Games

Last night my friends and I played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. There's not a lot new to that, except that we played on the new-to-me gaming table The Coolness was kind enough to allow me to set up in the garage. I built a pair of tables for Black Diamond Games' game center back in 2007:

Yes, that's a three year old Boo in the background.

This is not the exact table, as this one was beat pretty bad in its storied career at Black Diamond Games.

The first table is, however, now gracing my garage again. With the eight-by-four table I was able to use about 88 percent of the Dwarven Forge terrain I own all at one time, a first.

The players, my usual crew, enjoyed the display and accomplished a tiny bit more than I'd anticipated. Most importantly, it was fun. Fun for me and my players, who took to the rougher conditions with good humor and excitement. And now I can leave it up and not annoy the Coolness with my 'toy soldiers' and books lying about.

We knocked off at midnight.  I had a soccer game in Antioch, some miles away, at 0900. Last night was the time change. You do the math.

I made it in plenty of time. No one else was near the pitch. It's cold and windy, and the pitch is both slanted and canted toward one end.

As go time approaches we're short two players, one woman and one male. The other team has a very large roster, and leant us two players.

The first quarter was frustrating for the opposition, with several off-sides calls against them. They had several players who liked to shout out calls for the refs, who are really quite good at their jobs and needed no such prompting.

The field was a bit short, and the opposing goalie had a beast of a boot. He hammered one up and my center stop got a foot to it without stopping it. One of the refs-in-training, the center striker for the opposing team, shouts, "He can't touch it!" as he races me for the ball.

I use my feet to clear the ball.

"He couldn't touch it!" the guy continues to shout.

"You want to ref, jackass, put on a yellow jersey!" I grumbled.  I shouldn't have. It wasn't sportsmanlike, and I have no excuse.

Hearing me, he called me some version of fucker.

The ref, hearing him and failing to hear me, kicks the other player off for cursing. The quarter break came up immediately after.

As I am walking off, one of the yoked out players for the other team comes jogging up to me on our half of the field with his shirt off and stops me with a hand to my shoulder, asking me why I'm "Threatening players."

My expression was, I'm sure, contemptuous. I told him to take his hand off me, that I hadn't threatened anyone.

He didn't immediately remove his hand, so I removed it.

"Don't touch me man, I'll kick your ass!" he shouts, muscle-tits bouncing.

Clearly, I wasn't going to be able to communicate with him.

The ref, doing his job, came over and told everyone to shut it. The original ref in training came back on the field. I asked him to hold it a moment and spoke to the ref. I owned the words that led to the ref-in-training being sent off, and told him I wouldn't be upset if we were both given a yellow card and played on. Most everyone on our team was worried the game was going to be called on account of the muscle-bound guy's antics.

Thankfully, the ref didn't card anyone, and play resumed.

And it resumed cleanly. Their offense continued to be upset with the off-sides calls, but there was nothing approaching the level of drama from that first quarter of play.

We won 3-0. I had three saves I'm quite proud of and about seven more collections that were mine to screw up. I played well, but the rest of our team really clicked and played outstanding ball. I hope we can continue in this vein, perhaps with less drama. It's my first clean sheet since I began playing with the team, and I think I earned it.

Ownership And Good Customer Service

About a month ago, I went in to my credit union to take care of some business and see where I was with a loan. I had paid it in full the previous paycheck. I was quite happy about that. Working with the teller, I then re-allocated the cash that had been going toward that loan to other places.

In the end, I didn’t allocate enough to the account that funds are withdrawn from to cover the motorcycle loan. I only learned this today when I had a call from the loan officer at my credit union. She politely informed me I had not made a timely payment.

I was surprised, to say the least. I had funds in another account sufficient to cover the gap, but I found myself getting angry a mistake had been made.

Then I took a deep breath.

It was me that had signed off and approved the allocation. This was not a complex problem requiring an accountant to figure out, so there was no blaming an expert for failing to explain to me that I would fall short in the one account. It was, therefore, my mistake.

