![Make Your Own Star Wars: Legion Heroes! Rebel Agent & Officer Set Review [7 Days Early Access]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2025/12/unboxing-atomic-mass-games-star-wars-legion-rebel-alliance-agent-_-officer-coverimage-225-127.jpg)
Weekender XLBS: Bonding Over Tabletop Games!
September 9, 2018 by crew
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need to join the Cult of Games.
Or if you have already joined the Cult of Games Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with OnTableTop unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's the Cult of Games?
Once you have made a free account you can support the community by joing the Cult of Games. Joining the Cult allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Cult of Games Membership Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Cult of Games XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the CoG Greenroom.
- Access to the CoG Chamber of Commerce.
- Access the CoG Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
6am and I’m ready for xlbs!!! Happy Sunday everyone!!! Hope its been a great weekend one n all 😀
My wife and I met playing World of Warcraft.
I hooked her into RPG games (D&D, Savage Worlds, ect) and some board games.
She tolerates my table top miniatures games and Kickstarter habits (yes, KS is like a drug).
In the end, she agreed and encouraged me to convert a room in the house into a gaming room with multiple shelves to hold all the games, 4×6 Ultimate gaming table, coffee maker and frig, and much more.
Got my German Apple Tart! Tall glass of milk and its Sunday Morning with XLBS! Life is good. By the way @warzan whatever you rename this as make sure it rolls off the tong like XLBS!
Happy Sunday! 🙂
OMG!!! You have never played Diplomacy! That’s the DADDY of all board games! It may be old but you guys should definitely do a Lets Play of that. Seeing Warren & Justin going at it in Diplomacy would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’d love to see a let’s play of diplomacy, a game I really enjoyed when I started off in serious board gaming but haven’t played it in decades!
Agree, have not played it in a long time but it was the go to game of my High School and College Days!
Happy Sunday, I met my GF 9 years ago on a LARP Social Media platform. We both do gaming, I can´t think of any other person to love who don´t share my hobby with me. Gaming is a central core in our shared life.
What significant other…..
No, I would never take a geeky game into work of any variety to teach or team build.
When should you break the news to a non gamer partner that you lick brushes, sniff newly opened board games and pray to the dice God’s on a regular basis?
Is this episode leading up to a BoW Big Brother Dating Boot Camp! Game themes diplomacy and betrayal.
Could get someone to do the proper Gordie voiceover and everything and pump it through our sound system…
Pretty good topic. It was a good suggestion.
I like the idea of getting to know someone by playing a boardgame. The problem is that my only boardgame is Kingdom Death. That’s definitely not something you just whip out ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and play with someone you are getting to know.
On the topic of Kingdom Death. I’ve introduced the game to someone at work and their friends. We are getting through it quite well, but when it ends, the group is probably over. Like Cass joked about, but serious for me, I don’t like people much and tend to stick to one or two good friends. But it’s a good laugh and fun.
@warzan you might want to have a look at this Four Against Darkness: A solitaire dungeon-delving pen-and-paper game: Volume 1 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Against-Darkness-pen-paper/dp/1976371457) it’s a Fighting Fantasy but done with a group where you create a party. Just ordered it as I have heard interesting things about it.
A playthrough can be found here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYbAnLd5hga31-wPXjesWt3ZWW90b1IH
Or he can talk to @brennon who spoke about it a week or two ago 😉
Trouble with it might be that it is lighter on the story to capture the little ones
Yup, the one that was hard to explain but well worth exploring as a concept haha
I met my other half on match.com. I had all my hobbies listed in my profile, so she knew what she was getting into. 5 and a half years later I’ve started to convert her to the tabletop skirmish gaming with the Batman Miniatures Game (she has a Gotham City Sirens gang) and she’s acquired some terrain. We’ve even taken up larping together. We’re getting married next year, and the wedding is going to be medieval themed (hired a castle and everything).
Nerds of a feather flock together.
Met my partner on Match as well! It really was a good site and I was very upfront about being a proper nerd and even included a Tolkien quote at the top haha.
Seems like it worked and on our first date she walked into Waterstones and wandered right to the Black Library section! True love 😉
Very happy to hear about the wedding next year and the theme! My partner still won’t let me just buy a sword though…
That is true love indeed. I tried to get my partner into Black Library, she wasn’t that interested.
Luckily I bought most of my swords before I met my partner. Although I’ve managed to convince her that I need a stab safe larp spear.
It took me about 14 years to tell my wife about my gaming geekiness! However this was mostly because I had forgotten myself for a while, rediscovering the hobby during an existential crisis in my early 30s. And I didn’t tell her as such, more she worked it out as the piles of miniatures grew and grew!!
Happy Sunday everyone… I have to say when I started playing RPGs in the 80s it was using D&D the original version… We just had pens paper and dice … Absolutely no mini’s this was how we played all our RPGs so the idea of using minitures never even occurred to us in fact so much so when we started playing mini games we never crossed these with our RPGs it was always two separate things.
