Machines Replacing Cashiers Is Not A Good Thing

Machines Replacing Cashiers Is Not A Good Thing

 

I went to Lowe's. I needed a flag pole for an event I'm going to. They had the best deal. After thinking about it for a day I went ahead and made the purchase. It was going to be a quick in and out, but then I got to the cash register. This was a whole other adventure.

They have machines set up there to take your money, and there is no cashier, per se. Lowe's appears to be interested in eliminating humanity and giving you a cold, heartless experience. There's a guy at the front who will help you get situated. But he doesn't wait on you.

We've had this discussion in recent years. It came up with the desire for fast food employees to make $15 an hour and earn a living wage. It seems to me that the people who want their burgers quickly prefer slave labor or kids who will take what they get and like it. I strongly disagree with that mentality.

Minimum wage itself has not gone up with the cost of living, so people are working jobs and getting food assistance from the government. There's something very wrong with that. Anytime people speak out against it, they're told that they don't like the system or any number of stupid excuses.

The $15 cause for fast food employees was met with smart ass remarks about replacing the workers with kiosks. They think they're clever. You'll even see memes where there are kiosks at McDonald's and other places, but these clueless people mocking the fast food employees are missing the real point here.

There's already an agenda in place to eliminate workers entirely. This includes self-driving trucks to bring the food and goods across the country. They want to eliminate as much labor as possible. Once they do that, you're going to have more people sitting idly about, and it's not going to be a Utopia. 

 

It's not going to be a case of people having free time to do all the fun stuff they desire. What people aren't thinking through is what's going to happen to those people once they don't have jobs, but they better think about it. There's a plan in place, and it isn't pretty.

As I was standing there in line, I was making the vow that I won't return to Lowe's if this is the way they check people out. I'll get what I need elsewhere at a place that appreciates humanity a little bit more. A place that will hire a cashier to wait on people.

It isn't that the machinery didn't work efficiently. Sometimes when you put your folding money into that thing, it spits it back out and tells you it can't accept it. My three bills went in easily, and it spit out the coins that I had coming.

For good measure, it had me on camera, letting me know that I was being recorded. So, not only did I have a heartless buying experience from a big corporation, I also was treated somewhat like a criminal. Like, "Mind your manners, you are being watched."

There are other hardware stores, and I'll look there next time. If I want heartless, I'll order online and have it delivered to me. I'm not fond of that decision either. It doesn't make me feel good that they have us participating in our own obsolescence. What can we do to change this trend? It feels like it's going to happen no matter what.

Heroes Of The Dungeon Crawl Offers A Simple Set Of Fantasy Role Playing Game Rules

Heroes Of The Dungeon Crawl Offers A Simple Set Of Fantasy Role Playing Game Rules

Back when  the Role Playing Game (RPG) Dungeons & Dragons was new, the goal was to try to get new people to play. The rules were a little bit difficult to understand, so TSR Hobbies made multiple attempts to make the rules more understandable. It also gave Gary Gygax an opportunity to expand on the rules with more options, leading to Advanced Dungeons & Dragon.

Holmes was the first one to do a rule book for Basic Dungeon & Dragons, and he did it for free. A couple years later, Tom Moldvay created a set of basic rules, referred to as the Moldvay/Cook rules as Zeb Cook had done the expert rulebook. Tom also created several very popular modules.

Frank Mentzer was the next to take a shot at the rules, and he created what was referred to as the BECMI rule set. This took it all the way from Basic to the Immortal set. It had always been hinted at that there would be a Companion rules set and a Master roles set, but Frank was the one to make it happen. He also slipped in an Immortal set, which was never planned.

One of the genius ideas that Frank had was to get people playing Dungeons & Dragons before they actually knew the rules. Hance, there was a solo adventure in the Basic rule book that had you learning the rules as you went. You met a healer named Alina, but it didn't end too well for her. You meant a villain named Bargle. So many memories, and just a brief solo adventure. 

The last expression of these rules was the Rules Cyclopedia, which brought them all under one hardcover book. The rules seemed to get a little bit more complex at that point, which went away from what this was all meant to be. Eventually, the company got away from doing Basic rules at all, and you had to buy all the hard cover books to play. Let's not even talk about miniatures.

