Rogues Gallery: Fighter and the case of the Incompetent Caller

Could this be the Caller?

What follows is a transcript from the court case of The Party vs. The Caller, recorded at the  Adventurers Guild Chancery in the Spring of 1977. J. Eric Holmes used the typewritten transcript referenced by the Prosecuting Attorney for the Example of Play on page 40 of the blue Dungeons and Dragons Rulebook. 

In this court case, the Caller faces 4 counts of man/demi-humanslaughter along with charges of gross negligence in the line of duty and incompetent leadership.

If you're not familiar with the events, a party consisting of five characters known as Fighter, Thief, Halfling, Elf, and Dwarf walks down a corridor and finds an L-shaped room where they encounter 4 orcs. Below is the court transcript of the trial.

Optional Visualization Aid: I picture the prosecuting attorney as Markie Post from "Night Court"--never mind that she was the public defendant in that show and John Larroquette was the prosecutor.  Also, the Judge is Minerva McGonagle/Maggie Smith. And as the defense attorney: Jon Lovitz.

Prosecuting Attorney (PA): Did you send the halfling ahead of the party to listen at the door to the L-shaped room, as recorded on page 40 of the Basic D&D rulebook, published 1977?

Caller: Yes

PA: Was there a thief in your party at that time?

Caller: Yes, there was.

PA: And yet you chose to break with Standard Dungeoneering Protocol and violate Adventuring Class Labor Union guidance on division of labor by sending a halfling to do a thief's job, even though a halfling has no special capacity for moving silently in a dungeon environment and are not better than 1st level thieves at hearing noises?

Caller: [Looks at his hands.] Those are guidelines, not rules.

PA: And again, when they'd discovered a chest inside the room, rather than having the thief, who entered the room along with the fighter, search the chest for traps, the fighter kicks the chest over.

Defense Attorney: Objection! "Find traps" was not among the thief's abilities in Holmes rules. Thieves had no better chance of finding a trap than any other class.

Judge: Sustained. The prosecution is advised to constrain your arguments to the appropriate version of the rules.

PA: Noted. [looking at a typewritten transcript] According to the transcript, Fighter kicked over the chest, then four orcs rounded the corner and engaged the party in combat. After the fight with the orcs, you once again assigned to the halfling the task of listening at the door? Why didn't you assign that task to the thief?

Caller: The thief got killed in the fight with the orcs.

[gasp from the courtroom, this information was redacted from the Holmes transcript]

PA: Let me ask you, Caller, was the thief a good fighter?

Caller: In Holmes D&D to hit and damage were the same for all the classes, so yeah, the thief was as good a fighter as anyone else in the party.

PA: True, but defensively, did the thief not have the worst armor class and, as a result of an undignified d4 hit dice, the lowest hit points in the party?

Caller: I don't recall, ma'am.

PA: I submit to the court the character sheets for the party, which clearly demonstrate that the thief had a 7 AC and only 2 hit points, while Dwarf and Elf, who were held back from combat by the Caller, had 7 and 5 hp respectively and armor classes of 5 or better.

Defense attorney: Objection your honor. How is this relevant to the case?

PA: I contend that it establishes a pattern of incompetent deployment of resources your honor.

Judge: I'll allow it. Continue.

PA: [to the defendant] According to the transcript, you assigned the dwarf the task of holding open the door and the elf the task of looking down the hall. Why did you assign two of your best fighters to this task?

Caller: They were the only people with infravision.

PA: Could one of them have watched the hallway while simultaneously holding the door open?


Caller: ... I ... the DM... ummm... Probably.

PA: So you left two of your best fighters to do a task that one could have handled while the Fighter along with Hafling and Thief--the two worst fighters in your party--took on the 4 orcs?

Caller: The halfling and thief were both +1 with missiles!

PA: Did missile fire come into play in this combat?

Caller: [shoulders sagging] No.

PA: Moving on. After the fight with the orcs. The Elf and Dwarf search for secret doors while the halfling is once again tasked with listening at the door. Elf finds a secret door just as Halfling reports that he hears "slithering noises." Is that correct?

Caller: Yes. I ordered everyone through the secret door to escape the slithering.

PA: But first you ordered the halfling to spike his door.

Caller: [brightening] Yes, standard procedure to obstruct pursuit.

PA: What kind of creatures slither?

Caller: ... Snakes?

