Wisty Mysteria II

"Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

The second volumes of any of my modern mixes are almost always the same: they consist of all the tracks that didn’t fit on the first volume, either in terms of style, or because I just plain ran out of room.  The pre-modern mixes¹  are different: at the time they were developed, there was no concept of a “second volume.” I thought I was putting together the definitive statement on mood X, and that would be an end to it.  Of course, being older and wiser (and continuously discovering newer and newer music), I now know that you can never really exhaustively describe a mood.  There’s always something new to say, and some new tunes to say it for you.

This the first second volume of a pre-modern mix that I’ve managed to finish, and I’m pretty happy with it.  I think every track here still retains that slightly sad (wistful), slightly creepy (mysterious) vibe that I was originally going for, but it’s expanded in nearly every way.  Where the original volume was mostly stuck in a narrow band of time (1986 – 1991), this volume spans three and a half decades (1982 – 2016).  And whereas volume I hewed very close to what “alternative” meant in the late 80s and early 90s, this volume ranges far and wide, from early 80s synthpop, to the power ska of the aughts, to downtempo electroncia, and even into some alt-country territory.  Let’s dive in, shall we?

On the sadder side of the spectrum, we have strong contenders from Richmond duo House of Freaks, British phenoms the Beautiful South, and one of my favorite 80s bands, Yazoo.  House of Freaks is one of those bands you can’t believe is only two people; they exist in a musical spectrum that I have yet to describe but starts on the slow end with Toad the Wet Sprocket, continues through the Goo Goo Dolls and the Replacements, and ends up with the metal-leaning Candlebox.  House of Freaks is on the solidly folk-leaning side of the spectrum, perhaps where the Gin Blossoms hang out, but oh so much better than those Arizona gentlemen.  No stranger to writing melancholy songs about historical events,² this one is about slave ships coming to America.  The Beautfiul South, far more popular in their native UK than they ever managed to achieve on my side of the pond, is also singing about dark times in history; in their case, it’s a condemnation of politicians who send young men off to die in wars while they stay safe at home.  Moving from the historical to the personal, Yazoo’s “Midnight” uses Alison Moyet’s powerful voice to tell a quiet story of loneliness and regret.

But the one that personally touches me the most is Chris Isaak’s “Nothing’s Changed.” A taste:

Kisses you gave me,
The vows you made me,
None of these things have changed ...
Nothing’s changed.

And yet, in the song, of course everything’s changed.  The palpable longing in this tune feels very real and raw, and Isaak’s use of dynamics and pauses really drive it home.

Switching to the other side of Wisty Mysteria’s continuum, there’s the weirdly psychedelic “We Are So Small”—weird in the sense that the Red Sea Pedestrians are far more known for klezmer-tinged Americana³—that touches on “the vastness of unbounded space,” and there’s “The Shining Path,” in which Shriekback opines that “if we were different some other time, we don’t remember”: both seem to touch on all the things we don’t know about the universe.  Still, I would probably give the award to “Lost Boys and Girls Club” by LA’s own Dum Dum Girls.⁴  This is female-fronted shoegaze-adjacent power dreampop, similar in style to Mazzy Star or fellow Angelenos Tashaki Miyaki,⁵  and it’s an excellent example of their style: there are fuzzy guitar chords, and echoey vocals, and fantastic lyrics like “your eyes are black X’s of hate and of hexes.”

But, as always, most songs are in between the extremes.  For sheer isolation, it’s tough to beat the howling wind in the background of Bronski Beat’s “Memories,” which fades directly into the howling wind of the Smiths’ “Asleep.” There’s also the figurative winds of Cutting Crew’s “Sahara,” and the winds in the title of “Sarah When the Wind Blows” by emmet swimming.⁶  I’m not sure there are any winds in “Trophy” by Bat for Lashes, but there’s certainly desolation and defiance.  And “Gold and Rose” by Myles Cochran⁷ has that echoey emptiness that only country-adjacent tunes can seem to capture.

As for Keren Ann, an anti-folk artist squarely in the mold of Regina Spektor and Feist,⁸ she often puts out gentle, shimmery pop gems such as “Not Going Anywhere,” the title track from her 2003 album.  They’re often hopeful, as this selection is, but in this case there’s a touch of wistful sadness (mostly provided by the backing violin) which makes it fit perfectly on this mix.

For this volume’s injection of songs which seem upbeat until you actually listen to them, my favorite is certainly “Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde.  Actually, when I arranged the original mix, I was torn between this track and the one I eventually chose, but in the end “Little Conversations” captures that wistful feeling more than this track.  But “Happy Birthday” describes a peculiar sense of loneliness where you’re not exactly sad about it, but it certainly ain’t happy either.  And I’ve always loved the temporally contemporary Voice of the Beehive, an alternative band fronted by two sisters from California and backed by former members of Madness, who are excellent at producing midtempo or even upbeat songs that have deceptively downbeat messages.  “Sorrow Floats” provides such lyrical gems as:

You can’t drown your sorrows,
Or on you will be the joke.
Because the only thing that you will drown is yourself,
‘Cause you see my dear, sorrow floats.

I always wanted to get this track onto a mix somewhere, and this was the obvious place for it.

Wisty Mysteria II
[ Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More ]

“Option” by Naomi, off Pappelallee
“Gold and rose” by Myles Cochran, off Marginal Street
“Big Empty” by Stone Temple Pilots, off Purple
“Nothing's Changed” by Chris Isaak, off Heart Shaped World
“Sahara” by Cutting Crew, off Broadcast
“State of Mind” by Mad Caddies, off Keep It Going
“Sarah When the Wind Blows” by emmet swimming, off Big Night Without You
“Sorrow Floats” by Voice of the Beehive, off Let It Bee
“Bottom of the Ocean” by House of Freaks, off Monkey on a Chain Gang
“Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde, off Free
“Not Going Anywhere” by Keren Ann, off Not Going Anywhere
“We Are So Small” by the Red Sea Pedestrians, off See Through the Eyes of Osiris!
“Trophy” by Bat for Lashes, off Fur and Gold
“Lost Boys and Girls Club” by Dum Dum Girls, off Too True
“The Shining Path” by Shriekback, off Big Night Music
“Have You Ever Been Away” by the Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“Memories” by Bronski Beat, off The Age of Consent
“Asleep” by the Smiths, off Louder Than Bombs [Compilation]
“Midnight” by Yazoo, off Upstairs at Eric's
“Crescent Moon” by KT Tunstall, off Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon

Total:  20 tracks,  79:49

I’m not sure there are any truly surprising choices here, but perhaps the Mad Caddies qualify.  The power ska group from just up the California coast from me is more known for upbeat tunes such as you might find on Salsatic Vibrato.⁹  But “State of Mind,” while not exactly downbeat, is certainly really happy-making either.  The bridge proclaims “I feel the weight of the world sometimes, hanging on my head, ... look for the light at the end of this tunnel once again,” and that sums it up nicely: the singer wants to find some hope, but isn’t really succeeding.

