The following post is what started me on the idea of writing a blog about my gaming shenanigans. It was intended to be my first post, but I thought a ‘Who am I’ was a better choice.
It was a pleasant fall afternoon…
Then I became “that person”, and it’s haunted me ever since.
The following events took place in October at IntrigueCon, our local TTRPG convention in Edmonton. It was my last game of the Con, which started sometime on Sunday morning. This specific game was Dark Heresy 2nd Edition I think? It may have been 1st, I’m not certain. While I play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and GM’d it on day 2 of the convention, this was my first time playing a Warhammer 40k TTRPG. Which to me is surprising because I am HUGE into Warhammer 40k – I even have a tattoo!
The table was loaded, and my 4 companions and I were ready to get going. We chose our characters from the pre-gens that our GM had ready for us. I can’t remember the exact specifications of my character, only that I was essentially the “face” of the group. And I had a hand flamer!!! We had a psyker, a mechanicum adept, an Arbites, and a… sniper I think.
I feel I need to mention that this was my first time playing at a gaming con, and the 2 previous games I played on the day before were Dungeon Crawl Classics and Delta Green. Both different games with different players. Delta Green was the highlight of my time as a player during the Con. To add to this, 2 of my 3 GM’s during the con were women – Delta Green & Dark Heresy.
In the grim darkness of the far future…
I struggled to play the game I signed up for, and it was no one else’s fault but my own.
I consider myself spoiled when it comes to my gaming groups. Being that most of my games are on the internet for people to find and watch, we played our characters pretty seriously. We didn’t have time for much table talk being a live show and weren’t prone to going on joking sprees. At this specific game at the con, that was not the case, and I wasn’t prepared for it.
By the throne, the toaster jokes!
Let me clarify that when I say I consider myself spoiled, I mean that all my groups have been great to me. (Shout out to Liam, Sean, Luke and Ryan, my Symbaroum and Scum & Villainy when we added Drake, crew!)
They didn’t fail me, I failed them
When I had a hard time getting into the game, by not being able to play my character as I felt she needed to be played, – seriously, let the charismatic character do the talking – I shut down. I spent the majority of the game on my phone talking on discord. I was still paying attention, I just wasn’t engaged. When it came time to go into combat, you better believe I used my flamer! I got ALL OF THE KILLS in the game, so there was that.
I feel guilty about how I conducted myself in that game, and I am determined to do better in the future. My take away from that experience is that I need to not be so series all the time in public situations, and if the table is getting silly, go with it! I’m not sure if my fellow players noticed me being weird, but if they see this, I would like them to see it as an apology.
Every story has an ending
Now, closer to the end of the game, I got back into it. We were moving down a walkway towards a landing pad, where we were to wait for a lander to land. Well, the lander was coming down, then it exploded. Something about a bunch of psykers and a daemonhost on board. Lander blew up, we now had an uncontrolled daemonhost on the loose. Most of us got into strategic positions. The sniper did his job rather well, took the enemy down critically, and then the psyker and I got impaled by some spike from the daemonhosts body, the psyker in the front, me in the back.
My turn comes up, I’m impaled, my psyker friend is also impaled in front of me and essentially blocking the enemy from view. I don’t recall the specific mechanic, but I had a fate point or something to burn. In an attempt to burn the baddie, I ran a plan by the GM. I want to burn through the psyker – with his permission of course – to let the flames get at the enemy. She agreed to this, but on one condition; I die in the process. And die I did! I burnt through the psyker, killed the enemy, but the heat from the fire was enough to make the promethium canister on the hand flamer explode, taking me out!
That is my previous con guilt. I’ve learned from it, I will try to read the table a bit better, and just go with the game.
That is my previous con guilt. I’ve learned from it, I will try to read the table a bit better, and just go with the game.
Games are for everyone, and we are all here to have fun!