It lists annoying types of people who play board games. To save you from watching the video, here's the list in text form (though watch the video for more detail, it's a good watch):
- Quarterbacking: the people who tend to aggressively tell other players how they should be playing without being asked.
- People who don't care: people who aren't paying attention and generally look like they don't want to be playing.
- People who are too aggressive / aren't aggressive enough / care too much about winning / don't care enough about winning, i.e. People who aren't having fun the way you think they should be having fun: I didn't really understand this one, and I didn't really agree with his example that it's OK for a couple who are playing a game together not to attack each other*, but OK.
- People who heckle during rules explanations: self-explanatory - luckily, I've never experienced this one either
- People who bend cards or spill stuff: self explanatory again**
I didn't realise that I was doing it, but quarterbacking now really annoys me. I feel like it's inevitable in co-operative games, as everyone's chance of winning is dependent on each player playing the optimal strategy. I first noticed it in a Dungeons and Dragons game I was playing in, where a couple of the players seemed to be dictating what all the other plays should be doing, and in the end, I ended up thinking to myself that they might as well be playing all six characters themselves, and eventually I ended up leaving the game. It probably didn't help that one of the other players was a #2, and spent nearly ever session on the phone, or just doing what the other players said to do. Ever since then, I've tried to be really mindful about it.
However, what I wanted to write about was #3. Graham invited me and Sharon to playtest a board game that he had created. We played a couple of games, and I ended up winning both. Later that night, we bumped into RB, and we were talking about the game. RB asked who won, and Graham made an offhand remark, "Of course Anna did, she always wins, even at games that don't even have finished rules yet." Perhaps I am ovethinking it (and I have been thinking about it for a long time), but the way that he said it made it sound like I'm some cut-throat player who will win at all costs.
Time to delve into my past again. As a kid, I was a really sore loser. I think because I am the oldest of four children, and as many of my friends weren't into playing games, I usually ended up playing with my cousins, or my brother's friends, all of whom are younger than me. So for quite a while, I had an advantage over them, purely by being older and knowing more stuff. But after a while, that advantage grew smaller and smaller, until it got to the point where they were becoming equal, if not better than I was. I did not adjust well, to the point of accusing people of cheating if I lost. I am not proud of it, and I'd like to think that I've changed since then.
After that, I did a complete change, and went from being incredibly competitive to not caring about competition at all. Coming first felt as good to me as coming last - I really didn't care either way. While that meant that people were far more willing to play with me, it also meant that my rate of improvement slowed dramatically. But I didn't care.
All of this came to a head when AG took me aside and said that he thought it was really sad how little I applied myself, and that I should be competing because that's how you get better. I completely disagreed, and even though he and mum were both pushing me to enter competitions, I refused. My maths teachers and science teachers wanted me to enter, too, and I still refused. I felt like they were trying to pressure me into entering things for pointless reasons. I mean, come on, some of those crappy high school "competitions" were simply mini-exams, where you got a not-so-pretty certificate in the end, which you got to receive at a school assembly, along with fifty other students. Because they even had certificates of participation.
It was actually an 11-year-old kid at the chess club who said that he wanted to play in a tournament, but not by himself, so we signed up together and every Monday evening we'd play chess and then goof around in the chess club. The completely casual way that he handled competition was so awe-inspiring to me, and it made me realise that you can play against others and not have winning be so completely overwhelming. I ended up entering a few more comps, and played because I wanted to get better, not because I wanted to win.
So Graham's comment actually hit me pretty hard. I'm worried that the super competitive me is trying to make a comeback, and I really don't want to be that person.
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* I played a Warcraft 3 free-for-all game with 7 other people, and built up my army, defended myself against a couple of attacks, and then launched an attack against another player (yellow). I see on my minimap that one of the other players (blue) was coming in from the other side of the yellow player, so I figure yellow is pretty much going to be wiped out soon, so win the fight I'm currently having against yellow's troops, and try to retreat so that I can rebuild while blue finishes yellow off. Then next thing I notice is that blue has marched completely unscathed through yellow's base, not attacking anything, and not being attacked in return. My army is smaller than blue's at this point, as I'd just been fighting yellow, so I get crushed. I go back to rebuilding, and defending, but eventually, the combined forces of blue and yellow go around crushing everyone else. After the game, I found out that blue and yellow are married, and for some reason, were allies in that game, when everyone else was playing a free-for-all.
** Personally, unless the game is one where it depends on cards not being marked in any way, e.g. one of those secret role games, where someone is a traitor of some sort, but nobody knows who it is, so the cards need to be identical, it doesn't really bother me if people aren't 100% perfect with my games. My Settlers of Catan is becoming kinda worn, and I do wish I had put the cards in plastic sleeves, but I do love how our family Monopoly game is worn, and I'd like my Settlers to be the same. It feels homey.
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