You Know You're a Gamer When...

**West** · Oct 24th, 2014 09:44 AM

In light of this thread, I thought it might be fun to share stories -- not of legitimate embarrassing moments, but ones caused by Doin' It Wrong (messing up rules, forgetting things, etc). Just so, you know, everyone knows we all fuck up *lol*

Off the top of my head:

As an ST, I should know the rules. I like being a rules lawyer. However...

Protean
For almost four years, we played with Protean's Aspect of the Predator projecting an elevated BP. Until Whisper said something. It was explained to me as working one way, I never questioned it, and so we did it wrong for a REALLY LONG TIME. oops.

Predator's Taint
Similarly, we used to use Predator's Taint like vampire radar -- that you could feel it. Core says you have to become aware of the person before it hits. You can't track someone in a crowd, or feel them enter a room. oops.

Character Creation
When I made my first vampire, I didn't read the book. At all. I'd just been building Vampires as Antagonists for my mage game, so I just read the powers. My initial character submission? I picked a VII Bloodline (Akhud). oops.

I'm sure there's a ton more, but those are my three biggest facepalms that come to mind to kick this off

**Orianna** · Oct 24th, 2014 10:17 AM

So looking back on this now, it was pretty funny. I played my first WoD game back in 2009, and was soo excited to play a Vampire. Well, my ST ran a quick "get her into the game" scene, only three of us. So....yah....my friend declared he was staking my vampire, Daniella actually! I was freaking out because I did not realize staking didn't kill a vampire, and here my first character was, literally staked to a car seat:( LOL...so yeah...freak out lasted only a few mins until my ST stopped laughing and let me know she had no met Final Death:P

**Vassagon** · Oct 24th, 2014 10:56 AM

A majority of my experience in nWoD has been on this site, with a single campaign played in VtR via tabletop some years before I joined. And I loved the fluff and mechanics which focused so much on RP. But probably one of my biggest mistakes that I still have some trouble with is the Devil in the Dots.

"Hey, I want to be able to do this, but I want to play my character like that," mentality was embarrassingly hard to overcome for me and I hope I've got the hang of it now. Probably the worst of it was when I got into actual combat with my Wolf. I'm sure I regularly pissed off the ST with my attempts that too often (at least once) ended in an unanticipated Kuruth. But now I'm addicted to crafting personalities that are supported by dots, inherently linked which makes my xp expenditure decisions a breeze.

That said, I find that my mistakes and being called out on them really cement my understanding of the game so I can play character personalities more confidently. AwakeOrangutang I started out knowing next to nothing about nWoD but now I know it better than any other system. (Is that saying much? You decide!)

Oct 24th, 2014 11:21 AM

I came to the site having originally played oWoD. So this was all new to me when I began here. I asked a TON of what were probably silly questions to ST's, but not to me. I didn't know how certain things worked, the effects of things, mechanics, and etc. Everyone was new here once, a lot of us forget we were new at some point. One thing I learned within the first month I started, patience is the key to adapting to this site.

Things to keep in mind:
1. This is all fun and games, literally.

2. Read the post(s) you're responding to in full. Skimming causes bad things to happen.
3. If you don't know ask your ST.
4. If you're unsure how something works, ask your ST.
5. Ease yourself into the game and threads, if you have questions on how to start threads, ask an ST.
6. Read other threads so you have an idea of how things work, how PbP works.
7. Make the Wiki your friend, but remember it is a tool and sometimes there to point you to things in the book. Not everything is on the Wiki.
8. See #1.

Dumb things I've done:
Broke Wiki pages
Accidentally answered someone's internal thoughts because I read too fast.
Posted too quickly/out of turn/overzealous.
Rolled stuff wrong
Rolled the wrong reciprocating roll
Coded posts wrong
Posted as in the wrong character account.
Over-worried about an outcome to the point that I couldn't figure out how to make the post. (I still do this)
Regretted NOT doing some things because I'm skeptical of risks. (Still do it)
I'm sure there's more to my list that the ST's could add but ....

**Teeramus** · Oct 24th, 2014 11:37 AM

So just recently in this thread my mage took a ton of aggravated damage. Once he was concious again I made two posts before Cross asked me why I wasn't healing myself. For some reason I was under the impression that you could heal aggravated damage at Life 3 despite it being right there on the wiki.

Great reading other people's woes and knowing you're not alone!

**Brownlee** · Oct 24th, 2014 07:49 PM

My first game of Mage (OWoD) I approached a PC group, and asked why my scrying spells weren't working on them.

Oct 24th, 2014 09:21 PM

I suppose since I kinda started this thread, I might as well share why. So while in a bar scene, a beautiful PC walks in,catching the eye of the person my character is talking to. My character reacts as if she realized he was covertly checking her out. Can't, she didn't roll high enough. So I scrap that post and write a new one where she knows he's looking at something, she just doesn't know what. Nope, not rolling high enough entails that as well. Worse than that, my character says something rather mean-spirited against the lady who walked in. But she wrote that she sat down at the table with them, rather than still walking there like I thought, so she ends up offending her because she basically said it right in front of her. So now everyone views my character as a whiny bitch (exact words). So my character then tells a lie for a... mostly unrelated reason. Except instead of rolling Manipulation and Subterfuge, I role Composure and Socialize (because she had to keep a good composure to lie believably and she's just conversating. Get informed I need to role the correct dice pool and my 3 successes drop to 1. Cue me talking about it in OOC Chat and roundaboutly creating this topic.

**Xander** · Oct 26th, 2014 06:57 PM

Hmmm, where to start?

I guess the most embarrassing experience for me on site was when I was first starting mage in a scene with Vaeltia. I had made Leo from Baltimore without seeing the wiki page on the background or the info on Mage Wizzle's page. Nothing huge, just saying he was from the area and referencing the Magister, to wit Vaeltia asks if Leo knew Kai. Oops. Meanwhile Key PMed me asking if I had seen the wiki on Baltimore, and not twenty four hours later the city write ups were linked to the chargen page. So when you scroll down to the bottom of the Mage chargen page and see the different background Concilia, remember that's only there to reference because Key had to retcon a scene for me because I didn't read all the material I needed to.

She was very polite about it though thankfully.

Other things I have goofed over the years!

-Used Unseen senses as Mage sight to notice other mages.
-Forgotten all but like 2-3 Kuruth checks for both characters and NPC's in Wolf.
-Didn't narrate the Beast of my vamp correctly until WP pointed out a good example.
-Forgotten paradox rolls in multiple Vulgar castings, one even during my tenure as Mage AST.
-Undoubtedly many more I can't think of at the moment.

Oct 26th, 2014 06:59 PM

Baldwin jogs.

Oct 26th, 2014 08:17 PM

...you can laugh really hard while hearing a song like this and only other gamers laugh with you. The rest look like at you like you're crazy.

So my friend Josh, the tall one with glasses playing the bass, did this video a few years back. He sang it at the convention this week during the performance of his band, The Kamikaze Snowmen. If you like goofy parodies, I recommend checking their stuff out on YouTube. I own three of their first CD's with some personalized songs made for a show we were all involved in.

Hope you enjoy!

Metagame Song