Interesting I am just about to start RPGing again with my gaming group on a Tuesday night we are starting with Traveller a game I have never played 🙂 but again I don’t think we are using minis.
My experience was as yours, but this would be the 70s. We kept note books to keep track of our characters and used grid paper to map out our adventure. No minis al all.
My tip is to make sure you have reflec armour for being able to help stop Lazer fire.It can be combined with normal body armour which is good
whoa, whoa, whoa … the “most seasoned historical wargamers” don’t understand the term meta gaming? I must ave missed something in last week’s show. 😀 I’ll have to check out that comment stream again.
Mind’s Eye in gaming started with White Wolf 2nd Edition in the mid 1990s, when they rolled out what they were calling “Mind’s Eye Theatre” in those days – what would become more commonly known as Live Action Role Playing, or LARP. I don’t think traditional White Wolf “five-dots” pen and paper RPG was known as Mind’s Eye. Been out of that scene for 15 years, though, so I may be out of date.
Diplomacy is indeed a classic. Might not make the best Let’s Play, though, since the game (from my recollection, it’s been 30 years since I’ve played it) can take up to 6+hours.
That was me
Mind’s eye theatre was always in relation to the LRAP and never referred to the table-top game
You’re right. ‘Mind’s Eye Theatre’ was the brand / description they gave to the LARP version of their Vampire: the Masquerade setting.
I’ve not heard people use the term more generically. Although (annoyingly to me) the term LARP has come to be associated more with running around the forest with latex weapons over a weekend – something that seems to be fairly light on roleplay to me.
I don’t roleplay much these days but some friends are still running a Vampire LARP and I occasionally do cameo NPC roles which is a lot of fun.
@grimwolfuk and @angelicdespot – Sounds like we concur. 😀 That’s what I said in my post, unless you were just backing me up. 😀
I think MET / LARP for WW was also technically rolloed our for WtA and MtA, although I don’t think it ever took off like it did for VtM. Honestly, that’s when I quit VtM. Once people started playing rock-paper-scissors in night clubs, that was my cue to move on to a different game.
We had some fun with WtA in modern times, MtA in World War II, and finally WtA in the American Revolution, before finally walking away from the World of Darkness (not a fan of the post 2004 reboot settings).
Just backing you up dude 🙂
Likewise!
I played in a couple of pretty good Werewolf: the Apocalypse LARPs as well as a good Sabbat one. I don’t think any of the alternative settings were ultimately as suitable for LARPing as Vampire was / is though.
I never tried the rebooted settings.
As for Rock / Paper / Scissors in a nightclub, I’ve never done that but we did have some awesome special games.
One Vampire game we had a live band playing and several people NPC’ing ‘normal humans’. It was a private event so although some non-gamers had been invited, they had also been warned that there would be people playing a game around them.
We also (this was in our Werewolf game) had one of the most hilarious gaming sessions I’ve ever particpated in when we had an in-character party with card games being played. First we played ‘for real’ and then with players using their disciplines (gifts?). So we had people roleplaying that they were forgetting what cards other people had played and all sorts of shenanigans!
Cool deal @grimwolfuk and @angelicdespot –
I’ll say this much for the rebooted system – it was much more unified and clean-cut when it came to crossovers. Old Gothic-Punk / WoD was five games that were at least in theory inter-compatible … to a point. 🙁 The new WoD was one unified system from the outset, so the different “races” could play with / against each other much more smoothly.
Just wasn’t a fan of what they did to werewolves in the setting (new tribes, background, etc), and Mage especially.
Interesting to see it looks like the older settings are being being rebooted?
It never worried me that the old systems weren’t properly compatable. The problem was that most people didn’t seem to realise it. There was enough rules crossover to be able to do so as much as you wanted, provided you understood that you were playing from the perspective of one of the games. i.e. you could introduce all the other stuff into a game of Vampire without any problem, as long as you understood you were playing VAMPIRE and that the theme and the story would focus upon the stories of the Kindred.
It made a lot of sense to make the games inter-operable when they were doing the reboot. I don’t know if my next comment is fair, as I didn’t play them, but I think that you probably have to make a choice: either you have 5(or more?) distinct games which can be overlapped with a bit of skill and dedication or you can have one game in which all of the factions / species / creatures are watered down in their importance to the core setting.
Personally I felt that it was better, with a richer, more satisfying experience, to focus on the stories on one of the species in their own game rather than have an ‘Avengers Assemble’ mixing and matching.
I agree 110% @angelicdespot . I always preferred one setting, with one or maybe two others strictly as enemies or uncertain temporarily allies and NPC flavor. However, our single biggest chronicle was an “Avengers” model as you say 😀 … and while successful for most of its run, was also a nightmare – a mistake I never repeated.
@oriskany – Yikes!
