So here's one I didn't see - hope I'm not re-posting.

What rules do you have for visitors when it comes to playing your pins?

Now, come on, don't try "I have no rules..!" lines . We have rules, or there wouldn't be any "drink holders" for sale at pinballife or bay area amusements ....

I'll go first, since I haven't almost had anyone over yet ._.

1. There's a reason the pins have drink holders -___-.
2. No Death Saves, even if it's a DE machine. I don't care if DE machines grant you a reward for doing it - not in my home.
3. You play all three balls - none of this "my first ball sucked" junk . I treat it as if I was playing a game on location outside of someone's home. If I put 50 cents in, I wouldn't put another 50 cents in just to go back to ball one - I'd play all three.

I'm sure there's more, but those are what I got right off the bat. What about everyone else, what are your big no-nos ?

And if you're wondering, no, I don't break my own rules. My fiancee won't get away with it either, so yeah, anyone who comes over and thinks the rules don't apply to them will have a nice big check signed by "reality" given to them .

Well, in my home on my machines- I do. That's the beauty of it. It's my home and my rules . It's like a garage. You go over to help work on a friend's car. You treat his tools and garage equipment the same way you would if you bought them with your own money - you have utmost respect for their workplace, their tools, and their requests. Anyone who treats someone else's stuff with neglect and disrespect after being requested not to needs to seriously think things over. And if someone is going to fire back at me "Man, I buy widgets and treat it like junk." well, good for you. The widget company loves you because you'll probably be buying another widget from them a lot earlier than I will be .

Speaking of condition, I would be willing to bet that there are higher levels of current, bigger changes in voltages and resistances, and more strain going through the machine to "reset" everything back to ball one. If not, then I welcome any owner to go to their machine, and just keep hitting start over and over and over and over, making the entire machine reset itself back to "beginning of ball 1 mode" at a rapid rate. I'd be willing to bet that would kill a pin's life a lot faster than playing all 3 balls with whatever wear-n-tear three balls would inflict on a playfield.

Just my thoughts. Either way, my rules aren't changing .

Man , quite an interesting array of responses so far.

One of the reasons I started this thread is you never know what may come your way. You can get to typing on here, go to a expo or show before you know it, or know someone who knows someone who knows someone who happens to be a friend of someone here on the forums gets invited to said-forum user's house to play pinball. With that being said, the way people feel about their pins is extremely varied, and assumptions as a guest at someone else's house could land oneself in a lot of hurt if "common sense" train of thought is absent.

As for the "just have fun" responses - yes - I do completely and totally agree with this by adding the words "responsibly." If an five year old found a corkscrew, and decided to carve everything that was running through his head on someone's Medieval Madness, boy, I'll bet there'd be a LOT more unwritten rules to the saying "Just have fun" REAL fast . I mean, he WAS "just having fun" - how can you be mad at him for that ? See where all the nuances start coming in...?

That's mainly why I started this thread. We all want to have fun and a good time - but what are your REAL boundaries with your pins? So far, we've seen a very interesting spectrum of answers - keep em' coming!

There's more than one of us here , I guarantee you that .

That I will definitely agree with too!

You know, I can COMPLETELY vouch for that. Balls 1 & 2 on RFM last week = maybe 20-30million. Ball 3 took me all the way to 257million - and this was the first time I had played this game in over a year. Got the picture to prove the score (: !