Which only leaves us with our opener, closer, and volume namer.  The last of which may also be a surprising choice: grunge masters Stone Temple Pilots at first seem an odd pick for a volume of reflective tunes, but “Big Empty” is just that.  Full of surreal imagery (such as “her dizzy head is conscience-laden”), it’s another example of using dynamics to build an amazing song structure.  There are the quiet moments when Scott Weiland says he’s done “too much walking; shoes worn thin” as well as “too much tripping and my soul’s worn thin” (which, as thinly veiled drug references in rock anthems go, is one of the better ones), then the song bursts into guitars and drums and Scott wails that it’s “time to take her home.” It’s always been one of my favorites, even though I generally prefer Core to Purple.

As for the opener, it’s another appearance from one of my favorite obscure bands, Naomi, who were so instrumental in forging the first two volumes of Smokelit Flashback.  Given my definition of “obscure band,” many bands are obscure when I first write about them, but become far better known in the years afterwards.  But, considering that the Berlin masters of downtempo released their first album in 2002, it’s somewhat amazing to me that AllMusic barely acknowledges them, with a discography but no biograpy, and Wikipedia continues to be blissfully unaware that they exist at all.  But exist they do, and they are amazingly versatile, as you might guess from the dizzying number of mixes they’ve appeared on.¹⁰  This track, from their sophomore album Pappelallee,¹¹ is tinged with just enough regret to make it slot beautifully here:

I can’t say “no,” and I can’t say “yes,”
Just another way of saying “no,” I guess ...
When you can’t say “no,” and you can’t say “yes,”
You leave a mess.

Given that I’d discovered this song about 15 years too late for it to make onto the first volume, it was actually one of the earliest tracks I slotted for this follow-up, and it was nearly always in the anchor slot.

As for “Crescent Moon,” it has a bit of a strange tale.  I first discovered KT Tunstall via one of those “if you like that, you’ll like this!” music discovery services.  I’ve no doubt that the “that” in this case was Liz Phair; if you like Liz Phair, I find it difficult to believe that you could possibly fail to like KT Tunstall.  So I knew I wanted to check her music out, but where to start?  AllMusic convinced me that Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon—not exactly a double album, but one with two very distinct halves¹²—was her best, so I tried it.  And didn’t immediately take to it.  Not willing to give up, I went back and tried Tiger Suit and fell in love.  Most of what we’ve heard from Tunstall (on Sirenexiv Cola and Porchwell Firetime) has been from Tiger Suit, which I still feel is her best.  But Invisble Empire // Crescent Moon has its own charms; it’s far more delicate and ethereal than the upbeat, peppy Tiger Suit, so it takes a few more listens to fully appreciate.  I did use one track (“How You Kill Me” on Smooth as Whispercats) from the Invisible Empire half, but that’s been it so far.  However, when I first put this volume together, it originally ended with “Midnight,” and it just didn’t feel right as as closer.  Oh, it’s a brilliant song, sure, but not exactly the right note to go out on.  I wanted something quieter, softer, that faded into a not-uncomfortable silence.  And I rediscovered “Crescent Moon,” which is all that, and more.  With some beautfiul strings in the mix and some great lyrics sung from the point of view of the moon itself, such as “pulling all your oceans up around my body” and “never found a refuge up there in the sky,” this is a darkly pretty, beautifully poignant note to close out the volume.

Next time, we’ll drift into more surreal terroritory.  Again.

⇐ Wisty Mysteria I

__________

1 Easiest to just read volume I‘s post for what that means, if you don’t know yet.

2 We last saw them singing about the development of the atomic bomb on Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

3 Such as their amazing cover of “Sugar in My Coffin” that we saw on Porchwell Firetime.

4 Introduced to me by a former coworker, who knew or had met one of the members.  Or former members.  I don’t recall exactly.

5 Who we’ve seen in this series many times: twice in Paradoxically Sized World (volumes III and IV) and once for the inaugural Darkling Embrace.

6 I’ve talked about my discovery of and connections to emmet swimming on Salsatic Vibrato I and Tenderhearted Nightshade I.

7 Who we first saw on Rose-Coloured Brainpan, where I mentioned that he’s another Magnatune discovery.

8 And in fact the place we’ve seen her before is right where you’d expect: Sirenexiv Cola.

9 And you will find them there, on volumes III and IV.

10 To wit: Smokelit Flashback I, Smokelit Flashback II, Shadowfall Equinox V, Bleeding Salvador I, Rose-Coloured Brainpan I, and Cantosphere Eversion I.

11 Which, the Internet just informed me, is apparently German for “Poplar Avenue.” Go figure.

12 Much like the two halves of Concrete Blonde’s Free are commonly marked “Day Side” and “Night Side.”

Isolation Report, Week #27

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, it’s been a few more weeks, and the world doesn’t seem to be getting any better.  Police officers keep killing innocent black people, Trump continues to do whatever the fuck he wants, and the only people who claim to have any chance at a vaccine any time soon are so unreliable as to make the prospect of taking a vaccine even scarier than not having one at all.

The only plus side whatsoever about the political situation is that Trump is apparently too stupid to stop doing skeevy shit for even a few days, so there are constant reminders about his unfitness for the presidency.  Of course, a majority of people voting against Trump is by no means a guarantee that he won’t win, as we all know from painful experience.  Nonetheless, it’s probably the best shot we have.

On the personal front, our guinea pig died a little over a week ago, despite an emergency trip to the vet, antibiotics, and feeding a liquid diet twice a day for several days.  The kids went to their first birthday party in months, although it was understandably small (i.e. attended by only the 3 families in our “social bubble”).  The PS/4 is still on the fritz, so it’s difficult to watch DVDs.  Work is going well, I suppose ... I mean, as well as one can expect given the prolonged lack of contact with my coworkers.  On the plus side, our work hired a comedian to do a Zoom show for us.  It ain’t the same as going out to a club with the folks from work, but it’s certainly better than nothing.  (And Adam was pretty funny, I thought.)

But we’re hanging in there, and certainly it could be worse.  And, you know ... only 3½ more months till this horrible, fucked up mess of a year is finally over.

Perl blog post #61

Recently, I discovered what “literate programming” was, so I wrote a post about it.  Obviously, I posted that on my Other Blog.

So Very, Very Low

I had a longer post all ready to go, but then I got laid low with some stomach issues.  I’ll have to try again next week, sadly.

Isolation Report, Week #24

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, The Mother is back from Colorado, safe and sound.  And virus free?  It seems so, but she (and our littlest one) are staying even more out of the public than usual for the requisite 2 weeks, just to be sure.  It seemed that Southwest, at least, is doing a soft-of-decent job at trying to keep everyone safe(ish): they’re only flying 2 people to a row, and I believe the masks were required (of course our ladies would have done that anyway—heck, we even got some glasses for the little one on the off-chance that that’s helpful—but it’s nice to know everyone else will mask up as well).  The trip itself ... well, I’m sure many of you know how it feels to go home to visit your family in the best of times, much less when people are in and out of the hospital.  Not so much fun, overall, although it was nice that The Mother got to meet her neice for the first time.