I think the biggest problem with merged campaigns is not the rules (which can be done well) but that you really cut down on story options. If the various factions / species are really different with their own agendas, then every ‘Avengers’ game becomes fundamentally about the relationships between different groups of people (or not people). And that story – while it can be interesting – is fundamentally the same whether you’re talking about Werewolves and Vampires, Ultramarines and Dark Angels in the Deathwatch or Hulk and Iron Man.
If you don’t play ‘Avengers’ (and I would argue ONLY if you don’t play an ‘Avengers’ style campaign) you can focus on and appreciate the struggles within the society of the faction you’re focussing on.
Which is normally more interesting. Although I don’t deny that it fan be fun to mash everything together occasionally.
Overly-crossover-ed chronicles (yes, that’s a term I just made up … you’re welcome) I found also suffered in terms of tone, mood, motif, and theme, contrasting tones would “cancel each other out.” Spooky, dreary, eerie Wraith character stories and blood-n’-balls Werewolf didn’t mix, much less esoteric, metaphysical Mage and dark, Machiavellian politicking of Vampire. It’s like when you mix too many colors in your paint palette and you wind up with a muddy gray.
I agree 100%, the stories were more interesting overall when you focused on the struggles, personal conflicts, politics, mysteries, and existential threats of one “race” (for lack of a better term). Werewolf and Mage were my favorites 1997-2011. Had a lot with Sabbat back in 1993-96, and good ole’ Camarilla starting in August 1991, the month VTM 1st Edition first dropped (I was stationed at a base just a few hours from Stone Mountain, GA, where it all began).
*Sigh* … where does the time go?
They just have to set a time limit to the diplomacy between each turn! Watching Justin and Warren trying to out diplomacy each other would be awesome!
“Destroying Friendships since 1959” – Diplomacy can be a cutthroat heartbreaker of a game.
We want to see a fair number of the team locked in the studio for a full weekend playing Diplomacy, live streaming and/or live blocking the event
I think what made Diplomacy so “cut throat” and heartbreaking was the game length. Lots of games have betrayal, etc, and its not as big a deal because the game only takes 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, etc. No big deal, you yell “aw, ya got me! I’ll get ya next time, ha ha!”
A game that you’ve been working at for 4, 6, or even more hours … and then someone stabs you in the back … that’s a different experience. 😀
That’s why we always had a hard and fast rule that all friendships must absolutely be checked at the door prior to agreeing to play the game. Once that was a standard prior to game play everyone understood that and no friendship was ever lost in the literally hundreds of games of diplomacy that I played. It did get to the point though that if more than three guys played against me that had played me before they knew right up front that they had to ally together and take me out first or else i’d be sure to beat them. Did not bother me though as I took that as a badge of honor. For me it was still just about the social interaction which is the primary reason I play any game be it board game or miniature game.
When reading through Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade there was a section in the front of the book which talked about the types of RP you could do.
Mind’s Eye was used as you suggest, for the basis of LARP, but it has become more of a universal term for a role-playing game which doesn’t use maps, grids miniatures and the like…at least within the circles that I have role-played with.
I think it’s a pretty good term for it as well, even if it wasn’t its original intention. A game played out in the theatre of the mind etc.
Cool deal, @brennon . I’ll say this much, I totally agree that these are the kinds of games that are best run without grids, minis, hexes, or too much “wargame-ey” tactical detail … or at least structure. We’d always have a map of some kind, but this was much more of a “picture is worth 1000 words” sketch to just help people visualize where everyone was. We certainly weren’t measuring distances with tape measures of counting squares on a grid. 😀
That has very much been my experience as well.
Happy Sunday!
After a while together you may need a hobby that your other half ISN’T into such as Golf, or whatever you get up to in your shed… mine’s gaming. Sure ,my wife gets something out of it; a happier hubby and piles of boxes with nice graphics to stare at in several rooms.
I haven’t played D&D for a fair while since 3rd Ed, I’m sure that was “mind’s eye” and so did baulk a bit when I started seeing official minis etc appear in the shops with later editions… the cynic in me putting it down to the game having to adapt to a new business model.
As for “meta”, I have meta-stuff in my work all the time (meta-data, meta-models, meta-languages) but have found different gamers dropping the term “meta” on its own to often mean completely different things… but if it helps this is what Urban Dictionary has to say:
1. Meta means about the thing itself. It’s seeing the thing from a higher perspective instead of from within the thing, like being self-aware.
2. A term used in mmo meaning the Most Effective Tactic Available. It’s basically what works in a game regardless of what you wish would work.
I like both of those…
Also the DPS term that @warzan had never heard of is also an MMO term
I am sure Warren would love a little tank and spank.
Ben mentioned Adrian Smith… Hate vol 1 book has been out of print and stock for a while, but got notification it may be available in a month or so (reprint) just in time for the CMON game in early 2019. In the meantime a certain online retail behemoth was selling Vol 2 for about £7 (from ~£30)… and I’ve just seen why!
That same website has pre-orders open for a vol 1 & 2 compendium landing in December 2018 to set the mood for the game.
