types of junk food, with paper, pencils and every RPG book known to man all around you, with painted figs, grumbling manly things about stuff, you're not a true gamer. Trust me on this. I used to hang out with guys like this. It's .. interesting. I had a friend of mine whose boyfriend (who knew my friend played D&D) absolutely forbade her to game with him and his buddies 'cos it'd be too distracting for them to not only play their charries, but hers as well.

Think Stephen Lynch's D&D song (either original or extended 2005 version) and you'l understand.

[Broomjockey]

I had a friend of mine whose boyfriend (who knew my friend played D&D) absolutely forbade her to game with him and his buddies 'cos it'd be too distracting for them to not only play their charries, but hers as well.

And he was still walking, let alone they were together after that? Yikes. Any group I've been in didn't mind having girls in at all, and they were all good players. Except for the one who played like a female version of me in my mid-teens (a.k.a. really fracking annoying).

[CaroPhoenix]

Heh Broom, my friend has a decidedly masochistic sense of self. I love her though, she's awesome!

You've been lucky. The few times, before I met my husband, that I gamed in a mainly all-male setting was because either the DM or one of the guys wanted to date me. Otherwise, they wouldn't have allowed me to play.

[Broomjockey]

You've been lucky. The few times, before I met my husband, that I gamed in a mainly all-male setting was because either the DM or one of the guys wanted to date me. Otherwise, they wouldn't have allowed me to play.

Let you in on a secret: any gamer guy wants to date any girl with knowledge of games, even if he doesn't admit it

Things were fairly interesting in my main group as the girls were already dating one of the guys in the group (or brought the guy into the group because they were dating) or the girls were gay. So that simplified things greatly.

Also, I just remembered there was a card store in my home town for awhile where the kids could play card games, but it was fairly small, and couldn't comfortably hold more than 10 people at a time. Makes it hard to get something going, especially while the store's open. Closed after a year or two.

[draggar]

I think I'm going to have to side w/ idrinkarum on this one. Yes, I play EQ and LOTRO now but only to fill my nee for *real* RPGs. I mainly played D&D and GURPsS but unfortunately it's been an extremely long time since I've even had a real tabletop game (and it depresses me, anyone up for a 2nd ed. D&D campaign? FR, SJ?). EQ and LOTRO are nice, but they concentrate more on the hack and slash aspect than what RPGs are really about (puzzle solving etc.). Yes, there are quests, but that is a small part of the games. I'd rather play a few hours of Civilization 3 than go back onto EQ or LOTR most of the time.

It's an age / generation thing. I'm willing to bet that Jacen is younger than 30, most likely younger than 25 while idrinkarum is older than 30 (no offense to either of you if I'm way off). There is a definite split. The younger crowd never new a time that you could game w/o a PC (you didn't have a choice) and the older crowd tries to hold onto the classic gamer style. I think I'll blame DOOM for this. it came out around the right time for the younger crowd to see a good PC game *and* you could play against other people in real time. Yes, it existed before with the MUDs but DOOM gave you the graphical interface that was "really cool".

I miss the classic gamer stores, we had a great one in NH (if anyone is in the Nashua, NH area let me know if the Wizard's Tower is still around). Why did I like them so much above the others?

- The owner knew the games
- You could rent tables for $10 (for the night, reservations were accepted, walk-ins OK if they're available but he had 20 tables that could seat 10 people comfotrably on them, including a DM who needed to be seperate.
- The owner lived in the store too so you didn't have to be worried about being ushered out when he wanted to close
- Fully stocked (and owner-owned) vending machines for candy and soda
- Used section - buy a module for $5, play it, sell it back for $2-$3. A great way to "rent" modules and the owner didn't have to worry about losing the money
- He was "in" with the local pizza delivery place, they'd stay open if he knew it was going to be a late night and would have a few sales from ot (owner would work this out w/ the gamers and the pizza place, and gamers were good tippers)

As for "girl gamers" they were always welcome in my groups and one of my best friends, who is a female, was a regular with our group.

[Dreamstalker]

I'm fairly certain that my store is the only one in the area where you can get GW stuff (GW used to have a store somewhat nearby, but it closed down last year; we absorbed some of their stock and built a bunch of terrain tables).

We carry some space games (I know we have B5 and FC stuff, even some Starship Troopers stuff that's been rotting on the shelves for awhile). I technically handle special orders now so...

I was mainly into WoD games when younger; we would make a few interesting mutant hybrids with WoD, Ghostbusters and GURPS (at times the GM didn't even know what was going on and we would continue on the fly). My little gang disbanded about 5-6 years ago and I haven't been able to find anyone else local who likes the hybridization and general weirdness we were known for.

My newest project is trying to rework the Ghostbusters RPG (D6) to work with D20 mechanics. Haven't gotten very far as lately I haven't had the time, but soon...(is West End Games still around?)

[Jacen]

EQ and Lord of the Rings online are actually very bad examples of MMOs, hell EQ won't even work for me.If you want to compare MMOs, use a current gen one like WoW or SWG. (Or STO or SGW)

Idrinkarum, I also play board RPGs. Those are ones where there are no rule books, no guide lines, only your imagination and whatever show (if any) you based it on. A good example would be to look around Yahoo groups.

No offense mate, but I don't see what age has to do with anything.

If you don't sit in a darkened basement, eating all types of junk food, with paper, pencils and every RPG book known to man all around you, with painted figs, grumbling manly things about stuff, you're not a true gamer.

