The Gaming Den

And electric flyswatters.
VERY satisfying killing the little buggers with these things.
Burning chitin tends to smell awfull though <.<

So, last night, my laptops battery died.
It did so with a pretty audible TINK noise and then the machine just went dark.
The Laptop runs just fine on cable power still and luckily, it is an older machine from back when they still made them with removeable batteries.
And i am just so fucking glad it went like that and not the boom route.
90watt hours of energy stored in there means we are actually approaching grenade levels of potential boom when these things go up . . makes me seriously reconsider using that thing not on a desk anymore O.o

Stahlseele wrote:So, last night, my laptops battery died.
It did so with a pretty audible TINK noise and then the machine just went dark.
The Laptop runs just fine on cable power still and luckily, it is an older machine from back when they still made them with removeable batteries.
And i am just so fucking glad it went like that and not the boom route.
90watt hours of energy stored in there means we are actually approaching grenade levels of potential boom when these things go up . . makes me seriously reconsider using that thing not on a desk anymore O.o

Did you see any of the failures back a decade or so ago when they were putting bad capacitors in everything? I saw a nice blue flash out of the corner of my eye, then my desktop went black and quiet. A larger explosion sounds interesting in a bad way.

No, my hardware is only 4 to 6 years old, not that old anymore.

in related news:

this custom built gaming rig i ordered for 3000€ in 2014 has, as of today, saved me 1500€ in electricity bills compared to my old monster.
So, in another 4 years or so, depending on rising/falling energy costs, it will have completely amortizised? it's buying price with the savings in energy.
PROGRESS!

Looking forward to playing the Card Game that Can't Be Named this weekend with my sister. Lessons learned: I suck at printing and cutting out things that are supposed to line up.

Saw this on tumblr awhile back


And I really like it, but it's also $60. So I decided to just make my own, and I finally gathered the pieces and made it today, and not just a replica, but a version that's specifically mine-

That's pretty cool, actually. Nice job.

Finally "fully" launched my company. Took a long time to come together, so hopefully it'll pay off.

Site is a bit barebones due to my lack of webdesign ability/the limited tools the builder has, and from lack of funds. We're offering paid GMing and RPG supplies.

https://heartbreakerpress.ca
https://heartbreaker-press.myshopify.com/

I can't decide if I should be happy this means I might be able to convince Cham to give Mr. Vampire another shot via discord where things might be easier to manage or if I should be disappointed I'd have to pay for the experience. I still feel kinda bad about letting that whole thing trail off like Chief Wiggum, but negotiating how much planning is or isn't needed to do something over PbP is a real bear compared to the face-to-face gaming I'm used to. And of course, life happened, as it has a tendency to do.

If ya see this, consider it a formal apology, Cham. FWIW, I had fun.

Fuck, man, Mister Vampire is the reason I'm so hesitant to offer PbP stuff. Letting that go out with such a whimper is, like, my greatest failure as a GM.

That's a pretty good track record, tbh. I'd bet cash money the success rates on PbP is pretty fucking grim.

Serious questing about DMing as a service: What do you do when a player whines about bad things happening to their character and goes into entitled customer mode?

Remind them that I already have their money, my refund policy is "fuck you and your lawyer," and that it will take me maybe two or three weeks to replace them as a customer. Of course, someone who's just generally disappointed with the outcome of an encounter doesn't automatically get that treatment, because part of the service I offer is in fact that you can set your own house rules, so if they want to house rule something in that stops them from losing too badly when they lose, that's cool. But if someone's going to be a dick about it, I am actually the one with the leverage in that conversation. Charging $10 I've been able to replace customers pretty much instantly, and having bumped things to $15 I'm still finding that it's not too long before I get new groups expressing interest.

nockermensch wrote:Serious questing about DMing as a service: What do you do when a player whines about bad things happening to their character and goes into entitled customer mode?

Impossible to tell without more information. Preferably with his opinion in his own words to compare to your side of the story. It's equally possible that he's rightfully entitled and you're a shit DM. I still wouldn't give him his money back, anyone retarded enough to pay a DM deserves to get ripped off as far as I'm concerned.

Da fuck, Count? It's a service. What- we cannot live in a world where people provide services for fees and try to make it an amenable exchange for both parties? People pay to play at conventions. It's not so different to hire someone for private games. There's clearly a market for paid DMs. DMing is often lousy work, even as a labor of love the emphasis for me is always on the labor.

