Ah WR, you continue to be teh awesome to my days.

Well, my wife is a typical young attractive female with few geek interests. I can tell you that she loves gossip. Buy some Ok!, Us Weekly and In Touch magazines and read up on celebrity gossip. Bring what you learn into conversations. This is actually easy prep work. Gossip is only ever a week old, so if you're going to a party, buying the current week's issue, reading, and conversing on topics you have just read is all you need. Information backlog is irrelevant. As these magazines come out on Fridays, and parties are on weekends usually, you can buy it, read it on the way to the party, and possibly have gossip so fresh the girls haven't heard about it yet. INSTANT win, for sure. This WILL work.

I don'T recommend gossiping about actual people you know. While this will definately get female attention, you are unwittingly getting into complex female politics that can have you suddenly on someone's "side". Don't go there, it's not worth it on long term.

You can however discuss reality TV. This works great too. If you can hold a gossipy conversation about The Bahcelor, The Biggest Loser, Survivor, etc, you are bound to get a female interested. The downside is that you have to watch these shows in order to discuss them. IMO, not worth it.

Females also like fashion. If you talk about where you bought your clothes, and how they were on sale, you will appear intelligent. Intelligence is measured by how much money you save by picking the right sales, nothing else. Oh, and when you buy something on sale, you do not "save" money. You "make" money. This is crucial to understand. Other generalizations about girls may not hold true, but "making" money when buying stuff on sale is universal.

For slightly older females - late 20s to 30s - talking about cooking may also reward. You can somehow drop into conversation "the other day I made this incredible osso bucco...". If one girls goes "You cook?" you may have a bite, and can continue talking about cooking. If you do not actually cook, you cannot use this. You may however take the neophyte cook approach and say how you tried a recipe and it failed, and ask whomever shows the most interest her advice on how to succeed. She will find you cute and disarming, and you will get into the trust zone quickly.

As you have noticed, some subjects are of GREAT interest to women, but men cannot use these subjects. Make-up, hair styling experiences, etc. As much as it would seem like a good way in, you just can't use them, sorry. Unless you're gay or want to appear gay, but that won't get you were you want in the end, so no good.

Be careful with the cooking angle. I've noticed that it can be very hit-or-miss; one minute I'm talking about the great Indian Pudding I made with the half-pound of chocolate and they're all over me, and then the next I'm talking about the amazing sausage filling mixed with ramen seasoning and wrapped in woven bacon and I'm getting looks like I'd just killed someone's dog. Women are deeply confusing creatures.

~J

My son, you have entered the First Circle. Well done. Understand... this is only the beginning.

@WR:
You can always go the consensual way by talking about "universal" subjects such as :
* job: "what do you do for a living?", if it looks like she actually likes her job, ask her more about it, bonus points if you have some knowledge in that field.
* music, cinema, tv shows
* books might not work, but who wants a girl who doesn't like to read anyway? Just don't start right away on sci-fi/fantasy/military books.
While martial arts might not be interesting to her, you could have good result by mentioning that you're practicing one. Generally speaking, funny or interesting anecdotes about your life can be a way to help you be more interesting to talk to.

You have to find something she likes and then talk about it, or rather have her talk about it. Usually, starting with "what do you do for a living?" and "what do you do in your spare time?" are a good start to find the right topic.
But BE CAREFUL! If you're too understanding and "nice to talk too" you'll end up being "a very good friend" and she'll walk back home with the outlaw biker who hasn't spoken to her once, except to tell her something rude and sexist. To avoid this, you have to "challenge" her. Tell her you disagree with some of the thing she says, tease her about things she likes (but is okay with being teased about, such as some tv shows, don't tease her about her work for charities).

Non-verbal language is very important too: look her in the eyes, if you feel like the conversation is going well, slowly lean a bit closer to her (if sitting in front of her at a table). Touching (the shoulder, for example) is sometimes a good idea, but it depends a lot on the person you're with and how easily you do it.

(Of course, as to be expected on such a forum, all this comes from a long-time single who just happened to be lucky one evening.)

The primary manners needed to attract female attention begin with dismissing them utterly. I do not mean one should merely feign indifference. No, despite the duplicitous insistence of polite society to the contrary, you must accept the natural superiority of the male mind and body to the female's stunted and childlike physiology.

Once you realize this implicit empirical fact, you must move on to understanding your superiority over not just the fairer sex, but also the rest of your own. With few exceptions, you have no equal; something you have always known, but failed to wholeheartedly embrace due to the pressures of your excellent breeding, which sought to instill humility and modesty in demeanor. While useful for business dealings and in church, in the realm of matrimony and mistresses, it is an unwelcome inhibition. Pride, where there is a real superiority of mind, as with you, is not a flaw.