If you don't have a super computer with the latest super games on it, and sit in front of it staring at the screen for hours on end, shooting zombies till your fingers hurt, your not a true gamer. (lol :P)

EQ and LOTRO are nice, but they concentrate more on the hack and slash aspect than what RPGs are really about (puzzle solving etc.).

If you love problem solving, I think you'd love the Knights of the Old Republic and the Jedi Knight line of RPGs (Jedi Knight isn't a true RPG, but I still love it). Your right through, MMOs have a lack of problem solving in them.

I once had a Star Wars D20 RPG Book. it was more of a play it once then toss it away style game.

The younger crowd never new a time that you could game w/o a PC (you didn't have a choice) and the older crowd tries to hold onto the classic gamer style. I think I'll blame DOOM for this. it came out around the right time for the younger crowd to see a good PC game *and* you could play against other people in real time. Yes, it existed before with the MUDs but DOOM gave you the graphical interface that was "really cool".

OMG! I miss the original doom. I was about 5/6 when it originally hit the stores in 93, I believe.Love that game. It's not as scary or thrilling and doesn't have the advancements Doom3 (or quake 3 or half life or any of those modern ones) have... but it is still extremely enjoyable.

The "younger crowd" these days don't even know what a good book is. I love to read (and the main part of World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies IS reading)I personally do not watch TV/DVDs (unless there is something I like on, rare). I prefer to spend my time with a good book when I'm not wanting interactive entertainment. But todays young people prefer DVDs. movies. Wheres the fun in that?

Yes, there are quests, but that is a small part of the games.

Actually, todays MMOs are 99.99% questing, .01% grinding. I've posted a large post and still am trying to recall a good puzzle in an MMO. I think the only time I've seen that is in instances.

YOur talking about what RPGs are really about... but the thing is, MMOs... Table top... their not following the true meaning of RPG. Roll Playing Games. It's all about sinking into the mind set of your character or characters and pretending you are them. When I mentioned this in a wow chat generally (describing what a RP server is about) I was told that I'm an idiot. (And I bet you this was a kiddie. But one thing WoW is lacking is the ability to PLAY your character.

I really hope this last paragraph made sense. I don't think it did

BTW Broom, love the idea behind your avatar and personal title.Stargate fan I take it, looking forward to Star gate worlds?

Oh, has anyone tried Sony's online CCGs?

[Broomjockey]

I think I'm going to have to side w/ idrinkarum on this one. Yes, I play EQ and LOTRO now but only to fill my nee for *real* RPGs. I mainly played D&D and GURPsS but unfortunately it's been an extremely long time since I've even had a real tabletop game (and it depresses me, anyone up for a 2nd ed. D&D campaign? FR, SJ?).

I played my first D&D campaign when I was 6. My neighbour/friend's older brother ran a campaign for the three of us, and I was hooked. Which is why I'm now going to have to partially smack you. EQ and WoW and LOTRO are games, yes, we established that part. But I don't consider them RPGs for the most. They're technically called MMORPGs for a reason, and popular usage reflects that by most people calling them MMOs, rather than RPGs. RPGs are the classic Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, and then Arcanum and Knights of the Old Republic for something newer. Something where it's the story that's featured. Then character development. And finally, combat is one of the lesser concerns.

MMOs usually make a head-nod towards story, and then give you 5,000 unrelated quests to get you to the level cap. There are no characters beyond some NPCs you'll interact with twice or thrice. Some of the newer ones are making some motions, story-wise, but I don't think they'll ever match regular computer RPGs, which in turn won't ever match PnP RPGs.

Ranting over

BTW Broom, love the idea behind your avatar and personal title.Stargate fan I take it, looking forward to Star gate worlds?

Thanks I got the avatar from Nightangel, and I love it. Frankly, I'm pretty nervous about Stargate Worlds, but I'm waiting until it's almost released before I make any kind of judgement.

[CaroPhoenix]

Role Playing Games are awesome. If you get the right people in the group, you can have a table top role playing game. That described my last RPG group before my DM and his wife moved to Florida.

As for wanting to sink into the role of the characters and play an RPG, you're going to have to play a LARP (Live Action Role Playing). There are 2 big Larp groups around here: Avalon and Nero. Nero, I think is bigger. I know someone who is in Nero - he plays a Drow and yes, he dresses all out for the part (along with the other people in his group). Larping isn't just for Vampires anymore.

I'm thinking of tryng to get my husband to run a Tales of the Floating Vagabond game for me. I haven't played it and I'm jonesing for a funny game. I think I can get "L" to loan me his Tales stuff (or he can point me to where I can buy the stuff for cheap). He should know, "L" was the one who wrote it.

[CaroPhoenix]

Also, Draggar, thank you for siding with me! Finally, an old school gamer(?)!

Yes, I'm over 30. And you're right. Mainly all of the computer gamers I've known/met are all younger in their late teens to their mid-twenties.

My husband remembers a time when D&D was preached against in church and knew kids who were forced to stop playing the games because of the ignorance of the preachers.

And there was a murder case almost a decade ago around here where 2 guys murdered a chick's father because she asked them to. The article made mention that the 3 of them playing D&D. That's the connotation of RPG's. If you play a table top D&D game, you can become a potential serial killer. (But if that's the case, why didn't Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez or Jeffrey Dahmer play RPGs?). Computer gamers, I guess, just don't have the aptitude to commit complicated, need to go by the number murders. You can only find that twisted, logical thinking in gamers who play D&D. *



*Last 2 sentences are sarcasm, in case no one could figure it out.