Weekender XLBS: Embracing A Healthy Hobby & Why D&D Is Good For You!
May 29, 2016 by lloyd
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HAPPY SUNDAY 🙂
Happy Sunday.
Will this be another hour watching Warzan finger his ring ??
Happy Sunday!! On the point of really enjoying parts of collecting & tinkering, I can totally raise my hand. I love the collecting aspect & i LOVE putting mdf kits together. I think it feeds my jigsaw puzzle gene. And then there’s my Magic cards, which I can sort, and sort some more. That part feeds my OCD gene.
Happy Sunday!
Fifth! Woot.
Pfftt.. I crack me up.
I think favourite comment is a great idea rather than random! Makes people want to put something into their comments rather than just giving the little comment.
I had a little laugh about the Iowaska one of the mind altering chemicals we have studied. One of things people don’t talk about is the diarrhoea and vomiting that happens before their psychedelic adventures… Not as magical I wouldn’t think after that. But each to their own…
Happy Sunday. @warzan got all war-zen at the end there…
Great show, especially @warzans ‘rant’ about hobby. I generally feel frustrated I don’t get to play games but its maybe more a feeling I’m not legitimate because of it.
I’m ogreblood and my hobby is painting, imagining the worlds my toys live in and once in a blue moon seeing an old buddy and putting my toys to use.
I agree 😀 I think @warzan ‘s comment on it was great! I always try and be super positive on WAYPN, because I think for the longest time painters haven’t had that community. I know GW calls people hobbyists not gamers. I think if someone says they are a gamer or a hobbyist you almost already know the type of ‘wargamer’ they are.
GW splits the pie six different ways, Builders/Painters/Diorama-ists/Competitive gamers/Casual Gamers/Fluff people (fluffers is a different thing ha ha)
And your meant to find where each person fits in these parts. While two are gamers the majority is not.
I think you should follow the golden rule, if your enjoying yourself, and not hurting anyone. Keep it up 😀
Agree completely with Warren. I have to admit my hobby is collecting miniatures, and I have more than I will likely ever be able to assemble and paint, because I want to participate in building upon the sci-fi/fantasy universes I enjoy. And because I don’t game, I can paint and collect at the pace that I’m happy with.
With the D&D thing that is mostly why I hobby, I just make the NPC’s and the player characters and I sort of got roped back into the wargamming thing. So yeah I am more than happy to harp on about the virtues of tabletop pen and paper adventures rather than the screen based one.
1! Social interaction! A lot of people take it for granted, but simply talking to people today, makes you better at social interaction than your average person, a lot of people are retreating into ‘eletronica’ a world of the electric. You socialising through game play which is how most animals teach, gives you that social edge.
2! Resetting your biases to zero! A lot of people have trouble understanding other people. I know I do try my best, but it is often hard to put yourself in their shoes. But playing the character who has different values to you, you gain a greater understanding of the world.
Now, don’t argue one way or the other just imagine if say your religious or if your not religious, playing a character that is deeply devout or atheistic.
Really getting into it. You would gain an appreciation for what it might be like to be that person. However, in my opinion what is much, much better is the hidden lessons where someone plays as something gets upset about it (in a character way not rage quiting the table). And then they realise that may apply somewhere in the world they didn’t realise.
3! Teamwork! Your average group cannot overcome a dungeon/encounter/whatever system it is alone. Strength of will and body is not enough working together is so important.
4! Historical application! Understanding the layers of history, my world, which I am hoping to bring to a publishable stage in maybe a year or two. (A quick aside, trying to hire artists is like herding cats! ). In that world a lot of the motivations of the previous generation lie in the decisions of the people before them. Understanding how history effects things is important, trying to understand Russia today without an understanding of the U.S.S.R is hard to say the least.
5! It’s fun! If your doing it right, which is however right is for you 😀 Your having fun! It releases endorphins and dopamine into the body when you learn these things so your body wants to remember them! All of this means you are predisposed to loving the idea of being open to new idea 😀 To me that is a win!
I could go on forever, but I figured I have already taken up too much of the comment section already!
Well said. I absolutely appreciate what you have written and it hits the target more than you know!
Thank you so much warren for what you said. I for one have not been active on forums for exactly what you said, must add not so much on BOW. So I am right behind the ‘My hobby is mine’ movement. I am trying to get that idea over to my kids also, just sat watching my youngest playing fantasy ogres against necrons in his own game and had great fun. cheers again
Thirteenth! Wait, am I playing this game right? The internet is confusing 🙁
The Infinity Gems were the macguffin that powered a series of comics in the early 90s. Collected together in the Infinity Gauntlet they granted the wielder god-like powers. The next Avengers movie will be based on this storyline.
