I should have clarified that I did not believe this was unique to my shop. Just that it kills the environment as a whole. Shop owners like casual players because they tend to buy more in the long run. Things like the FNM promos kept some people away just because they don't feel they have a real chance of winning one.
Honestly, I just wish I could attend FNM again.
Everyone has a shot at an FNM promo. Half of them go to random players every time.
I'm also not certain why people can't dress in a Fedora/Suit if they want. Maybe you think it's ridiculous, but we're also using $50 pieces of cardboard to pretend to cast spells at each other. Really the only legitimate complaint someone can have is the smell (which is certainly bad sometimes). Otherwise complaining about how people dress is just elitist at best.
I agree with the OP but I don't think there is a solution to it. Some people who play MTG are really chill college dudes, and some are bit more weird. Fact is MTG is significantly farther on the nerdy scale than say Playstation 4, which most women/non gamers play occasionally. As a pretty normal ladies man I don't really find myself fitting in with that kind of crowd.
It is really hard to get women to play mtg when a solid 25% of the player base are creepy/weird/smelly dudes. Just isn't a great environment for the ladies.
I definitely agree that the attitudes of players at an LGS can have a big effect on the growth or decline of a local community, and, by extension, the Magic community as a whole. When I sit down for a match, I shake hands with my opponent, smile, and, where possible, make small talk, such as how do they like the Limited format (I mostly draft), are they having a good evening, do they come here often, have they played often? These sorts of basic courtesy can really pay off in the long-term, allowing one's local group to become a fun, engaging environment for beginners and veterans alike.
However, I must disagree with the sentiment that one's clothes can stunt the growth of a community. While basic hygiene is a basic expectation for participating in such an event, the notion that a particular style of clothing could make others feel excluded is, to me at least, nearly inconceivable. I usually wear blue jeans, a t-shirt, and an unbuttoned button-down to FNM, but I regularly see others wear attire as varied as uniforms from a job and very formal suits to the tournament.
This isn't "LGS culture." There's always going to be stupid/annoying/smelly people wherever you go. That's what happens when you play a game with 15-20 random strangers.
It used to be clean, orderly, and all around a nice place to be.
Then the main employee left, and when he left, he also kicked the other two employees who were living with him out because they didn't pay rent for months.
From there, the store devolved into a place where one of the employees basically lived for a few months. Didn't even have the common decency to spray some Febreeze every now and then. Placed reeked of BO next time I went in, so I bought my stuff and left, never to go back.
The people playing there also had something to do with it, as it was a bunch of rulesharks and general *******s.
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It is my firm belief that everypony should pony pony to pony and pony.
IMO it usually comes down to management and the attitude they bring to the job.
All too often you have unprofessional players running the shop and as a result you get a dirty/sloppy atmosphere that can certainly be a turn-off for normal people.
Cannot fathom walking into an establishment and feeling unwelcome due to the clothes people are wearing. Perhaps I just don't have a proper perspective to see the issue.
Exactly. Whatever clothing people wear or feel is fashionable is their prerogative, arbitrary, and shouldn't affect the game experience for anyone else. With that general attitude you may as well build your decks around invoke prejudice.
Then again, if I walked into my LGS and saw someone wearing a white hood or sitting in Nazi attire I'd obviously take offense even if it was Halloween. Even freedom of expression has its socially acceptable limits.
Anyhow, the best I can come up with myself is a game in the top 8 of a PTQ back during Urza block in which we were starting game 3 with time already expired, so the tiebreaker rule was that whoever had more life after 3 turns would win. And I lost to... healing salve.
Hey guys, just wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way.
I like playing MGS for a nostalgia aspect, here and there. And rarely go to FNM events.
Every time I do there are a number of "regulars" who are very dramatic, loud, hard to deal with or just be around in general.
It doesn't help that rounds are 45mins to an hour depending on the shop owner's random scoring/time limit system.