PA: and snakes, are they known for their facility with door knobs?

Caller: No but it coulda' been a Medusa!

PA: Their hair slithers, do you think that's what the halfling heard?

Caller: The one in "Clash of the Titans" slithered!

PA: Yes, but that the original version of that movie won't come out until 1981, may I remind you that it's still 1977? So while the halfling is spiking the door to keep the approaching snake from opening it, everyone else goes through the secret door and the Caller orders the dwarf--the last one through--to close the door behind him.

Caller: It's standard emergency procedure!

PA: Even when one of your party is on the wrong side of the door?

Caller: How was I to know that Halfling hadn't made it through yet?

PA: Because you announced the marching order: [reading from transcript]

"Elf in front. Fighter behind him. Dwarf will close the door and bring up the rear." 

No mention was made of the halfling, who was still spiking shut the door in the L shaped room and, being preoccupied with the busywork you insisted he perform, had not seen where the secret door was. I direct the courts attention to the sworn statement of the Dungeon Master:

"Once the secret door closed, the halfling was left in total darkness. As he would be unable to find the secret door under such conditions, he waited at the spiked door until the slithering went away, pried out the spikes he'd shoved into the door frame, and departed the L-shaped room."

Caller: I ... I ... plead the fifth?

PA: What happened to the rest of the party?

Caller: We went down the hall on the other side of the secret door, until we saw the gelatinous cube. I sent the dwarf back to listen at the secret door to the room we'd just left thinking we might need to retreat there. On the way, he reported back that he thought there was a hollow spot in the floor, so I sent Elf back to help him search for trap doors.

PA: And you just didn't notice that in your party of 4 people, there were only three of you?

Caller: I thought that the halfling handed me the torch!

PA: Yes, according to the transcript,

"Caller: ... Where is that torch?
Somebody: Here it is." 

Who, as it turned out, was that "Somebody"?

Caller: My older sister.

PA: And which character was your sister's?

Caller: None of them. She was watching tv in the next room at the time I shouted for the torch. She was just being a jerk.

PA: So who did have the torch?

Caller: Fighter.

PA: And whose character was Fighter?

Caller: Mine.

[Snickering from the crowd]

PA: And what befell the elf and dwarf in their search for a trap door? They found one, correct?

[Caller shrinks in his seat]

PA: They both fell into it, did they not? I'd like to present to the court page 10 of the Holmes D&D Rulebook:

"Many dungeons contain traps, such as trap doors in the floor. If a character passes over one a six-sided die is rolled; a 1 or 2 indicates the the trap was sprung and he has fallen in." 

So you all passed over it safely the first time, but Elf and Dwarf ran out of luck the second time.

Caller: Yes, but they survived the fall!

PA: And what happened next?

Caller: The gelatinous cube was approaching so I ran and jumped across the pit trap so that I could lower a rope down and pull them out leaving the cube on the other side of the pit.

PA: A surprisingly reasonable plan, to be sure. But how did it turn out?

Caller: Well, I forgot that the thief had the rope, so after spending two rounds first removing and then  searching my pack, I ran down the hall to the L-shaped room to get it from his pack.

PA: And...

Caller: While I was searching Thief's body, the secret door closed behind me. I had to spend a turn trying to figure out how to open it.

PA: But you did finally open it. Then what?

Caller: By the time I got back to the pit, the gelatinous cube had ... fallen into it.

PA: Completely engulfing Elf and Dwarf in its acidic embrace!

[The crowd gasps in shock, followed by angry shouting]

Judge: [Pounding gavel] Quiet or I'll clear the court. [The crowd settles]. Proceed prosecutor.

PA: So what happened next?

Caller: I was all alone, so I went back to the L-shaped room and down the corridor--

PA: Did you find it odd that the door in the L-shaped room was no longer spiked?

Caller: Well, I didn't think of it until I saw the giant snake in the hall.

PA: Did it attack you?

Caller: No. It was asleep. It had... recently eaten.

PA: And you knew this how?

Caller: It had a big bulge in its middle.

PA: A bulge approximately the size of a halfling?

Caller: Yes ma'am. [Hangs head in shame, as his defense attorney surreptitiously gathers his papers and slinks from the room]

Rogues gallery: Clarissa the Cleric, Spider Crusher

Back in the Holmes Basic Set, Clarissa the Cleric famously avenged the death of Bruno the Battler by staving in with one mighty swing of her mace the nasty giant spider that poisoned poor Bruno. This was a life-changing moment for Clarissa; her first time swinging her mace in combat met with such satisfying success.

