Playtesting Champions With Cats

[BNakagawa]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

It is easy to get them from jumping on table. Make them so fat, they cant jump.

 

Seriously, my late cat used to like waiting till I was reading something, and then plop on top of it. I would remove him and put him on floor. If he really wanted the attention (almost always), he would look at me like I was stupid and proceed to do same as before. Usually I was sitting in the old recliner, so I would pull him off to my side and pet him while reading. (Made turning the pages difficult but compromises had to be made )

 

That might be a hidden advantage to reading stuff on computers - cats are not so prone to sitting on screens (mostly because we rarely have them lying flat)

 

That said, I'm surprised that ninja cats didn't do more to suppress the development of flat-screen monitors, given how fond most cats are of sleeping on top of the conventional crts.

[Seanaci]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Bwaha. That's awesome.

 

But you forgot the part where the kitty bats all the dice onto the floor. We used to watch our cat do that, bemused, then check to see what he rolled when it fell.

 

He always rolled better than I did . . .

 

LOL

 

Be honest, did you use your cat's roll sometimes? I'll bet ya did. I mean, I would have.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

LOL

 

Be honest, did you use your cat's roll sometimes? I'll bet ya did. I mean, I would have.

Sadly, no. My GM went with the no-getting-critters-who-have-innate-Luck-to-roll-for-you house rule.

 

And my cats do have Luck. About six dice of it apiece.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Back in the day, there was this really cool comic/game store called Planet 10 which had a game room in the back and a store cat. That cat would go bananas for those round weighted d6s. I always wanted to play a game and let the cat roll the dice for me, but they wouldn't let me...

[Koshka]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

As for sticky tape: we tried it to keep the cat from scratching up our La-Z-Boy chair, and she decided the sticky tape was REALLY COOL and an AWESOME TOY and to play with it she just HAD TO SCRATCH THE CHAIR EVEN MORE!!!

 

Sigh.

 

One of my friends (one half of the couple whose house we game at) has been getting a bunch of stuff off eBay recently for a project, and their kitten decided that packing tape and bubble wrap exist so cats can chew on them. But then, there's a reason they named that kitten "Rascal" ....

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

I have four cats (one of whom I have nicknamed the Atomic Death Kitten).

 

Player A has one cat,

 

Player B has two dogs.

 

Player C has a dog and a cat.

 

Player D has an apartment with approximately two square feet of uncluttered space, counting all floors and walls (and I'm surprised he doesn't have anime or Steelers stuff on the ceiling yet).

 

We usually game at Player A's, and yes, this is all very, very true.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Where I game, the guys have a cat named Buddy. If he get's mad at any player, he uses players things as he's litter box, many times I have had to dry my carrier and books off, then use mega-amounts of stuff to get rid of the smell. So you have to find a place where he can't get to them, but that makes him even madder.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Cool.

 

We had a cat that loved to come lay on the map. We used a dry erase board, and his moving around would erase pieces of the map (we made sure we had non-toxic pens just because of this).

 

He was a classic orange tabby. He was nicknamed "The Great Orange Cat of the Apocolypse"

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

That might be a hidden advantage to reading stuff on computers - cats are not so prone to sitting on screens (mostly because we rarely have them lying flat)

 

Naw, they just like to lay on, and walk across keyb/_p9;lki7nhy65tfvrqeoards.

[Egyptoid]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

I used to game at a shop that had a store cat.

 

before the game you had to ask your opponent if they knew the cat rules

 

basically it was any miniature toppled by the cat suffered damage in the game in question.

any miniature knocked on floor by cat was destroyed.

 

most people were too tightly wound to find this humorous.

[MPT]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

This also reminds me of when my friends baby was at toddler stage (except for the lock in bathroom bit).

[teh bunneh]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

When we're gaming with miniatures (which is most times), both cats like to jump up on the miniatures table (Arrgghhh!! Catzilla!). Saturnine has the extraordinary ability to thread through miniatures and terrain and never disturb a single one. Gemstone likes to grab minis in her mouth and run away with them.

 

Squirt bottles are handy.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

When we're gaming with miniatures (which is most times), both cats like to jump up on the miniatures table (Arrgghhh!! Catzilla!). Saturnine has the extraordinary ability to thread through miniatures and terrain and never disturb a single one. Gemstone likes to grab minis in her mouth and run away with them.

 

Squirt bottles are handy.

Heh. The first time that happened, we were setting up the hex map for combat, and the cat leapt onto the table to see what was going on. The GM, without missing a beat, said, "And in the middle of this encounter, all of a sudden, a giant cat appears."

 

Became a bit of a running gag for a while, actually.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Heh. The first time that happened, we were setting up the hex map for combat, and the cat leapt onto the table to see what was going on. The GM, without missing a beat, said, "And in the middle of this encounter, all of a sudden, a giant cat appears."

