We went for a family walk this afternoon around a nearby lake. I had already taken my daily exercise walk, so this was a bonus. We’ve walked around other lakes in our area, and they all have paved walkways, and are pretty flat. This was our first time exploring this particular lake’s walkway, and it turned out to be quite different.

The walkway is only paved maybe ten percent of its length, and the rest is dirt trail up and down sometimes fairly steep terrain. You have to keep your eyes on the ground watching your steps among all the roots and rocks. And the trek must be about 20 miles.

Well, okay, maybe it was only 2 or 3 miles. Actually, I usually don’t mind a good hike through non-paved terrain; I often enjoy it. But having to do it with an eye on two young boys, a wife, my own footing, and those sneaky joggers and bikers who don’t call out their approach in the twisting and turning and narrow path makes it extra tiring—I only have two eyes. We weren’t prepared for as long a trek as it turned out to be. We hadn’t brought our water bottles with us from the van—we won’t make that mistake again.

After about three-quarters of the way, I ended up carrying the boys on my shoulders (one at a time) to give them a rest and still keep up our pace. Unfortunately, neither of the boys like riding up on my shoulders. They were both kind of scared, and wanted to hold my hands while they were up there. Try walking up and down hills, across roots and rocks, with 30 or 60 pounds on your shoulders, and holding your hands above your head—it ain’t easy.

When it got to the point that neither of the boys wanted to ride on my shoulders, and they obviously couldn’t keep up any pace, my wife stopped with them so they could rest. I walked on to get the van, and then came back and picked them up where the trail crossed a road.

All told, it was a good walk. The boys did surprisingly well, considering the distance and terrain, and no one complained. Well, I think I complained a time or two. (Really, it turned out much longer than I expected.) We’ll have to do that walk again sometime —but maybe not in the hottest part of the day, in July.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I was pulling up to the McDonald’s drive through to order some lunch when I had the urge to try a Big Mac. In all the times I’ve been to McDonalds—how many hundreds of times in 40 years—I’ve never had a Big Mac.

The picture on the menu board looked good, and I was really hungry. But what comes on the Big Mac? I don’t like tomatoes or pickles on my burgers, but asking the ingredients of a sandwich at the drive through box can be aggravating, and unproductive.

But then that jingle popped into my head:

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

When was the last time I heard that? 20 years ago? Longer? Now that is a good jingle. “Good” meaning it works for the advertiser—it stuck in my mind for a couple decades, and came to my thoughts right when I needed it.

Anyway, I ordered the Big Mac, minus the pickles. It’s a good sandwich. Really good. But it’s big, and fatty, and probably shortened my life expectancy by nine months. I probably won’t eat another one because of how bad it is for me, but it tasted great. Especially that special sauce.

And now I can’t get that damn jingle out of my head.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Back when I was in college, I worked in the camera and electronics department of a chain department store. It was the days of $1,000+ “camcorders” – even the latest-tech small ones of the day were larger than the standard palm-sized stuff of today. Here are two true anecdotes from my time selling these instruments.

* * *

A man and an obviously pregnant woman came in to find a camcorder. While the husband talked with me about the various features of the cameras, the wife was sitting down on an exercise machine in the nearby sporting goods department. After a few minutes, I noticed the woman breathing quickly—it looked very odd to someone who had never seen Lamaze before.

I mentioned her breathing, “Is she alright?”

The man looked over at her and said, “She’s in labor.”

“Now? Here?” I said, shocked.

“Yeah,” he said, “We’re getting the camera to tape the birth.”

I speeded up my explanations and got a camcorder in the couple’s hands as quickly as I could. They left happy, and hurriedly.

* * *

We kept the camcorders in a glass cabinet behind the glass case-counter. The cabinets were locked and we had specific protocols for showing the camcorders: never more than one camera out at a time (put the first back before taking out a second), never leave a camera on the counter unattended, etc.—some cameras cost as much as $1,500, so theft was a big concern.

