Ok this may come across as a bit of a rant however I feel
the urge to vent a bit after Andy and my game last night. You see our gaming
club is an over 18 type of affair, not because we don’t encourage younger
gamers but rather because our lovely hosts (The Belgrave Social Club) is a
place where alcoholic refreshment is served, and as such they have quite strict
rules. As a consequence the average bracket of our gamers is probably about 30-40
years old with a mixture of professions and backgrounds.
Well last night was a pretty typical night with around 30
attendees and a wide variety of historical, fantasy and Sci-fi gaming being
played in equal measure. I set up our LoTR SBG board in a corner of the room
with the hope that we’d be able to play our silly little game in peace.
Ahh but it was not to be. You see both Andy and I are what
you’d call social gamers, we enjoy the game itself, have a desire to win,
however that is overridden by the desire to have a natter, game a story and in
general have a laugh. There is very little competitive gaming going on although
we do have the occasional cunning ploy. As a consequence we play quite slowly
and are usually some of the last ones to finish and pack away.
So we’d got about 4 turns into our game the other night when
we noticed that we’d acquired a small audience. Now if you know LoTR SBG once
the forces clash you start playing a very intense micro management style
wargame where you’re busy planning 2 or 3 moves ahead but also trying to adapt
said plans for if you don’t win priority. This is the bit I like the most about
the game and Andy and I get quite into it (there’s usually quite a lot of
crouching over combats and trying to predict outcomes, control zones and
priority), so as you can imagine it takes a bit of focus when you get to this
point.
And now to the meat of the matter. We play games for fun
however when you have a group of people heckling you from the sidelines it
stops being fun! This is the point where your 40 years on this earth count for
nothing as you are returned to the playground of your childhood where groups of
children try to out do each other with the quality of their jibing! Supposedly
mature, intelligent men resort to heckling as a means to prove how “cool” they
are.
Now this is quite understandable considering the environment
we are in, as we (and others around us) are playing games that simulate conflict
where one side is trying to defeat the other. This whole process is very
abstract from the actual reality of conflict, and rightly so otherwise we
wouldn’t have much of a society if we all got together on a Wednesday evening
to pummel each other into submission. However the competitive game itself puts people
into a mindset that focuses their natural tendencies to compete with each
other.
Now at this point I need to say that I’m being a little
unfair to my club mates, as it would have been easy to turn round and tell them
to cut it out, act their age or just p**s o*f, however nether Andy or I did
that. I don’t doubt for a second that said heckles were intended as a bit of
fun with no malice intended. However we said nothing (apart from a few choice
swear words in their general direction), got on with the game, let it affect us
and then had a bitch about it afterwards when they’d gone home. And that is
wrong, as is whinging to the world about it on my Blog (or the tiny bit of the
world that reads this!). However I am only human and this blog is not only for
an audience but also for myself as a kind of journal that I can read back in
later years. I know that one or two of my club mates read this Blog and I
apologise for not speaking to them at the time (I’ll talk to you next week
fella’s or drop me an email!). However the one thing I will suggest to anyone that reads this and
finds themselves in the same situation (whether you’re the gamer receiving the
heckle or the one giving it) is be aware of your actions and how they impact on
others as what you may find fun could be received by others in a very different
way.
So that’s off my chest, life is after all a learning
experience that never ends and this is something new to file in the “things to
remember” folder.
Sorry, rant over!
No comments:
Post a Comment