Very cool – I love his artwork. It’s always raw and brutal with an alien quality to it, especially when he does Elves…they always look so cool!
I don’t think there are any elves in Hate… It’s all a bit brutal! 😉
HAPPY SUNDAY!!!!!! be back after I watch the video
The other massive advantage of using gaming as the hook for a dating experience is the fact that if this person is engaged with the idea you already have a connection to build upon.
Being comfortable in my own skin and over 40 I would never attempt to hide or be embarrassed by the person I really am. Life is to short to live with a partner who wants you to be something other than the real you.
For us we have always used minis and wipe clean boards for dungeons and fighting encounters in games. The only reasons were
1. It makes it so much easier for the DM to keep track of what’s going on
2. Most RPGs that have magic have areas of effect so it’s important to know who is where
There are plenty of RPGs where we haven’t used it. Games like TORG etc but minis (we used the same citadel Norman’s from skeletons to rust monsters) do help speed everything up
Happy Sunday everyone 🙂
I have a friend who arranges team building events for companies using board games. He also work as a volunteer for a house for young immigrants, where they play board games, helping the kids develop social skills and meet across different cultures and norms. So yeah, I think (board) games are totally great for developing social skills and get a team to understand each other better. Hell, even CIA use board games to develop their teams. Hopefully it’ll become more and more common to use games in this fashion as well.
Having said above, then funnily enough, (and as I mentioned in Cass’ article, which I totally loved by the way), my boyfriend does not understand my passion for all thing board games and toy soldiers. And as much as I think our relationship would benefit from a shared hobby, I must admit I don’t understand why electronics gets him all exited. But we both understand and accept that these hobbies ARE our passion, and thus make room for them in our relationship. There’s one thing I think is kinda major though, and I am not sure how to best explain it, but…my boyfriend and I don’t have kids together. And no plans to have any. So we don’t have anything ‘critical’ to work together around. Where my ex husband (who is still a very good friend) and I have a wonderful daughter. And we (ex husband, I and now also daughter) play games together…to this very day. And I seriously believe we’ve all learned a lot about who we are, what we value and prioritize, and how to best work together through board- and computer games. And I also think that that is part reason why we’re still friends today.
Anyway, enough ramblings from me. Thanks for yet another awesome XLBS. have a great Sunday all.
Work and boardgames?
For me I like to keep work and outside work as separate as possible. So I’ll talk about football etc in work but I wouldn’t call any of them close friends like the ones I have known for 30 years and game with
First off happy Sunday all!!
Great show, and very interesting for me. I have always been very guarded with my hobby when dating, Its something I’ve wanted to share but just maybe lacked the confidence to come out with or its taken quite some time to reveal! I will certainly have to give the article a read now on the back of this to see what I can change going forward 🙂
“Don’t touch it! DON’T TOUCH IT!! It’s glowing!” Yet Cass can’t help herself…
Really? On a first date? 😉
Happy Sunday!
@cassn – great to have you on the show and great article too. Really thought provoking. Have you seen / heard about Consentacle? I’ve not played it, but it sounds fascinating, and quite along the lines of the games you’ve already mentioned. The two players are a human and an alien, using non-verbal communication to have a mutually satisfying sexual experience!
Here’s the kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/990619951/consentacle-a-card-game-of-human-alien-intimacy
I told my girlfriend quite early on that I was a gamer. Possibly on our first date. In the past I’ve been very shy about gaming, but for a long time now I’ve taken the view that it’s important to be open about it. Also, the kind of people who would have given me a hard time when I was at school I either don’t interact with these days or we’ve all grown up and no one cares. It’s much more likely that the person just won’t know much about it.
So in my case, there wasn’t any worry about an initial negative reaction. That said, my girlfriend didn’t realise just how much of a gamer I was when I told her – she had to learn that over time!
We have played a number of games together, as a couple and with friends. Some, like Pandemic and Mythic Battles: Pantheon, she really enjoys, others not so much.
I think the trick is finding games that are either completely cooperative or that are definitely competitive so you know where you stand. We’ve found that games like Sub-Terra and Near and Far haven’t been quite as good as we’ve been expecting. I keep winning near and Far, which is a bit weird when it feels like a cooperative game. And we keep losing sub Terra, which frustrates her because it seems that whatever we do we can’t win.
I’m back from watching the video … (no please don’t leave .. please 🙁 ) Well I quite enjoyed that one.
First of all Warren, just some feedback the sound was excellent it was easily the best XLBS audio wise. Seriously.
It was interesting to hear Ben describe “Mind’s eye” roleplaying. I sarted on D&D Magenta/Cyan in the early 80s … progressed to AD&D, Traveller(Black books) Boot Hill, Top Secret, Runequest eventually AD&D second Edition . Never touched a mini or had an action grid for 10 years. That was how we rolled (heh 😉 ) It was the thing , as you said, which put me off the most about D&D 4th Edition so much.