I walked up to the counter one time and saw an unattended camcorder sitting on top. I looked around and saw no one around. I figured that someone had left it out accidentally, so I picked it up to put it away. At that moment, I didn’t have a key for cabinet, so I took the camera into our secure electronics storeroom and set it on a shelf. I then went to help a customer elsewhere in the department.

Unknown to me, a customer had brought in his own camera to get guidance on how to use it. A salesman was helping him, and they had stepped over to a rack of blank video tapes. (They were around a corner, just out of my sight when I walked up and saw the camera on the counter.)

When they came back to the counter, the camera was missing. (I was already gone from the spot.) Both the customer and salesman were concerned. The salesman called up to the customer service desk, at the front of the store, and asked if they had seen anyone leave with a camcorder. The woman answering the phone had seen the customer enter the store with a camcorder, and she thought that’s what the salesman meant, so she said, “Yes.”

The salesman, holding the phone, standing with the customer, said, “You did?”

The customer heard that and got immediately upset. Without waiting another moment to hear the salesman get clarification, he bolted. He ran to the front of the store, out the exit doors.

The entrance and exit of our store was inside a small mall. The entrance of the mall near our store was the standard glass doors in a huge glass wall. The customer ran full out toward the mall exit, misjudged where the doors were, and smashed right into the glass wall. Witnesses in a small restaurant beside the mall entrance described what happened. The man hit a glass panel and bounced back about ten feet to fall on his back, in a daze.

Hearing about all the excitement, I went out into the mall to see what happened for my self. Someone had already taken the man to the hospital, but the blood and mucus was still on the unbroken glass pane where his nose had hit. The same signs were on the floor about ten feet back from the window. Witnesses said the man wasn’t seriously injured, so it seemed alright for folks to laugh at the accident.

A few minutes later, back in the electronics department, I learned why the man had run out of the store—he thought someone had stolen his camera, and he apparently intended to run out and get it back.

I told my manager what I had done with the camera, and he told me to just not tell anyone else. I didn’t tell anyone else at the store, but I’ve been telling this story to friends for years since.

* * *

I bet you expected to hear about some embarassing video recordings. Well, there was one incident, but it really isn’t as intricate or interesting as the above tales.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Classic D&D adventure module review

The Village of Hommlet, by Gary Gygax – Advanced D&D, 1979, 1981

Introductory to novice level.

24 pages plus the separate cover with maps on the inside faces. (3 blank pages backing maps.) The adventure has 35 numbered areas.

The first thing you notice about this book is the dense text. Each page is two columns, with small margins, and long paragraphs. There’s a lot of text in this book.

The first page is the background for Hommlet and the starting set up for the party entering the area. Hommlet has quite the storied history, being the closest normal town to the Temple of Elemental Evil. The next half page is notes to the Dungeon Master (DM) on running this adventure.

The area here, as well as that of the Temple (contained in a separate module), was developed in order to smoothly integrate players with and without experience in the Greyhawk Campaign into a scenario related to the “old timers” only by relative proximity.

[The actual Temple of Elemental Evil module wouldn’t be published for another 6 years, in 1985, as the first “super module.” That module would include this adventure, republished.]

The biggest chunk of text in this book is the building by building key to the village: eight and a half pages covering 33 numbered areas of mostly mundane buildings and village folk.

6. HOUSE WITH LEATHER HIDE TACKED TO THE FRONT DOOR: This is the home and business of the village leatherworker (0 level militiaman, leather armor, shield, sling, hand axe; 4 hit points). With him live his wife, her brother (a simpleton who does not bear arms), and 3 children of whom the eldest is a 12 year old boy (0 level militiaman, leather jack, buckler, sling, dagger; 2 hit points). The leather-worker is a jack-of-all-trades, being shoe and bootmaker, cobbler, saddler, harnessmaker, and even fashioning leather garments and armor, the latter requiring some time and a number of fittings and boiling. He is not interested in any sort of adventuring. Sewn into an old horse collar are 27 g.p. and 40 e.p. as well as a silver necklace worth 400 g.p.