 

Became a bit of a running gag for a while, actually.

 

One GM's cat was fond of running across the battle map, but didn't stay on it, resulting in wrinkles in the map and minis strewn everywhere. We just started saying "Earthquake!!"

[Badger]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

We game often at our place, and have two cats.

 

One of those two is afraid of strange people (and gamers are all strange as hell ) so he hides under the bed for the duration.

 

The second tends to come down about 11PM and ***** at us that it's bedtime, or failing that, time to bribe cats with food, after which he retires for the evening.

 

We've never had a probem with cats on the gaming table.

 

Yeah, my cat usually bolted for the basement when we had company. I dont think he liked anybody but me (most of the time, LOL) and my mother (well at dinner time, when she fed him at least)

[Badger]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

That might be a hidden advantage to reading stuff on computers - cats are not so prone to sitting on screens (mostly because we rarely have them lying flat)

 

That said, I'm surprised that ninja cats didn't do more to suppress the development of flat-screen monitors, given how fond most cats are of sleeping on top of the conventional crts.

 

 

Umm, now that you mention it. My cat got soemthing in his head to sleep on my desk with the computer on it. He'd always knock the keyboard off if he moved too much. We eventually said enough and put a plastic cover over it, when not in use. The very next day after the start of this, he jumps on the chair, thinks for a minute, then climbs under the opening at the bottom of the plastic cover and basically looks now like the bubble boy (err, cat). @2minutes later (CRASH) there goes the keyboard dropping.

[Tim]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Umm' date=' now that you mention it. My cat got soemthing in his head to sleep on my desk with the computer on it. He'd always knock the keyboard off if he moved too much. We eventually said enough and put a plastic cover over it, when not in use. The very next day after the start of this, he jumps on the chair, thinks for a minute, then climbs under the opening at the bottom of the plastic cover and basically looks now like the bubble boy (err, cat). @2minutes later (CRASH) there goes the keyboard dropping.[/quote']

Your cat was not to be denied!

[zornwil]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

I just had to bump this!

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Cats & Gaming:

 

1) Both of my current campaigns are held in houses with cats. In the Knightshift Stories campaign, there are two cats (Hodi and Izzy), while in my Legends of the Emerald Sea campaign there are three cats (Isis, Sugar & Spice). All five cats love to lay on the battlemat, even when they can't tolerate being around one another. Hodi is the worst of all the cats (and the biggest, go figure) when it comes to laying on character sheets and books, but he also loves climbing inside bags (including the small gym bag I use to cart my collection of 4th Ed. books around).

 

2) I used to game BattleTech at a house where the cat would meticulously bat each and every 'mech off of the table, but would leave the dice, pencils and snacks alone. After a particularly bad session where several of the mechs were reduced to pieces after such attention, we started gaming on the floor and the cat left us alone.

 

3) A friend of mine in the early days of gaming had taught his cat to roll dice in a bowl by batting them around. The trick was cute, but we eventually had to tell him that he would have to limit the activity to a few rolls a night, since the cat would get very energetic in batting the dice, especially if there were more than a couple.

 

4) Another place I've gamed had a dog named Pete who was an immense and aging Golden Retriever. His tail wagged so energetically and was so massive, it could leave bruises on unprotected shins under the table. His favorite place to lay was under the gaming table, and he would occasionally fall asleep there and begin to snore so loudly that the game could not continue...

 

Matt "My-dog-up-and-died-And-after-20-years-I-still-miss-him" Frisbee

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Well the place I play on now has five more cats. All kittens, so far they haven't become an issue, but the three older ones can be a handfull. One Mackie loves to lay on 'my' Character Sheets more than any other at the table, but I sit in one place on the table Mackie won't as bad. So needless to say I have to sit there.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

My last game had all three cats on the gaming table, at one point or another. The kitten came up and started batting at the dice and pencils, big ol' Jeff plunked down on my notes, then Herc tried to carry away some of the dice in his mouth. Then the kitten curled up on a player's dice box and fell asleep, and the player hoped she wouldn't have to get more dice anytime soon.

[mayapuppies]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

Many many years ago I had a cat named Food, I used to run games sitting on the floor as I moved around too much and needed too much space for a couch or table. Well, she decided that sitting on my shoulder/back while I was hunched over books was a great thing.

 

It became so common that she just became known as the GM's Familiar.

 

As to why her name was Food, she would literally, sit in the food bowl when eating. A trick she learned to ward off the 2 dogs and 3 other cats.

[zornwil]

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

 

As to gaming logistics, in our place we keep the cats from going downstairs, primarily because we have one gamer who is allergic plus our furnace and my music equipment is down there, so we keep the cats away from that in general.