Wargaming is a gentleperson's game. Do you have questions on proper protocol? Ask Etiquette Eddie he knows everything! Dear Etiquette Eddie: I have a real problem with my wargaming friends. They are just not competitive enough. They just want to drink rootbeer and enjoy themselves It's like they think wargammg is a pretense for a social fathering!! How do I get them to put the "war back in gaming? Intense in Inyo Dear Intense. It is truly a sad state of affairs when the recreation of killing and maiming of human beings in the quest for power and profit is treated like a pleasant parley in the park. Unfortunately some people insist on enjoying their hobbies. The best thing you can do is work to ensure everyone in a given game is on the same competitiveness rating. If you want high competitiveness, keep to tournaments or scenarios that stimulate intensity. Volunteer to set up a scenario for your friends where the victory conditions require ruthlessness. Use a kitchen timer to control turns and keep people focused and moving. Appeal to their greed and give a prize for the winner. Above all, tell your friends that this game is in a high competitiveness setting. On the other hand, when the group consensus is to pass the pretzels and the time while occasionally playing a wargame...go with it Competitiveness or the irritating lack of it is only frustrating when people are at differing degrees of intensity. Etiquette Eddie Dear Etiquette Eddie My friend and I are telekinetic. If we wait until what we see what our opponent rolls on his die, we can usually roll what we need to win. My problem occurs when my friend and I play each other. We sit and stare at each other for hours. waiting for one of us to roll first. What should we do? Telekinetic is Torrance Dear TNT: You are not alone. Watching gamer behavior at any convention will show you that most of us believe we have the same telekinetic abilities as you and your friend. Easiest thing a do is to turn off sour telekineses and just have everybody roll their dice simultaneously. Alternatively, We. alternate which one of you rolls first. If you can't decide who rolls first. resolve by rolling a die . . Dear Etiquette Eddie: Please settle a dispute for me: When a dude loses, isn't he supposed to criticize the rules. the scenario, the terrain, the zodiac, and/or the climate? This one jerk I play with always blames himself.. it's so annoying. Winning in Winetka Dear Win Win: A very good question: how to be annoying can be a trick proposition. Tell your friend, if he really wants to be annoying, he should be critical when he is winning. Etiquette Eddie I'm an expert on military footwear. I can and often do wax eloquently for hours on the fine footing foundation found frequently on feet. But, my fellow military gamers don't seem to esteem the wide expanse of knowledge I continuously circulate ceaselessly concurrent with our collective club conventions. An army does not travel on its stomach (although, some of my fellow gamers might). The question: how do I get them to appreciate my incredibly immense intensely interesting info. Footloose in Fontana Dear Footloose: What can you do? No genius is truly appreciated in his lifetime. [Gunther is a good example. Ed ] The sad fact is that all your allies ain't able to absorb all your addicting anecdotes. Their brains are too small. So after you bantered boots for a bit, move on to another topic. How do you know when to move on? Nonverbal communication. Stan from our statistics department notes that 86°%u of people fidget when they are tired of a particular topic. Interestingly of those, 92% don't want to end the conversation, they just rather talk about themselves. When your friends fidget while you are hobnobbing about hobnails, it's time to find out what expertise they wish to share with you. Tolerate their inane conversation for a while. and then you can reintroduce hipboots without anyone feeling like they're up to said boots in fun footwear facts. Etiquette Eddie Need to know how to inform an opponent that he screwed up the move again, without sounding overly critical? Ask Etiquette Eddie. Questions, no matter how silly (there is no such thing as a completely silly question) should be sent to "Etiquette Eddie" care of this newsletter. [Etiquette Eddie, AKA the polite Dan Gunther has spent his life studying the phenomena of wargamers' etiquette. His new book, Unforgettable Garners I have Met and Corrected will be published soon, Ed.] Back to Table of Contents The Messenger February 1996 Back to The Messenger List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by HMGS/PSW. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com