I find that it's not an age thing, there are some well adjusted college-going teenagers that have nothing but respect for those around them and are generally easy going. And there are grown men who buy into this nerdy persona that they feel they need to buy into.
I feel these types of people tend to push away more than a few customers.
I have tried multiple shops, It's always the same type of person, fedora, baggy jeans less than desirable hygiene as the regulars.
On rare occasions there are some well-adjusted members of society, few guys coming into the place with hermes ties on, and I distinctly remember playing against a man slightly older than I with a panerai PAM on his wrist. It's nit just the way these people dressed, its how they carried themselves, not yelling loudly or running around the shop like children.
Sounds like you need to find a shop more suited to your tastes. There are certain sports bars I don't go to for football or fights, because the usual crowd is annoying beyond what I want to deal with. It's something you find everywhere, and the more you get out, the better you get at ignoring it. You may come back in a coupe of years and realize the crowd doesn't bother you much anymore, or that they've changed. If people are dressed strangely, fine, I doubt I'd want to take them home anyway.
If they have hygiene issues, that's something the shop needs to deal with. The owner of my local LGS will, very discreetly, call an individual out, and also publicly announce that, while it shouldn't be something they have to announce, everyone needs to mind their hygiene.
As for the rules, call and ask ahead of time. I personally wouldn't play somewhere with short rounds, because I don't want to be forced into a draw with the guy playing mill/gates/control/fog or whatever, and I find that generally LGS's with non-standard rules are more likely to have other issues.
Considering the OP's experience, I'm assuming he went to TSG in Temecula, which typically does things where they give out random prizes or what not to people wearing x costume/article of clothing they set prior to the event. GMI is probably the second closest store to you, but they only do limited/modern FNM. Dice of War is my preferred Riverside store, but it's all the way up in Rancho. OC has a TON of decent to great shops, most of which do events every night, if you're up for the drive.
The OP comes off slightly brash but to be honest i agree with most of the points being brought up.
Its like if I was going to a bar to watch a fight and every time two a brawl breaks out because someone just knocked someone out on TV. I wouldn't go back to that place because its a bad atmosphere.
Its the same with LGS. I don't know how so many people reply with "oh they're just stereotypes" when I'm sure we've all experienced most of them:
- ITS THE SMELL - my gf walked into the shop I used to play at and thats the first thing she commented on when we left.
- that loud guy - every shop has one. They stand next to you and yell really loud about anything
- Fedoras - seriously i've seen 3 people that don't look ridiculous in a fedora and i think one of them was justin timberlake in a video.
- that person that doesn't know anything else in the world other than magic so they can't talk to you about anything. They can tel you everything about interactions but if you talk about ANY other thing happening in the real world, they have no clue what you're talking about.
- the guy who has to make a comment every time you hit one of your outs.
(although this one isn't that common because most people don't want to be confrontational).
- The person without a filter who makes comments about women, race, sexual orientation, etc.
Do all of these exist outside of magic? Yes. But somehow I've run into every single one of these while playing magic at a shop. I can't say that about any other activity that I participate in.
With that said, I've made some really cool friends from magic but they're all old and have stuff going on in life and play magic as a competitive hobby. They're not magic players first and then everything else second.
Tier 1 in temecula. The one with the '32 ford sitting in front of it near chopper gallery. but they closed down like last week. I walked into TSG exactly 2 times, standing around for 25 mins waiting to make a purchase, i pulled my phone out, went to amazon and made the same purchase while waiting for the shop owner to get off of the phone. then turned around and left. shop owner waved goodbye though which was nice of him, considering i gave amazon my business instead.
i thought all card shops had the space issue and the pairings issue?
i assumed that card shops don't make a lot of money, so they can't afford to make 3-5 print outs of pairings or some extra $40 tables from walmart so i never had issue with it. I also assumed the business of buying and selling paper on a secondary market does not net enough profit to take on staff to organize card/product. This was all fine in my book, as it comes with the nature of the store/game.
my issues aren't with the shop owners, they're just running a business.working small-law before i got into the position where i am now, i understand how hard it is to run a small business. Not to mention a fad driven shop with razor thin profit margins.my point was more with the playerbase acting like they do, because they think they have to act that way inorder to pander to the nerdy subculture demo. like a bad episode of big bang theory, or some model trying to fit in at a comic book convention
also are you guys actually telling me there are shops out there that make enough money to actually not just call out random first names to pair against other first names as if everyone in the shop was a regular?