I almost forgot that I've done it for cheap with strangers because I DM'd a couple Living Greyhawk mods at a convention on short notice since they were light on DMs where otherwise people weren't going to get to play. I was paid like six bucks because that was their policy for giving the DMs a cut of the event fee (dollar per player from the event fee that was like 5 or 6 per player). At no point have I ever felt like someone was being a sucker in paying for a DM/game.

The negotiation with entitled player should go along the lines of, I'm being paid to run a game by these rules. If everyone paying wants different rules then let me know and we can see. If it offends my sensibilities or requires a lot more work then possibly I won't do it, or I'll at least charge more.

It's not stupid to charge for DMing, it's stupid to pay it. There's a difference.

I did pay to play once at Gencon. It was 3.5 eberron and was an official WotC event, the GM only knew 2e, and about 75% of the time was spent arguing with the GM because he didn't know what the fuck game he was running. It wasn't the worst gaming experience of my life but it was in the top 5 easy, and I regretted not turning my $5 into quarters because I'd have infinitely more fun whipping quarters at pigeons.

You got a bad DM. It happens. I’ve gotten shitty car window repair guy who made an almost invisible crack way worse while failing to even seal it. Doesn’t make the whole industry shit. I’ve gotten poorly cooked food before. Doesn’t make every restauranteur a sucker.

I think part of the problem is everyone agrees on a good window repair job. Food is a bit more subjective, but there are certain bars everyone wants met.

DMing isn’t like that. Some people legit want low magic campaigns, meat grinders, alignment fuckery, or other weird things that would bother other players. You’d have to run some crazy questionier if you wanted to gauge compatibility.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:It's not stupid to charge for DMing, it's stupid to pay it. There's a difference.

No it's not.

We have a local comic book shop that just opened up. Great place. They also do pen and paper RP games. The policy is you pay a fee to get in. Pays for both the space and a bit of the DM's time.

The space is clean and the people are extremely pleasant. I'm good friends with the ones who run the games and they are extremely competent DMs, which means that I'm more than willing to pay the entry fee there. They're still not going to run a game they're not interested in; I mean, this is a hobby and not a job that pays the bills, it's just a nice little kickback to them for putting in all the work that DMing is. Because it really is a lot of work.

Okay, I guess you got me there, although there are no shortage of DMs there (in fact, players are harder to find than DMs), I'd honestly pay to play somewhere that isn't a cat-piss smelling basement where sewage routines floods up through the drains and isn't infested with black mold. Also the house next door supplies crank to homeless people and doesn't even try to hide it, there's always piles of fresh scrap metal, stolen bikes, etc. I've tried to convince the group to game literally anywhere else but there but no one except me and my domestic life partner wants to move the game.

I've noticed that the shops that charge small fees for table space seem to do better and stick around longer than the ones that don't. I suspect it's less the additional income trickle and more to do with store culture. The stereotypical Android's Dungeon where you've got the one guy who owns and runs the place like it's still a hobby and not a job are often kind of low key cliquey and a pain to actually shop at. E.g., the last place that went out of business around here had a well-meaning owner but he was always off in the back room babbling with his MTG buddies rather than actually manning the checkout counter. That doesn't bother me much, personally, but lots of people are pretty sensitive about their customer service and find it really off-putting when they have to go interrupt a conversation to make a purchase. By contrast the shop that's been around for ages is better staffed and the owner will relinquish his place at the register when you pry it from his cold, dead hands.

Maybe it's just me but if you want a mini to paint to play a tabletop game you better hope you're playing a half-nekkid chick with big thingies or a monster because otherwise it's hard to find. And I'd rather not pay what Heroforge wants to charge.

You should try the dip method. You can get a surprisingly decent looking mini in ~30 minutes (split up in two 15-minute blocks).

If you want professional quality, it takes hours and hours and that costs money. Or at least, it should.

You could also pick up a D&D pre painted mini, but I think the dip method looks better than that.

Those minis look pretty good for what they'd be used for in real life, but I'm a wash and drybrush kind of guy.

I did manage to find a few suitable minis though, I found some more humanoid monsters that I might be able to use as humans. I generally don't play female characters because I feel weird. Mostly because any guy I knew that played a female character played a bisexual nympho who cleaved pretty close to every horrible stereotype nerds have about women and it's creepy even by my standards.

Is there a reason you don't get Reaper minis? Their quality is okay, they have fully clothed women, and many are very characterful and/or clever. I mean, a lot of their older stuff is shit, and they definitely have fanservice sculpts, but you can just not buy those.