By then, I had walked away from the game. When I started looking again at the rules years later, I was disappointed to see that what they referred to as a Starter Set only had an adventure in that box. It didn't provide all the game play and simplicity of the rules I remembered You had to go buy all the hard cover books. 

The beauty of the old Basic rule books was that you could play several adventures with just those rules in that that red book. With just the the red book and the blue Zeb Cook Expet rule book, could do an entire campaign. Two Boxed sets for less that $40.

My frustration level was so high that I decided I'd take a swipe at creating rules for a fantasy RPG myself, and this led to the creation of a game I call Heroes of the Dungeon Crawl (HotDC). In an effort to streamline it, I made the rules very simple. In just a minute or two, you are able to create a character, and there are a just couple of advanced options if you want them. Also, you only needed two six-sided dice .

 

I made is so people could just download the rule book for free online, or buy the hard copy for a little bit more. Most people have a board game at home, such as Monopoly or Sorry, so they have all they need to play the game with addition of paper and pencil. I did get a bit discouraged as I was put these rules together.

2007 was the year I fulfilled a childhood dream by going to GenCon for the first time. I met so many people, including Frank Mentzer, Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and Pierre St Andre of Tunnels and Trolls fame. I also meant Earl Otis and Larry Elmore, two of the greats behind so much of the art in those books. It was great just being there. My rule book wasn't quite ready for debut, but I unloaded the Basic Charts Edition by the end of the year.

I sort of ended the crusade there, but the HotDC Basic Charts Edition has everything you need to play adventures from first through sixth degree (level). Monster stats were made available, character creation information, and the book even had it sample dungeon that you could use to get started. When I was hard at work, I even created the beginnings of a campaign setting.

It was all going to come together with a Basic HotDC rulebook and possibly an Expert rulebook after that. Just two rule books. I had no desire to make a bunch of books. This was along the spirit of the original Dungeons & Dragons Basic rules. Just a couple of books, an imagination and hours of play.

I haven't really promoted this game, but I feel now is a time to put it out there again. There are people who like to play the same rule set, so they are dedicating all of their time to Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder or whatever the game system is their choice. Others like to sample different things.

The beauty of HotDC is that you can throw a character together in a minute or two. It's easy to throw an adventure together, the combat system is easy to handle. If your character gets eliminated, a new character be can be created easily, just as it was back in the old days. 

 

There are even rules put in place to be able to save characters for those who want to put effort into role-playing and don't want to have to create a new character multiple times in an adventure.

The rule books are available on Lulu.com

The free PDF can be downloaded here

 

The paperback can be ordered here

A lot of the work I put into the creation of these rules is still available on the old Heroes of the Dungeon Crawl blog, which can be viewed here.

What I Liked About Old School Basic Dungeons & Dragons

What I Liked About Old School Basic Dungeons & Dragons

An old blog post from an old defunct blog that I had...

When I used to play Dungeons & Dragons years ago, there was already a great divide in the game. I embraced the basic game that needed a pen, paper, dice and an imagination. The miniatures and other extras weren't required. It came in one box for something like $10 or $20. It was called Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

This is because Gary Gygax was trying to distance the game from the man who really inspired it, Dave Arneson . Gary added lots and lots of stuff to Advanced D&D, don't get me wrong, but it still stemmed from what Dave was doing before he even called Gary to tell him about it.

This is not an article to bash anybody, because I respect what both men did for table top top role playing games. They really made them happen. Those computer RPG's owe much to what these two pioneers did some 40 years ago.

Gary felt that Basic D&D was a good place to start to get new players in and eventually bring them to the advanced game. Dr. Eric Holmes donated his time to create the first rule book. Then, Tom Moldvay and Frank Mentzer were hired back in 1980, and both made the basic line fly to new heights. It became it's own game.

Moldvay and David Cook did the Basic and Expert rule books that you could play for months with just those two boxed sets. We're talking all you need for somewhere between $20 and $40, and a whole new game every time you played. Both did much for the franchise.

By the time Menzter got his hands on things, he simplified and made Basic D&D so easy a child could play, which was the point. He followed up with rule books for Expert, Companion, Masters and Immortal. It's affectionately referred to in the community as the BECMI line, and fans are still devoted to it to this day.