Meanwhile I was stuck at home with our two older children, one of whom is ostensibly an adult, but neither of whom is noted for their motivation or pliability.  I believe I described it as like pushing elephants uphill—the classic “herding cats” didn’t really begin to cover it.  If my elder child ever figures out how to monetize talking people into going out to buy them food, they will soon be wealthy; if my middle child ever figures out how to redirect all that time spent complaining about doing a thing into just doing the thing and moving on with his life, he will soon find it nearly impossible to fill all the extra hours.  Still, it was only 10 days that I had to do it unaided, and I’m somewhat compensated by the fact that my children refuse to read this blog, so they can’t bitch at me for bitching about them.

Our politics continues to be somewhat depressing, as Trump’s obvious strategy of constantly inventing new scandals so that all the old ones get forgotten continues to work on a grander and grander scale.  Having gotten away with kidnapping people off the streets of Portland, he’s moved on to screwing up everyone’s mail delivery in the hopes that will tip the election in his favor (remember: that’s not just my opinion of his actions—he actually admitted it), talking about trying to delay the election, and—perhaps most bizarre for its banality in the face of his other actions—looking into having his face added to Mount Rushmore.  Sober people are talking and even writing about the possibility that Trump could refuse to leave office even if he loses.  Trevor Noah’s old jokes likening Trump to an African dictator really seem less and less funny all the time ...

Am I heartened by the official acceptance of the Democratic nomination by Joe Biden?  Honestly, not that much.  (For my level of enthusiasm for Biden—as well as the level of enthusiasm for the majority of voters, I suspect—I will refer you once again to The Daily Show ... they sum it up better than I ever coould.)  A bit more so by the choice of Kamala Harris, who I’ve always liked, even though of course she’s not perfect.  But, hey: at this point, if lack of perfection is the worst thing you’ve got going for you, you’re a fucking political rockstar.  While Biden may not get us anywhere much farther that out from under Trump—assuming he can even get us that far—there’s always the chance that Harris will be president soon afterward, and then we might see some real reforms to the horrific state of our political system.  But, you know, I ain’t holding my breath.

I’m also extremely amused by the people (Colbert, for instance) who talk about the fact that Donald Trump fears going to jail once he’s out of office.  Even if Trump were capable of understanding consequences—and he’s definitely not, as nothing he’s ever done, no matter how bad, has ever spawned any—this is laughable to me.  We don’t send rich white guys to prison.  Roger Stone isn’t going to prison.  Nixon didn’t go to prison—hell, even Spiro Agnew didn’t go to prison.  The concept that Trump, or even any member of his family, might go to prison one day is so remarkably naive as to be amusing ... you know, if it weren’t so depressing.

Likewise, the concept that DeJoy will be in any way inconvenienced by having to testify before Congress—if he even does!—is also just silly.  If he decides to go, he’ll pretend he doesn’t “recall” anything and nothing will change.  Hell, if he decided to go and say “hell yeah, I’m sabotaging the post office: whaddaya gonna do about it?” ... still, nothing would change.  Better yet, why should he bother to go at all?  There are no consequences for not showing up, apparently, so he could make better use of that time on a golf course or a private jet or somesuch.  People on the screens rant about how Congress should be “grilling” DeJoy, or “holding him to account” ... I say, why bother?  What difference would it make?  There are no consequences for corrupt officials lying before Congress, there are no consequences for corrupt officials failing to appear before Congress, there are no consequences for Presidents scheming to rig elections, there are no consequences for police officers shooting innocent civilians ... why do we even bother any more?  Safer to expect the worst, I think.  Perhaps then I might be pleasantly surprised.

But, as I said before: I ain’t holding my breath.

Minor Magic Items

[This is a post I wrote primarily for an audience of people who play fifth edition D&D.  Nearly three years ago now, I pondered starting separate blogs for my eclectic interests, but I never really did.  If I had, though, this would certainly be on the gaming blog.  So, if you’re not a D&D player, you might want to give this one a pass.]

As part of my ongoing family campaign, the players have accepted a side quest to help out an important NPC in the city they happen to be staying in (temporarily; they’re passing through on a longer journey set for them by their “mysterious benefactor”).¹  Of course I expect them to complete this mission, and thus I have to be prepared to have the NPC reward them for their service.  I could just break out the hard currency, of course—no one ever turns their nose up at gold—but it seems boring.  The characters are not wanting for cash right now, and D&D 5e has a bit of a weird relationship with money anyhow: since the game discourages an active economy in magic items, once you get to a certain level of equipped-ness, you often can’t find much to spend your excess gold on.  But they’re still moderately low level (2nd through 4th, right now), so I also don’t want to drop a bunch of powerful items on them that will raise the overall power level and make me regret my decision later.  What to do?

Obviously the solution is minor magic items.  I’ve now spent a bunch of time combing my books and the Internet for the perfect items to gift my players with, so I thought it might be nice to share some of my findings with other folks: perhaps this info can help your game as well.

First of all, I gather from searching the Internet that there seems to be a some confusion as to what a minor magical item even is.  So perhaps we should start with what it isn’t.

• A minor magical item is not the same as a consumable magic item. A major effect is always a major effect.  Limited use of that effect does not magically (haha) make it a minor effect.
• A minor magical item is not the same as a wondrous item. “Wondrous item” is a term which here means “item we couldn’t fit into any other category.” While it’s true that sometimes a wondrous item may have a minor effect, many (many!) more of them have pretty major effects.  “Minor” does not mean “not a sword or a suit of armor or a staff or a ring or a ...”
• A minor magical item is not the same as a trinket. A trinket is a strange or unusual item which is designed to spark roleplaying opportunities.  It might not even be magical at all.

Let’s dispense with these in order of ease of dispensing.  Wondrous items are a category of magic items; it has absolutely nothing to do with whether it’s a minor item or not.  (To be fair, this is the term least often confused for “minor magical item,” so I think most people already get this.)  Consumable items are, again, a completely orthogonal concept.  A major magical item might be consumable, or it might not.  A minor item could also be consumable, but let’s be honest here: if the effect is already minor, it seems pretty mean to then limit the number of uses on top of that.  The question of trinkets is a bit harder, but not much.

First off, as mentioned above, some trinkets aren’t magical at all.  Here are some examples from the trinkets table (Player’s Handbook, pages 159 – 161):

• A mummified goblin hand
• The deed for a parcel of land in a realm unknown to you
• A small cloth doll skewered with needles
• A tiny silver bell without a clapper
• A l-inch cube, each side painted a different color
• An empty wine bottle bearing a pretty label that says, “The Wizard of Wines Winery, Red Dragon Crush, 331422-W”
• A black pirate flag adorned with a dragon’s skull and crossbones

These are all great, flavorful items, and they can all provide interesting story hooks for clever players.  But no magic.

On the other hand, here are some other examples from that same list:

• A shard of obsidian that always feels warm to the touch
• A small, weightless stone block
• A candle that can’t be lit
• A nightcap that, when worn, gives you pleasant dreams
• A silver teardrop earring made from a real teardrop
• A tiny mechanical crab or spider that moves about when it’s not being observed
• A wooden box with a ceramic bottom that holds a living worm with a head on each end of its body

Also great, flavorful items, but these are all definitely magical.  Not very magical, granted, but then we were looking for minor magic items ... right?

