That Irritating Guy

NeonPeon wrote:

I eat sloppy joes while loudly criticizing everyone's suboptimal moves - firing chunks of meat in their faces - and I hit on my friends' girlfriends, in front of my wife, whom I make change the vomit bucket I keep beside my seat. Plus I cry when someone steals the role I was about to take.

Seriously, I try to be a good sport when playing a game I dislike - usually some SJG Munchkin-style humor crap - but my misery is obvious.

Neon, I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

NeonPeon wrote:

I eat sloppy joes while loudly criticizing everyone's suboptimal moves - firing chunks of meat in their faces - and I hit on my friends' girlfriends, in front of my wife, whom I make change the vomit bucket I keep beside my seat. Plus I cry when someone steals the role I was about to take.

I think I read about you on the RPG.net creepiest gamer threads. Anyone remember those?

Mine are probably

1. Bitching about people taking too long on their turn. Sometimes this is deserved but often I'm just being an ass to people that are trying to think.

2. Complaining about games mid-play... some games you know suck about halfway through and this is when I start ripping on the game, the designers, the publishers, and anyone who happens to be enjoying themselves. Heads of State was a good example. Any game which has a phase devoted to assassinations and STILL isn't any fun can rot in hell!

3. Interrupting people during how to play instructions. I'm really bad about this and I'm trying to stop.

1. I play "music" that sometimes sounds like cats being skinned alive while a cement mixer full of ball bearings is running in the background, topped off with Chairman Mao speaking through a PA system setup 100 yards away under a freeway overpass.

2. I teach the rules (typically) and occasionally "remember" rules I "accidentally left out" at strategic moments. I also sometimes teach new games with house rules and/or optional rules as if they were the standard way to play.

3. I stock the mini-fridge with mini-sake bottles and mini-pink champagne bottles.

When I started reading the thread, I couldn't think of anything I did that was annoying until Ken mentioned the deck adjusting. This would be my one big foible. I can't keep my hands away from the table, no matter what the game. When playing Scrabble with my wife, she deliberately lays the tiles down off-centre just to mess with me and watch me follow every placement with an adjustment. Warrior Knights is another one that sets my OCD off. And I hate when people don't place their Chess pieces in the centre of the square. Arrrgggghhh! Happy place.... Happy place.....

When I get bored during AP Guy's turn, I start talking to another player. Nearly 100% of the time, AP Guy gets distracted and joins our conversation, prolonging his already long turn.

Fuck - where do I start:

1. Being a loud, straight-forward Kiwi in quiet old England.

2. Inadvertant Cheater (and I provide a lot of the games!) - mainly from not paying enough attention and getting too wrapped up in an apparent good move (because I wasn't following the rules).

3. Deck adjuster - all those skill decks in BSG drive me mad.

4. Will walk away from (and go home if nothing else is on) most eurogames 'cos I just can't stand them anymore.

5. Try to be helpful to newcomers and end up giving them too much advice/moves.


.... I can see my name being quietly struck off lists all over the world now.

Southernman wrote:

3. Deck adjuster - all those skill decks in BSG drive me mad.

I don't think that I've ever been a "deck adjuster" but those skill decks in BSG were driving me mad last night. One player was doing his own discard pile, discarding all of his cards into one messy pile. Another player, the one sitting nearest the skill decks, kept flipping over the real discard piles (because his OCD told him to?), forcing other players guess which pile to draw from. We didn't even notice that one player's own discard pile until we suddenly ran out of yellow cards.

I think my biggest sin is that I get seriously ADD if I don't think I have an effect on a game. It's not that I expect to win, but I want to be a PLAYER. At least let me monkeywrench!

If this doesn't happen, I am incredibly figity (knitting at the table helps) and have been known to wander off to play with pets, fuss with music, make a cup of tea - to the chorus 'THAADD! GET BACK HERE -YOUR TURN'. It gets worse if I am tired too, I have a good 30 second attention span.

Player elimination is a blessing at times - for me, and everyone else.

I'm definitely annoying smoke break guy. Most of the people I game with also smoke which lowers that irritation factor, but if smoking is allowed in the house I tend to chain them filling the room with my obnoxious habit. It doesn't help when a tumbler full of scotch goes so well with just about any game experience. And 5 cigarettes goes so well with a tumbler full of scotch...and so on...

The two apartments in our small building share a well-ventilated back porch (one of the windows is completely missing), so that is the smoking lounge. There is an abandoned couch back there, an old coffee table and a heavy ashtray. Gets mighty cold in the winter though, so our smokers tend to just smoke one cigarette after each game ends. That works really well, because that gives us time to put away one game and set up the next while they're out back.

I dunno. Probably some combination of farting, cracking my knuckles and rules-laywering.

But I'm sure it's my analysis-paralysis that really gets on people's nerves the most.

I fart-explosively.

But far worse is this habit I developped in high school: I can tflip a pen/pencil in my right hand over, and over, and over again without looking at it or even be aware that I'm doing it.

if any writing instrument is within my grasp, I'll subconciously reach for it and start flipping it. It relaxes me, but drives everyone else around me batshit insane within half an hour.

My wife has promised to shove the next thing she catches me flipping staright up my arse.


















I need help.

is the pencil flipping like what Dave Letterman does all the time? I love that

I put my hand down my pants and stroke myself while thinking about my next move. It helps me focus better but my cards and pieces can get a little glistening effect from hand-sweat which I guess bothers some people.