The reason I liked these games was they were simple and easy to understand. Mentzer Basic D&D even had you playing the game before you know all the rules. I didn't like the advanced line with all of it's rules that felt like you were at school studying for finals or something. You could be up and playing very quickly with the Basic line.

When they dropped this line, the game became more complicated with need of expensive miniatures and other accessories. That is far away from the roots of this game, and many people who might play will look at all of that and turn on their computers to play there instead.

That's a real shame, because if you get a group of people all playing their characters and working together on an adventure, no computer can beat the experience. A stand alone basic game that allows people to continue playing with just those rules would help the cause in my opinion. They need to bring it back.

Poor Aleena, We Hardly Knew Ye

Poor Aleena, We Hardly Knew Ye

This is an old blog post from a defunct blog I had

In the highly successful Basic Dungeons & Dragons rule book, edited by Frank Menter, there's an interesting story. Frank hit upon an idea when he did those two red rulebooks. He wanted to teach the new player how to play D&D while they learned the rules with a solo adventure.

It seemed like a crazy idea at the time. D&D is a group game, after all. Frank took you through the steps that had you creating your character and taught you what you used those crazy dice for. Soon, you were reading about a dungeon adventure and making the decisions on what to do.

Along the way, there is a treasure room. You can see it, but the door is locked. I've often wondered what was in there. You also meet a lovely female healer named Aleena, who casts her healing spell on you. Frank gets you to care about her.

Unfortunately, she gets killed by the infamous Bargle the wizard. Just like that, you learn how quickly a character can die in the game. Aleena actually built up a cult following among fans, which led to the creation of the Kill Bargle movement. I don't know if he ever paid for his crimes.

It was a clever idea to have people playing the game as they learned. Frank's Basic D&D rule books may have been the best ever, though I'm also partial to Tom Moldvay's Basic D&D book from a couple years earlier. Tom created a lot of fun adventures for the game in his day.

In the back of Tom's version of D&D, there's an example of how the game is played, and you see a fine example of one of the things that goes on at the gaming table. Black Dougal, the thief, misses the poison needle on a treasure chest and dies of poisoning. Moments later, the party is dividing his stuff amongst themselves.

Aleena's plight wasn't quite as cold hearted as that. You take her body back to her temple so she can be laid to rest and honored as the hero she was. I think it's a testament to Frank's writing that even three decades later, players still remember her and the way she died.

Blog Article About Aleena: https://web.archive.org/web/20150612213413/http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/10/on-iconic-characters-in-dungeons.html

Dragons At Dawn Offered A Glimpse At Early RPG History

Dragons At Dawn Offered A Glimpse At Early RPG History

This is from an old, defunct blog I had...

D.H. Boggs happens to be a big fan of Dave Arneson, the man who created many of the concepts that became a part of Dungeons & Dragons. So, about five years ago, he started working on recreating the game that Dave played with his friends in Minnesota back in the early 1970's.

The story goes something like this. Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren created a rules set for a war miniatures game called Chainmail. In it, fantasy creatures were added along with spells and concepts new to miniatures gaming.

Gygax and Arneson had worked on a game called Don't Give Up The Ship, which would offer the inspiration for armor class to role playing games. Actually, there wasn't really a role playing game back then. Arneson and others played a game called Braunstein with Dave Wesley as game master in the late 1960's.

Wesley had introduced the concept of role playing the characters in the game, and it produced some interesting results. Fast forward to Wesley joining the military and Arneson taking over the game. Arneson had seen the Chainmail rules, but they didn't quite match what he was looking for in a game.

As Dave explains it, after a day of eating junk food and watching creature features on TV, he was inspired to create a whole fantasy world setting that he would take his players through. The land was called Blackmoor, and the castle became one of the main attractions.

Dave introduced the concept of each player running one character, hit points and armor class, experience points and gaining levels. He also had a desire to get the characters to explore the mysterious dungeons underneath the castle. Once they did, the first "dungeon crawl" was born.

We know some of the history from there. Gygax sat in on one of Dave's popular games. Dave had been scribbling rules in a note pad. Sometimes these rules were written in the moment when a decision was needed. He wanted to be fair and consistent with all of his players. Gary took those rules back home with him, and eventually, Dungeons & Dragons was born.

