Cryndo said:
Well, mine isn't role-playing related, but I think it is funny just the same. When I was a freshman in college my buddy was showing me how to play Axis and Allies. He considered himself quite a good wargamer. Well, I had no experience and despite numerous tactical errors, I destroyed him in my first game.
He got so ticked he left the dorm and drove home (about a two and a half hour drive) - on a Sunday night. He made it back to school in time for his eight o'clock class in the morning. Basically, assuming no LA traffic (right!) he left at almost 9 PM and probably got home sometime before midnight only to turn right around and leave at 5 AM to go back to school.
He acted like nothing happened the next day. Well, we're still good friends, but we haven't played Axis and Allies since.
Axis and Allies has destroyed more friendships...
Me, my dad, and his friend Heath love the game, and play quite a bit. But we're always looking for two more players. This particular time, we roped in my brother, and my friend Scott.
The group winds up being Me, my Dad, and Scott as the allies, and my brother and Heath as the Axis (we figured that was the fairest way to go - Heath and my Dad are the tactical experts, and we knew that since the allies has the edge, putting the newest player on their side should even things out).
One of our long-standing rules, made because my dad can be pushy sometimes, was that "advice" or communication between players beyond "roll the dice" or "be right back" wasn't allowed during play - we did all our planning at the start of every turn.
Scott wasn't the smartest player, and after the first turn or so (in which Scott left his bombers alone in a territory within german fighter range, which destroyed them all), me and my dad had written him up a list of basic reminders - "don't leave your bombers alone", "think ahead a turn", "use your bombers to knock out IPC's" and the like. Scott forgot to use the list, EVERY TURN.
But it was okay. I was Russia, and doing my usual awesome job at taking out the germans, and my dad was the U.K., and had been building up a navy for the inevitable attack on Germany in only one turn. It had been a tough fight, but if we could survive for one more turn, we'd win.
The game was close. In fact, Germany and Japan had managed to take over much of the map - they had enough of the world to win, but only if they could hold it for the entire turn.
It was Scott's turn. He knew that if, at the end of the turn, the axis held only ONE of the territories, they'd win. He knew that he had the capability, as the U.S., to take four of those territories. He kept looking at the board. He only had to take one. No one was saying a word, except Scott, who was doing his best to use his faulty logic:
"If I take this place, I'll lose my armies and transport next turn."
"But I can't do that... I need to take something now, or we lost at the end of this turn."
"If I take here, it puts my transports out of range for our attack next turn..."
So, he does nothing.
And we lose.
My dad FLIPS OUT, and starts yelling at Scott - "How could you be so stupid?" and so on. He's not really angry, just AMAZED that someone could be so dumb. It's not really anger, but if you don't know my dad, you'd think he was angry.
I felt so embarrassed at my dad's behaviour (even though Scott WAS being stupid) that I wound up walking Scott home and apologized about a hundred times.