I went to the credit union to correct my error, and ended up with the same teller who had helped me the last time. She apologized sincerely and profusely for the error. I told her that it was me that had signed off on the allocation, and should have realized the mistake. I went on to tell her she had nothing to apologize for.

She repeated her apology.

I smiled, “Wasn’t your fault.”

Then we fixed it.

Fixing it, perhaps, took longer than it would have if I were doing it myself and didn’t have to check to make sure everyone was on the same page. Ultimately, though, I was very happy that her customer service skills were more than a match for my sense of ownership.

Recognizing my own hand in things is one of the hardest things I do as a man, a father, and a citizen. It is not objectively rewarding, but man, does owning my shit make it easier to sleep at night.

Conversation of the Week

"How do you get down?"
"Well, I like to listen to Battleflag, but that's just me."
He snorts. "I mean, downstairs.
I gesture at the elevators, "Those elevators."
"They looked closed."
I answer slowly, "The doors are, until an elevator arrives."
He snorts again, shaking his head,"Fuck, I sounded stupid."
I sail on, my work being done.

An End

So, last weekend I was running my Greedy Little Bastards campaign with a number of friends. As a life-long GM, I am pretty good at running a fair and fun night, else I would have no one willing to play in my particular sandbox.

That being said, I lost patience with one of the players and barked out a warning that I was tired, worked very hard to run a game all the players could enjoy, and that effort required respect, so please just comply with my ruling. After the below events, I checked in with the other players and the consensus appears that my ruling did not seem to warrant argument from the player.

I do not wish to detract from the fact that I shouldn't have shouted. That was improper and I regret it.

The player quit, then sent text after text to me for the next four hours, telling me my motives for treating him inappropriately. At the end, he told me that he was removing me from all his social media. I told him I felt that was a shame, that making such decisions at 0330 in the AM might lead to regret.

I regret his action. I regret losing my temper and shouting. Twenty-eight years seems a long time to simply toss in the dustbin over a disagreement regarding a game.

I have a number of buts I might place in here, but such would detract from what I am apologizing for.

I hope that there will come a day when we might say something like this to one another and to others:

Man the FUCK UP

A teeth-sucking asshat this morning brings this rant to boil over onto the page. It seems a bit like I have already said much of it before, but my life is nothing if not repetitive, so you can bear with me:

Males, you need to take a moment, grab your fucking sacks, and take ownership of what you do. If you make a mistake (and I have made and will continue to make, my share) or fuck up, you need to own and learn from it, not try and find someone to lay your shit off on. You are not entitled to any sympathy, but if I see you struggling to own, rather than throw off, responsibility, I might throw you a bone. Others who think like I do might do the same. They are under no obligation to, but they might. Now, a litany of FUCK UP:

If you are a drinker, and you like to drive after a few pops, then when the universe comes knocking to collect that karmic debt you've managed to avoid until that moment, don't think you are entitled to get around it. No one, not one person, can say they didn't know it was illegal and just plain stupid to drive drunk. If you get busted, man the FUCK UP.

If you're the type of bastard likes to sock his lady friends about, when the cops come, break your door down and take their sweet time fighting your resisting ass into custody, don't think it is anything other than your actions that led to that moment and man the FUCK UP.

If you deal dope and one day you sell to the wrong motherfucker, winding up arrested and getting strip searched, quit your whining. You knew the risks when you decided to work the far side of what's legal. Man the FUCK UP.

If you happen to like to drive faster than the posted speed limit, you know you might get caught. When you do, don't try and lay it off on others, try and whine your way out. Man the FUCK UP.

If you make a mistake at work, don't try and cover that shit, man the FUCK UP.

If you cheat on your wife, your taxes, or anything else, you know you might get caught. When you do, man the FUCK UP and take what's coming to you.

Here endeth todays rant.