Geeks Gone Wild >> How To P**s Off Your Favorite Gamer
Jason Little
United States
Eden Prairie
Minnesota
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My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek for this GeekList... Inspired by culls fabulous "You know you're a Game Geek when...." GeekList (found here http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listi...) I decided to go another route.
Sure, we now know the crazy foibles and quirks that make gamers so, um... foiblish and quirky. But underneath the calm exterior and gaming-induced catatonia lurks a savage beast waiting to be loosed upon an unsuspecting world. Different stimuli may trigger these beast-loosening episodes... So help me make a lighthearted list of all the ways Geeks get pushed over the edge (or at least to the brink) of sanity itself due to their passion for games and gaming.
What are some fool-proof ways to make your favorite gaming geeks completely wig out?
What's the craziest episode you've personally witnessed?
What gets under your skin worse than anything else in defense of your hobby?
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Matt Connellan
United States
Avondale
Arizona
I am the white void. I am the cold steel. I am the just sword.
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Don't try to win
I realize games are played to be fun, but it's not fun for me when you're just pushing rows around and not getting pieces. When I complain that it's not enjoyable to play against someone who isn't trying to win, then you can say, 'But I don't care if I win.'
Well I care. I'd much rather lose than obliterate you.
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Mike Ellis
Canada
Vernon
British Columbia
Gaming is a lifestyle choice.
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Bowling the dice
Risk 2210, rules explanation:
...and please don't throw the dice.
Turn 1:
Please don't throw the dice. I asked you this already.
Turn 2:
Please don't throw the dice. You screwed up the army placement in Europe.
Turn 3
Please don't throw the dice. You knocked over all the pieces on the moon.
Turn 4:
If you throw the dice at the board next turn I will kill you
Turn 5:
Dice thrown. Death ensues.
Some gamers (real game gamers too) insist on throwing the dice across the landscape of the board and sending pieces flying everywhere. As if the intensity of the dice roll will affect the outcome. My friends tease me because my only constant house rule is "don't roll on the board!"
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Mitch Small
United States
Sisters
Oregon
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Steal someone's carefully tested and constructed deck and then play them with it.
Proceed to say that you not only didn't take the deck, but that the deck in question never existed before they "made" it.
In 7th grade I spent alot of money on Magic cards. I had 3 functional decks (Red/Greed 'smash n' burn,' Blue/White 'lockdown,' Green/White/Red 'swarm') and I'd plopped about 60 bucks of allowance savings into them.
I accidentally leave a lockdown and swarm in the room we would play in during lunch. My cards mysteriously dissapear when I come back five minutes later to redeem my mistake. A day later, I show up with smashy and a guy (who I was friends with) was playing with my cards against me.
On the bright side, it taught me not to spend 60 bucks on cards.  I've put 5 bucks in my current deck and it only has problems against the sliver decks and rules-lawyers I know.
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Jordan Kruis
United States
Las Cruces
New Mexico
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Initiate a trade embargo early on in the game.
My siblings did this once because I had won the past five or six games.
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Mr Hen
United States
Fridley
Minnesota
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After discovering that the rules were misunderstood, argue to continue using the incorrect rules.
During a rare condition about the control over farms near the end of the game I looked up the rules for field again to see if they offered any help. Suddenly, I realized that we had been playing the fields incorrectly and that the actual rules made a lot more sense.
I explained the rules as they should have been and someone started arguing with me about the semantics of what the words in the book meant. The correct rules were significantly more consistent with the rest of Carcassonne, but he kept complaining about it.
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81.
Board Game: Hearts
[Average Rating:6.44 Overall Rank:982]
Mr Hen
United States
Fridley
Minnesota
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Suddenly changing the rules midgame.
Everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes the mistakes are about misreading or misunderstanding rules. Or sometimes house rules are not explained or chosen correctly at the beginning of the game. But none of these are good excuses to suddenly change the way the game is played during the game. Wait until next time.
The exception to this is if there is unanimous agreement to continue play with the correct rules.
The example from Hearts is the variation where the Jack of Diamonds reduces your score by 10. It helps to know that before the 10 is played.
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Mr Hen
United States
Fridley
Minnesota
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Creatively stretching the rules and exposing a game's brokenness.
My favorite example: The first time the rules were explained to us the teacher said, "And you can cheat."
We said, "We can cheat?"
"Yeah, cheating is allowed."
"What if we get caught?"
"Anything you tried to do is undone."
"There is no penalty?"
"Nope. The only limits is that everything has to be above the table, and something has to be unnoticed for one turn before it is permanent."
The classic example is lifting extra money from the money box or cheating on dice rolls. I decided to still cards from the draw and discard piles and managed to slip a card into the active game without anyone noticing.
