Welcome back again dearest readers to another installment of “Mayday, Miss Marcy!” where I, your friend and trusty advisor Marcy, am here to provide you with the information you need (at least, “you” being figurative here. These are reader submitted, after all). Last week, we dealt with Dorn Holes and other things, so if you haven’t checked out the previous column, go ahead and do yourself a favor and read that too. You deserve it.
This week we have a trio of questions to tackle, but before we do, a reminder that if you’d like to submit YOUR questions, you can do so in one of two ways: Patrons can submit questions via Discord using our anonymous bot whipped up by our Discord wiz Greg (the one who writes about lemonade that kills you and other things), and non-patrons (or people who don’t want to use Discord) can submit questions here as comments, although they’re going to be a bit less anonymous, obviously. So go ahead and get those questions in! I’ll be waiting!
A Shorthand in Time Saves None When it’s Unclear
Miss Marcy,
I have been woefully baffled at times by some of the numerical shorthands used for saves in the fine Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game ™️. 3+/4++? Is that an invuln? What’s the deal? I can barely comprehend “lethal sussy five plussy.” I am ignorant and I am confident you can teach me smartness.
-Lethal Sussy on the B… hm
Dear Sussy,
Hobby terminology and jargon is one of the greatest signifiers that you have entered an honest to god Activity System or Discourse Community, to get a little academic about it, and it is something that should be greatly celebrated as it helps define that the thing you are participating in has a defined language system and other unique communication tools that can truly make the ways humans communicate with one another fascinating and intriguing to examine, like snowflakes under microscopes.
It also makes them VERY frustrating when people don’t actually explain these things to people, which is part of the actual process; a lot of times, hobbyists tend to just use jargon without explaining them or defining them in easy to find or noticeable ways, and since a lot of hobby knowledge–like rules–is passed on second-hand from, say, a person running a game to teach another person, a lot of these lexiconical terms can get lost.
This is a semi-large amount of words to say that on the surface, it is very opaque, but it makes sense when placed in the right context. To briefly sum up, the amount of + indicates the type of saves and when/how they would be applied. + is armor saves, ++ is invulnerable saves, and +++ is “Feel No Pain”, to explain a shorthand with another hobby keyword. The pluses don’t actually mean or indicate anything on their own, such as additive properties or numbers, but instead the order/priority that those saves are used in.
I’ll take the chance here to shout out that our Discord, which you can access by being a Patron, has an entire channel dedicated to Rules, and we also have Ruleshammer, which are great ways to help demystify the hobby, because you aren’t the only person to ever struggle with these terms and icons, so don’t worry. Just try to remember that when you finally teach someone how to play Warhammer, you actually explain this to them, now that you know it!
Does Bring Your Own Brew Apply to Homebrew?
Good day Miss M,
Thank you for you help with my previous question but I now have another.
For a long time I’ve Homebrewed a D&D campaign. I’ve ran it at home with family and “home friends” but would love to take it to my FLGS to expand its audience. Unfortunately I have concerns. 1st is that I have no idea where the current gaming group are in a campaign and don’t want to suggest starting one if there’s one already in progress. 2nd is I haven’t had the opportunity to jump in with the group as a player and am worried about “skipping the que” and being an Unknown/unearned DM any more sagely advice?Thanks,
Despondent DM
Dear Despondent,
Your question is very interesting because there are a few layers to unpacking what the source of the issue is here. On the one hand, it sounds like you have a Fictional Baby you’ve birthed, and as someone who has a lot of similar Fictional Babies, I understand that there is often a level of nervousness that comes from introducing your universe, characters, settings, lore, and world building to other people that you may not know. Will they hate it? Do the people around you just tell you it’s great to be polite? What if you run it and they do so badly that it makes you resentful? These are just some of the questions that come out of the issue of bringing your hard work–and it is work–to other people.
But the second question you’ve asked is more simplistic, when you really look at it: how exactly do you join a group of people you’ve not previously met and start playing pretend with them when you are not 5-10 years old?
There’s some other smaller issues that you bring up, but they are less important overall. It is of course worth mentioning and you even do that just showing up and going “hello, I hear you have a campaign, but what about MY campaign” might get you some odd looks and start things off on the wrong foot. But you also don’t want to show up, join, and then start casually going “boy by the way, *I* have a campaign we could play, once this one is over,” because then it just makes you look like a slimy salesperson, when in reality you are just hoping to share your creative energy with others.