Warren …you took your kids through the Citadel of Chaos??? I remember it as being the hardest of the lot !!! I don’t think I ever got bloody Balthazar Dire . None the less mate I love your gaming stories about you and your kids. You might run yoursel down mate but you are a bloody good man.
Cass, I loved your article during the week and it raised some interesting points. As a young man in the late 80s and early 90s in Australia, you didn’t admit to young ladies that you were a gammer as it was a relationship killer. (seriously I know olf two blokes who had their relationships destroyed after the young ladyconcerned found out after a few dates. One confessed and was told that he was childish and the other was outed by a friend and she broke it off with …”Oh he seemed so nice” )
Consequently I never fessed up to anything and had given up gaming by the time I met my eventual partner) Interestingly while she admitted to not liking gaming early on in the relationship, as her idea we hosted one of those Murder Dinner Parties in a box, we had a ball with outragous acting and double entendres aplently and it really helped build our relationship . I got back into gaming around the First Lord of the Rings movies which fortunately changed the group culutral mind in Australia and being nerdy became acceptable and in some circles cool) You kids these days … you have it easy 🙂
and Justin mate, I reckon your terrific but rembering the name and not the person you played with is slightly shocking… Sam is more than a name, a title! No he is a unique hobbit sized human being who should never be collectively remembered as being just another Sam you know … poor beggar he’s had a hard week.
We Sam’s need to form a union.
It’s the definition I’ve grown up with when role-playing and think it works quite well. Coming from a wargaming background INTO RP I think it made sense to use miniatures but nowadays we don’t do that as much.
For example; playing a Savage Worlds game tonight without miniatures set during the Roaring Twenties!
Yes I can see your point, and the term makes perfect sense, but I was just reflecting on the fact that for most of the inital years that was the beauty of role-playing, no board needed and just an area to throw some dice.
I was the reverse of you Ben, a role-player that evolved into a miniature wargammer, and I love making the mini scenes that make it clear to both players what the lay of the land is , as there isn’t a GM/DM to to it for them
I have no real issue with the use of minis but there is something beautiful about being able to describe something and not have someone counting squares, and just let the scene unfold.
Hope the Roaring Twenties game went down a treat. 🙂 Thanks for the reply
I have taken board gaming into the workplace and it worked out great!
When I deployed to Iraq I took Diplomacy along with me and had all seven of my officers play a long running game where they came together every Sunday for one hour and played a couple of turns. It was a great way for them to de stress in a combat zone and further helped them develop their relationships and their ability to work together as a team. They were all pretty much reluctant at first but once they got into the game they couldn’t get enough of it and started asking to get together twice a week if time allowed. I’d hear them talking with their allies and enemies throughout the week ‘in essence’ doing the diplomacy part of the game all week long! They all had a blast and once we re deployed to the States they all went out and bought their own copy. It was great fun!
That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone say they played Diplomacy to ‘de-stress’ – are you sure you were playing it right? 🙂
I agree with @angelicdespot . They played Diplomacy to DE-stress? What did they do after that, juggle burning chainsaws? 😀
I should say that I’ve never actually played it. Would love to, but between the time it takes and the brutality of it, I don’t know anyone to play it with even if I picked up a copy.
Think the key to the destressing is in the part about the deployment
Not digging the new mics lads, a little hollow and echoish?
I thought the same. Listening on headphones and the sound isn’t as nice as before. Also they are kind of big and in the way!
I met my wife in college 13 years ago and we were friends for about a year before we started dating. I never made a secret of my hobby, which back then was 100% GW – but I didn’t talk about it either. I’d tell her I was gaming with friends for the weekend if asked but I wouldn’t go on about it. When we started dating she’d tell people about my hobby, she thought it was different and interesting and would try to get me to talk a bit more openly about it, which really helped me to come out of my hobby closet with new people, particularly as most people don’t immediately think you’re a weirdo.
She loved the classic board games growing up like cluedo, Game of Life and Monopoly, all games which I can’t stand, so I never considered myself a boardgamer. We bonded over our mutual love of cinema, travel and disney. She would ask me to play boardgames and I’d go along with it because I knew she enjoyed them (although I would reverse cheat at monopoly by bankrupting myself as soon as possible in order to end the game :P). I got her to try miniature games but it wasn’t her cup of tea. She was always really supportive of my hobby and hobby time even though she wasn’t interested herself.
THEN, in 2012 I discovered a little web series called TableTop hosted by Wil Weaton….. and a lightbulb went off. I never knew there were “hobby” boardgames…. Oh how this changed everything!!!!
The first episode I saw was Ticket to Ride and I showed my wife, who thought it looked fun and was surprised I was interested in a boardgame (at this stage she had discovered that I reverse cheated at monopoly). We watched the other available episodes, which were Smallworld, Catan, Tsuro, Zombie Dice & Get Bit. We immediately went to our local FLGS and proceeded to buy all of them bar Catan (which is 3 player minimum) and Get Bit, cos we didn’t like the look of it.