I've only had two LGS experiences and both of them were enough for me to stop playing magic both times, people were just too rude. One of the stores is closed now and the other one I do not know.
The only time I play paper magic is with a friend and I usually go with said friend to SCG Opens and he wants to try GP's.
I never realized how many men judge other men based on how they are dressed. Seems pretty [mod]<]/mod]gay[mod]>[/mod] to me (not that there's anything wrong with that).
[mod]Warning issued for inappropriate language. -Xen[/mod]
Tier 1 in temecula. The one with the '32 ford sitting in front of it near chopper gallery. but they closed down like last week. I walked into TSG exactly 2 times, standing around for 25 mins waiting to make a purchase, i pulled my phone out, went to amazon and made the same purchase while waiting for the shop owner to get off of the phone. then turned around and left. shop owner waved goodbye though which was nice of him, considering i gave amazon my business instead.
i thought all card shops had the space issue and the pairings issue?
i assumed that card shops don't make a lot of money, so they can't afford to make 3-5 print outs of pairings or some extra $40 tables from walmart so i never had issue with it. I also assumed the business of buying and selling paper on a secondary market does not net enough profit to take on staff to organize card/product. This was all fine in my book, as it comes with the nature of the store/game.
my issues aren't with the shop owners, they're just running a business.working small-law before i got into the position where i am now, i understand how hard it is to run a small business. Not to mention a fad driven shop with razor thin profit margins.my point was more with the playerbase acting like they do, because they think they have to act that way inorder to pander to the nerdy subculture demo. like a bad episode of big bang theory, or some model trying to fit in at a comic book convention
also are you guys actually telling me there are shops out there that make enough money to actually not just call out random first names to pair against other first names as if everyone in the shop was a regular?
Yeah, I've never had this "pairings" issue. Every shop I go to (barring MTGdistribution, which has issues, but free tourneys with $100-150 prize pools, i'll overlook a LOT) has table numbers posted, and puts up a pairings sheet in 1-2 places every round. Most even have tablecloths and/or the full table playmats.
I never realized how many men judge other men based on how they are dressed. Seems pretty gay to me (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Everything one does is judged. Regardless of where you are.
And it is not gay to compliment or critique another guy on their outfit.
To underscore AJ's point:
We all develop preconceived notions about the people we see. We assume that smelly, dirty, slovenly dressed people are homeless. We infer that guys in two or three piece suits are businessmen. And yes, we often judge people as hipsters/geeks/etc. based on their style of dress.
I dare you to tell us you've done any of the above, Funk.
BTW, anecdotal evidence time: I know plenty of gay guys who couldn't care less about fashion. (They're not slobs, mind you. They just have different interests.)
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
I never realized how many men judge other men based on how they are dressed. Seems pretty gay to me (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Ridiculous. It is 100% human nature to make first impression judgments based entirely on appearances. Part of natural social interaction.
I really don't understand the fedora thing. If you are attending an event (dinner party or theater) that requires formal wear and you include a fedora with your 3 piece suit that's one thing. If you go to the local burger joint or walmart wearing cargo shorts and a fiery dragon/anime tee shirt then top it off with a formal dress hat it's just appalling. Identical to just wearing a starched button down with sweatpants and flip flops.
You're allowed to wear whatever you want and behave as you wish. But I'm allowed to call it ridiculous and laugh at what I find to be absurd.
We all develop preconceived notions about the people we see. We assume that smelly, dirty, slovenly dressed people are homeless. We infer that guys in two or three piece suits are businessmen. And yes, we often judge people as hipsters/geeks/etc. based on their style of dress.