This gets us to the heart of what a minor magical item is.  A major magical item has a major effect.  Whether it’s wondrous or not doesn’t change that; neither does whether it’s consumable or not.  A minor magical item has a minor effect.  So why aren’t magical trinkets minor magic items?  Because a trinket has no effect.  Sure, the nightcap may give you pleasant dreams, and the block may not weigh anything even though it’s made of stone, but none of that actually has any effect on the game.

So what would be an example of an actual minor magic, item?  There are a few in the DMG, but not too many.  Happily, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything gives us a whole mess of ’em.  Here’s one:

• Boots of False Tracks (wondrous item, common): Only humanoids can wear these boots.  While wearing the boots, you can choose to have them leave tracks like those of another kind of humanoid of your size.

A very small effect, granted, but still something that could be useful in a game.  You might have to work pretty hard to come up with a way to use it, but that’s part of the joy of a minor magic item.  It’s real magic, it’s impressive to the common folk, it’s useful in the right situation, and it encourages creative play.  And what it doesn’t do is make the GM’s job harder.

See, as a GM you have be very careful with those major magic items.  Your players might be very excited to get a ring of invisibility, and you might feel quite magnanimous giving them one, but now you have to consider that you’ve got at least one character who’s never going to have to worry about sneaking past your sentries any more, or how to burgle that precious artifact that’s so closely guarded, or how to eavesdrop on crucial NPC conversations.  Oh, sure: you can demand stealth checks anyway, on the grounds that someone might hear them, or claim that your evil genius BBEG obviously would install “anti-invisibility preparations” (even if it’s only something as dirt simple as coating the floor with flour), but you can’t always ignore or override power that you specifically gave your players in the first place: it frustrates them, and why did you even give it to them if you didn’t expect them to use it?  So, every time you contemplate awarding some sort of major magic item, you have to think carefully about what impact it’s going to have on the game, and how it’s going to make your life harder: that is, how it’s going to make it more challenging for you to challenge your players.

But with minor magical items, you have none of these problems.  What plotline do you have planned that could possibly be upset by a pair of boots that can leave confusing tracks?  Or (to use a few more examples from Xanathar’s) a helmet that makes one’s eyes glow red? or a sword that gives off moonlight? or a tankard that allows one to drink as much as they like and never get drunk?  No, the minor magical item is awesome because the player gets to feel cool and special, and the GM never has to worry about being swept up in a magical powers arms race.

As for the creative play aspect, the OSR² proponents are fond of touting old-school D&D as facilitating “item-based problem-solving.” The idea is that modern D&D is all dripping with magic items so no one bothers to come up with uses for simple things such as mirrors, or a box of silver pins, or a pouch of herbs and spices.  But of course this is silly.  You can still encourage your players to use their equipment lists to their full extent; you just have to figure out to make it a bit sexier.  In those old-school days, you wouldn’t dream of going into a dungeon without your ten-foot pole, but that was because your GM would gleefully drop you into a spike pit if you didn’t tap all the floors along the way.  Also, if you didn’t use some sort of ear horn to listen at all the doors, you would eventually acquire ear seekers.  And if you didn’t have a silver mirror, your GM would inevitably spring a medusa or a basilisk on you.  Wasn’t old-school D&D fun?  It taught you to develop complex and bizarre shopping lists if you wanted to live: not exactly sexy swashbuckling adventure.  But that’s how it rolled—there were buttloads of bean-counting built into the game, actually.  Most of it has largely fallen by the wayside in the 3 major rules revisions since then, because most people don’t find detailed resource management all that fun.

But the OSR fans have a point that you really had to get the most out of your equipment list if you wanted to survive.  Figuring out how to make do with limited resources can be fun, as long as it doesn’t devolve into the aforementioned shopping list exercise.  But we can have the best of both worlds: minor magic items give the players something that they really want to use, because it’s all magical and cool, but because it has very limited application, it forces them to work hard to come up with a situation where they can actually put it to good use.  See?  Item-based problem solving and cool magic items as a reward and nice, modern rules with no complex resource tracking.  All your bases are covered.

Now that we know what minor magic items are and why we want to use them, where can we get them from?  Well, as mentioned previously, Xanathar’s is a good place to start.  The section is actually called “common magic items,” and it starts on page 136, but “common” isn’t quite the same as “minor” either.  Oh, many common magic items are minor as well, true, but some are just consumable, and those (while very useful) aren’t the type of thing we’re exploring here.  Happily, the list of items in Xanathar’s are all minor as well as common.³  In fact, some of them border on trinkets: I’m a bit hard-pressed to come up with a creative use for, say, armor of gleaming that would have any actual effect on a game.  But in general it’s a great list.

The DMG is, sadly, slimmer pickings.  Note that page 135 of Xanathar’s gives you a vital clue: anything on tables A through E in the DMG is considered a minor item.  But, looking at those tables (pages 144 – 145 of your Dungeon Master’s Guide), what you see is almost exclusively consumable items.  Still there are a few proper minor magic items to be found:

• On table A, we have the bag of holding (which is right on the edge of tipping into a major item) and the driftglobe, which is a great minor item.
• On table B, the alchemy jug is a fun one, and the cap of water breathing, goggles of night, helm of comprehending languages, mithral armor, ring of swimming, and saddle of the cavalier all qualify.  The mariner’s armor is at the upper end (like the bag of holding), but still pretty safe.  The robe of useful items is, weirdly, consumable, and the lantern of revealing is semi-consumable in that you have to keep putting oil in it.  The two wands have major effects; they’re only considered minor items because of their limited charges.  I would also be cautious with the cloak of the manta ray, the immovable rod and the rope of climbing: they’re not as minor as they might first appear.
• Table C adds Quaal’s feather tokens, most of which are great minor items (watch out for the bird and whip ones though), and the decanter of endless water, eyes of minute seeing, folding boat, horseshoes of speed, periapt of health, and sending stones are all good choices.  Heward’s handy haversack is what you give your players when you feel like a bag of holding is going too far.  The chime of opening and the necklace of fireballs are more of those unexpectedly consumable ones.
• Table D doesn’t add much, but the horseshoes of a zephyr are fun.  Nolzur’s marvelous pigments are technically consumable, but a moderately thrifty player will probably never actually use them all.  Portable holes are another of those more-major-than-they-seem items.  Bag of devouring is a cursed item, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
• Table E is 100% composed of consumable items, although sovreign glue (like Nolzur’s marvelous pigments) is one that you’ll probably never actually use all of.

So, a few good things there, but not as much as we might hope for.  But don’t count the humble DMG out yet!  Look on page 143; see that table marked “What Minor Properties Does It Have”?  The concept here is supposed to be that you have some powerful magic item, and you want to give it a little extra flavor by assigning it an additional, magical effect.  But there’s nothing saying that you can’t just have a magic item that has one of these minor effects and nothing else ... voilà, minor magic item.  In fact, some of the pre-existing minor items seem cut directly from this cloth: a driftglobe is just an item that only has the “beacon” minor effect, while an orb of direction is just an item bearing only the “compass” property.