Honestly it was one of the best times of our relationship because we were able to add another thing that we both enjoyed to our regular activities and it was a new hobby we could get into together. We have big plans to convert our attic into a dedicated gaming room with home cinema!
I wish we’d discovered hobby boardgaming much sooner because we enjoy it so much and is a great night of entertainment with friends.
I wonder how long xlbs will go on for. If it went for another 20 years I can imagine Warren and Justin still presenting
https://youtu.be/IaQCr4PIsHE
My partner and I used to work together, she knew that I gamed but not to what extent. The day we moved in together, she arrived at our new flat with just a suitcase; I turned up with two van loads of wargaming and boardgaming stuff. She appeared a little surprised and said I had not really spoken about my collection of hobby stuff before, now she knew why had wanted a two bedroom flat!
We’ve been together now for sixteen years, she found us a house with a big room in the garden for me to store my stuff.
She will occasionally play a board game with me, but I’m not allowed to let my wargame stuff migrate into the house.
Seems like you’ve got a workable balance!
My girlfriend has got into boardgaming a bit with / through me but the biggest difficult is in our approach to ‘stuff’. She only moved to the UK about 6 years ago and has moved several times. She’s currently a student and her family live in another country so she’s spent years having all of her possessions fit into a single room, constantly giving or throwing stuff away. She also hates clutter.
So you can imagine how hard she finds it seeing my walls full of games and miniatures, half the room taken up with boxes full of stuff, and more in the roof…
Interesting discussion. I like this social angle on gaming, instead of just talking about the gaming content itself. Hopefully this is a sign for shows to come.
My girlfriend (soon to be wife) and I met online. She has almost no interest in games, but is very tolerant of me and “my 3000 miniatures” as she puts it. The only thing she willingly plays with me is Escape the
Dark Castle. She can connect with this game because it’s simple and she loves horror.
From that standpoint I disagree with Warren that your main interest should be shared, although it might be a beneficial factor. I guess my girlfriend and I come together on personality, thinking and responding to situations in a similar way. Our main interests are very different, but because we accept that from each other it doesn’t negatively affect our relationship.
She does like horror, history and politics. So sometimes we can connect on these secondary themes related to games. I play Europa Universalis IV. She doesn’t get the attraction of computer games at all. But she is interested in the historical events running the game if I tell her about it and occasionally watches along or helps me make decisions. This often leads to a conversation. She teaches me about east-asian (her birth region) culture and history and I teach her about things that happened here in Europe.
@brennon : I don’t think painting a mini is bad luck, it’s using an unpainted mini for ten sessions then painting it just before the eleventh. ?
Theatre of the Mind vs Minis: my preference is for minis (or tokens as my D&D group plays through Roll20) as it’s easier for me to visualise. Or at least for combat I do. For social interactions, ‘quick time events’, etc Theatre of the Mind is great and preferable, but for combat knowing where everyone is is preferable and easier to manage, especially for things like AoE.
On Fireman Sam lighting fires: obviously this is the AU Fireman Sam from the Fahrenheit 451 universe. ?. Also, when Warren said Fireman Sam did anyone else think for a split second of @dracs cosplaying as a Fireman? Maybe he should do that for Warren’s kid’s next birthday party (you know like how you can hire someone dressed as Batman or Spider-Man or whatever for kids parties). ?
Listening to Warren talking about his family roleplay game, anyone else want to see something based on this in the next Justins&Dragins strip? Something like it’s Barbarian Warren’s turn to look after the kids and has dragged them off on a quest and they’re running rampant to his horror. ?
Sam trying to pickpocket a monster attacking Justin is another great idea for a J&D strip. ?
Gaming and dating: think this discussion is wasted on me – need to actually get a date first before I can put any of this into practice. ?
Thankfully it wasn’t bad luck and they lived through their next encounter this weekend. The Paladin did go down though when an Orc exploded all over him!
… Nope. Not even going to touch that sentence.
Thank you Beasts of War for the totally unexpected mention this week.
Really appreciate your kind words.
You’re totally right, of course, winning the coveted Hobby God bag really did spur me on and pushed me through the rest of that project build.
With such a show of confidence in my corner, how could I fail?
Only problem now, is Goddom is a huge height to fall from…. pressure’s on for all future projects ?
It’s fantastic to see your work coming together in the projects and the forums chap and can’t wait to see more of it in the future 🙂
@warzan check out silverwing armory she hand makes her notebooks might be what you are looking for and I believe that she can customize them as well.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/SilverwingArmoury?ref=listing-shop-header-item-count#items
My wife learned the extent of my nerdy ways when my alliance in EVE-Online was betrayed and disbanded and she spent 3hrs sleeping in my room while I talked to other nerds around the world trying to coordinate our response in a fictional universe. She waited patiently then took me out for dinner.
