The Epic Blog of Awesomeness: Sort Of A Dress

I'm writing this on Friday for both the previous day and today.

Yesterday wen't well enough.

Woke up super early. PWFD whistle blew maybe an hour after I had been awake. I flipped my pager over to monitor and heard them confirm a fire on port washington blvd. I needed the exercise so I decided to walk to the fire and buff the job. Seemed to be a small but long burning fire in the cockloft of a deli. I don't enjoy criticizing other peoples operations but I will just gladly state that I am happy that I am with the Sea Cliff Fire Department.

Did a bunch of cleaning but didn't get much studying done. All week I had been super excited about the Dungeons and Dragons Next Playtest, so I made sure to leave early, planning on stopping by my Grandmother's place to say hello and maybe get something to eat before the game (she is all of 2 minutes from the game shop where we play). Turns out everyone in the world was driving eastbound on Long Island, and a few of the many drivers decided to disregard the rules of physics. Mass cannot occupy the space presently occupied by other mass, and when attempted, a violent reaction occurs. Car accidents make for shitty traffic.

So... I arrived at my Grandmother's exactly 12 minutes before game time (I had planned to have an hour with her). As Grandmas do, she fed me, hugged me, and sent me on my way. I arrived to the game not on time, but a full minute early (MIRACULOUS!), enabling me to get to know one of the other playtesters before we started. Turns out he is a programmer, freshly out of school and working for King Kullen's tech department. He had a ton of useful advice for me relating to programming and web development, much of it matching what I had already been doing. Thank god. I'm getting tired of restarts. I gave him my card and told him to email me so we can further discuss and I'm hoping he does. What a great guy.

So, being a playtester comes with certain restrictions as to discussing the game with the public, so I can't go to deeply into mechanics. I should still be able to talk about certain aspects of game. I chose for myself a High Elf Wizard pregen. We also had in our party a paladin like dwarf (my programmer friend) who was aligned with good, a preisty type human who was lawful good, a rogue type halfling, and a strikerish dwarf. This led to a hilarious dynamic. The paladin was a high and mighty knight, and demanded to be treated as such. To our great dismay he made sure to have the town we met in provide the shittiest possible trumpeter in the world. This made the paladin feel stately. In addition, he decided that it was time to shop. After five minutes of his buying items (which later benefited us) I decided to play up the high elf superiority complex and said "We ready to go ladies?". He responded "WOAH! What are you wearing? A-a what? A Robe? Sort of a dress?" in the most sarcastic stately tone I have ever heard. Rarely do I hear such witty things. Hanging out with fellow nerds made me happy. In addition, my protests of bringing a drunk human along as well as the shopping, later caused more hilarity as every time these things came in handy (often) he would look at me and say "good thing we brought that, huh?" I'm sure the sarcasm of the event doesn't transplant well in text, but those who play DnD with awesome people will surely know where I'm coming from. Those that don't...well you'll call me a nerd because you have inferior intelligence and not wish to understand (that was my high elf meme). Another quick note, our DM Beth was superp, and really brought the environment to life and responded perfectly to us. Another note: If you have a lawful good member in the party and you decide to bring the town drunk on horseback, make sure you tie him to the horse in the beginning so you dont all have to stop. The best part is leaving him tied to the horse and saying "hey, watch the horses". There's some sarcastic absurdity to that which makes me so happy.

Also, I so much prefer playing wizard as opposed to paladin. Tanking is noble but raining sweet hate from above rocks all of the socks.

DnD has changed my life and I can't see ever being without it again. Most video games and movies cannot possibly compare to even a tenth of the immersion which I experience when playing. If you are an intelligent person with an active imagination, put your preconceptions aside and give it a shot. You'd be surprised how much you will enjoy it, and how normal most of us are (some are crazy so pick your group accordingly).

I love being a nerd. So you naysayers can suck it.

After the game I briefly stopped by Grandma's just to complete our conversation.

Today I woke up at a reasonable hour, even after having had trouble getting to sleep until after my wife's alarm clock went of to wake her up. This has been happening all to often lately. Cleaned up a little more, which is great since I'm really starting to see the difference in the house. After this intensive cleaning month, we need to make sure we maintain everything.

I was about to sit down and study when my Brother Jeremy called me up. I went over to his place and together we worked on site layouts and creative design. I wont go into too much detail but I will say that it feels good having an intelligent individual request and appreciate my opinion. Had lunch at Jeremy's which was great too. Got home with a little time to study but didn't get much done today either.

Next week, I'm going to have to study to brutality.