Thirty-eighth Session – The B team hunts dinosaurs and fights a pretty large number of draconic centaur Klingon type aliens. We hit them until they like us. Diplomacy is just like dating!
We had a lot of fun this session. The dinosaur hunt was entertaining. Peppin missed the whole attack by the Medurr assassins, but he was having fun trying to ride around on a riding dino. Markus always shines in the more savage locales – intrigue on the space station is challenging for him, but as a genetically engineered shock trooper, if a situation calls for beating the living crap out of something, he is the man to do it. Lenny got to be referred to as ‘our female’ all the time – the Medurr are matriarchal and we figured that we’d get more cred if we claimed Lenny was our female (he’s a lizardlike alien called a T’sa, and we figure there’s no way they can tell one way or the other). Lenny wasn’t consulted on this plan, which was hatched by a throwaway line last session, so he protested every time it happened, but no one paid that any mind. Lambert, Ten-zil, and Peppin all got to shoot up the landscape a lot. Ten-zil especially had some great additions to our tactical plans.
Markus got a lot of screen time since, as the most violent, the Medurr considered him the person to talk to. I felt bad that our ambassador didn’t have much to do, but Tim spent a lot of the time cutting up with Georgina anyway, so that worked out fine. I especially liked the scene after we fought off the assassins that had lured us in with a trapped dinosaur – Markus stalked over, terminated the dinosaur with a sabot pistol round point blank to its head, and whipped out his knife and carved a huge “IX” in its side to mark the spot. I was happy that Chris got the reference (Markus was in the Thuldan Empire’s IX Legion and has a big IX tattoo, I try to mention it from time to time). Bruce was all “what the hell” when it happened but Chris explained it to him. I like when everyone’s into it enough that they remember stuff like that about each others’ characters. Then later when Stykor asked Markus his “clan” I was momentarily at a loss, and Chris suggested “Clan Nine,” and that was a marvelous idea.
There were a lot of little jokes that didn’t make it into the summary but we were all in rare form. Having the entire group there was nice. Next time, Bruce is going to try to Skype in rather than driving from Dallas, we’ll see how well that works out, it’s an interesting idea if the tech is up to the execution.
Geek Related 
One of our players is often stuck at the other end of the country, so he Skypes in often. It is a bit disconnected, and it affects the way we play at the table — we have to be a bit less boisterous so that we can be sure he hears what’s going on, and we often have to explain the environments when we use maps, as the webcam doesn’t pick them up well — but it does the job.
Yeah, we’re trying to figure the same thing out even at work – despite a wide array of “collaboration technologies” it’s hard to get the person on the other end fully read in to stuff “on the table,” whiteboard drawings, dynamic give and take, etc.
We tried to skype in with me out of the state once. It proved too distracting for the group to handle, probably because skype video instantly turns people into ‘make silly faces mode’.
I’ve never tried Skype but I can certainly imagine how it could be an issue. I find it difficult enough to keep people on topic when it’s easy, let alone with an extra distraction to think about. Well done on being able to pull it off at all.
We’ve had Bruce Skyping in regularly now to the new Jade Regent game. It works OK. We bought a Blue Snowball mike and have a dedicated laptop to do it, and augment with cell phone pics we send for whiteboard and battle mat situations. It works OK except Skype connection quality is frequently bad – we might oughta switch to G+ or similar.