September 22, 2024: Are You Sure That's What Attacked You?!

[RoboAdmin]

September 22, 2024: Are You Sure That's What Attacked You?!

Read this article on the Illuminator.

[whswhs]

I haven't got an anecdote as funny as that. But the first time I tried running Catan at the city library's board game day, I didn't spot the rule that during initial setup, everyone gets several cards that match the hexes adjacent to their second placed settlement. That really slowed the game down!

[elv]

This is more a "don't want to deal with advanced rules" rather than "didn't read something correctly", but the first time I ran GURPS (which none of us had played before) I said we'd start with basic combat to avoid headscratching & page-flipping. We got to the first fight (against a giant mechanical steam-powered centipede, of course), and one of the players pretty much straight away said "I'm going to sneak around to that tree, climb it, and drop my hat over its eyestalks". I don't know if I actually put my head in my hands and sat there giggling, but I could immediately see that the KISS approach was not going to fly with this group...

[Nicosomething]

LOVE this story.

My closest is more of a, "the 1st printing rulebook was unclear," moment.

The original printing of Sentinels of the Multiverse was a short run and we got a copy. Those instructions didn't give you any insight into how many heroes you should have on a team, or any guidance on difficulty for the supervillains. So for our first game we picked one hero each and went up against Citizen Dawn, who turned out to be one of the most powerful villains in the game.

Aaaand we got curb stomped. Like, we lost so hard we were laughing.

We must not have been the only ones, because the next and definitive printing of the game (until 2nd edition came out) included difficulties for all the villains and suggested team sizes :)

[Alden Loveshade]

"Three kobolds in a trenchcoat" is now an online meme!

As for rules, even as a young teenager I was the member of the family who had the game rules sitting next to me.

But one of my favorite "we didn't understand the rules" memories is this.

I was at a gaming convention, and got to visit with Sergio Aragonés. Remarkably quickly, he drew me a card for a certain card game you might have heard of. It was the "God" card. What did it do? I would imagine anything!

Note I never actually used the card in a game. I just threatened to!