While she got into the cleric gig out of a desire to heal, she couldn't deny the blood lust she felt on successfully crushing the horrid arachnid, and thereafter spent a great deal more of her adventuring efforts inflicting wounds rather than healing them.

When she reached 3rd level and her party was forced to decamp from their Basic D&D surroundings, she got her first look at the Players Handbook; her eyes lit up when they landed on the paladin write-up. The potential of healing powers combined with capacity for bloodshed were just what she craved. However, she lacked the charisma and strength requirements. In order to prove her worthiness, she underwent a rigorous training program meeting with motivational speakers, physical trainers, faith healers and witch doctors to achieve the necessary requirements for the paladin class. Finally, her DM relented, allowing her to switch her Cha with her Wis and, in a holdover from Basic D&D, lowering her Int to raise her Str, she finally reached the minimum ability scores required, and off she went smashing heads and healing wounds.

Occasionally Clarissa let her zeal for bloodshed get the best of her and was reprimanded by the alignment police. She was issued a citation after one particularly ruthless assault on a gang of three poorly armed bandits who made the mistake of attempting to rob her. Her claim of self defense was ignored when the Video Assisted Referee showed that the last of the outlaws had dropped his weapon and was clearly in the act of surrender when her mace crushed his face.

Chagrined by her actions--or more specifically, at being held accountable for them--she quit the paladinhood and considered changing class again. She was no longer interested in healing people at all so she revisited the PHB and petitioned her Dungeon Master for another change; she wanted to be a chaotic neutral elf fighter/magic user. The DM as initially shocked at the race-change, but on reflection, was relieved that their would no longer be a need to police Clarissa's actions so strictly, and so approved the unorthodox alteration. She moved her 17 Cha to Int and adventured on until she reached her racially determined level limits, bought a townhouse in Gryrax, and retired. Though her alignment, class, and even her race changed periodically throughout her career, one  thing was always constant: her precious, spider-crushing mace.

Holmesian Non-system: or Who cares how you roll intiative?

I gotta be honest with you: the Holmesian initiative thing I prattled on about the other day doesn't really evoke a sense of Holmeliness to me at all.  Not in the least.  Indeed, this sort of granular rules-tinkering in general seems to defy all-that-is-Holmey about Basic D&D.  To me, no particular rules could possibly evoke Holmes, because when I played Basic D&D back in the day, the rules were only vaguely understood and were almost irrelevant to the experience.  All you needed was a rough grasp of the core concepts of a> role playing and b> using dice as arbiters of action.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=913789

 
What made that old blue book special to me was the sense of adventure it evoked.  Just look at that cover; I distinctly remember the feeling of awe I had when I first laid eyes on it: the way the dragon was looking right past Malchor the magicuser and Bruno the battler, right at me.  You got the sense that you were part of the party facing the dragon and that if you didn't think fast you were going to be toast.  I think this image made it clear what "role playing" was all about in a much more meaningful way than any Intro to any rulebook in the genre has ever accomplished.

As the Holmes set we used back in the day came without dice, we often got our D&D on using only 6-siders plundered from board games.  We ditched the silly chits as too cumbersome--plus, by the 3rd or fourth session, several chits had gone missing.  As I recall, a 4 or higher on a d6 was considered a hit, regardless of the attacker's hit dice or the target's AC and everything did d6 damage (true to the Holmesian rules, coincidentally).  We may have cobbled something similar together for Saving throws, or perhaps ignored them entirely.  And we assumed that a 1st level magic user could cast each 1st level spell once, 2nd level MUs could cast all the 2nd level spells, etc.  It seemed completely obvious that that was how magic was supposed to be handled, there was no need to delve through the text to decipher the precise meaning of the author.  Basic D&D was a means of exploring the world in a brand new way, not a collection of rules to be tampered with and argued over by a pack of middle aged men with ADD.

Advanced D&D changed all that.  Daddy Gygax made it clear that our free-wheeling ways were the wrong way to play, and we were only too happy to absorb the new, more sophisticated rules.   We quickly digested the hardcover tomes, though, like everyone else, we couldn't swallow a few things like psionics, segments, speed factors, and about two thirds of the DMG.  But sadly, we were no longer explorers in the ways of gaming, now we were more like middle managers toeing the corporate line while foisting grief on our underlings.