Now she avoids questioning how much time and money goes into plastic, resin and metal plus bits of laser cut wood.
Haha wow, EVE is quite the titan of nerdy nature!
I wonder what hobby supplies you could possibly mean… was it the bean tins @lloyd was using, because I don’t think you could buy them all 😉
I am 62 years old and have gone through my life using “in my minds eye” as a phrase to say how i am mentally visualizing something being describe to me.
Yep, which is why even though it has the LARP connotations I have always used it to describe miniature-less RP 🙂
I was chatting with a friend about GWs new Blackstone series and how the new minis may affect what in the past I visualized in Rogue Trader RPG play. The minis are cool, but much different from what “my minds eye’ saw in the past.
Happy Sunday everyone.
My significant other knew I was a gamer from day one, although she wasn’t and never has become one. We established a joint hobby space, she loves to sew quilts, needle point, etc. I sit at my desk and she sits at hers. I assemble and paint my models, she cuts and sews her fabrics. We chat, laugh, argue, listen to music. On gaming nights she finds something else to do. In turn I cheerfully hold her purse when she decides we are going shopping.
Warren maybe you could use the Frostgrave spellcards with your children’s role playing adventures
My other half has played a couple games but I’d like her to try more as I think it would be great to share the hobby together, but she is great about how passionate i am about the gaming hobby and encourages me to continue
We are both in our early 50’s
My wife knew I was a gamer from the day we met. I met her when we were both cubicle warriors in a corporate tomb (an insurance megacorp that later turfed us out in a surprising, yet inevitable betrayal).
Walking past her desk one day I recognized the wrought-iron fence border on the pages of a White Wolf World of Darkness rulebook. The big problem was that she was the admin asst for the manager of the whole department and I was just a temp for one of the most lowly menial work teams. I could get in trouble just for stopping by her desk to talk to her.
At the time gaming was not accepted _at all_ by our co-workers, so I couldn’t slip and let anyone know that either one of us was a gamer. Of course, there was also the obligatory “no relationships in the workplace” policy that could see either of us fired.
It really was a bit of a game all by itself, to find a way to tell her that I was a gamer when I couldn’t ever speak to her alone or say anything that others would recognize as ‘unacceptable’.
For the first few months of our relationship we had a great time sneaking about, speaking in code or veiled references, and chatting in a instant message program that the IT techs used, so it wasn’t tracked or monitored by the department.
a good fun show guys I go for the Negan approach divide an cocker if the game requires it to win at the end.
Gaming and relationships. .. on more like relationships and RPGs, I had some interesting time with that back in my late teens – stuff did get a bit weird in the campaign then there were a real triangle going on. Must say some one on one sessions. ..
As for my wife I were up front from day one about my gaming habits
I should say I like the new sound setup. 😀
Pop filters for the mics would be great guys 😉
I met my wife through our joint interest in historical buildings, at the time we were both living in Wales, so this meant exploring castles together.
I told her early on that I was into gaming, and it didn’t really bother her. She’s not a gamer or remotely interested in the hobby, but she will play a board game occasionally.
Her one rule concearning my hobby is that it stays in my man cave and doesn’t stray into the rest of the house.
I’ve been in a previous relationship with another gamer which didn’t workout. She was actually less tolerant with my hobby than my wife is. We eventually broke up and she married a computer gamer.
What I do find strange regarding both of those relationships is that my wife will buy hobby items for birthdays and xmas but the Ex who was a hobbyist wouldn’t.
Here is my similar dice tray I made a couple of months ago and probably nobody noticed.
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/mandas-amachan-cheap-cheerful-dice-tray-project/
I don’t have a significant other, since the world around me doesn’t want me to be happy with someone.
Warren you want Battlestar models?
https://www.shapeways.com/marketplace/miniatures/scifi/?tag=battlestar+galactica&s=0#more-products
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=453817
http://www.ob1knorrb.com/battlestar-galactica-ravenstar-studios-miniatures-fleet/
Great show everyone.
Most of us are married with kids now but back in the day we used to refer to telling a new girlfriend about our gaming as ‘coming out’ ?
My wife definitely falls into the category of tolerating my gaming and to be honest that’s how I like it.
I also put a ban on her buying me anything gaming related for birthdays or Xmas!
Regarding telling your other half about gaming.
I’m 6’2, extroverted. I lift heavy weights, love MMA, UFC and I played in the 2nd row of my rugby scrum. I am an army veteran and was a cop when I met my wife. Telling her I played Dungeons and Dragons was so shame filled it was like admitting I had a drug problem. The first time I brought her back to my place I was crapping my pants that she would see my miniatures and go running from the building, or burst into fits of laughter. I still remember the look in her eyes as she looked from the display cabinet to me.
“You painted these?”
“Yep.” I said trying to remain cool under scrutiny.
“Wow”. The disbelief in her voice unmissable. “How long have you been,…. playing with your little men?”
“Since I was 10”.
“Ohh. Any other kinky shit?”
