Why I hate "fun"

[Heff]

Been a while since I started a thread on here.

I was thinking about the "Fun" (as opposed to fun)/competitive continuum in Bloodbowl. And the fact I dislike "Fun". What got me on this was a hissy fit I had at a recent Tournament that used cards. (They were given instead of weather changes on a roll off, my opponent got one)

Third game was going well, I was in control and it looked likely I would win. Went into the second half 2/1 up and 2 players up. (Brets v Chorfs and it was a chorf and a centaur I had done for). We set up. Just about to kick off (to me-this was the perfect game). So I am about to receive and he plays this card "Love potion" off goes a player in the wide zone, my guard piece. Completely destroyed my set up, removed my player advantage and derailed my game. I basically lost all interest in that point. We played 2 turns till he scored and then I offered him the draw. Had he not have accepted I would have conceded.

So why?

To me BB is a game of probability management. You get an instinctive understanding of what should work, what might work and what probably will not work. Cards and other "fun" things disrupt that. Wizards screw that but in a manageable way for one turn. Except now we have a frog. A frog that turns my wardancer into a snotling FOR THE REST OF THE DRIVE! I have to protect him, and still manage the game. I cannot manage the probability curve given the random nature of the cards etc.

I also dislike people telling me that I have no sense of humour about this. I ALREADY KNOW THIS! Or ITS JUST A GAME. Would I waste so much of my life playing it if I thought it was just a game. And what makes it a game is the sense of riding a known probability curve.

"Fun" destroys my sense of the game. "Fun" removes the fun for me. The game is hard enough without "fun" I hate "fun"!

Fun on the other hand is a tight game against somebody who knows what he is doing. Who recognises that a string of unlikely dice is not an indicator of skill but an indicator that you did something wrong. I want to play a game where every dice roll I make requires a 2 (or a three with a re roll) while I make every dice roll you make a 6.

[howlinggriffon]

I feel your pain - my new league uses cards and it can totally screw your game over. Thankfully I'm not taking things seriously.

I'm not sure I'd play in a tournament that allowed cards - they're far too random to allow a competitive game. I get the idea of the crazy fun of Blood Bowl but there's a time and a place for it.

[zulu]

I am not sure I see any difference in this, to some of the kick off results that happens, like pitch invasion, blitz etc. These are events that can have a very unpredictable effect on the game. Cards are just part of this. Yes they add more unpredictability, but for me that then just adds to the challenge of grinding out a result.

[Regash]

I will never understand why people can take a game so serious when not even the rulebook can keep away from silly jokes and puns.
Why take a game serious that doesn't take itself serious?
In all honesty, playing games is, in my opinion, nothing else but having fun. Or at least, it should be.
Obviously, people consider different things as fun.

Maybe you should start playing chess, no "funny" things happen there.

And I also wonder what your opinions was if you got the card and disrupted your opponents game.
Would it still be no fun? Or would you shrug it off and say "It's in the rules."?

[firebreather]

I think the problem with the cards is the randomness is so unknown that it makes it impossible to have any kind of contingency plan all you can do is react. Sometimes the cards are game changers and other times utterly useless.

At least with things like the kick off results you can set up in a way to try to minimise their effect to some degree.

[dode74]

I will never understand why people can take a game so serious when not even the rulebook can keep away from silly jokes and puns.

That's the difference between "Fun" and "fun" which Heff mentions.

Maybe you should start playing chess, no "funny" things happen there.

And I also wonder what your opinions was if you got the card and disrupted your opponents game.
Would it still be no fun? Or would you shrug it off and say "It's in the rules."?

I think it's about variance. A bit of randomness makes the game more "Fun" (i.e. not Chess/competitive) but too much and you no longer have as much agency over events, and the game is no longer "fun" as you become an observer rather than a meaningful participant. I think this is part of the issue people have with CPOMB and attrition in general: it removes people's ability to influence events in a meaningful way, sometimes due to high variance (CPOMB) and sometimes because of the long-term effects (LRB4 ageing).

[besters]

At least it wasn't me he was playing against

[harvestmouse]

Karma for playing Brets maybe?

[Jip]

Wrote a response to this earlier, but it appears to have not saved, or been deleted.

What got me on this was a hissy fit I had at a recent Tournament that used cards.

I was on the table next to you for this game, playing dreamscreator.

The card played was sh*t, granted. Having witnessed the "hissy fit", I subsequently checked out the cards as I'm relatively new and have only ever played with the 50k ones - there are some savage one in there, aren't there!

With that said though, it was part of the ruleset you/I/we signed up for. Although it isn't actually mentioned in the rules on the forum thread (perhaps an oversight), but was covered in the pre-tournament 'lecture', thus making it part of the known probability curve, as you say.

