Hobbitfest '14 Continues: Witcher style

While in Eastern Europe for a wetwork assignment some time ago I discovered a series of novels by an obscure Polish author named Adrzej Sapkowski. The series chronicles the adventures of a character called Geralt, who is a "Wiedzmin," which translates roughly as "Witcher." A silly name, to be sure; it is easy to understand why he's unknown in the English-speaking world.

I'm enjoying Mr. Sapkowski's output, despite the fact that I'm one of those obnoxious D&D nerds who professes to not care for fantasy literature all that much. I've enjoyed it so much that I've started translating The Wiedzmin series of books into English in hopes of finding a publisher here in the States. In the process I've come across a tidbit that hearkens back to late summer 2014 when, instead of pandemics and insurrection, hobbits were on everyone's mind.

Yes, it was Hobbitfest '14, a time when second breakfasts and foot-merkins were all the rage. At the time I posited that halflings in D&D needed to take some cues from other sources than the Shire and toughen up a bit if they wanted to survive in the modern gaming world. Sources such as Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings, or the buff little dudes Jeff D. was rendering back in the day. 

 

R.I.P. Diego Maradona

So when I read this scene from Sapkowski's The Lady of the Lake--which I'm only now finding out was the last of the Witcher books--I decided I had to retroactively shoehorn it into Hobbitfest. 

In this scene, a family of halflings is tending their garden when they are approached by a band of mounted brigands lead by an exceptionally depraved character named Pike. The bandits demand that the halflings turn over all of their material wealth, food, and livestock, to which Rocco, the family patriarch, tells him where to shove it. The following ensues: 

Pike straightened up and reached for the shortsword hanging from his saddle.

"Have at them!" he yelled. "Kill them all!"

With a movement so fast it was almost imperceptible, Rocco Hildebrandt stooped down towards his barrow, took out a crossbow concealed under a rush mat, brought it to his cheek and sent a bolt into Pike's mouth, which was wide open in a yell. Incarvilia Hildebrandt, nee Biberveldt, swung her arm powerfully and a sickle spun through the air, slamming into Milton's throat... Ograbek, moaning, tumbled beneath the horse's hooves, with grandpa Holofernes' pruners buried in his belly up to the handles wooden facings... The entire incident took more or less the same time it would to utter the sentence 'Halflings are incredibly fast and can throw all sorts of missiles unerringly."

While this confirms the long held understanding that halflings are extra-ordinarily lethal with missile weapons (+3 to hit in good old fashioned AD&D), they also, based on their surnames, are of Dutch heritage. Ironically, the Dutch are currently the tallest people on this planet.

More Hommlet Podcasts!

Every now and then I lower my Gillnet of Knowledge-Gathering into the depths of the internet to dredge up new Hommlet content. My latest trawling efforts have yielded not one but two recent podcasts. 

First up is Open Dice Night, an ongoing game-play podcast wherein a gang of PCs known as the Party Folk are using actual 1e rules (descending AC! D6 initiative!) to take on Hommlet. The gang are not old timers, but curious youths (relative to old creeps like me) going back in time to see what AD&D was all about. I always like to see what other folks do with Hommlet so this is pretty fun for me.

Next: Dungeon Master of None A couple of dudes, one a mere whippersnapper and the other an appropriately seasoned gamer, shine some loving attention on the greatest 16 pages of D&D ever printed.

Your Druid broke my Moathouse!

It took a societal lockdown but, at last, I took the now-teenaged [barely] progeny to Hommlet. He seems to finally have achieved the requisite maturity to handle a [simplified] character sheet, so he actually rolled up characters for the first time; though he did complain that "it took like nine hours". He was off by a factor of 12 but nonetheless I took over once it got to equipping the newbs mostly because I wanted to break out my old quick n' dirty PC starting equipment rules.