So when I say that Holmesian Basic is the Official Rules of Record for the Holmsmouth Urban Megadungeon Project, it has nothing to do with how you determine initiative, how fast zombies move, or even--amazingly enough--what type of hit dice thieves get to roll.  It has more to do with a feeling fostered by the sometimes--often--cartoony artwork of Tom Wham and the Daves than by how many seconds are in a melee round.  Or with the sense of old school horror brought on by the Thaumaturge with the caged ape in his lab and the green flames that engulfed crazy old Zenopus's tower all those years ago, which was a big change for us kids who were still giddy from watching "The Empire Strikes Back" in its original run.  We were exploring not just a new genre--fantasy--but also a new way of playing games.

Holmes-ish Inititative

I've been using Holmes Basic as the Official Rules of Record for my systemless Holmsmouth Urban Megadungeon Project cuz, well, it's in the name, among other reasons.  But despite having cut my teeth on Blue Book Basic back at the dawn of the 80s, I really haven't played it since.  So I've been brushing up on it lately, and, of course, there are a few things that I've gotta mess with.

Initiative is going to be the first target of my tinkering. (After thief hit dice of course).  For those not in the know, Holmesian initiative is a straight-up comparison of Dexterity scores of the combatants.  This means that Holmian initiative is individual--not team--based.  And, once established, the order remains fixed: no re-rolling each round since there's no rolling to begin with.  And it also means that if you have a high dexterity you are likely to get in the first blow every time.  And, probability being what it is, there are going to be a lot of folks tied-up around the 9-12 range.

But what it also means is that you're going to have to roll up a dex score for every orc, kobold, and displacer beast that decides to take on the party.  And then you'll have to track each one of your uniquely dextertied critters throughout the combats.

That, for me, is a deal breaker in itself. But there's still one more nail in the coffin: the implied assumption that the 3-18 ability range that we use for  humans and their ilk would be applied universally for all creatures from purple worms to pixies, zombies to giant ants.  [Actually, maybe not zombies; isn't their a rule that they always lose initiative? Or is that in AD&D?]  Who ever heard of a cat with a 7 dexterity?  Impossible right?

I want a score that:

1. Reflects all the various things that go into making you quick on the draw; things like your size and your general quickness, and, most importantly
2. It has to already exist in the rules; I don't wanna be making up new statistics here.  You figured this out yet? 

Movement.  Think about it, it already takes into consideration things like your size and quickness.  Long legs allow you to cover ground more quickly, but at some point the cumbersomeness of your limbs starts to slow you down.  As illustration of this principle, famous sprinters you have heard of are pretty much all between 5'8" and 6'2" tall; at 6'5", Usain Bolt--the current 100m world record holder--is an outlier.*  Giants have very long legs, but have far surpassed the optimal balance between size and quickness, thus they move at the same rate as humans even though they're twice as tall.

*Hence yesterday's post, in case you were wondering what brought that on. No idea how tall that Tiritelli dude is.

So your move in olde school "inches" will be the baseline.  Actually, Holmesian basic lists movement in feet, e.g. elves move 120', dwarves = 60', etc.  Just drop the trailing zero for the same result.  You're going to get an awful lot of ties though, since every dude in chainmail and every orc are going to have the same initiative value.  So we're going to add a couple of variable to the mix: your dex adjustment (In Holmes it's +1 for dex of 13 or greater, -1 for 8 or less, I believe) and a randomizer, also known as a roll of the dice.  But, in keeping with the Holmesian method, you don't re-roll every round; just once until the combat comes to a meaningful ending.

The Holmesy-Dice Chucker Initiative Formula:  

Initiative = Movement + Dex adjustment + Randomizer (d4,d6, or d8 based on hit dice)

Yes, the initiative die rolled is dependent on your hit dice; MUs roll 4-siders, fighters roll d8, thieves and clerics d6 (thieves only get d4 in Basic D&D,you say?  Then you haven't been paying attention). In fact, I'm thinking of extending HD to also include damage rolls: fighters would do d8 damage with whatever they use as a weapon, thieves (and clerics I suppose) do d6, and MUs will always plop down the pathetic pyramid for combat results.