Save a small circle of intimate friends, whom you bless with unfailing generosity - due not to their many skills or large estates, but to your divinely inspired grace; allow no one to win your approbation. That is not an excuse to be rude, per se; rather you need not condescend to compliment or even offer platitudes on barometric measures as suggested by the bloating banal lexicons of disingenuous greetings. If forced to take notice of a woman, quickly find something in her physiognomy to remark upon, which will leave no doubt of your distaste (i.e. "I can see why she didn't go into modeling" or "She's almost pretty, really. A pity about her nose.").

If you cannot avoid introduction to a woman, do not sneer! I cannot emphasise this enough. Keep your expression neutral, incline slightly, say "Madame," pause for a moment, then continue, "If you'll please excuse me", and resume your stoic perusal of the room. Try not to make eye contact with anyone except at the moment of introduction. When in conversation, only turn to look at the speaker to express incredulity at their interests. At clubs, dance well, but not often, and never with anyone who asks you.

Finally, it is absolutely critical that you are rich. It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that any man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. But there is an equal and opposite truth, that a man of modest means is a bachelor. Therefore, inherit yourself a mint, and you'll find the attention of women inexorably pointed in your direction.

My son, you have entered the Second Circle. Well done.

Kanada Ten; Substitute women with men and you pretty much got it right.

If you really want to snag a girl, treat her like a human instead of meat or a walking blow up doll. Be courteous, (spelling?!) but do not fawn. Be a gentleman, but do not overdo it. Be polite, clean and smell of a good aftershave and have a care with your appearance. Sloth is not the way to get a good woman. Above all, be true to who you are. If she wants to change you into something you are not (and I am not talking about a change of underwear or a nice suit or nice clothes, gents), then get out! QUICK!

My husband snagged me by being whom he was: True to himself. He talked about guns, blades (and not between the fourth and fifth rib either), martial arts (not main stream karate or judo or jiu-jitsu), books (sci-fi, adventure, RPG, SR, mil-spec stuff) and other such stuff. How to poison a person, religion (asatrue, buddhism, boddhisattva, shinto, konfuism (sp?!)
Basically all the things listed you do NOT talk with a woman/girl about.
And that was when I first met him.
But hey, I am a nerdish geekgamergirl.

Though I do like popmusic. Any one got any Christina Aquilera?! My achilles heel.... *chuckle*

BOLLOCKS!!!

My biggest piece of advice is just to present yourself as confident. I've only learned this over the last few years, when I've finally become comfortable with the person that I am, that if you can't present yourself as someone that can take care of himself, no one will ever be attracted to you. Sure, you might have lots of friends, but will you have a partner? Someone to be intimate with? Probably not.

Because girls like guys with confidence. Mine was attracted at first by how arrogant I could be, first online, and then as I came out of my shell more, out in the real world too. And I don't mean kicking puppies and flipping off boxes of kittens, but by being someone that knows he looks good, knows he's smart and capable, and won't take shit from anyone. Confidence.

But grooming is so important its not even funny. Wash, brush, shave, take a shower at least every day, comb your hair out, keep your glasses clean (one of the things I always forget) and keep breath mints on hand. You could be the most charismatic asshole on the block, but if you smell like you just crawled out of a garbage can, no one is going to want anything to do with you.

Especially you.

(Hi hun)

There really is no way to present sarcasm or humour in this medium without the little smiley faces, is there? I didn't think I needed them.

In order to research this topic, I have started to read a book on female bullying called Odd Girl Out.

http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Girl-Out-Culture...9428&sr=8-1

I've read the first three chapters so far.

According to the book, girls prize their relationships with other girls very highly. The key thing is the existence of a relationship. According to the book, if girl A is best friends with girl B, and then girl B starts to become emotionally abusive to girl A, then girl A will typically fear termination of the relationship more than anything else, and so will go along with being controlled and abused by girl B. Also, if directly questioned about why she is being mean or whatever, girl B will deny doing anything.

Interestingly, the author mentioned how in one case, an emotionally abused girl's brothers were almost exasperated and asked her why she didn't go and simply beat up the other girl who was emotionally abusing her. That really stuck out in my mind because of course the first thing that occurs to me when reading about situations like that is "why don't you beat the crap out of the person abusing you?"

EDIT: The nature of the abuse can be things like coordinating all of someone's friends to ignore them, whisper while they're there, write up lists of negative qualities, etc. Not even something like straight up denigration or punching. It's the fear of social ostracization that is the most significant according to that book.

Well teenage boys power come from physial prowesses, while women's comes from social standing.