I dare you to tell us you've done any of the above, Funk.
BTW, anecdotal evidence time: I know plenty of gay guys who couldn't care less about fashion. (They're not slobs, mind you. They just have different interests.)
Don't include me in your "We". I've hung out with preps, nerds, crust punks, and dudes who wore suits to school every day for the heck of it. I don't give a crap what you wear, I give a crap what you act like. And looking down on someone because of what they wear is acting like a jerk.
Ridiculous. It is 100% human nature to make first impression judgments based entirely on appearances. Part of natural social interaction.
I really don't understand the fedora thing. If you are attending an event (dinner party or theater) that requires formal wear and you include a fedora with your 3 piece suit that's one thing. If you go to the local burger joint or walmart wearing cargo shorts and a fiery dragon/anime tee shirt then top it off with a formal dress hat it's just appalling. Identical to just wearing a starched button down with sweatpants and flip flops.
You're allowed to wear whatever you want and behave as you wish. But I'm allowed to call it ridiculous and laugh at what I find to be absurd.
Sure you are. And I'm allowed to call you an effeminate jerk for doing so.
Exactly. Whatever clothing people wear or feel is fashionable is their prerogative, arbitrary, and shouldn't affect the game experience for anyone else. With that general attitude you may as well build your decks around invoke prejudice.
Then again, if I walked into my LGS and saw someone wearing a white hood or sitting in Nazi attire I'd obviously take offense even if it was Halloween. Even freedom of expression has its socially acceptable limits.
Let people dress like Nazis if they want, lel canada with its lack of freedom of speech.
Out of curiosity, have any of you who happen to be nerdy, non-athletic people tried to interact with the sports jocks at school? I bet you were treated similarly to the way experienced magic players tend to treat new players.
Point in, is any culture, those coming from the outside are going to be just that, outsiders. Now while that doesn't condone being a jerk to them, its just that its human nature. Why do you think wars happen? All because there are people with different cultures.
Don't include me in your "We". I've hung out with preps, nerds, crust punks, and dudes who wore suits to school every day for the heck of it. I don't give a crap what you wear, I give a crap what you act like. And looking down on someone because of what they wear is acting like a jerk.
Sure you are. And I'm allowed to call you an effeminate jerk for doing so.
Suppose a guy came in wearing a teletubby costume and spoke in baby talk. I would make judgments about that person solely based off of those facts. To do so is human. Don't tell me you walk around with no preconceived notions or judgements. You have proven otherwise by defining the act of one guy noticing other men's clothing as "gay and effeminate" behavior. So don't go all holier than thou, casting stones from atop that high horse. You too are human.
In my experience fedora wearers adhere to the nerd hipster and neck beard stereotypes. Are there exceptions? Without a doubt. But drawing on past experience makes me expect them to lack social interaction skills and hygiene just like past experience makes me expect open flames to be too hot to touch.
Out of curiosity, have any of you who happen to be nerdy, non-athletic people tried to interact with the sports jocks at school? I bet you were treated similarly to the way experienced magic players tend to treat new players.
Where do you get that experienced magic players tend to treat new players badly, most of the time I have seen it (including when i joined the game) everyone around was very helpful towards them including those that take the tournament decently serious. Sorry if the general experience isn't the same for everyone here.
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Everyone has a shot at an FNM promo. Half of them go to random players every time.
I'm also not certain why people can't dress in a Fedora/Suit if they want. Maybe you think it's ridiculous, but we're also using $50 pieces of cardboard to pretend to cast spells at each other. Really the only legitimate complaint someone can have is the smell (which is certainly bad sometimes). Otherwise complaining about how people dress is just elitist at best.
It is really hard to get women to play mtg when a solid 25% of the player base are creepy/weird/smelly dudes. Just isn't a great environment for the ladies.