17. MODEST COTTAGE: A potter is busily engaged in the manufacture of various sorts of dishes and vessels, although most of his work goes to passing merchants or the trader. He has a variety of earthenware bottles and flasks available for sale. The potter (0 level militiaman, padded armor, shield, glaive; 3 hit points), his wife, and four children (two boys are 0 level militiamen, padded armor, crossbow, spear; 4 and 2 hit points respectively) all work in the business. A crock in the well holds 27 g.p., 40 s.p., and 6 10 g.p. gems. They are of the faithful of St. Cuthbert.

[Bolding above as it appears in the book.]

I cannot see a true need for the amount of detail such mundane villagers receive. A few of the villagers are agents of one side or the other in the Good and Evil contest, and the text explains them in as much detail as the normal folk. Only a handful of the NPCs, those with levels in a class, are given names in the text.

There is a lot of coin and magic treasure in this town. The detail and highlighting of these items, as well as the combat stats of every able-bodied male in the village, suggests perhaps the author expected the Player Characters (PCs) to explore the homes and businesses as they would a dungeon. I can’t believe that was actually the intention, but the information on the village buildings looks exactly what you normally find in a dungeon write up (including the dungeon at the end of this book).

A few of the buildings are detailed down to the rooms inside, even with full maps: The Inn of the Welcome Wench tavern (3 floors), the Traders’ Establishment, the Church of St. Cuthbert (3 floors), and the Guard Tower (7 floors). There’s no set adventure to be had in these locales, so scaled maps seem unnecessary. I guess they could be useful for first-time DMs to see what a tavern or church in a D&D world would look like, but I would think illustrations would be better than combat grid maps.

The map on the inside of the book cover shows the entire village at 110 feet to the inch scale. The individual building maps cover pages 17 – 22 (one sided pages).

For the village of Hommlet, there’s a great deal of individual building and person detail. The adventure site, The Ruins of the Moathouse, located 3 miles from the village, covers pages 12 – 16, with the two-level map on pages 23 and 24.

The ruined moathouse “was once the outpost of the Temple of Elemental Evil,” and its ground level is now occupied only by some vermin and a small group of human brigands. The wandering monster encounters are:

2-8 giant rats (see #13., below)
Scraping noise (materials shifting)
Giant tick overhead (see #16. below)
Squeaking and rustling (rats in the floor below)
2-5 brigands (reinforcements for #7., below)
Footsteps (trick of echoes – party’s own)

The dungeon level of the moathouse is the true place of Evil in hiding. An ogre, some zombies, gnolls, bugbears, ghouls, and a sizable group of evil soldiers for the Temple of Elemental Evil are all lead by Lareth the Beautiful, “the dark hope of chaotic evil”.

The PCs could become heroes for rooting out and destroying this small bastion of dangerous villains. They could also come out quite wealthy.

The text of this adventure is dense, with most of the areas written in single paragraphs. There’s no boxed text to read aloud to the Players, so the DM has to read the information carefully before the game session, and probably make notes and highlight information to run the encounters. As evidenced here and in other adventure modules, this author tends to write encounter information in a stream of consciousness style—description, monsters, and treasure are in a single long paragraph for each encounter area, with no set organization.

All the monsters are listed in a modified “old school” stat block style: (H.P.: 21): AC 5; HD 5 +1; Move 9″; 1 attack using bardiche for 2-8 +5 (7-13) hit points of damage.

The adventure is simple and straight-forward enough for novice players wanting to explore a dungeon and fight evil monsters and men, but the opposition in the dungeon is pretty numerous and strong for a party of 1st-level PCs. Even if the adventurers are themselves numerous (the text does not state how many PCs the adventure design expects), they’ll have to be tactically savvy with a mind to retreat when necessary, if they hope to survive this dungeon delve.

Overall, this book spends many pages and much detail on the mundane villagers of Hommlet compared to the adventure. But, the book is titled The Village of Hommlet, so it is actually giving the DM what it advertises. This book is a village, home base source book with a small adventure appended to the end rather than an adventure module.

Bullgrit