The owner was ticked.
"You said we could cheat."
"That's not what I meant!"
"Well, what, you want us to just cheat in ways you thought of?"
They eventually moved all the cards to the other end of the table.
In addition, one of my friends decided to just watch the owner like a hawk to prevent him from cheating. He did not watch anyone else at the table, just the owner. We still tell stories about how we ruined the poor guy's experience, just to point out the flaws in the game.
The Munchkin games are also known for encouraging broken patterns in gameplay. Here there are some things that are guaranteed to tick people off.
* Infinite loops. (Pink stamps anyone?)
* Completely abusing the terminology. We once made someone roll a d20 because the card simply said "roll a die".
* Anything involving "who played the card first" syndromes
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Mr Hen
United States
Fridley
Minnesota
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Playing for your teammates, even when they were playing just fine on their own.
Epic Duels is a good example of a game that can be dominated by someone who wants to win more than let other people make decisions. I played a lot of Epic Duels and a certain gaming group likes playing with open hands for teammates. This meant that the person who claimed to be the most experienced would just tell his teammates what to do and get upset when they did something else.
This naturally ticked everyone else at the table off. Especially his teammates.
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Mr Hen
United States
Fridley
Minnesota
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Ignoring a stable starting arrangement in favor of trying to give yourself an edge.
This conversation roughly occurred when setting up a game of Risk: Godstorm.
"Do you want to speed this up by letting everyone place their pieces at the same time and when everyone is happy, start the game?"
"What? No, why would you do that?"
"It is quicker, and we are just playing casually. We do that for Risk 2210."
"No, that is ridiculous. What if I put all of my armies in one continent?"
"Then I would probably go somewhere else."
"But then I would not need all of my armies there, so I could take them out, right?"
"Uh, no, because if you left it open I could put my armies there and take the continent."
"Well, if you put yours back, then I would put mine back."
"Then I would take mine out..."
An infinite loop like the above only happens when playing with imbeciles. We laughed at the kid and sat down for the longer process and did not invite him to play Risk 2210 with us.
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Jim Miller
United States
Portland
Oregon
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You've carefully transported games to Denver in a suitcase, to play with relatives who happen to have an infant. You're well into the Old Kingdom when naptime ends. One player, the doting grandmother, must now absolutely hold the infant while trying to play, even though non-playing female idler relative with two good arms is sitting at the same table. Fat, dangling infant legs menace the placement of pyramids and farmers. A feeding is performed; slop drips from child's mouth, again menacingly near the edge of the board; a sodden mouth-rag is laid within a careless inch of neglected power cards. Your blood pressure rises. Doting grandmother now cheerfully notes that infant is shitting its diapers. "Oooh that was wonderful," she coos. "Now give us another good spurt! Come on!"
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87.
Board Game: Attika
[Average Rating:7.08 Overall Rank:256]
Nico Van de Zande
Belgium
Vlaams-Brabant
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Stand up and walk around the table
Stand up and walk around the table (even when it's not your turn). When someone asks why, just tell them, you will have a better view on the board and a better view on yours and others strategy.
And then just win the game 
I've picked Attika because I usually do this with this game. Can also be used with other games.
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Anthony Martins
United States
Lakewood
CO
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Only half pay attention to what's going on, so the owner/host of the game needs to say "It's your turn," every time it's your turn.
Holy cow, this happened to me in a five player game of Arkham Horror, and I became the Arkham Horror. There's enough to think about already, but having to constantly remind everyone to go was really a brain drain. Eventually, I said, "I'm getting a little tired telling everyone to go. If the person to your right does something, please do something next without me having to tell you." It was a little snippy, but I let it go on too long.
Now I nip it in the bud by bringing it up as soon as I see it happening. Then I can say it diplomatically without feeling agitated yet
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Keep it on the table!
*sigh* If you roll the dice off the table again, I'm going to have to hurt you...
And, on a related D&D note, d4 HURT when you step on them later!!! 
And you can't find them in a hideous shag rug from the 70s. Except by, you guessed it, stepping on them.
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Chris Newbury
Depere
Wisconsin
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TEACH THE GAME BEFORE YOU KNOW THE RULES -OR- RUIN THE GAME FOR YOUR BUDDY'S GIRL
Yeah, this is a constant problem for a good friend of mine. He loves to dive into games to learn the rules. Sure, good for him. But he never tells you if he knows the rules to the game he's about to teach you. This has pissed my girlfriend off so much she doesn't even bother sitting down with us anymore, and I'd much rather be playing with her than him.
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Peet Smith
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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Insist that you are capable of teaching a complex game you have never played, even though you are Dyslexic.