However, I must disagree with the sentiment that one's clothes can stunt the growth of a community. While basic hygiene is a basic expectation for participating in such an event, the notion that a particular style of clothing could make others feel excluded is, to me at least, nearly inconceivable. I usually wear blue jeans, a t-shirt, and an unbuttoned button-down to FNM, but I regularly see others wear attire as varied as uniforms from a job and very formal suits to the tournament.
It used to be clean, orderly, and all around a nice place to be.
Then the main employee left, and when he left, he also kicked the other two employees who were living with him out because they didn't pay rent for months.
From there, the store devolved into a place where one of the employees basically lived for a few months. Didn't even have the common decency to spray some Febreeze every now and then. Placed reeked of BO next time I went in, so I bought my stuff and left, never to go back.
The people playing there also had something to do with it, as it was a bunch of rulesharks and general *******s.
All too often you have unprofessional players running the shop and as a result you get a dirty/sloppy atmosphere that can certainly be a turn-off for normal people.
Exactly. Whatever clothing people wear or feel is fashionable is their prerogative, arbitrary, and shouldn't affect the game experience for anyone else. With that general attitude you may as well build your decks around invoke prejudice.
Then again, if I walked into my LGS and saw someone wearing a white hood or sitting in Nazi attire I'd obviously take offense even if it was Halloween. Even freedom of expression has its socially acceptable limits.
Sounds like you need to find a shop more suited to your tastes. There are certain sports bars I don't go to for football or fights, because the usual crowd is annoying beyond what I want to deal with. It's something you find everywhere, and the more you get out, the better you get at ignoring it. You may come back in a coupe of years and realize the crowd doesn't bother you much anymore, or that they've changed. If people are dressed strangely, fine, I doubt I'd want to take them home anyway.
If they have hygiene issues, that's something the shop needs to deal with. The owner of my local LGS will, very discreetly, call an individual out, and also publicly announce that, while it shouldn't be something they have to announce, everyone needs to mind their hygiene.
As for the rules, call and ask ahead of time. I personally wouldn't play somewhere with short rounds, because I don't want to be forced into a draw with the guy playing mill/gates/control/fog or whatever, and I find that generally LGS's with non-standard rules are more likely to have other issues.
Its like if I was going to a bar to watch a fight and every time two a brawl breaks out because someone just knocked someone out on TV. I wouldn't go back to that place because its a bad atmosphere.
Its the same with LGS. I don't know how so many people reply with "oh they're just stereotypes" when I'm sure we've all experienced most of them:
- ITS THE SMELL - my gf walked into the shop I used to play at and thats the first thing she commented on when we left.
- that loud guy - every shop has one. They stand next to you and yell really loud about anything
- Fedoras - seriously i've seen 3 people that don't look ridiculous in a fedora and i think one of them was justin timberlake in a video.
- that person that doesn't know anything else in the world other than magic so they can't talk to you about anything. They can tel you everything about interactions but if you talk about ANY other thing happening in the real world, they have no clue what you're talking about.
- the guy who has to make a comment every time you hit one of your outs.
(although this one isn't that common because most people don't want to be confrontational).
- The person without a filter who makes comments about women, race, sexual orientation, etc.
Do all of these exist outside of magic? Yes. But somehow I've run into every single one of these while playing magic at a shop. I can't say that about any other activity that I participate in.
With that said, I've made some really cool friends from magic but they're all old and have stuff going on in life and play magic as a competitive hobby. They're not magic players first and then everything else second.
So in closing, get off my lawn you damn kids.
i thought all card shops had the space issue and the pairings issue?
i assumed that card shops don't make a lot of money, so they can't afford to make 3-5 print outs of pairings or some extra $40 tables from walmart so i never had issue with it. I also assumed the business of buying and selling paper on a secondary market does not net enough profit to take on staff to organize card/product. This was all fine in my book, as it comes with the nature of the store/game.
my issues aren't with the shop owners, they're just running a business.working small-law before i got into the position where i am now, i understand how hard it is to run a small business. Not to mention a fad driven shop with razor thin profit margins.my point was more with the playerbase acting like they do, because they think they have to act that way inorder to pander to the nerdy subculture demo. like a bad episode of big bang theory, or some model trying to fit in at a comic book convention
also are you guys actually telling me there are shops out there that make enough money to actually not just call out random first names to pair against other first names as if everyone in the shop was a regular?
