Remember. If you’re a jerk, people won’t want to play against you. And if you have nobody to play against, Magic isn’t very fun. True, it’ll probably never get to the point where everyone knows your MTGO name, your LGS, etc, but why let it even start down that road at all?
You might not be able to please everyone, but you don’t (typically) need to be a jerk to anyone. Magic is a community. Don’t make your part of it toxic.
One of the most important parts of mastering a skill is learning how to teach it to others effectively.
That is an excellent example of the distinction between good and bad players.
I got into Magic way back in the dawn of time when it first started. I had poured way too much money into it, and when I finally got out, I sold my complete set of 1st edition, and Arabian Nights for a hefty sum and used that money to get the hell out of dodge and try to find myself in Florida (it didn’t work.)
When I finally came back to Magic, it’d been several years and may different iterations and expansions of the game had gone by. I was at the local game store, just kind of hanging out, when a group of people were trying to get a game of Emperor (I think that’s what it was called) going and they were looking for one final person. I said, sure, provided that they understand that a) It’d been at least five years since I last played and b) they’d have to provide me with a deck.
Everybody seemed to be on board with this so I sat down and proceeded to play. Things went okay for the first couple of turns, until I drew a card that had an ability that I didn’t recognize, and that wasn’t explained on the card. So I leaned over to my partner and asked him what the ability mean.
The leader of the other team (the Emperor?) just slams his fists on the table and just yells at me, face beet red, “NO KIBBUTZING AT THE TABLE!!!” I’m like, “Dude, chill I’m just trying to figure out what this card doe-” “NO KIBBUTZING!”
So I just quietly nod, reassemble the deck and give it back to the guy who lent it to me. I thank him for letting me play, give the finger to the dude with anger management issues, and I haven’t picked up a physical copy of the game since. Sure there’s good players out there, but sometimes all it takes is that one asshat to ruin it completely for you.
This is so important, and it applies to all hobbies and especially to all gaming, because of the social and community-driven nature of it. You can’t play MtG or D&D or even Monopoly without other people, and if you’re an asshole, then other people will not play with you. It takes so much less effort to share why you enjoy it, to help others understand and become equally invested and to foster growth in your hobby, and then you have so many more people to play with. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?
If you play Magic or Pathfinder or whatever, and you pride yourself on being 1) better than others at it, 2) heavy-handed with it, 3) a rules lawyer about it, and/or 4) judgmental about the innocent choices of others who want to enjoy your hobby, then the same thing will eventually happen to you that happens to all such people: Whatever community access you have will shrivel up away from you, and if there’s anyone left who’ll fuck with you, at all, it’ll be the same two or three stale people with the same bad attitude, bringing out the worst in each other more and more until one day y’all can’t stand the sight of whatever hobby it was that brought you together, in the first place.
When you ruin it for others, you’re ruining it for yourself. Don’t be a dick; share the game.
