Button Counters

[panzerkaput 33931xp 0]

That would be such a great idea @warzan

[panzerkaput 33931xp 2]

@dugthefug1644 Andy was never a button counter and always helped people

I find that most of these “helpful” chaps, with there History degrees, etc, etc, are very good at the criticism and not the clique. It is mainly in the Historicals but Historicals is a real period and elves and dwarves are not. I actually research the heck out of my historicals but general go with what I can find and what people say. What I am not going to do is go down the route of spending £100+ of getting access to a document thats nearly thousand years old and look at the faded original colour to see what the colour might be. Maybe I fail as a historical player there.

For the record I play KoW too but not a be fan of 40K as I think the rules such but love the background

 

[panzerkaput 33931xp 1]

@torros that is my Billions Suns fleet, buttons, lol

[panzerkaput 33931xp 0]

@rovens no but it the old one or two that point out what wrong but never whats right or where to find the information.

[panzerkaput 33931xp 1]

@torros yes that was my experience too. The draft thing I used to get it a lot when demoing Very British Civil War which as far as I can remember I helped to make up, lol. I remember once someone telling me about one the factions and they did this and that and I dont understand VBCW. Then another people on the table polite told them at I was the guy that illustration and wrote spme the stuff and in fact had a massive input into what they was talking about. Was quite funny as then they became a fanboy. I think I preferred them the other way, lol

[panzerkaput 33931xp 2]

Please dont get me wrong as I know it is not all Historical gamers it is just the tiny minority.

I have played Historicals for over 35 years and the one thing I love about historical gaming is getting the history right, you know research. But I would never dream of basically insulting someone publicly as you can something wrong and then after making a big fuse walk away without siting what is correct.

I sadly know too much on pre ECW and ECW uniforms, late 17th century uniforms and Inter War and Early War British Uniforms and civilian dress, I could bore you all about detachable collars on shirts of the working classes doing the 1930s and the correct way to wear a cravat but I would not dream of correcting someone about it unless I was prepared to site the evidence.

I also know that you get it in Fantasy and SciFi too

If anyone had noticed my picture is Winton Churchill, wearing the dress uniform of the Gloucestershire Hussars circa 1938 with his c98 Bloom Handled Mausers on his dress. Can anyone tell what is wrong with that picture?

[torros 23802xp 1]

Can anyone tell what is wrong with that picture?

Hes not fat enough?

the correct way to wear a cravat

You  mean there are people that don’t?

[wurzzelParticipant 2734xp 0]

@panzerkaput, I’m guessing the problem is he wasn’t in the Gloucestershire hussars, but seeing as he apparently liked wearing the Adrian helmet, the wrong uniform isn’t a massive step ? on another note why shouldn’t we ignore uniform regulations when generals like Montgomery did?

[panzerkaput 33931xp 2]

@torros well yes and @wuzzel yes he wasnt in the Glous Hussars but but dress regs are important, lol. Most Brits disregarded the dress regs in one way or another

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 4]

Rivit/button counters, lore whores, knowledge hoarders, gundam ottaku are all the same.  Keyboard warriors lacking social skills, overly invested in their niche without any perspective, in my experience they all seem to only have their hobby in their lives and generally take issue with people who have anything else going on, and seem to revert to some primal dick waving battle for alphaness in a manner guaranteed to have the opposite effect they hope for, ie not respected just mocked.  It’s not a historical thing although my take on why the perception is that there is more in that genre is that it overlaps with the scale modelling and model train worlds more than fantasy and Sci fi does. (once had a run in with someone because I used the wrong scale riviting tool on an airframe and I’d posted pics of to a forum, he shut up once I a) pointed out I don’t care, b) his mum/blow up susan might humour him no one else does and c) it was a scifi model which doesn’t exist so the rivits can be any effing size I want)

The absolute worst example of this type of keyboard warrioring was aimed at a very respected UK scale modeller who triggered some total idiots in the UK gundam scene leading to claims he was “disrespecting the model and Japanese culture” by posting a video wondering if he should prime on the sprue or off (this was a perfect grade gundam so 1500+ parts), long story short modeller gets twitter mobbed regrets having ever bothered vows never to build a gundam contemplates quitting the scene, shuttering his business (he sells sanding sticks and weathering supplies which are very good BTW) over some thing as basic and sensible as priming on the sprue.  He had last laugh when guy who started the bitching got banned for life by Bandai from entering or attending any gundam event globally, kicked out of his group, and insult to injury several undisputed  gundam masters (slayer sword equivalent award winners) revealed they always paint on the sprue..