Another useful trick, if you decide to come up with your own items, is to look at cantrips.  Now, cantrips come in two distinct flavors; they don’t have technical designations, but they’re often referred to as “damage-dealing cantrips” vs “utility cantrips.” You probably don’t want to give your players even more ways to magically create damage.  Besides: it’s boring.  But those utility cantrips can be quite useful to draw inspiriation from.  Again, some of the existing minor items seem to follow this recipe: it seems obvious that clothes of mending are based on the mending cantrip, and an instrument of illusions is just a more flavorful way to cast minor illusion.

But perhaps you don’t want to mess around with creating your own.  Surely there must be someone out there in the big wide world wide web who has done it for you?  Feel free to search for yourself: now that you know to avoid lists that are just consumable items, or trinket lists, you should have better luck.  Here’s a few that I’ve found that I like:

• Goblin Punch has a list of 100
• S. A. Hunt has collected over 100 from around the Internet for you⁴
• Spouting Lore has smaller lists of items, one for rogues, one for rangers, and even one for magical swords that aren’t too overpowered
• Tales of Scheherazade has some introductory text which references the same “item-based problem solving” article that I linked to above—which itself contains a list of items that are very much trinkets, not minor magic items—but then goes on to provide 100 items, the majority of which fall safely into this category

It’s taken some analysis, and some research, and some creativity, but I’ve come up with what I think are some great minor magic items for my party.  Hopefully I’ve short-circuited some of that work so that you can do the same.

__________

1 By the way, I would be remiss for not giving credit for the bones of this side quest to Justice Arman and his team in their excellent Baldur’s Gate: City Encounters.  My characters are not actually in Baldur’s Gate, but that doesn’t keep many of the encounters from being very useful, including this one, which is #12 (“Little Calimshan”).  Transplanting Rilsa Rael (an NPC from Descent into Avernus) to my city—which happens to be Sammaresh, for the Forgotten-Realms-savvy—was trivial, and the idea that Sammaresh (just across the Shining Sea from Calimshan, and therefore much closer than Baldur’s Gate) would also have a Little Calimshan neighborhood seemed perfectly natural.

2 Remember: “OSR” stands for “old-school revival”; that is, modern offshoots of D&D based on the 1st and 2nd edition rulesets, but updated slightly to make them less confusing.

3 Even the consumable ones, such as beads of nourishment.  But, again, those are really a separate category.

4 Fans of The Adventure Zone will no doubt recognize a few of those.

Isolation Report, Week #22

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Today I drove to Burbank Airport (much closer and more sedate than LAX) and dropped off The Mother and my littlest one.  By this point, they’ve landed in Denver.  Flying during these trying times is certainly not something our family was looking forward to.  But due to some family medical issues, this trip really couldn’t be postponed.  So we put masks and goggles on them, we availed ourselves as often as possible of the many thoughtfully placed hand sanitizer stations, and we got in and out as quickly as possible.  That’s the best we could do.

I have to say, this was only my second time at Burbank, and obviously my first during the pandemic endtimes.  I was quite impressed at how helpful the airport and airline employees were.  When there were buttons to be pushed (such as the “walk” button for the crosswalk), there was nearly always a masked and gloved employee to push it for us.  We ended up touching nearly nohting the whole time, and everyone was super polite, not annoyed as you sometimes see with overworked transportation workers.  It was easy in, easy park, easy out.  I hope I get the opportunity to use Burbank more often.  You know, if flying ever becomes a thing we do on a regular basis again.

At $work, I was able to polish off a new project that came up with some urgency, so I’m pretty happy about that.  It wasn’t a difficult one, but it had deployment challenges, and a few times when I could have taken shortcuts: that is, doing lower quality work that could be completed faster.  But happily my bosses weren’t interested in that route, so we got it done in a relatively short timeline without compromising.  I was pretty pleased about that.

I haven’t been keeping up with the news as much due to Colbert being off for the past two weeks and Noah being off for the past one.  Possibly this is a good thing.  From what little I have heard, I’m probably better off taking a short break from it.

The grocery store Friday was the best it’s been for a while—possibly the best it’s been since pre-week-zero.  So that’s something to be appreciated.  Then there’s the fact that ... actually, come to think of it, that’s it.  That’s about all the silver linings I can come up with right now.

Recommendations for how to pass the time:

• I’ve finally gotten caught up on The Adventure Zone: “Graduation”.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, and even if you don’t normally care for D&D podcasts, I highly recommend it.  As good as Griffin is as a GM, I think Travis may be even better.
• Umbrella Academy season 2 is pretty friggin’ awesome—possibly even better than season 1.
• Portal Knights is still a great timewaster, although now my gaming partner is gone to Colorado.  No worries: my middle child just got a copy of PixelJunk Monsters 2.  We used to have a great time playing the original, years ago, so we’re hoping to recapture a bit of magic.  So far, it’s been pretty cool.
• Quibi, in its desperate attempt to remain (or maybe even become) relevant, has stumbled on a fun way to leverage the pandemic: they’ve done a “remake” of The Princess Bride, with different celebrites reprising the roles, each one shooting their part in their backyards or what-have-you.  Each scene features different actors for the same characters, and of course the whole thing has to be cut together to make it seem as if they’re interacting with each other when in actuality they’re nowhere near each other.  It’s all very low-tech, of course, and nothing matches (for instance, the Man in Black hands Vizzini a glass of red wine, but it’s become white wine by the time it gets to Vizzini’s hand), but that’s part of the charm.  Some of the casting is utterly inspired—Jack Black for the Man in Black’s climb up the cliffs of insanity, Dave Bautista for Fezzik’s rock smashing, Patton Oswalt for Vizzini’s battle of wits (for the princess? to the death?)—and it’s all great fun.  Of course, you can’t watch the whole thing, unless you have Quibi (which of course no one does), but you can watch what might be the best stretch of it on YouTube.
• I find that just sitting outside (by the pool, if it’s not too hot, or under the patio fan in the side yard) while working from home can be quite relaxing.  I have a new laptop and its battery life is much better than my old model, so I can be outside for quite a bit longer than I used to manage.  I’m still working, but just reminding myself that the outside world didn’t go away just because I never go outside any more can be good for the mental health, I think.

That’s enough for this week.  Shooting for a longer post next week.

D&D and Me: Part 7 (The Next Generation)

[This is the seventh post in a new series.  You may want to begin at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

[Last time, I talked about my longest-running character, a monk in D&D’s third edition.  This was also one of the last characters I played with my long-time gaming group.]

In 2005, I moved to Southern Maryland, and in 2007 I moved again, this time to Southern California.  I didn’t find a new gaming group in either location, so, after roughly 15 years of weekly gaming with very few breaks, I began a long hiatus away from TTRPGs.  From actually playing, in any event.  I still kept up with the news, and I would buy a book occasionally, just to read for myself.  In many ways, this period harkened back to my original experiences with D&D: just reading new rules, messing around with creating characters or storylines, but not really playing.