What Boggs did was gather comments that Arneson had made about the early days in interviews. He also gathered information from players who actually played in Dave's games back them. He used this to create Dragons At Dawn, the game that is as close as anything to what Arneson was playing back before Dungeons & Dragons was born.

This took many hours of work for Boggs to put together, because his desire was to be as faithful to Arneson as possible. When he had to use his judgement on a rule that Arneson never explained, he tried to be true to what he thought Arneson would have done.

Though the rules are very primitive compared to today's standards, Dragons At Dawn is a playable game. But, it's more than that. It's also a glimpse at the past with many quotes from the man himself.

I loved this book, because I've always felt Arneson's contributions to the role playing game experience have been downplayed. It's not surprising given that Gygax ran the company and was at the forefront, and Dave was sort of left behind. It never would have happened without Arneson creating some of the key concepts of the game.

I don't know why, but I was thinking about Dragons At Dawn today. I managed to buy my copy a few years ago, and that's a good thing. Boggs has taken it off the market, but not because he was told to. Instead, he has a new project in mind and wanted to devote his time to that.

It's called Champions Of Zed, which he calls a complete rewrite of the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. Gygax and Arneson have gone on record saying the rules back then were not done to their satisfaction, which eventually led to Gygax creating Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Boggs has taken comments made by both men through the years on what they wanted to do with the rules, and it gets better. He has a copy of the original manuscript of revisions Arneson wanted for the original game,. Of course, those were rejected back then.

It's a rather interesting project that is much like Dragons At Dawn, but in this case, he's attempting to create the version of the original Dungeons & Dragons that could have been had Gygax and Arneson had their way and also worked together on it. Boggs had a Kickstarter campaign that doubled what he was asking for, so the project has proceeded.

I think it's a good thing, but its still a shame. I think Dragons At Dawn should still be put out there for those who are interested. It is a fascinating look at some of the early history of the creation of a game that millions of people through the years have played and enjoyed.

A Gamer Reviews Dragons At Dawn: apaladinincitadel.blogspot.com/2010/04/dragons-at-dawn-rpg-review.html

Five Good Ways To Die In Old School Dungeons & Dragons

Five Good Ways To Die In Old School Dungeons & Dragons

Rescuing this fron an old defunct blog I had

In honor of the release of the new version of Dungeons & Dragons, I wanted to look back at the old school version. It was the era of 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the Tom Moldvay/David Cook Basic/Expert D&D. I played Moldvay/Cook and preferred the simplicity.

Back in those days, it was extremely easy for your characters to die in the first adventure. In fact, countless characters did, sometimes for the stupidest reasons. You sometimes didn't even bother to name your character until they proved they could survive. I felt bad for the people who gave their character a background, only to watch them die in the first room after a bad roll of the dice.

Those games were death traps, but there was a bright side. The simplicity of the rules was such that you could have a new character ready in a couple minutes. One of the reasons for the new rules coming out now is because the previous edition was so complicated that it took much longer for character creation.

So, I wanted to look at five of the easiest ways to die for a 1st level character in the old school game:

1-Poison: Better make that savings throw, or you are done. It could happen from a poison needle on a treasure chest, a spider or snake bite or whatever. One bad roll, and it's time for a new character.

2-Magic missile: If you faced a magic user, they may not have much of a melee attack. However, this spell was something a first level character could use, and it always hits. Higher level spell casters were worse, since they had spells that could do more damage, but a magic missile could eliminate that 1st level character too.

3-Traps: Poison needles on treasure chests were one thing. You could touch something that triggers darts to fire out of the wall or spray poisonous gas into the room. There's that pesky 10 foot pit in the hallway. A real vindictive DM would put spikes on the bottom just to do more damage.

4-Wights: Unlike skeletons and zombie, these undead could drain a level from you just by touching you. This is no fun at all. If you see one at 1st level, you learn to run away fast. Your sword may not be able to hit it anyway. All you have to do is watch what happened to Frodo in The Lord Of the Rings. He's lucky he lived, and he wouldn't have if not for the elves.

5-Anybody with a weapon: Fighters could sometimes absorb two hits, but seldom three. You have to be tactful in battle and lucky at the dice when you must fight. When you gained levels on old school D&D, they meant something.