A dyslexic friend of mine got all excited about ASL because he is a big WW2 fan, bought a copy, and proceeded to try to teach it to me... twice.
I went along with it because I could see that he was so into it, but both game attempts broke down somewhere during the first turn of the first scenario.
Poor guy. 
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David Giles
United States
Provo
Utah
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Bash on a recent purchase.
At the time, I was in a situation where I was given ~$150 a month to live on, utilities and rent paid. Thus, even the relatively measly $40 for Risk 2210 was a significant investment, which involved a month or two of saving up money sent from home.
A few days after I finally purchased the game, a coworker, who was in a similar situation, came over to my place. While I was explaining the concept, he poked around inside the box, looking at a few chips and pieces. When I was done with my explanation, he, unimpressed with the volume of plastic and cardboard my $40 had bought me, responded "You got ripped off, man."
I was rather mad for a while afterward.
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Dave Dubin
United States
Champaign
Illinois
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Babble inanely in pseudo-German
I'm proud to say that no one in my regular game group does this, but I hear it surprisingly often at conventions, and I wish people would stop. Luckily, I only once experienced the embarrassment of having this happen at a table where a native speaker was present:
Bonehead 1: "Iss dass nish dee cloister builden?"
Bonehead 2: "Ya! Ya! Ick builde dee cloister!"
Me (looking down at the table): "Das Kloster, auf Deutsch, nicht wahr?
German guy (also looking down): "Ja."
That last was one of those wonderfully expressive, inhaled affirmations that captured his polite exasperation just perfectly. I've often wondered if there's a German word (or Norwegian -- they do it too) for that inverted sigh.
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Randy Bayless
United States
Sedalia
Missouri
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Man you guys couldn't have done that without me. Like seriously, I killed 16 zombies and you guys killed 5. I should just do this on my own!
Yes. Yes you should. There is a difference between playful banter and just outright obnoxiousness. I hate when players just go on and on about how good they are and how much better they are compared to you or someone in your group. Its annoying. Stop.
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J H
United States
Billings and Bozeman
Montana
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Show up for a collectible minatures game with miniatures from a cheap knockoff different game
Bring some Axis & Allies Miniatures minatures to a Flames of War game, and see how pissed people get! This really pissed off a store owner when someone even joked about doing this!
Bring some of those plastic army men to a Warhammer 40,000, saying they represent a Space Marine army!
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Deciding to follow some insane course because it's "more fun" even when everyone else is opposed to it.
A couple of friends of mine are prone to this at games of Battlestar Galactica, they somehow find it hilarious to do everything in their power to turn the sympathiser cylon. And yes, this has happened multiple times with neither of them being a cylon.
This really gets under my skin since BSG is difficult enough for the humans as it is.
In our last game one of these friends also decided to jump at -3 pop, while we had only three population and there was no real direct threat because "We were going to lose anyway and this way we either lost immediately or we'd be further on our way. 
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Mirko Paganelli
Taiwan
Tamsui - New Taipei City
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'And what does the Merchant can do?'
You teach and explain all character cards for hours, again and again, to five/six new gamers - also called Monopoly's veteran players - and the clevest one just ask you: 'Ok, I got it. And what about the Merchant?' Whoa. Just move away.
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Benjamin Parker
United States
Manchester
Connecticut
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Accuse them of being a kingmaker
I was playing a 3p game of Through the Ages a while back, and I was losing... badly. Fortunately, so was one of my opponents.
It basically came down to which of us figured out that we weren't going to win first; whoever did that would get second. So I stopped trying to kill the leader and started focusing on racking my own points up and killing my next in line. My next in line opponent hung on to hope to the last second and came in third...
...complaining about my kingmaking the entire (many hour-long) way.
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Rebecca Colbourn
United States
California
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Abuse the Game's Theme to Constantly Reference Other Games in Annoying Ways
Such as playing the "Big Combo" card in Lunch Money then announcing two fighting game moves in the style of any Capcom fighting video game [or any game the person hates]. You get bonus points for being annoying if you act it out....
Or just scream like Link from Zelda.
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Rebecca Colbourn
United States
California
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"I don't know to play this game. How about you teach us this time?"
Pretend you don't know how to play some game with a thick instruction manual [or anything published by Avalon Hill], then nominate the most noob player to read the manual and teach everyone how to play.
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I am the white void. I am the cold steel. I am the just sword.
ONE SPACE AWAY FROM HOME!!! 
Raytown
Missouri
Consequences: One of the cardboards to hide the investigator sheets presents a hole that looks like ¿a bite? And the cards feel more like stamps by now.
¿Should I kill'em or my sister?
San Francisco
California
Sedalia
Missouri
Portland
Oregon