GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ Anti-rant Rant

This week I’ve decided to cover another subject so I’ve put several of my lighthearted and highly informative insider views of game store life on the shelf. Plus, I ran out of humor on some I’m working on because just remembering some of the total jerks I’ve had to deal with gets my blood boiling and makes me want to hunt those specific people down and whip the dog tar out of them.

Actually, I’m not exactly sure what dog tar is, but I guess if you whip somebody enough you’ll eventually find out.

I want to address Grognad’s perpetual criticism of Hasbro… or, as he prefers to call them, HASBORG.

All the ranting and raving Grogs does about Hasbro is pointless. He accuses them of a multitude of historical inaccuracies, he indicts them for being profit motivated, he slams them for glossing over little known and meaningless historical minutia, he even blames them for making cheap components. To top all that off, he actually ranted that the anti-tank guns in the new Axis & Allies Miniatures game have the wrong wheels… or was it tires?

So my answer to Grognad’s rant is this: so what?

It’s not as if Hasbro is taking an existing pool of gamers and reducing the total number of people in that pool. Is it? Quite the opposite in fact. Hasbro, along with its subcorps WotC and AH are increasing the number of gamers on our planet. Right? Ranting and raving about Hasbro making historically abstract games in a historically abstract fashion is the equivalent of accusing Ford of not making Porsches.

I also noticed our good Geek from the Frozen North chimed in and mouthed his displeasure at Hasbro as well. And when I followed the same thread on Boardgamegeek that Grogs referred to the harshest criticism of the new Axis & Allies game came from one or two people who hadn’t played the game, won’t play the game and therefore, the game sucks.

So despite the fact that Grognads and Coldfoot are two of my favorite Geeks, I want to go on the record right now and state very clearly: they are both wrong and they probably know it… deep, deep down inside their little gamer hearts, they know it. I think they’re just jealous because they didn’t make both the game and the subsequent millions that Hasborg…errr… Hasbro will make.

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Next subject ~ Joe Gola and his Dicefest article

I liked that article quite a bit. Well done Joe, but then I expect anything you write to be well done. The article reminded me of the inherent chaotic nature of Dicefest games and the criticism they take. Joe highlighted that very well.

I happen to believe that games involving dice are, by and large, the best games made. I like dice. I like chance, I like the chaos and I like the fact that I can win or lose a game despite my excellent strategy and brilliant moves, because of a bad die roll.

I’ve looked at Gola’s game ratings on Boardgamegeek and while he rates many games high that I don’t care for I think we see eye to eye on the subject of chance in a game. I suspect I’m in a fairly unique position as regards Boardgamegeek and certainly here on Gone Gaming… that’s because I have probably taught and witnessed more games over the last 24 years than almost anyone you could think of. I have run literally thousands of game nights, taught several thousand people how to play several hundred different games and I’d guess I’ve personally played somewhere between 500 and 1500 different games myself. And one thing is crystal clear about 99% of gamers, they like dice. They like randomness.

So if you remove the twelve or thirteen people on Boardgamegeek who decry any game that has any sort of chance factor in it you’ll understand one of the most successful mechanics of any game is that the game ought to have some measure of chance in it, be it dice, cards or a random tile or chit selection.

Back in about 1967 I was living in St. Louis and an older guy I knew well was a master gunsmith and the National Benchrest Shooting Champion. We took some modified Ithaca shotguns out to a private shooting club on an Army base in Illinois and spent the day shooting Skeet and Trap with several other world class benchrest shooters. When the day was done I had shot consecutive sets of 24 and 25 in both competitions using this guy’s shotgun.

He was pissed off.

He blamed it on the wind. He blamed it on the load. He blamed it on the sun. He blamed it on the ambient light. He blamed it on the humidity shift between my turn and his. He ranted and raved the whole way back to St. Louis and I was pretty intimidated by his vocal barrage. But I believe he missed the whole point… which was that I had a particularly good day and he just happened to suck that day.

It may have been the ambient light for all I know. Maybe I was just lucky, eh?

Dice are good. Chance is good. I didn’t need Joe to remind me of that but I’m glad he did. Especially since I got creamed in two Axis & Allies Miniature games yesterday because I rolled such horrible dice. If it had been Grognads he’d have blamed his loss on the fact that the anti-tank guns had the wrong tread on the tires.

Right Grogs?

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Last subject ~ Mary, Shannon, Yehuda and Alex

Thanks for inviting me on board here and thanks for such great articles. I mean it, everything from rants about box size to weird multiple personality stories to articles about how to bribe your family, it all makes sense somehow and it’s great to be able to see a slice of life from various gamers around the world.

Okay Grogs, I’m ready for your next excellent rant and I have also proved to Coldfoot that I look nothing like Curly, his local game store owner, by attaching a picture of me to this article.

Besides which, my dad never owned a Ford dealership. He did own a tote-the-note used car lot in New Mexico though. And I was his Repo man on and off for a couple of years. True story… I’ll get to it one day if I can figure out how to tie repossessing 20 year old Chevy's to the subject of games.