If he played Blood Bowl he was definitely a Pretty Cool Dude. I play it a lot, and I enjoy designing rosters. There's actually a huge rules update coming out sometime next year, along with a big shiny new vidya gaem using that ruleset around the same time.

For those who don't know, Blood Bowl is a game that hates you and wants you to suffer and wants your lovingly-crafted team of rising stars to get mangled on a milk run game against a dozen or so halflings. More specifically, and less facetiously, Blood Bowl is a turn-based 11-a-side sports-themed miniatures board game with a high degree of randomness and propensity to turn on an absolute dime. The teams are based on factions from the Warhammer Fantasy universe, so you get all that fun stuff - but it's based on the old Warhammer Fantasy universe, so you get the ridiculous stuff as well. Goblins with chainsaws, snotlings manning rickety wagons, a dwarf piloting a gigantic magic steamroller covered in spikes, it's all there waiting for you! Another key point is that the game is really about building your team of rank amateurs into a lethal force of Insert Race Heres - there's an experience setup in the game that works very well, allowing you to pick extra player skills from certain categories depending on what dice you roll. This means you can really build a narrative with your players and show off how they've developed! Before watching them break their own necks failing a 2+ D6 roll to score a game-winning touchdown. That happens a lot. Well, it happens to me a lot. =]

I highly recommend giving it a try over at FUMBBL, the free online version of the game that uses the current ruleset and rather charming 8-bit-ish graphics. If you want a more graphically polished experience, try Blood Bowl 2, a fine multiplayer game with a low price tag, an established community, and terrifying spaghetti coding style born from indifferent Frenchmen hitting a computer with a string of onions until it worked sort of okay-ish. See you on the field! It's jumpers for goalposts and elves for breakfast. =]

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"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

This is really, REALLY not a game for people who get angry at dice. Source: me, undergoing Deep Mental Strangeness when everything went wrong for the seventh game in a row and subsequently spending three hours screaming abuse at the family of disinterested parakeets that lived above the vegan chip shop over the road from my flat.

It occurs to me now that my life is a bit weird.