"Most annoying conversation when introducing new rules." Topic

1. Give me the rules! Let me look up what you're doing wrong!

2. Who are these guys? How fast can they move again?

3. You're not allowing my troops to charge out of skirmish formation? Why Leopold VI of Franconia did just that at the Battle of the Umlauts in 1762!

1. Give me the rules! Let me look up what you're doing wrong!

2. Who are these guys? How fast can they move again?

3. You're not allowing my troops to charge out of skirmish formation? Why Leopold VI of Franconia did just that at the Battle of the Umlauts in 1762!

4. "I'll tell you when you do something wrong."

5. "I know there's a lot to absorb." I've both said and received that one, always with a 3-5 page 10-point font rules "summary".

I think the worse is the rule lawyers who memorize the rules but never have played a game with them and aren't going to play in the game but correct you if they think you're wrong in explaining the rules.

10-point font rules #summary#.

Luxury. Try 8-point photo-copied twicely.

6 – "ah, but your Ancients rules don't specificly prohibit Tiger tanks…"

I just did some of this in the Circus Maximus game at CSW Expo. "But the column header says to use the DIFFERENCE between the skills of the two drivers!"

Turned out that they'd been playing the game wrong for nearly two decades.

(I'd never played before and never read the rules. Worse, if I'd kept my mouth shut it wouldn't have hurt anything.)

I'll save telling you the uniforms/facings/flags are wrong for a different poll.

Oh, why not?
7) The uniforms are wrong.
7a) The uniforms are the wrong shade of blue.

8) The facings are the wrong color or the wrong shade.

9) The flags are wrong.

Re 5. You know, I actually got away with that once. (Wasn't my idea. I was pressured to run a CLS game at a convention. As far as I'm concerned, nothing over four pages is suitable for new players at a convention, and two pages is better.) But we had an "intro version" which at least got it down to 10+ with a single-page QRS and included only the troop and terrain types on the table, and paired the newbies with vets. Did a fifteen minute verbal explanation of mechanisms, and two half-hour turns later, they could play unsupervised. But I would NOT care to repeat the experiment.

10. (Interrupts) "Are you using 3rd edition rules with the alternating initiative activation charts for anti-armor squads, or the 6th edition rules? The 3rd edition rules are better." (There are, of course, no anti-armor squads on the table.)

11. So nobody else apart from me has actually read these?

Much like 3 but more annoying. I only ran into it once, at a club night:

12. That can't be right- what about [insert obscure historical/mythical reference]? Are you really going to play these?

We might as well have

13. The gun carriages are the wrong color, just to complete the set. I'll plead guilty of one offense.

I just want to point out that there are conflicting accounts of just what happened at the Battle of Umlauts.

Actually I just want to say one more thing: most of the people who say the kinds of things described here would annoy you in some other way if rules introduction were not the context. I introduce people to new rules a few times a year, and generally people just want to have fun so they go straight along with everything. And sometimes when people criticize rules they are right!

But if I were pressed for most annoying it would be the *second* time someone mentions a different set of rules. The first time they say, "oh, weird, Ruleset Ex does it this other way" that's just conversation and them processing the change. But if they keep bringing up how much better the other rules are, I am irked.

Nothing to do with the Poll, but don't you just DESPISE when a perfect stranger wanders by your table, picks up a figure, holds it up to his eye, sniffs, shakes his head, puts the figure back on the table where it approximately came from and walks away?
I would suggest that he deserves being shot in the back. Or, at least the butt.
Harrumph.

Or, as Ensign Pulver would say, in the bu-tocks.

@Andrew Walters
Around these parts, it's comparing the rules to Age of Reason. Even if it's triremes, or Star Wars fighters.

Yeah. That counts.
14. Comparing your rules to others.

13. The gun carriages are the wrong color, just to complete the set.

Well, in the AWI, the proper answer to "what color should my American artillery carriages be?" is "Yes".
French tubes on British carriages were captured at Saratoga.
British artillery and carriages were famously captured at Ticonderoga. And recapping the British, and carrack again.
Hessian 3pdr guns were captured at Trenton and rebored to 6pdrs by Knox.
"Homemade" American carriages were painted grey, barn red or just Lindsay Doyle.
French supplied carriages were first red. Then blue.

So, the proper answer is indeed "Yes". 🤷
In other conflicts, who is going to take the time to repaint captured guns? It's not like flags or uniforms.

I plead guilty to all fourteen violations. My only defense is character flaws inherited from my ancestors.

15. After a known dope storms off after insulting the new rules, his friends say, "Oh, don't let him bother you. That's just the way he is."

16. Your ranges for ranged weapons are all wrong. They should be x inches (longer/shorter) because I know the real ranges for these weapons.
17. You aren't using this house rule that EVERYONE uses because the game is totally broken without it. Only an idiot doesn't use that house rule.

And recapping the British, and carrack again.

Sigh… Should be:
"And recaptured by the British, and captured again."

or just Lindsay Doyle

It took me a minute to translate that as "linseed oil". Am I right?

Yup.
I follow Eion Reardon's channel. He's an Irish woodworker.

I was running a Guilford Courthouse game at a convention and a guy, who was not playing, walked up to me and said I should have the last American line hidden.

I said I didn't want to fool around putting them out during the game and I worked hard on those figures and wanted everyone to see them. Everyone knows the Continentals are there anyway. But this guy wouldn't stop he kept on and on. I finally told him to go away using some colorful language and he did.

"No need to use the charts. I have them memorized."

"What do you mean I'm wrong. Give me the rule book and I will prove I'm right." Then proceeds to use the next 20 minutes looking up a rule that you and everybody else knows doesn't exist.

"Was that these rules or one of the other ten rules sets we use."

I actually furnish a set of the rules to every player (we have a small group) and then schedule a practice game.

Not the instruction part, but during a convention game, one player refused to move his troops. Just sat there the whole game, while everybody else engaged in battle. His nominal allies called for him to join the fight, but he wouldn't— even when the enemy exposed their flank to his forces. In the end, his side lost. He actually came to me afterwards and talked as if the others lost the fight and should have just taken his approach.

That is … pathetic. SMH
Going to a convention, signing up for a game, and sitting there doing nothing. Why? Some people play a game as if their life was at stake. My philosophy is that I don't own the figures, I didn't paint them, and Valar Morghulis. The GM put them out there to die anyway, and my job is to facilitate the process. 🤷

7) The uniforms are wrong.
7a) The uniforms are the wrong shade of blue.
8) The facings are the wrong color or the wrong shade.
9) The flags are wrong.
13. The gun carriages are the wrong color, just to complete the set.

Why would that be in the rules?

Game Masters who kick things off with a 20-minute lecture on why Lichtenstein entered the war and its ancient feud with Hanover dating back to 976 AD—rather than explaining the rules. A brief summary of the battle's context is fine, but let's move on to the game mechanics.

Is someone who called me a liar trying to engage in a conversation?
Meh. Leave him on stifle until I get an apology.

Wasn't me.

No. Not you. Definitely not. 😄