Anyway, this puts encumbered folks at a serious disadvantage, which I'm ok with.   At least this is a matter of players deciding how to allocate resources rather than a result of a single die roll made during k-jen that will haunt/bless your character for the rest of eternity... or until they die on the 2nd level of Skull Mountain. 

Top Ten Cool Things About Holmesian D&D

In case you haven't heard, J. Eric Holmes would have been 82 years old today.  Thanks to Zenopus Archives for the birthday alert; and in response for his request for anecdotes, I prepared this little top 10 list of my favorite Holmes-isms:
 

10. The Original Adult Fantasy Role Playing Game--Yes, this was the tagline from the cover of the book.

9.  Wisdom--"is the prime requisite for clerics."  That's the extent of it.  No mumbo jumbo about judgement or senses or guile or connection to a deity.  If you're not a cleric you can lower your wisdom score to raise your other abilities.  Nice. 

8.  Alignment Graph--In a classic example of how a picture is worth a thousand words, this little graph made alignment selection a snap.  No need to understand the merits of law vs chaos--decades later, folks are still debating that to no avail--just pick your favorite critter from the diagram and be done with it.  If TSR had ever produced pre-printed character sheets specifically for Holmesian D&D, they might as well have replaced the word "Alignment" with "Chaotic Good."  

7.  Dagger (in boot)--From the Encumbrance section on page 9 you will learn that the primary function of boots was to carry your dagger.  Secondarily they offered some protection for your feet. 

6.  Harpy Breasts--Before the days of the internet, pre-pubescent kids didn't have a lot of options when it came to getting illicit glimpses of naked boobs.  For that, DCS's Harpy illustration was a thing of wonder.  Plus, the fighters are all wearing backpacks; a nice bit of realism for your adult fantasy game. 

5.  Stone Mountain--This bad-ass dungeon cross section is one of the iconic images of D&D.   Though uncredited, it's stylistically closest, I think, to the work of Tom Wham who, for comparison, also drew the Gnolls on page 27 and had a few entries in the Monster Manual. 

4.  "They may have other powers, do additional damage, etc."--The tone of the whole affair is "here are some cool rules, but they're not set in stone; you're allowed to monkey with stuff."  Once you moved on to AD&D, there was a definite sense that these were the Rules that Moses brought down from the mountain; diverge from them at your own peril. 

3.  The Parry--Parrying was such an important element of swashbuckling sword fights that it always struck me as unfortunate that parrying got the brush off in AD&D.

2.  G--Gloomy--Letter-coded dungeon rooms have their limitations--like, say, if you have more than 26 encounter areas in your dungeon--but I like that the letters could also carry meaning that numbers are not as well equipped to handle.  E meant empty, C was for corridor, RT was Rat Tunnels.

1.  Undisputed Sample Dungeon Champion of the Universe--It's got a magic sundial, a trick statue, loads of sarcophagi, 3 goblins holed up in a room the size of a high school gymnasium, rat tunnels, catacombs, an underground river, a sea cave full of pirates, a damsel in distress who's probably tougher than your party, and, to top it all off, an evil Thaumaturge with a mutinous pet gorilla.  How awesome is that?!

Primordial D&D: Eric Holmes and the 11 year old’s dungeon

Over the weekend I heard the sad news of the passing of yet another figure of the Grand Old School, Sir J. Eric Holmes, OBE; known as Rupert to his friends.* He’s a strange figure to me because even though it was his “Blue book” rules that introduced me to the game in the early 80s, I was not aware of his existence until at least 25 years later. At the time that I started playing the game, authorship of game rules was not a matter of interest—just as I cared not who wrote the rules to Monopoly or Trouble. And since it was a short 2 or 3 months after learning the game through the “Blue Book” that my older sister’s boyfriend generously loaned me his AD&D rulebooks, by the time authorship did gain meaning for me, there was only one name that mattered and it ended with an “x.”

Our gang immediately shunned Holmes’s work for the more detailed, and (slightly) better illustrated world of AD&D. Even to this day I wonder why anyone would be interested in reviving any of the Basic editions of the game; they all seem so limiting and just plain boring to me. [This from someone who has been reveling in playing the even older, more limiting rules of OD&D of late, so yeah, I acknowledge the paradox and mean no offense to those who do enjoy the Basic/etc. versions of D&D.] Despite this inclination, the Blue book and, especially, the Tower of Zenopus (the sample dungeon included with the rules) formed, for me, the primordial soup from which all dungeons evolved, and elements from Zenopus would prevail for some time in my dungeoneering** before they eventually withered from the repertoire.