Anyway, just saw Megan's Body - sorry, Jennifer's Body - and that's a pretty good movie. I thought of it just now cause of the abusive bff angle. That movie felt like an episode of Buffy, if Buffy wasn't in town to stop the evil thing. Actually, it's like if Willow and Faith were best friends when Faith went bad.

If I may add to your list...
*Chick lit, but your head might explode from the lack of. Well, suffice to say, not my kind of genre. Oprahs bookclub is a way to find litterature.
*Chick series. Desperate Housewives, Sex in the City, stuff like that. Though with Sex in the City it is sort of a handbook in how to decode female behaviour.
* Chick flicks, though I have no idea what they are. I avoid them like Yersinia pestis.
*Gossip magasines are the way to go. I have no idea why the lifes of the IN-crowd is so fascinating, but it is.
* Cooking, but try to mix low fat recipees with the more unhealthy ones.
* Learn how to cook.

* The art of tea making, green tea, black tea, white tea, with/out honey, milk, sugar...
* Coffee.. Oh the heavenly scent of well made coffee!!

*Remember to smile.
* Remember to be courteous and gentlemanly. The door, the chair etc.
* Remember to give compliments. Compliment her hair, her scent (for the love of the gods, do not call it smell), the care she took in her appearance, the way she smiles, the way she laughs. NOT how she walks or how her boobs move from side to side or how her hips undulate from side to side or swivel. Even though it would make a nice physics experiment. Especially if you want to test it against fake boobs and the variety of fake boobs... Never you mind... Misspent youth, not for your ears... Or eyes.

* Humor. Not sordid below deck humor but the intelligent one, though do not appear to be more intelligent than her, unless she's got a college degree of some sort. Women marry upwards, not downwards. Genes, gents. Remember we do want intelligent good looking offspring, so remember hygiene.

*Hygiene. And I do mean yours. Hair can be long, if it is clean and smelling nice. Aftershave, a good deodorant, eau de toilette, clean clothes, clean fingernails, that are TRIMMED and a shave. If you got a beard, trim it and keep it clean! No funny odours from the beard at all, gents.

* Sex. If she chooses to talk sex in front of you with her gaggle of gee.. I mean hatchery of.. I mean girlfriends, then you may fall into several categories.
1) She thinks you are gay. 2) She wants to make you blush. 3) She thinks of you as a friend. 4) She really likes you and trust you. You are in the "I want him!" category.

Above all, be true to who you are inside. Relax, if you relax, so does she. Smile, have fun and do not expect to bed her at any point. Treat her like a person![size="3"][/size]

Have fun...

Thank you for taking the time to articulate your thoughts. I'll meditate on that for the next few days.

So, from Games Workshop to Relationship Advice.

Yup, this is Dumpshock all right.





-karma

Fun though..

Some folks buy used codices in order to get the fluff/artwork/whatever, because they dig the background story of Warhammer 40k (just like, say, Bug City or the Lone Star Sourcebook might still be hunted down by an SR4 player). There's also folks that -- like SR3, maybe -- play a previous edition of the game because they like the rules better, and so they pick up out of date army books.

You can sometimes use the same miniatures, yes, but other times you can't use all of them. One instance that hit High Elves (since I'm just using them as my generic example) was that you used to be able to make a themed all cavalry list, because Silver Helms, the basic horsemen, were a "Core" choice (which you're required to take two units of). You could fill your Core requirement with them, then take Rare and Special units of more elite cavalry, or chariots, or what-have-you, slap your Lord/Hero choices on horseback (or dragon, or griffin, or giant eagle), and have a pretty cool themed force.

Then, in the next edition of the High Elf book, they changed Silver Helms over into another category. The only Core choices were basic High Elf Spearmen or Archers, both foot troops. There goes the theme, and suddenly you've got to buy some infantry (at least two units) in order to be a rules-legal army. What's more, if you just buy two cheapie little units of Archers, at their smallest unit size...you're "that guy," when it comes to tournament play, because now everyone else gets to look down on you and give you shitty army composition scores at tournies, because you're only just barely playing a legal army, you've got the overwhelming bulk of your points sank into "not fluffy" units (Special and Rare choices), etc, etc.

One little change like that could've made a lot of people sell some Silver Helms, or maybe even ditch their whole army in a fit of nerdrage, right? And at the same time, with the new High Elf army book hitting shelves, other players might have seen something in the book that seemed really awesome (like, oh, War Mages riding on Dragons), and been all "ZOMG MUST HAVE IT," but they needed some other High Elf stuff to round out their army.

And so the used market trucks on.

It's in our nature. Besides, I was involved, and I'm king of sidetracking. How bout them Pats?

On that topic, Critias, I see Privateer Press is getting into the second-edition mood; any comment on what that looks like (how much change, is the change good, have they fixed their idiotic tournament rules)?