In 2008, D&D released its fourth edition (referred to, of course, as “4e”).  I was actually quite excited about this in all the hype leading up to the release, but once the product was in hand ... I was disappointed.  Not sure if it would have really made that much difference, seeing as how I had no one to play it with anyway, but for some reason I was really quite irked at how bad the new version was.  Luckily, that was about to change.

I don’t need to go into a long explanation about what Pathfinder is, because I’ve already done that, if you care to read it.  The short version is, Pathfinder updates the D&D 3e ruleset with major improvements, but little structural change.  I’m not opposed to structural change, mind you: the jump from 2e to 3e was huge, and I loved it, because things got better.  But this change—from 3e to 4e, that is—felt different, and definintely not better.  Pathfinder, on the other hand, was somehow both amazing in how much was changed and in how much remained the same.  By the time it was officially released in 2009, I had already been avidly following the public playtest, and I was ready to try it out.  If only I had someone to play with ...

But, of course, by that time my eldest was 11 years old, and that’s plenty old enough to learn TTRPGs.  I was back to being solely a GM, of course, but that was okay.  In many ways, those early days of Pathfinder were eerily similar to my early days of D&D: after a long period of just reading rules, I had a young child to teach, I had to constantly invent new rules because you can’t stifle a kid’s creativity, and I was generating settings from scratch with way more emphasis on fun adventuring than rational worldbuilding.  That the young child was son instead of brother made little difference; that the game was Pathfinder instead of D&D pre-1e was only different in that it was much easier to teach.  The big contrast was that, now with about a decade of GM experience under my belt, I mostly knew what I was doing.  I also knew enough to play around with other games: we spent quite a bit of time experimenting with post-apocalyptic RPGs, for instance.  In Pathfinder, my kid played a half-wood-elf-half-drow named Krad Demonshield who started out as a custom class I made called “witchblade” (that ever-elusive search for the perfect blend of fighter and magic-user) and then multiclassed into another custom class I made which reused my favorite alt-classname “nightblade,”^* this time cast more as a shadow-magic-wielding assassin (but, you know, the good kind of assassin).  There was also another fantasy character, a minotaur named Foghnar, but I don’t believe we used Pathfinder for that one.

Pathfinder was really fun for me.  I spent a lot of time developing classes, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I also enjoyed a lot of the supplemental classes that were released for it.  Their witch was so good I abandoned my attempt at building one, and their oracle was so close to something I’d been working on (which I called a “hermit,” after the tarot card, which was its inspiration) that I completely reworked mine to be a slight tweak of it.  Their magus gave me major tips for reworking my witchblade, and their hybrid class the hunter may be a better ranger than the ranger.^**  I loved the rules, which were still way more complex than they should have been, but I was comparing to the previous editions of D&D, and in that light they look delightfully slim.  The combat was still a major pain, especially from the GM point of view, but character creation was a joy, with ever-so-many options, and fairly easy (at least for a long-time 3e player) to add even more of your own.

Eventually my child went off to teach Pathfinder to their friend group, and became a GM in their own right.  This led to less tabletop gaming for me, but that was okay.  I had other things to do, and GMing is a pretty big time commitment, so as long as the kid was having fun and carrying on the family traditions, I was fine.  The GMing I had done up to then was still pretty satisfying.

Of course, the only downside was that I didn’t really get to play a character.  I had NPCs, sure—Krad Demonshield, for instance, was almost always accompanied by his paladin friend Alcinor—but they weren’t really my characters in the same way that my PCs had been.  They were sort of GMPCs, although I didn’t really treat them as such.  But it’s a gray area when you’re playing one-on-one campaigns.

Of course, I had another child as well.  He was far too young to play with us during our Pathfinder heydey, but, then, children have a tendency of getting older.  By the time we’d burned out on Pathfinder, my middle child was now 11, and it was time for him to get in on the action.  He first played a Dungeon World one-shot^*** for the eldest’s sixteenth birthday, and we moved on from there to a new campaign where I got to create the first paladin character I actually enjoyed, Arkan Kupriveryx.  Because, you see, by that point, fifth edition was out.

Next time we’ll talk 5e and the rise of actual play D&D games.

__________

* See part 5 for further discussion on the origin of that term.

** Although probably still not as good as 3.5e’s scout.

*** For those not familiar, Dungeon World is sort of like D&D crossed with Apocalypse World, and if you don’t know what that is, probably just best to think of it as a “modern” TTRPG designed to focus more on narrative than rules.

Gaming Series

Lately I’ve started a bunch of series related to gaming, in particular my love of D&D and similar TTRPGs (tabletop roleplaying games—sometimes, in older posts, you may see me refer to them as PnP RPGs).

D&D and Me

My personal story about how I came to love the game and my formative experiences with it.

• Part 1: The Time Beforetimes
• Part 2: Mapping Out the Territory
• Part 3: Playing the Roles
• Part 4: If I Could Talk to the Animals
• Part 5: Multiple Personalities
• Part 6: The Contemplative Life ... of Punching the Crap of out People
• Part 7: The Next Generation
• Part 8: Resurgence of the Game
• Part 9: All in the Family

GM Philosophy

These are posts which outline my personal tenets as a GM (game master).  This is mainly to have a formal place to point players to if they want to know what to expect in my games.

• Roleplaying is Storytelling
• Character Is King
• I Don’t Kill Characters
• (the fine print)
• Playstyle Matters

Multiclassing

One D&D topic that’s near and dear to my heart is multiclassing: the ability for one character to advance in more than class.  I started a series exploring how this was handled in various editions of D&D, hopefully to culminate in some ideas about what the perfect multiclassing system might be.

• History of the Multiclasses (2nd edition)
• History of the Multiclasses (3rd edition)
• History of the Multiclasses (4th edition)
• History of the Multiclasses (5th edition)

General D&D 5e Musings

Occasionally I write something more general about fifth edition D&D in particular.  There’s not a lot of throughline for these.  It is, by its nature, an open-ended series.

• The Starting Level Dilemma
• Meet Arkan Kupriveryx (Concept)
• Meet Arkan Kupriveryx (Execution)
• Minor Magic Items
• Rotating Through the Gaming
• 5e vs Pathfinder: A Dance of D&Ds
• Perception, Investigation: a Perpetual Imbroglio
• We All Need a Little Guidance Sometimes

General Pathfinder Musings

Before D&D’s fifth edition (affectionately known as 5e) came out, I was pretty big into Pathfinder.  I have some musings on that too:

• The Path to Pathfinder (part 1 of 2)
• Destination: Pathfinder (part 2 of 2)
• Looking Forward to Pathfinder’s Next Iteration

General Heroscape Musings

Outside of TTRPGs, my other big gaming love is Heroscape.  Here are some thoughts about that game:

• Why Heroscape Is Cool
• Heroscape Forever
• Assault on the Ice Tower (posted on Heroscapers.com as “Xotli”)
• Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map (short)

General Fantasy Musings

Sometimes I just like to talk about fantasy gaming in general, storytelling through TTRPGs, etc.  Like these:

• The Expression of Tension
• Gaming the Grey
• Improv at the (D&D) Table

Gaming with my Family

Of course I sometimes game with my family, and I sometimes write about it.  Here are some samples:  (Note: Most of these are about D&D, but some are about Heroscape.)