Point of my ramble dick heads are everywhere that personality type only exists as they are very damaged people who often ain’t as good as they want to be at playing the game or painting/modelling so love to feel better about their inability by pouring scorn on others, ignore do not feed the trolls leave Billy no mates alone and upset them more by having a good time enjoying what u do

 

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

@warzan paper clip on a base would make it easy to stack them, connect 4 counters work well too…

It was my first thought at the title as well lol

[crazyredcoatParticipant 13642xp 3]

I have to say that that kind of person is not limited to war gaming as anyone who’s been in or near the reenacting community… There are those who value accuracy above all else, and those who want to present an image, and by an large both camps play nicely with each other, but some people have that ‘I’m better than you because…’ attitude. Personally, with my historicals, I tend to end up on the button counter side more often, but that’s for me. But most wargaming is done at scales where the tiny details really don’t matter. No one can paint the regimental taping that differentiates the 6th Foot from the 100th Foot, for example, at 28mm. If people want my knowledge then I’m happy to give what I have, one of the reasons why my project logs tend to come with research posts before (though with school taking time that has basically dissipated for now). I’ve always been riled up by people who interfere in other people’s hobby, though. If a gamer wants to ignore facing colours on uniforms and just paint jackets in one colour, then they can. Approximation at anything less than 10mm is probably a requirement, really.

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 3]

@crazyredcoat I’d say approximation is the name of the game for anything unless your actually there as it happened.I just think some people struggle to accept others enjoy different things differently to them and that’s across all aspects of life not just gaming

[panzerkaput 33931xp 1]

@timchubb what a great idea with the paper clips

 

[onlyonepinman 18053xp 2]

I’m going to be the voice of discord again here, Devil’s Advocate perhaps.

There’s nothing wrong with being a rivet counter. Or a lore whore. Or even being the opposite and being captain alpha strike. We all get into hobbies for different reasons – for some historical accuracy is one of the things they are interested in. Online communities, whilst allowing us to share with like minded people from across the globe also mean that we will more frequently encounter people with different views to us as well. It’s a double edged sword.

I don’t think the problem is that people are button counters but purely from how people behave, whether it’s in person or online, when they encounter people who don’t have the same motivation as they do.  I think with everyone sharing everything online all the time, we see the people with no social skills who are willing to point out all the historical flaws in someone’s army or someone’s painting far more frequently than we otherwise would and to be honest many of the people who do it online are the same in real life. Without access to online communities, if we were unlucky we might encounter a couple of these people in our local gaming community whether it’s a store or a gaming store. When we transition to online communities you get to those same people from every gaming community the world over.

There’s no easy solution either. Sure we can all dog pile on them when they do it but does that make us any better if we do? We can try telling them politely that what they’re doing isn’t cool however from experience (I have friends who can be a bit like this) they don’t have that filter and in many cases they can’t abstract the concept. They can understand that what they did in that instant was wrong and they can apologize but they can’t translate that into an abstract concept to drive a change in behavour overall. It’s surprising how many people are like this. I am not going to talk about people being in any kind of spectrum because I am not in anyway qualified to make that diagnosis, but I do know that there are people whose brains just seem to work differently and who struggle to grasp some of the social etiquettes we take for granted. I am reasonably certain there’s nothing they can do about that either.  Lacking social skills probably doesn’t make you a bad person, troubled maybe but not bad.

And of course, online there are trolls. Many, many trolls. Normally they just want to get a rise out of you. I won’t try to  guess what percentage of people online are trolls (and we’re all brutally honest, we have probably all done a little bit of it at some point or other, when we encounter someone who has pissed us off maybe). But even if 9 out of every 10 button counters are just idiot trolls, my preference would be to ignore them to make sure that we don’t dog pile onto someone who is probably genuinely well meaning but who for some reason lacks social skills.

I realise this doesn’t offer many solutions beyond “just ignore them”

[Author]

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