The most immediate and important thing to tackle here though is that you haven’t even really given the group the Vibe Check. I would worry far less about how their campaign is going or if they’d like yours, or if your campaign will be let down by their lackluster interest in it, and instead whether this is a group you would even remotely want to consider spending your Thursday Evenings From 8-11 PM Every Week for The Next However with. Do they seem relaxed? Do they have a Main Character problem? Are they weirdly homogeneous? What is the table atmosphere like?
To check this, I suggest trying to drop by and check it out. Perhaps bring a friend; this is a great way to check a social situation out, while also having a wing-person and useful exit tool. Someone that you can rely on to help get you out of the situation if you wish to leave, and also makes it easier to extricate yourself by the virtue of having another person with you. It also helps lessen some of the anxiety on you and the other players than having a random person just hanging around them. If they’re playing at the LGS and not in a private room, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to get a vibe check; if they are more isolated, perhaps ask the LGS runner to introduce you to the group and just say you’ve been looking to play and run a campaign. There really isn’t anything wrong with being honest that you want to DM, but don’t show up and try to join the table right away. Worry first about what the table situation is, and go from there. I wish you the best and hope you can get your homebrew to new audiences!
Choked-Up by Choices
Dear Miss Marcy,
I am a long time 40k player. Recently I have realized that I don’t enjoy playing the game very much, so I stepped out of the GW world and picked up Shatterpoint. Now all of a sudden I’ve backed 1490 Doom, and am looking at Zeo Genesis. Maybe I won’t back Zeo, but what about Conquest? It would be fine just painting a model or two from a bunch of different systems, but then I can’t play a full game with any of them, much less get my friends into it! I am worried that I’m painting myself into a corner (pun intended) by buying so many models just to paint them and never play! What do I do?
Sincerely,
Games Galore
Dear Galore,
The problem with your question is that it begs other questions. Are you flitting from game to game because you are unhappy with 40k and Shatterpoint, and looking for excuses to stay excited about the hobby of miniature wargaming? Are you just a person who enjoys painting and the games are excuses to give you things to paint with a purpose? Or are you simply indecisive?
Let’s work through these from the reverse. If you are an indecisive gamer, the best thing you can do to help yourself break the cycle of FOMO and bad impulse control is to patiently ask yourself the question: who are you going to play these games with? As you move further away from mainstream games like 40k or Shatterpoint, you continually whittle down the amount of people willing to or curious enough to engage with a game they’ve never heard of. Obviously, these games do have audiences–We quite like Conquest here at Goonhammer–but do YOU have people in those audiences that will play these games with you? If not, you’re simply falling prey to Hobby FOMO; you’re unsatisfied with the games you are playing and looking for something new, and the new big thing or that Really Cool Model you saw must obviously belong to the game that will save you from the hobby doldrums.
It won’t.
If your main interest in miniature wargaming is actually painting and not playing, this question can be answered by focusing on what you actually want to do: paint models, apparently a variety of them, which is hard because buying a single model is often costly or expensive; when they are being sold alone, they’re being sold as both a product to paint and a gaming piece. This is also true of big Kickstarters filled with impressive models, many of which look like they’d make amazing display pieces; they’re also being attached to a game, which you have to agree to buy in on in order to get the model. If you’re really not that interested in playing anymore but instead simply painting, you might do better by looking for second-hand sellers from hobby communities on Reddit, Facebook, or similar places where people list their own items. You will likely find the cool Conquest model you saw but without having to spend 100+ dollars to get an entire game you don’t want just to paint it.
If your actual problem is the fact that you are becoming disillusioned with miniature wargaming–you mention not enjoying 40k and moving to Shatterpoint, but not much about how you feel about that game–it might be more important to re-evaluate what miniature wargaming does for you. Is it the social atmosphere you crave? Is it the creative hobbying and showing off your work that delights you? Is it the lore and world building of the setting that you want to interact with? By answering this question, you can actually figure out what you want to actually do and what you really want to focus on. That way, you can orient your priorities to what will actually bring you happiness in your hobbying again without breaking your bank or continuing to burn you out of enjoying your hobby.
I really do hope one of these answers helps you, because you actually sound quite a lot like me before I gave up miniature wargaming; I moved from 40k to 30k, to AoS, and my anchor game Guild Ball died a death, giving me hobby free-fall. I soon found that I was buying models for Infinity, Moonstone, Bushido… literally anything to try and find the “game” that would save my interest. It turned out that what I enjoyed wasn’t coming back, and that what I wanted was accomplished in board gaming and role playing, so I moved my priorities there. It can be hard to do, but it’s worth knowing when it is time to move on. Good luck!
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