Save vs. Geek

You can think I’m a horrible person, but when I’m talking to you on
the telephone, I’m hoping you have some sort of emergency, like a
fire, so you have to get off the phone. It’s not personal, it isn’t
you. I just hate talking on the phone that much.

This might strike some people as odd. I like to talk in person, and
face to face, I do a fair job hiding that I’m introverted (usualy by
being the loudest guy in the room). However, when I’m on the phone,
even with people I like, and want or need to talk to, I’m always
trying to come up with a reason to get off the phone.

I think there are a couple things going on here. First, when you can’t
see a person, you lose a lot of visual cues to help move the
conversation along. This cab be crippling to one who counts on those
cues to gauge how the discussion us going. Second, most of the time,
the phone is people wanting something from you. For me, this poisons
the tool for pleasant experiences.

If you’re a company, and I have to call you, you probably won’t be my
first choice to do business with.

If you’re a friend, and will only interact over the phone, expect me
not to call, expect the calls to be short, and expect me to be
distracted.

This isn’t a new thing for me, and most of my friends know it (because
any relationships that very dependant on the phone have withered).

I’m hoping I’m not alone with my hatred of talking on the phone. If I
am or I’m not, let me know.

dan social

We started in the middle of combat, outside the Kobold lair. The players easily slipped back into the encounter. I took some time to talk tactics, especially combat advantage and flanking. Knowing the big fight coming I wanted to give them every bit of help in playing the game in order to keep me from having to deal with a TPK. We had a new player tonight, a dwarf ranger, Vita du Eldebjarg.

He leapt out of the woods, killing two minions immediately. The players made short work of the kobolds, and they knew it. A slinger began to move to the lair to alert his cohorts. Calon Lan (the dragonborn warlord) ran to the kobold and grabbed the kobold. (I like the grab rules, I know that Wotc made a big deal of simplifying them, I don’t know how bad they were before, but it was easier than I feared it’d be.)

Vita then runs of into the woods, as the other characters dispatch the remain kobolds. The encounter ends, the characters grabbed the dwarf, and began asking questions. “Who are you?” “Why are you following us?”

At first Vita refused to answer the group. As the group took a more friendly approach, he reveals that there is someone in the lair that he must kill.

They send their rouge, Felix to gather intelligence, before launching their attack. With a fair amount of luck, she was able to get enough information to formulate a plan. The ranger and rouge will wait by the waterfall entrance, while the main force makes an assault on the west entrance.

Shortly after the fight begins, we start running out of time. The wizard dropped his flaming sphere, and used it to great effect to scour some minions. The skirmishers are harrassing the rouge and ranger, who entered the lair as the guards ran to attack the main force.

We ran out of time as the second eve of kobolds became ready, so we took pictures of the map, and called it a night.

My thoughts.

This session went great. Liam, who is playing Vita, had me nervous, as him playing his concept could easily become a fun-spoiler for the rest of the group. It seems that that’s not the direction that Vita is going in, and it should be awesome. (I’d love to share it, but I need to have a discussion with the players regarding PC vs. Player knowlege). In fact, many of the players have begun to develop some interesting backstories. The setting is startig to write itself, thanks to the players.

I’m having trouble with the session format. In a 2 hour slot, there seems to be enough time for a combat, and a small amount of roleplay, I think thy there needs to be a bit more time to have the narrative not feel disjointed.

School’s going on spring break, and we’re not sure yet if we want to have a Skype session, or just miss the session.

I’ll keep you posted.

dan DnD, gaming