With regards to you "offering" him the draw, you made it pretty clear that you didn't want to continue the game and I really felt for the fella, who was clearly finding it awkward. If the Love Potioned player died from a Throw a Rock, or Blitz! kick-off result, I'm guessing you'd have played on.

I'm not that fussed about the frog (and don't forget the Chaos Spawn transformation, too!), 'cos I think most TOs will do what they've done with most of the BB2016 stuff - ignore it.

I guess, as others have said, "fun" (with a capital F or otherwise) is relative. What you abhor may be what brings others to the game.

[Darkson]

Karma for playing Brets maybe?

I approve this reply.

[JT-Y]

Karma for playing Brets maybe?

I approve this reply.

As do I.

[rolo]

I ... agree with Heff. This is a strange feeling and I'm not sure I like it.

Or at the very least, I see where you're coming from. Randomness is a part of Blood Bowl. The Dice give and the Dice take away. And it's human nature to take good dice for granted and consider bad dice to be some kind of divine retribution from Nuffle, so this game can feel cruel and arbitrary at times. Ask a sample of Blood Bowl coaches, and the majority will say they have below average luck, which cannot possibly be true.

But if by "fun" (lower case) you mean, excessive randomness which ends up having an outsize effect on the game, then yes, I agree. We've all tied a game we should have won (or the other way round!) because of double skulls, or snake eyes, or whatever. We're used to it, it sucks, but it "feels" like an honest part of the game. If you had to dodge on turn 16 for the win, and roll snake eyes, well, that's kind of your fault, right? You could have positioned better to not have to dodge. You could have scored on turn 15 and defended. You could have done something different ...
... but there are some totally random aspects of the game which you can't prevent. My personal pet peeve is Sweltering Heat. But the cards are up there too, and Throw a Rock. Stuff which feels like it affects a match far too much. When you win because of that, it feels almost like you cheated. When you lose, it's infuriating. And the worst is when an otherwise evenly matched game feels like it's not decided by the coaches' decisions but just random nonsense, it feels like it's detracting from the game. In a way that situations like, "I need a 4+ dodge with no reroll to win this; if I fail, my opponent has 2 2+ rolls with a reroll to score", doesn't.

By the way, I think you were wrong to just give up with a draw (or to concede). It's not your opponent's fault that he drew the card that he did. Nuffle giveth and Nuffle taketh away, but that can only happen if you play. But maybe I'm only saying this because, oh my god have I ever been there. So more sympathy than judgement.
See you in Cardiff!
-- R

[Darkson]

In all seriousness, I can understand Heff's frustration, but then if you know you don't like cards why go to an event were cards are almost a given (they've been a part every year I've been, though admittedly I've not been to them all).

I've had games decided (in both directions) by the cards there, and I've had games where the cards (4 in one game!) had zero effect. I know the cards are in the rules and play with them in mind (as in, I know I make get screwed at any point).

[gjnoronh]

If the Love Potioned player died from a Throw a Rock, or Blitz! kick-off result, I'm guessing you'd have played on.

(SNIP)
I guess, as others have said, "fun" (with a capital F or otherwise) is relative. What you abhor may be what brings others to the game.

Agreed if the kick off result was throw a rock which removed the same piece would that have been so different?
Blood Bowl is one of the most cinematicaly (i.e. Michael Bey movies) high variance games I play. There are so few dice rolled and such huge implication of the dice that are that it makes it a highly unpredictable game. Compare this to most larger scale I Go You Go wargames where you might roll 20-60 dice to resolve one 'attack' (block in our variance) and almost invariably no result would end your turn.

Some Blood Bowl tournament/league rules sets may have more or less variance but the probability curves intrinsically per individual Blood Bowl game are a hot mess because of the small number of dice per action overall. 1-3 dice blocks and 2 dice armor rolls and 2 dice injury rolls means weird things happen.

Last night I played a game with Goblins against Undead where everything I did with my secret weapons and trolls worked exactly as planned.
He was down to 5 players by the end of the game. That wasn't fun for him, and was a bit un fun for me as I didn't play Goblins expecting to curb stop my opponents. Nuffle does strange things though and that didn't require unusual tournament rules or the like changing the base game. My last tournament I had a much more experienced coach on the ropes by mid first half and he opined that there was no hope of him coming back as he'd played 100's of games. He never the loss came back and handed me the loss as weird things happen thanks to skink craziness (or I stink!)

I get it unexpected sources of variance may be less fun then 'expected' sources of variance but either way weird unlikely stuff happens in Blood Bowl all the time.

[rolo]

I get it unexpected sources of variance may be less fun then 'expected' sources of variance but either way weird unlikely stuff happens in Blood Bowl all the time.

For me, I don't even mind the random nonsense, Blood Bowl is a silly game and there should be some silliness.
I dislike it when the weird nonsense ends up making the difference in a game. Which it inevitably will at some point, if it exists.