~J

...said the scorpions to the frogs.

Conversation without drift is not conversation.

Hrrmmm.. IIRC it is a fox. Either way, the scorpion kills the animal transporting her. I kinda like scorpion.

Your alias would suggest so!

From wikipedia: Common variations include a turtle, fox, or farmer in place of the frog, or a snake in place of the scorpion.

I like frogs as it makes more sense thematically.

Me? I'm the raven sort.

I <3 Privateer Press, but I wish that they'd publish their fsking metaplot somewhere. It's all well and good that I own (most) of the IK books, but they keep talking about how "war is right around the corner" but it's been going on in Warmachine for years. Kind of annoying, especially as they just decided to have the Iosans get involved.

OTOH, the shirts they do for The Ram are kickass. I wish I'd liked their Monsterpocalypse one better (though their themed menu was awesome).

...and some people have no clue what I'm talking about

The biggest changes were (a) a complete overhaul of their points system, (b) a simplification/streamlining of special abilities, and © a larger emphasis put on warjacks.

Everything in the game I've seen now costs between 1-9 points, instead of up into the hundreds. Warcasters are free now, but still vary in "cost" in that each warcaster brings you ____ free points that can only be spent on warjacks. This keeps players from feeling jipped when they've got to spend points on the sole mandatory model in their army (a warcaster), and encourages everyone to bring plenty of iron to the table (so that the game moves away from being so infantry heavy) by giving you free warjack points. An average game might be 35 points, now, instead of 500. Most models had their points scaled down about the same, so that it will still FEEL like a 500 point game used to.

Also, you'll no longer run into eight different special abilities that all do pretty much the same thing. There are fairly generic special rules for scouting, moving through cover, etc, as well as standardized spell lists (for things like Snipe, teleporting, or various defensive buffs). This means individual models may have lost what folks consider to be their special flavor, but if you ask me it's overall a good thing. Having four or five different spells that were functionally the same, but having a different name and text -- always written in font size impossible on the back of a card -- for each one was kind of silly. I don't think the world is a worse place because Caine's teleport isn't called Flash any more and Asphyxious' teleport isn't called Shadow Wings any more...they've both just got "teleport." Being an advocate, as I am, of the complexities of SR3 and preferring it over the simplicity of SR4, I'm sure it surprises people who are keeping track...but there's a fundamental difference between an RPG (where I have to keep track of what my guy can do) and a wargame (where I have to understand what everything in the game can do).

Lastly, in addition to free warjack points, warjacks are just plain better than they used to be. Most of them had their points costs scaled down very kindly (so that they're cheaper, proportionately, than they used to be), and there are a few new general warjack rules that help them out. One is a "shake" effect, for instance, where a warjack can overcome being knocked down by spending a Focus point, instead of having to sacrifice half it's action like everyone else. Several of their guns got a little better, and that sort of thing.

Overall, I like the changes I've seen. Keep in mind, though, everything I'm saying is based upon their free-to-download-just-give-us-feedback PDFs they put out in order to draft everyone, everywhere, as playtesters. This info's a few months old, and I have yet to see the finished product. At the time that the playtesting wrapped up for Warmachine (they're doing it right now for Hordes Mk. II), there were -- of course -- people who felt their favorite models had been nerfed, that everyone else's stuff was too potent, etc, etc. Some of the complaints were probably justified, but overall I think PP did a good job of balancing everything out again. When silly stuff was happening like a single warcaster being all that made it into the finals of their national tournament, something was obviously wrong. I like what I've seen of the Mark II rules, though, and I'm hoping that the book hitting shelves will spur my local gaming group into playing again. They, like plenty of others, have warily taken a step back and had trouble feeling motivated to play (and especially to buy or paint) while the rules were in limbo.

Women are simple enough to figure out. Just be vague when they ask you questions, occasionally feed them a backhanded compliment (i.e. "That dress is really slimming."), and form insightful observations about people you otherwise know nothing about. They especially love it when you ask their opinion about other people and pretend to be interested. Mix in a few quips about pop culture to make yourself seem cosmopolitan, and always playfully mock everything they like by saying, "Pfft. You're such a chick." It also helps to draw upon the stupid shit you did when you were younger as a means of tearing down the competition ("Look at that guy; I think I had that haircut when I was 16.").

Sorry, way off topic.

I just picked up the book, and am reading through it (echo most of your sentiments-I stopped playing because my free time is significantly less than it used to be). But if you've been using the last PDF (realeased in November) it is pretty much the same as the book. According to PP, only a dozen model specific changes were made since that rules set was sent out. I did likehow they handled feedback on their field test rules. And from the sales records they made in the first five days, they are probably happy with the results too.