Speaking of Vision, a shout-out is deserved for the current Vision comic book series. It’s well worth reading:
“The Vision isn’t a wacky superheroic action series where the Avenging Android comes home to his robot family after a hard day’s avenging—it’s a dread-laden surburban drama about murder, lies, what it means to be human, and the inevitability of heading down a self-destructive path. It just happens to star a synthezoid man, and the wife and two kids he decided to make for himself one day.”
http://io9.gizmodo.com/marvels-the-vision-is-telling-a-story-unlike-any-superh-1756995647
Great show guys -as to the hobby @warzan you are wrong … There is no try – there is only do or do not accept each other as equals -I will go for do! 😉
Sorry to pull old Yoda out the back but the sermon called for it 🙂
ahh i know what @Warzan is going for but it really get in to grammar and wording part that got down abit on my skin, feel like it have gotten a lot deeper then it need to be,but isn’t is hobby side meant to be you enjoy more on the build and paint parts more then the gaming aspect ?
i really get the part you went by enjoying which ever part of it you enjoy and not feel guilty.
Happy Sunday!!
I’m definitely into collecting and painting models that I ocassionally pkay with; got a few core systems I play regularly, but if there’s a model I really like from a different system then sod-it… it’s mine!
Timeline wise for Team Yankee, won’t it be more Lightnings, Harriers and Phantoms?
Can I chuck a good old fashioned word into the discussion: “Pastime”
From the OED: “An activity that someone does regularly for enjoyment rather than work.”
Which raises an intersting question about folks like the BoW team and others I know who work inthe industry – can your work really be your hobby? Or to quote Shakey:
“If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work,”
Lloyd’s more of a “crafter”… a big ‘Borrower’ that enjoys crafting stuff out of bits collected around the place.
The person that buys pre-painted X-Wing models is often some combination of a collector/gamer with an interest in that ‘Lore’
Some are into the escapism through mental immersion that can be achieved through role-play; whether on good old fashioned pene nd paper RPG, minis on a map RPG or a board game setting like Myth.
Angel Giraldez is a painter… I’m not sure how much gaming he gets in to say more…
I mainly collect and paint miniatures. The groups I join have come to understand that I enjoy the games part but not as much as them. They just so jappen to play better with unpainted minis than I do with my beautifully painted ones.
There’s just one big Game~Craft continuum that all of us slot onto somewhere that we call our hobby or pastime.
I promise I’ll stop trying to comment using my table and phone… stupid on-screen keyboards!
Couldn’t agree more about the hobby.
My hobby is : enjoying what I’m doing at the moment,
having enjoyed what I did in the past,
but also looking forward to what I’m going to do next !
You know what was missing from Warren’s rant? ‘My hobby is gaming with miniatures. I don’t like painting and I often game with unpainted minis’. This, in my experience, is where the hobby is most intolerant. To the extent there are people I know who don’t enter the hobby because of it. In no other aspect of the hobby are people required to do something they don’t want to do if they want to engage, but many tournaments enforce a painting requirement. Yet somehow it’s always the ‘gamers’ who are being intolerant of the other aspects of the hobby.
Forgot to mention that it is only people who don’t paint who are described as being ‘disrespectful’, it is only people who don’t paint who find other hobbyists refusing to engage with them.
I only paint because I want to play with painted minis and they look better on the table. If I could afford to pay someone to paint miniatures for me then I would in a heart beat
I’m of the same mind. I’m not disputing that painted minis look better than unpainted ones and that in an ideal world all minis would be painted. It is the case, though, that the pressure we put on people to paint does have an impact on those who don’t want to do it, but do want to game, but this is something we’re okay with. Like I say below, there are actual people I know who have left mini-gaming but do other types of gaming purely because of the pressure this hobby puts on them to paint. It sticks in my craw a bit when the intolerance aspect gets framed in terms of those who don’t to game, rather than those who don’t want to paint. When it is the latter we’re a lot more intolerant of.
Tournament play is the kind of play the least amount of gamers actually do. Most just play with their buddies or at the local club. No one forces you to enter a tournament and not entering them has probably zero, or close to it, impact on ones hobby.