• Roleplaying After the Fall
• A Game for a Younger Man
• War for Father’s Day
• Genethlian Cartography (quickie)
• Why I Play D&D
• Quiet week, just a few demons to deal with ... (short)
• Another proud father moment (quickie)
• No Time Like the First Time
• Kicking off the Family Campaign
• D&D Story #1: The Demon Doll

Heroscape tournament reports

Most years, I attend an annual Heroscaper tournament with a group of folks called the SoCal League.  Typically I take at least a human child or two along for the ride, so here’s a family subcategory consisting of those posts:

• Tourney the First (NHSD 2012)
• National Heroscape Day 2013 (short)
• Tourney prep (short)
• National Heroscape Day 2014 (short)
• National Heroscape Day 2015 (short)
• National Heroscape Day 2016
• NHSD 2017: Quick Results (short)
• SoCal ‘Scapers Summer Gameday, 2019 (short)

Isolation Report, Week #20

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


I had to go to the doctor for the first time during the pandemic: apparently, I (probably) have diverticulitis.  My grandmother had this for many years, so it doesn’t surprise me too much.  Now I have to go find a gastroenterologist, and I’m sure there’s a colonoscopy in my future, which is never pleasant to look forward to.  In other sad news, The Mother‘s dad and brother aren’t doing well, so it looks like she will have to undertake a short plane ride in these troubled times, which definitely isn’t pleasant to look forward to.  Our littlest will accompany; neither of them would sleep much otherwise.

We subscribed to HBO Max; it was the same price we were paying for HBO Now, so we figured why not.  Mostly what’s on HBO Max is the same as what’s on regular HBO, but there are a few extra things.  One of which is Doom Patrol, one of those marvelously inventive comic book series (like Preacher or Legion) that is oh-so-much-more than a typical superhero story.  While he wasn’t the inventor of the Doom Patrol (a group which actually preceded the X-Men by a few months, despite seeming like a rip-off of them, which makes it decades old), it’s Grant Morrison we truly have to thank for this bit of Dadaesque surrealism (see also Happy!, on Netflix).  While the core four characters predated him, Morrison gave us Crazy Jane, Danny the Street, and the amazing Willoughby Kipling, expertly portrayed by Mark Sheppard (a character actor who’s made a career of brilliant recurring characters in great series such as Supernatural, Warehouse 13, and White Collar).  If you don’t like shows where you are constantly trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, definitely do not watch this one.

Let’s see ... what else ... we’ve been playing some family board games.  The Wizard Always Wins, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Bears vs Babies; all highly recommended.  Also some card games—Minecraft Uno and Timeline—and of course the littlest one still sucks me into Portal Knights on a semi-regular basis.  That game is for me what I understand Animal Crossing is for other folks during these weird times: we mainly just battle things and go on quests so we can get more materials to build our awesome house.  It’s up to 3 stories now, with a rootfop observatory on top and a vegetable garden and pool out back.  There’s also a large bathroom with a red crystal ceiling, a little marketplace full of vendor stalls out front, and a cannon in the side yard that we occasionaly fire off the edge of the world just so we can watch the flaming cannonball shoot off into the abyss.  We really do spend a lot of time on it ... it’s weirdly soothing, vaguely creative, and surprisingly social.  Plus my kid loves it when we share decorating tips.

So things aren’t too bad on the personal front, although I grow ever more fearful at the state of our country.  While the rest of the world seems to have figured out how this whole virus thing works, we’re traveling backwards in time; as The Daily Show recently pointed out, we’ve now arrived at 1918, when the president said to ignore the doctors and scientists and encouraged large gatherings, people claimed that wearing masks to avoid infecting each other was unconstitutional, and localities triggered a second wave by reopening too soon.  Protests for racial justice continue unabated, but the news seems to have forgotten (or perhaps merely grown apathetic).  In point of fact, we’ve now progressed to the point where our president is sending in secret police to disappear people off the streets, and our system continues blithely on.  Is this what people felt like in Argentina in the 70s? in Russia in the 30s?  (I hesitate to mention Germany in the 40s due to Godwin’s law, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind.)  I bet you all those people in all those countries said the same thing we’re all apparently thinking: “obviously that could never happen here.”  I mean, I’m assuming people are thinking that, because otherwise why the fuck isn’t everyone in the country freaking the fuck out right now?  A couple of news stories that faded fast and a few sternly worded tweets from the opposition?  Is that really all the reaction we can get for secret fucking police? kidnapping people?  I dunno, man ... I’m not feeling particularly sanguine about the future.

Saladosity, Part 15: Autumnal

[This is the fifteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why this salad is called an “autumn salad” ... I don’t personally find it particularly autumnal, but I searched online for salads with similar ingredients, and what little concensus there was in the naming of it pointed to the seasonal moniker, so here we are.  Perhaps its because the fruit and nuts we’re going to add are commonly harvested in the autumn ... although, these days, you should have no problems finding any of this stuff year ‘round.  Still, “autumn salad” is what I’ve always called it, once I started calling it anything at all, and that’s what we’re sticking with here.

The Fruit

So this is one of those salads with some fruit in it.¹  Hopefully that doesn’t turn you off.  Trust me that this will all work out.

What this salad really should have in it is pears.  However, I dislike using pears for two reasons:

• I have a hell of a time keeping pears from going bad.  I like this salad quite a bit, but it’s very much a “once in a while” salad.  It’s a bit more of a pain to make, and it does contain some added sugar, so I just don’t eat it as often as the others.  That means that I often don’t get around to the pears before they go bad.
• Pears are, at least for me, a huge pain to prepare.  They’re annoying to peel, due to the irregular shape, and it’s annoying to try to get the core out.

Now, if you have some secret way to get pears into chunks, and you eat pears often enough that they won’t get bad, I definitely encourage you to substitute pears.  They’ll actually make this salad even better.

If, on the other hand, you’re a mere mortal like me, just use apples.  They keep for-friggin-ever, they’re super easy to peel,² and, because you bought all the stuff I told you to, you have a corer-slicer which will give you beautiful slices in a matter of seconds.  Once you have the slices, take half of them, cut each one into about four chunks each, and use that for your salad.  Eat the rest: they’re yummy.  Adjust amount and size of apple chunks to your taste.

The other fruit we need for this is dried cranberries.  This is the first place we’re going to have to be okay with added sugar, because I’ve never even seen any dried cranberries that were unsweetened ... and, honestly, even if you could find some, you probaly wouldn’t want to eat them.  Even sweetened, they’re not particularly sweet.  The added sugar just makes them tolerable.

The Nuts

You want walnuts for this.  Now, as I mentioned previously, I personally can’t find roasted walnuts—if I could, I sure would buy them.  If you’re ambitious enough to want to roast the walnuts yourself, again I encourage you to do that.  But we’re trying to keep it as simple and pain-free as we can, so I just use raw walnuts.  They’re perfectly lovely.  You bought the pieces, right?  That saves you having to chop them, and they’re usually cheaper to boot.