The only time I play paper magic is with a friend and I usually go with said friend to SCG Opens and he wants to try GP's.
R/W Devotion
Mono-R Devotion
Legacy
Burn
Punishing Jund
[mod]Warning issued for inappropriate language. -Xen[/mod]
Yeah, I've never had this "pairings" issue. Every shop I go to (barring MTGdistribution, which has issues, but free tourneys with $100-150 prize pools, i'll overlook a LOT) has table numbers posted, and puts up a pairings sheet in 1-2 places every round. Most even have tablecloths and/or the full table playmats.
Everything one does is judged. Regardless of where you are.
And it is not gay to compliment or critique another guy on their outfit.
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
To underscore AJ's point:
We all develop preconceived notions about the people we see. We assume that smelly, dirty, slovenly dressed people are homeless. We infer that guys in two or three piece suits are businessmen. And yes, we often judge people as hipsters/geeks/etc. based on their style of dress.
I dare you to tell us you've done any of the above, Funk.
BTW, anecdotal evidence time: I know plenty of gay guys who couldn't care less about fashion. (They're not slobs, mind you. They just have different interests.)
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
Ridiculous. It is 100% human nature to make first impression judgments based entirely on appearances. Part of natural social interaction.
I really don't understand the fedora thing. If you are attending an event (dinner party or theater) that requires formal wear and you include a fedora with your 3 piece suit that's one thing. If you go to the local burger joint or walmart wearing cargo shorts and a fiery dragon/anime tee shirt then top it off with a formal dress hat it's just appalling. Identical to just wearing a starched button down with sweatpants and flip flops.
You're allowed to wear whatever you want and behave as you wish. But I'm allowed to call it ridiculous and laugh at what I find to be absurd.
Perhaps effeminate is a better word?
Don't include me in your "We". I've hung out with preps, nerds, crust punks, and dudes who wore suits to school every day for the heck of it. I don't give a crap what you wear, I give a crap what you act like. And looking down on someone because of what they wear is acting like a jerk.
Sure you are. And I'm allowed to call you an effeminate jerk for doing so.
Flame warning issued.
-Memnarch
Let people dress like Nazis if they want, lel canada with its lack of freedom of speech.
It sounds like you are saying that only women [should] compliment people....
You have never commented on a friends shirt because it was funny? In some cases, it will be a compliment.
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
Paying someone a compliment is okay. Being catty just because you see a person wearing something you wouldn't wear is not okay.
You should realize that he's saying this in the context of a thread that says people in fedoras and suits drive people away from the game
That is not a compliment.
Point in, is any culture, those coming from the outside are going to be just that, outsiders. Now while that doesn't condone being a jerk to them, its just that its human nature. Why do you think wars happen? All because there are people with different cultures.
Suppose a guy came in wearing a teletubby costume and spoke in baby talk. I would make judgments about that person solely based off of those facts. To do so is human. Don't tell me you walk around with no preconceived notions or judgements. You have proven otherwise by defining the act of one guy noticing other men's clothing as "gay and effeminate" behavior. So don't go all holier than thou, casting stones from atop that high horse. You too are human.
In my experience fedora wearers adhere to the nerd hipster and neck beard stereotypes. Are there exceptions? Without a doubt. But drawing on past experience makes me expect them to lack social interaction skills and hygiene just like past experience makes me expect open flames to be too hot to touch.
Where do you get that experienced magic players tend to treat new players badly, most of the time I have seen it (including when i joined the game) everyone around was very helpful towards them including those that take the tournament decently serious. Sorry if the general experience isn't the same for everyone here.