Once in town, he recruited a few NPCs at the inn--wisely shunning Zert's advances but taking on the wily Furnok, the drunken Elmo, and the pedantic Spugnoir instead. At the moathouse he got past the frogs outside the gate and the huge spider in the tower without much trouble. Then the kiddo wandered straight to the giant lizard encounter where his druid does the ol' Animal Friendship thing. So now he has an awesome giant lizard friend. He even has the MU cast a sleep spell on it so that he can remove the obstruction (a shield) that's stuck in it's craw. (See/listen to GGNoRe for an explanation of this situation)

Blogspots new insert image function really sucks.

This screws up--in a good way--the entire upper level of the moathouse. The bandits in room 7 are smart enough to know that they are just maybe up to taking on a small gang of novice adventurers, but are going to get slaughtered by a party of six accompanied by a voracious giant lizard. So they parley for their freedom and skip town. Two encounters out of the way thanks to one 1st level spell. 

But we're not done yet. Now the PCs wander toward the pantry where a herd of giant rats are waiting to feed on them. Maybe you can justify giant rats hungry enough to see a smallish anthropomorphic creature like a halfling or a gnome as food, but are rats  gonna attack a voracious, 25' long lizard? Hell no! They fled in terror, running down the stairs to the undercroft and triggering both green slimes hanging out on the ceiling. By the time the PCs catch up, the lizard has eaten 3 rats while 3 more are turning to slime and the rest have disappeared into the garbage heap. Two more moathouse encounters eliminated without an initiative roll.

Technically, this shouldn't have worked because the Giant Lizard is a 3 Hit Die creature and Animal Friendship, by Ed. 1 rules, only allows a 1st level druid to befriend a critter of 2HD or less. But, because I didn't have my 1e PHB on-hand, we were using the Castles & Crusades rules (basically 1.75 ed AD&D for those unfamiliar) which are not entirely clear on the matter. 

That all happened two months ago and we've been playing almost non-stop ever since. It's a lot more fun playing in person than the online game I've been involved with since society broke down and we moved into our Omega Man bunker. But that's another post.

Demographics of Hommlet: the Spreadsheet

My trusty colleague Rear Admiral D. Osgood III once again noticed that the ol' blogomatic device was out of gas so he wired a shipment of fuel over to Dicechucker Towers in hopes of restarting the boiler. And what form did this fuel dump take you ask? Why it's a spreadsheet detailing all the inhabitants of everyone's favorite town that nerdiferous pedants will tell you is actually a hamlet. 

Osgood has pored over the text of the Village of Hommlet (I understand he is using the Hommlet portion of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil as his base text rather than the original, stand-alone module) and developed a thorough census of the population. If you're just here for the handy spreadsheet, here it is. Use it in good health. Or poor health; I won't discriminate against the infirm.

If you want some analysis--or you're just killing time until the pandemic is over--stick around for further reading:

The Male:Female ratio is 7.7 men to 1 woman. This is made more significant when one considers that just 10 years ago the region was at war; you'd expect at least a few widows in this town. Or perhaps it was the women of Hommlet who cleared the moathouse, thus leaving the menfolk to step in and fill the gaps in the militia in the years hence.

The write-up on the Inn mentions that "when the season arrives there will be one or two "likely lasses hired on". What exactly is a "likely lass"? And what season is it that brings more bustle to the burg of Hommlet? Fall foliage? Hunting Season? Hockey season?

Over at Rufus and Burne's tower, the 16 mercenaries share a 20' d. room at the top of the tower for their lodgings while their capt and lieutenant get tiny yet private chambers on the floor below. But there are two 2nd level fighters posted as guards in the tower who do not appear to be affiliated with the mercenary posse that sleeps up in the turret. Since there are no other 2nd level fighters at the tower to relieve them, it must be assumed that they are always on duty and therefore have no need for a place to sleep.

Scale mail: Good enough for Thor

Also, those two guards have AC 5 and carry shields which means they must be wearing scale mail. No one in AD&D ever used scale mail. Leather and chainmail are prevalent, obviously, but studded leather and even ring mail--studded leather's disfigured troglodytic half-brother--occasionally make appearances, but no scale mail. And this despite it's cinematic appeal.