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.