Welcome back once again dear readers to another set of important questions, brought to you free and without tariffs, in exchange for similarly duty free answers. Last week, we answered questions dealing with gaming while married and rude opponents.
If you’re new and not sure what this column is about, you should check out the index of questions! And if that motivates you to submit your own question, a reminder that you have multiple ways of doing so.
If you’d like to submit questions, we now have an e-mail you can use! Please send your questions to:
Marcy@goonhammer.com
With the subject “Miss Marcy: ”
You are also able to leave comments on the article, as well as use the Discord bot command if you happen to be a member, meaning you now have THREE ways to give me your questions to answer! And now, three new questions AND answers. Don’t say I never gave you anything.
Kill Team of Dreams
Miss Marcy,
The latest edition of Kill Team has really gotten its hooks into me. I’m looking to get friends into the game, but I’m a little unclear about how to do so. Do I just go about buying & preparing whatever kill teams might be fun for new players? Do I try to entice people into sinking a not insignificant amount of time & money into a hobby they might not even like? Or do I just pick up something general like a Space Marine kill team and hope that people have fun playing it?
– KT Curious.
Dear KT Curious,
One of the least-pleasing questions to ask is, “How do I get people to play this game,” because I think the person asking it always knows the answer is, essentially, “If you build it, they will come”. You seem to at least know that much, so we can skip spending more time on it and go to trying to help balance the complicated aspect of being the person who has to host and demo games: how much do you need to do before you get annoyed at trying to recruit people to play a game with you?
In a few other questions, I’ve given a similar answer, which is that you should only invest as much as you are comfortable investing into this endeavor, particularly investing both time and money in equal measure, before you accidentally burn yourself out and find yourself resenting the game for not being what you “want” out of it. Kill Team is a particularly interesting quandary, because the game is never really as simple as it seems to want to make people believe it is, nor is it as small or easily playable as it probably should be either.
With these considerations in mind, I think taking a page from GW demo stations is a great idea. If you have at least two Kill Teams that you like to play, offering them to people curious about the game are a good way to get them to try it. I’d suggest Kill Teams that are “what you see is what you get,” and provide the simplest experience you can to the people you want to recruit. Space Marines are honestly a great choice if only because they are simple to build, paint, and play with, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. You may want to slim down the rules or game experience to an introductory experience, and it may even benefit you to run through the game a few times with someone who knows the game as well as you do and see if your “beginner” experience is as easy and simple to navigate as it seems.
Interior Design, or, How Not to End Up on r/Malespaces
Dear Marcy,
I’ve recently moved and am fortunate enough to have a dedicated game room. It’s nothing too fancy, but big enough to accommodate a 6’x4′ table, a small desk, and some shelves. I’ve got some furniture (mostly Ikea shelves), but am trying to find inspiration for how to decorate the space. A lot of the 40k rooms I’ve seen online fall somewhere between hoarder and bachelor’s apartment. I’d like the space to be welcoming not just to other gamers, but friends and family who might not know anything about the hobby. Any tips would be appreciated!
Sincerely,
Decorating on Damnos.
Dear Decorating,
There are a lot of things one could say about what most game rooms are decorated with, and most of those things may not be polite, so let’s just move on from that. Personally, I’m a big fan of decorating a space I spend a lot of time in with the idea in mind that I want to see things that I like and remind me things I enjoy, as well as being functional and feels lived in; my space is not a museum, it is a space for me to play with toys and games and enjoy those things.
Ikea Shelves, particularly Billys or Detolfs, do make for great tools to decorate spaces with; while one might make claims about Ikea quality, but it really is hard to argue with the size, space, and cost balance that a set of Billy shelves can give you. Don’t worry too much about your shelving and storage from an aesthetic standpoint except to remember that you should focus on accessibility and usability over design, and then just ensure that you are at least balancing colors and tones.