It makes no difference how much of a minority they are. This whole rant is about each individual being allowed to enjoy their hobby as they wish, but the one area we don’t tolerate is people who don’t paint. Despite this it is always the people who don’t game who presented as being the ones picked-upon for not doing it properly. Your post is another example of how someone who wants to game and not paint gets dismissed. No-one is forcing someone who wants to buy and paint to game as well, but people who want to game and enter tournaments is either forced to paint or placed under pressure to paint. I’m not talking in hypotheticals here either. These people exist, I know them and play other types of games with them. I myself have been them.
In sum:
Want to game and enter tournaments? You must and/or are being disrespectful if you don’t paint your minis. Don’t want to paint? Then don’t enter tournaments. No-one is forcing you to do so.
Want collect and/or paint but don’t want to game? It’s your hobby, don’t let anyone tell you what to do!
Sorry for replying twice, but we can’t edit our posts 🙁
If it irks you, or others, that painted armies are a must in many tournaments then organize your own where there are no such rules. Or make a rule that the armies must be unpainted. People who take the time and effort to organize a tournament can set whatever rules they damn wish. Don’t like it? Put in the time and effort yourself to make a tournament the way you want it.
Fine. I’ll make my own tournaments, with blackjack, and hookers. In fact, forget the tournaments and the backjack! I actually have organised my own tournaments without painting requirements, though that isn’t the point. Painting requirements are just an individual expression of our collective intolerance, not the intolerance itself. It’s the intolerance in response to a rant about intolerance which framed the issue in terms of gaming, not painting, which I’m addressing.
First up, whilst it was presented in terms of anyone should be allowed to do their hobby as they wish, it was framed in terms of gaming. You are doing it wrong because you don’t game enough, because you don’t game in the right way, because you don’t game at all. Whilst this does happen, in my experience, the way in which we, collectively, are most intolerant of what individuals want to do with their hobby is in respect to painting, or rather, not painting. No-one has ever said it is disrespectful to paint a mini and not game with it. Many, many people have said it is disrespectful to game with a mini which is not painted. This is a collective attitude, and if we wish to address attitudes towards intolerance of how people want to enjoy their hobby, this is the major area in which we are intolerant. That we are so instinctively intolerant of it is demonstrated by the fact that most of the time we’re not even aware of it. Witness its lack of any mention in Warren’s rant (‘I buy painted minis because I don’t want to paint’, not ‘I game with unpainted minis because I don’t want to paint’), and your own credulity that it would even be regarded as a collective intolerance. I am not saying that everyone should be okay with unpainted minis. I am saying that we should be aware when talking about how we collectively are intolerant of individuals ‘not doing it right’, that unpainted minis, not gaming, are our primary intolerance. Few people would say someone who paints but does not game is ‘not doing it right’, many more would say someone who games but does not paint is ‘not doing it right’.
I play a few different games and I understand people enjoy different aspects of the hobby in different measures. I don’t like painting that much but love the fluff. I play with people who don’t mind that my painting progresses, to say the least, slowly. If someone would not want to play me because my minis, or at least some/most of them, are umpainted that’s completely fine. Because for some people the enjoyment comes from seeing two fully painted/based armies face off against each other. Or should we just dismiss the guy who loves to see two painted armies?
I think you make a hen out of a feather (I’m not sure that’s the correct expression in english but I’m sure you get it). Game with people with whom you have compatible hobby preferences and stop whining of someone differs.
I’m not whining about the preferences of others. When someone posted a thread in the forums asking what others thought of their refusal to play anyone who doesn’t have a painted army I had no issue with that. Everyone should be allowed to enjoy their hobby their own way. This is specifically in response to a rant by Warren that everyone should be allowed to enjoy their hobby as they want, framed, as it usually is, in terms of those who don’t game not being made to feel bad for that. In my experience, where we are most intolerant as a collective is towards those who do not paint. It is the only area of the hobby in my experience in which there are actual rules in place forcing you to do it if you want to do something else with the minis. Painting competitions don’t require you to game with your entry, but gaming competitions often require you to paint your entry. If we’re going to get into a discussion about how we are intolerant of the way others want to enjoy their hobby, then this is the area in which we are most intolerant.
I’m totally supportive of folk who don’t want to paint, my point is do what you enjoy – and be respectful of others to help them enjoy their fav bits 🙂
Yeah, I think the D&D TedX was weaksauce. I’ve played D&D for a long time even though I’ve transitioned to others RPGs I like better. I think RPGs are great fun and it’s nice to make progress in a campaign but I think there is something wrong with a person who thinks it’s equally meaningful to beat a boss fight as it is to achieve something in real life, like landing a job, acing an exam and so on. D&D is a rather nice little hobby which can bring friends together for an evening of great fun but if it becomes a means of actual real life escape then you should see a therapist, not play a game.