You could try other nuts, if, say, you really hate walnuts.  But honestly I think that makes it a whole different salad.  Try it at least once with the walnuts.  (Okay, you’ll most likely have to make it with walnuts several times, to use up the whole bag, but that’s not so bad.)  I think you’ll dig it.

The Dressing

For this one, you’re going to want a slightly sweet dressing.  If you really don’t want to make it yourself, you could try a raspberry vinaigrette, or a balsamic fig.³  But it works best with a good honey mustard.

Now, the primary problem with honey mustard dressing is that you can’t actually buy a good honey mustard dressing.  Oh, sure: you can find some decent honey mustard dip ... I like Ken’s, personally.  But if you have a burning desire to slather a chicken nugget in something, there are several good store-bought honey mustard choices.  For salads, on the other hand, most premade “dressings” are totally infeasible.  They’re too thick and goopy—that’s a great quality for a dip, but not really what you want in a salad dressing.  The answer, happily, is simple: make your own.

And it’s also super easy.  You won’t even need the food processor for this one.  Just a bowl and a spoon and a very small amount of elbow grease.  Although we do have to do a little bit of prep work first.  But don’t worry: this is prep stuff you just do occasionally and then you’re set for a while, not stuff you have to do every time you want to make the dressing.

Lemon Juice

Remember when I told you I was going to tell you how to juice your own lemons and it would really easy?  Okay, now’s the time.

Take your lemons and put them on the cutting board.  Slice them all in half around what would be their equators if they were little yellow Earths.  Now take your handy-dandy juicer that I told you to buy and plug it in.  Use the smaller reamer.  Now, one at a time, just put the lemon halves in your palm, put them onto the reamer, and push down.  That’s literally all there is to it.  But I’ll give you a few extra tips:

• You can adjust the basket to allow as much or as little pulp as you like, but for this application you’ll probably want as little pulp as possible.
• Once the pulp starts getting torn out, squeeze the lemon gently to bring more of the pulp into contact with the reamer.
• A good juicer will spin both ways.  Once you feel like you’ve gotten all you’re going to get, lift your hand up, the juicer will stop, and then push down again.  If you’re lucky, it will immediately begin spinning in the other direction.  (If you’re not, you’ll have to lift up and push back down a couple of times.)  It will only take a few seconds for this second reaming, but you may be surprised how much more you get after you thought you were all done.
• I mentioned before that lemon juice will keep forever, but it does eventually get so damned sour that you can’t stand it.  Also, it will develop white solids that you should strain out, because they’re sort of fibrous.  But if all that sounds icky to you, just freeze your lemon juice.  They way I love to do it (when I do do it) is in an ice tray.  Ice cube sizes vary according to tray, of course, but in my experience most ice cubes are almost exactly a tablespoon (a.k.a. 3 teaspoons).  I like the ice trays that have little covers on them, because that way the juice won’t pick up stray flavors, but that’s mostly my anal retentiveness showing.

Homemade Mayo

Now that you have lemon juice, making your own mayonnaise is trivial.  Take a mason jar and crack an egg into it.⁴  Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (that’s 2 cubes, if you froze it up above).  Squirt in just a small squirt of mustard: I like brown mustard for this, but any will do.  It’s mainly there for its emulsifying properties.  Toss in a heavy pinch of salt.  Top off with oil up to the 1½ cups line, or maybe a smidge above it.  Many places advise that you let this come to room temperature before proceeding, but I don’t find that it makes much difference (unless you need to wait for the lemon juice cubes to melt, of course).

Now just jam your handy-dandy stick blender (a.k.a. immersion blender) into the jar and turn it on.  Mayonnaise will magically appear.  It’s insane, I tell you.

Tips:

• You can experiment with different types of oil.  Sunflower is probably the best; canola is terrible for you, and olive and grapeseed just taste bad.  Avocado oil is nice, although you will end up with mayo that has a slightly greenish tinge if you use only avocado.  Personally, I like about half-and-half sunflower and avocado.  Occasionally I’ll go a little heavier on the avocado—perhaps to as much as 2/3—but then again I don’t mind greenish mayo.
• Until you’ve done this a couple of times, starting with a smaller amount of oil is better.  You can always add more as you’re blending.  Remember: more oil makes it thicker, which can be a bit counterintuitive if you’re thinking of the oil as a liquid.  But the emulsification of the oil is what makes the mayo, so more is thicker in this case.  Basically, start your blending and, if it’s too thin, add more oil.  If it’s too thick ... well, you’re sort of hosed.  Try again.
• You may need to gently move the stick blender up and down a bit to get the oil on top.  If you’re really good, you can cock the blender at a slight angle and create a vortex that sucks the oil down to the blades, but don’t feel bad if you can’t manage that.  Just plunge up and down a few times (gently) and you’ll achieve the same effect.
• This mayo is absolutely not just for this dressing.  Use it all the time.  Never buy mayo again.  Seriously: once you figure out how easy it is to make your own mayo, there ain’t no going back.

Put it all together

Ready to make some dressing?  Here’s what you’ll need:

• 4 big spoons of homemade mayo
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 5 big squirts of yellow mustard
• 1 little squirt of dijon mustard
• 4 big squirts of honey
• 2 heavy pinches of garlic powder
• 1 heavy pinch of salt

Just throw it all into a big bowl and stir it up.  The end.  Use a funnel to put it into an old salad dressing bottle and stick it in the fridge; it should last a couple of weeks, but don’t wait too long.

Feel free to mix up the ratio of yellow mustard to dijon, or add or subtract honey to your taste.  You should find this version way more tangy than sweet, but still sweet enough that you know it’s honey mustard.  I’ve also experimented with using vinegar instead of (or in addition to) the lemon juice, which makes it super-extra-tangy, but eventually I decided the lemon juice was the better call.

Don’t leave out the garlic powder though.  I was frustrated for months trying to create the perfect honey mustard before I found some recipe that suggested garlic powder.  Like you probably do, I thought this was an utterly insane idea.  Until I tried it.  Trust me on this one.

Autumn Salad

And now you’re ready.  At this point, you’ve already done the hard bits, so this is just assembly.

• base veggies
• walnuts
• dried cranberries
• feta cheese crumbles
• apple slices
• honey mustard dressing (normal)

There’s sweetness in the apples, the sweetener on the dried cranberries, and the honey in the honey mustard.  There’s also tartness in the cranberries, the feta cheese, and the lemon juice and dijon in the honey mustard.  Plus the crunch of the walnuts and the veggies ... this is one of my favorite “dinner” salads.  As I say, it’s not an everyday thing, but once every few weeks or so it’s a real treat.

Next time, we’ll experiment with some “south of the border” flavors.

__________

1 But not a fruit salad.  Totally different head.

2 Although, again, if you enjoy eating apple peels, you don’t even need to bother.  But ... blech.

3 Try Annie’s for some quality pre-bottled dressings: they have both of the kinds I mentioned.

4 You don’t have to use a mason jar, of course, but it’s easiest, because it has lines on it for 1 cup, etc.