“No”.
“Shame.”
It took years for her to come to accept my “kink”, and I’ve since bought into a store, travelled to Gencon and Essen. I’ve tried several times to get her into gaming, but to this day 20 years later, it remains my ‘kink’ alone.
So at my wedding we had a series of group shots, when we called out for my “Gaming friends”, my mate Ben’s girlfriend (who he’d been seeing for 3 months) said to him, “What’s this gaming you do then?” He’d never mentioned his hobby to her before. He subsequently married her and they now have 2 kids, we still game, with the kids too, so it all worked out well!
A much belated Happy Sunday!
I guess for me I had a lot of friends growing up who were nerdy, and by the time I was dating it was such a part of my identity I couldn’t imagine hiding it. Fortunately, I didn’t need to, my wife and I spent many of our early dates discussing at length the theoretical ecology of dragons. We play WoW together, we own a massive shared RPG and Board game collection, and play those regularly. When we first moved in together we had to find all the duplicates so we could give them away to friends. We have spent past holidays at Essen and PAX:Unplugged, and we are going to Essen again this year.
I can’t oversell our nerdy connection. When we got married, we had two readings at the service, one was from Penny Arcade (From Gabe’s proposal strip, about the nature of love) and a passage from a love story in the Silmarillion. We spent years in another nerdy hobby of HEMA, and for one of our early wedding anniversary bought each other custom forged longswords.
As for gaming with work, we have a social night once a month where everyone is invited into the company breakout room for pizza and themed entertainment. A few of us suggested a board game night for one theme. It went ahead, and I brought in an absolute ton of board games. It’s a pretty nerdy workplace generally (we’re a tech company), so there was a fair share of people who were pretty into board games. There was also a decent share though who weren’t. Codenames and Pictionary were probably the most popular games of the night, but Settlers of Catan and Carcassone also had a fair few people joining in. I am not a fan of Catan, and I have to say I don’t think it was a good gateway game for those not already into the hobby. I have continued to bring in games for play on a lunchtime with those who showed an interest on that night. Though Chess, Pool and table tennis remain the most popular lunchtime activities.
Have to say I am with Sam on any great single-player gaming franchise becoming an MMO, just turns me right off. I play WoW a lot, but as I have lamented at length previously I would prefer WoW as a singleplayer, or even co-op with friends against the campaign story to a true MMO. It’s just the kind of games I love (that use to get big singleplayer releases) just don’t anymore, so I have to play them in the least multiplayer way possible. I sympathise with the multiple chosen-one dilemma, Wow has handled this 3 different ways that come to mind,
Wrath – The players are a group of exceptional heroes all invited by their faction to come and deal with a problem in the frozen continent of Northrend. No ludo-narrative dissonance worked well.
Draenor – Single-player instances for areas where you are “the chosen one” or at least, the garrison commander. I really liked this approach, avoided some amount of ludo-narrative dissonance and still allowed a nice feeling of being the key hero in a story.
Legion – So many people complained about the garrison single-instancing in Draeonor, the replacement in Legion (the class order hall) was multi-player. Really awful Ludonarrative dissonance “I am the netherlord, using this daemon heart to power my realm, but so are these other 50 people stood beside me”. It was sometimes nice to see someone who had the same class sensibilities as you with a cool mount or gear, but that was a small benefit. Especially since you could mingle in large groups in the cities, which again, actually made sense! I still enjoyed it a lot, but I’d rather have played a WoW that was more like Mass Effect 2 🙂 Or at least, Divinity: Original sin.
My girlfriend and I went on like 5 or 6 dates before it came around that she was to visit my place. I haven’t told her up to that moment what a huge nerd I am. So like 10 minutes before she was supposed to arrive I wrote her that I am some kind of a minitures freak. She was about 10 minutes late and I already thought “Ok, that’s that”. Much later I learned, she is always 10-15 minutes late. But I don’t mind. So she arrived. Took a look around in my place and went: “Where are all the planes?”. After my message she expected to see model airplanes hanging from the ceiling and stuff like that. She barely noticed my glass vitrines with all the DAK tanks and Space Marines in it.
We got to talk about it and as it turns out she’s quite the nerd herself. I bought her a model airplane for her birthday and we are quite happy with our nerd-dom ever since 😀
I was big into computer games when I met my wife and she knew about them. As time progressed she found out about all the other games that I played. She started by playing some of the card games and then actually asked to join one of the mmorpg’s that I was playing. She still will occasionally play the card or board games but never went for the miniatures until… we took a vacation to Ireland for the Fabled Realms boot camp!
What a great and chatty episode of XLBS! Also the boardgame date idea’s, those are great!
Been on hols so playing catch up 🙂
Told my wife about my geekiness on 2nd or 3rd date….. had an easy get out as she brought it up about her son playing! She’s never had an issue with it, comes along to events with me, plays the occasional game of Exploding Kittens and once kicked my ass at X-Wing