Very cool.
You do what you do. You do what you enjoy. You don’t do what you don’t enjoy.
That’s all there is to it.
I think that I might have taken a step closer to the universal consciousness thingy after Warren’s wisdom – no weird Amazonian hippy-trippy drugs required!
Warren = reincarnated Buddha CONFIRMED?! You heard it here first folks! ;P
Re the competition. Going by what Ben has said does this mean I won’t be able to win by copying and pasting ” This is cool” on every forum page I can find?
Thank you Warren, thank you for sort of expressing what I have only just discovered. If you do the hobby stuff you enjoy you enjoy doing, and stop feeling so %^%^ guilty for not doing the stuff you think you should be doing you get more out satisfaction and enjoyment out of the hobby.
Case in point for the last two years I’ve played a few games but I have done bugger all painting. Now I love painting absolutely adore it , (I am not necessarily good at it I getting too old). The last five months have been some of the most stressful at work that I have had to put up with. and in the hour before bed I was trying to find way to put the brain in neutral so I could sleep. I asked myself what did I use to do to get that calmness the answer was paint!.
Then I asked myself why haven’t you being painting (boofhead). The reason was that I had told myself that I had to finish my 2000pt 40k army before I went on to the next thing that I wanted to do. HOW BLOODY STUPID IS THAT (yelling at myself not you, dear reader). I hadn’t done what I enjoyed doing because of some stupid expectation I put on myself.. So I picked up the models I want to make , made them , undercoated them, whacked on a couple of base colours and the next night because I wanted to do something different went on to something else. By rotating stuff around and mixing things up I am 1) Painting more 2) producing more finished models (including some from the dreaded 40k army because I was only doing them in bits and pieces when I felt like it)3) Feeling, as Warren said, a real sense of achievement. 4) feeling nicely relaxed when I go to bed & 6) It has flowed into other areas of the hobby as I am interested in gaming more.
So thank you Warren for saying what needs to be said what ever you do, it’s your hobby, you enjoy it and that’s alright !!!
I am going to go on a little more (only a little, thanks for still reading if you are) and add our hobby is blessed with a wide variety of games and miniature makers, play and model the ones you enjoy, and you should never have to apologise for your choice, because it is your choice. I don’t like some games or miniature makers but, if your choice is different to mine , I will never, in these boards, look down my nose at you, a fellow hobbyist and make condescending comments that remove from your enjoyment. That is what i personally promise, because when it happened to me (not here) I was pissed off and didn’t fully enjoy. myself in the hobby for sometime afterwards. Mini rant off. thank you for reading. Enjoy your hobby. =)
That’s the approach I take to painting – I have a dozen Infinity minis on my table in various stages of completion. Some have been untouched for months!
I wanted to use one in a tournament last weekend, excitement kicked in, *BAM* finished it off in a couple of days, really pleased with the result!
@Warzan ‘s argument is great! To paraphrase Jarhead ‘My hobby is my own, there are many like it but this one is my own’
I get my biggest kicks when different aspects of this hobby come together. I had a great experience with a friend. He was someone who loved to play the game, and roll the dice. His armies were rarely more than primed. I am someone who spends a long time painting forces to the best of my ability. We played a game, where we used two fully painted armies and terrain that I had created. His passion for the game, and the cinematic moments that the dice told was fantastic. He spoke afterwards saying that nicely painted models made it even more enjoyable for him.
This hobby is big enough for all of us, and the greatest moments will always be when we come together and combine our favourite aspects
Ha ha!
I call my brush Daisy, she is so beautiful don’t you think…
Oh my as George would say.
really enjoyed the content in this show ….totally in agreement with warren rant …..very rare i play …. as a commission painter i have probably been in thousands of games and that gives me more furfillment and joy than anything…. i get to make the day of another hobbiest who has not the time or inclination to paint have the wow factor when he sets his/her army out ….i love what i do …would i change it ……no ……give me a six inch brush and a box of 15mm germans and im as happy as a vogon spouting poetry …….is there going to be a frog race vlog ……please
Warren has a good point but ones own hobby remains that only until you want to explore the hobby with someone else. When you join a wargaming group you can of course still only do the bits you like but if you want to interact with others you will have to come to a compromise of how the hobby is enacted/played/done. Your own little bubble, your rules. You want to share the hobby-bubble with others, you will have to find common ground (aka, adapting to others and putting in some effort in things you might enjoy less in order to allow the group to all have a good time). The whole guilt thing seems mostly like projecting to me.