A big mistake I see a lot of Gaming Spaces make is an emphasis on dark colors, which make rooms feel claustrophobic and basement-y, for lack of a better stereotype. If your shelves are darkly colored, try to balance them out with something a little lighter in the center of the room, or at least ensure that your space has adequate lighting and doesn’t feel like you’ve just stepped into a cave. As far as other decor goes, I would likely suggest opting for things you find interesting, eye-catching, or you want to display; for example, having a shelf devoted to your favorite painted minis or an army display shelf makes for a great conversation starter, and also helps you to break up the space occupied by books, boxes, or storage.
Furthermore, remember that while the game room is where you’ll invite other people to play games with you, it should probably be a space YOU want to be in. With that in mind, what do you like? Do you want to decorate the space in the theme of your favorite game (So, 40k?) if not, what DO you want to decorate the space with? Do you like a certain sports team, or do you enjoy a franchise? There’s no reason to not deck the space out in things that make you feel happy and comfortable in the space you’re in?
As some other small suggestions, you can get a lot of mileage out of riser shelves and other small display stands that you can use to add verticality to things like figures, making it more aesthetically interesting to look at instead of just equally flat figures or statues all lined up; placing smaller pieces on risers can give them more visibility, making it more unique to look at. Finally, don’t be afraid of color!
Turns Out the Voices Are Called Thoughts
Dear Miss Marcy:
I’m an open transgender woman who’s had a bit of an issue in the past of falling into very chud-heavy overall communities (while keeping to the very insular queer groups that do exist). Now that I’ve started playing BattleTech at an LGS near me, it’s a culture shock. Everyone is super friendly and accommodating to me being new to the game, several others there are open with their pronoun use, the player that I placed up against for the first set of my hinterlands league worried at one point he was mansplaining to me. Yet it all seems too good at times and my brain is struggling to accept that I’ve finally joined up with a community that won’t call me slurs for showing myself. How does one get through it all and understand people for once, DON’T want to be mean to me in these settings?
Sincerely,
A trans woman into stompy robots and spinny skirts.
Dear Stompy and Spinny,
Finding yourself in a space that is welcoming and safe after having been surrounded by so many hateful and careless people is honestly far harder to deal with than it might seem, to the point that this question probably resonates with our marginalized readers while those who aren’t in those situations may find it confusing why, “People are treating me well, is that a problem” is a legitimate question. In many cases, trauma responses tend to linger in our minds, and while ascribing PTSD to situations like this might sound extreme, it shares some similarities in how things are, or can, be managed and considered.
What is really happening here is that you’re so used to being in abusive spaces that the lack of abuse is making you second-guess or even feel slightly uncomfortable. This is akin to when you grow up and realize the abusive things your parents did to you aren’t, actually, what everyone did or had to deal with, and then when you find yourself dealing with people who show actual compassion or empathy, you can find yourself feeling unsettled because you are waiting for a shoe to drop that never will.
I think that there’s no real ‘solution’ I can offer you except to say that your reservations are valid, not in that the people are going to betray you suddenly, but just that you have found yourself in a welcoming and healthy space, and it is going to take you some time to adjust and understand that this is what a space should be like, not the other way around. It will actually take you a little bit of time to do, and ironically, it can be similar to initially coming out and getting negative responses, and then after being out for a while and finding queer and understanding people, you are told you no longer need to apologize for yourself.
Enjoy the fact that you’ve found a space where you no longer need to apologize for being who you are, and making excuses for the people that abuse or mistreat you. You’ve gotten away from those and found people that see you as a human being, and who will not attach qualifiers to you that make you more or less human depending on their mood that day. However, don’t beat yourself up too much if you find that the overwhelming positivity can be a little much; it is fine to take a break, or get some fresh air, and then get back into the positive space. It sounds like you’ve got a great group there, and I hope you continue to flourish in a place that deserves someone as special and amazing as you are, and those places you used to inhabit are salted earth.
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