Anyway, the news of Holmes’s passing has had me reminiscing about those early, primordial dungeons; back before my gang started taking the rules too seriously and insisting that dungeons make sense and all that. Which is to say, before puberty struck. A few key dungeon elements keep coming to mind that were persistent in the adventures that my friends and I subjected each other to in the first year or so of our playing days, and while not all of them are directly poached from Tower of Zenopus, they are intrinsically linked, in my mind, to beginner’s D&D, no matter which version one actually played. Below are a few of these game elements.

• Enchanted Sarcophagi: I had no idea what a sarcophagus was but after Zenopus came along, I immediately became an eleven year-old sarcophagus expert. Designing intricate boxes to contain the dead and imbuing said caskets with awesome and terrible powers to inflict/pass on to anyone brave/stupid enough to lie down in one. Of course, they were usually crammed with corpses—animate and otherwise— or moldering sacks but once they were emptied, climbing into them often offered some sort of reward. This could be based on our tendency as kids to play in the nearby cemetery—often climbing down into freshly dug graves—or , more likely, just daring each other to do so. I’m pretty sure I never got the nerve up.
• Underground water body: Absolutely essential to a dungeon experience for those who cut their teeth on the Tower of Zenopus.
• Giant crustaceans: I offer this as a sub-item because, well, something had to live in or near the underground water. And if it was just a giant pike then staying out of the water eliminated any threat. While I’m pretty sure that there were giant crabs in the river under Zenopus, the crustacean infestation in my early dungeons, I think, was also encouraged by my youthful fascination with, and dread of, the abundant crayfish that inhabited the rivers and streams I played in as a kid. Anyway, they were never giant lobsters in the dungeons. Lobsters are too closely associated with food and, even though they are vile, Cthulian looking critters in real life, the word “lobster” immediately conjures up images of hot, tender, white flesh doused with melted butter and eaten with a dainty, little fork.
• Cloud city: the inspiration for this one is pretty obvious to anyone who has ever seen the original Monster Manual or DM’s Guide. That’s right, 2/3 of all core AD&D rule books had a cloud city prominently displayed on them. Probably about 2/3 of all dungeons I made in the 1st year of playing the game had a cloud city floating overhead and some means of getting your ass up there. I don’t have any clear recollection of what purpose these cloud cities served; they were just, ya’ know, cities on clouds. They were always ruled by Titans or cloud giants whose good will could not entirely be relied upon, not even for such things as return trips to the ground. What seems strange to me now is that despite their prominence on the covers of the core rulebooks, there is virtually no other reference to airborne urban centers anywhere else in the game; not in any modules or rules. Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this. 
• Peaceful interlude: My early dungeons always had a room that served as an oasis from its dark and dangerous surroundings, usually inhabited by a wizened and kindly old man or elf. The room occupied some kind of intra-dimensional space, often aglow with warm light and equipped with a cozy breakfast nook overlooking a tumbling stream and a sun dappled glade of maple and beech trees—despite its presence 8 levels beneath the ruins of the Castle of Demonic Arcana or wherever. It was usually hidden by a secret door that only chaotic good characters (the preferred alignment of 11 year old boys everywhere) could locate. The wizened gent who haunted these chambers generally did not venture outside of his comfy parlor and offered no direct or material assistance in thwarting the evils of the dungeon; just a moment's respite from the harshness of the environs and, perhaps, a few cryptic words of advice or trivial tidbits of dungeon history. Generally, such a room could only be visited once. Players so gauche as to try to take untoward advantage of its hospitality would either be unable to locate the secret door or, should they locate it, find an empty, un-extraordinary chamber. I don’t recall an actual source within the game for such an encounter area—Tower of Zenopus did not, to my recollection, have one—so it might have been the likes of the Last Homely House or Tom Bombadil’s place or the other oases of safety that are prevalent in Tolkien’s work: Tolkien being, at the time, the only fantasy literature of which I was even aware.

* Mr. Holmes was not, to my knowledge, actually a knight; an oversight that I'm sure the queen will soon be addressing.  Also, probably no one called him Rupert either.

** I use the "-eering" suffix here not in the mountaineering sense--as in exploring dungeons-- but in the femineering sense