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Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

  1. #1201
    What about my Member? Shemek hiTankolel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
    "You're a barbarian, washing ashore half-dead after meeting Tekumel's native sea...lifeforms. Still, you reached Jakalla! You have relatives here, though you've been told that they've gone native - and that they'd have you fill a form detailing the way your families are related, in triplicate. Still, better this than going to the Foreigners' Quarter, where the unwanted dregs of other societies pass their lives in squalor and danger, isn't it?"

    Should be clear enough.
    If I ever run an "off the boat campaign" for players new to Tekumel this is most likely how I would handle it. A lot easier than letting them find out the "hard way" how things work. Then again, there's a lot to be said about the "sink or swim" approach....

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    Quote Originally Posted by Greentongue View Post
    I'm looking for adventure that doesn't require a degree in Tekumel Culture to understand and can be done by a new player to the setting.
    =
    Oh! I get you!

    The basic difference between Tekumel and, say, Lankhmar, is that the 'professional adventurers' are not free-lance mercenaries - we are part and parcel of our societies, which means we're responsible to our clans / temples / legions / secret societies. They, in turn, send us off on adventures, and we - hopefully! - come back with the loot to share. (We get most of the value, they get their percentage.) Phil's games / campaigns were rooted very firmly in this basis, as none of us had a Degree In Tekumel Culture when we started playing with him; we learned about our culture through immersion in it, and by asking questions of the major-domo or the other locals. Given that, Phil never had any trouble getting us into the thick of things - Lady Mnella, in Jakalla, specialized in hiring new PCs for her odd jobs that she needed done. So, patrons send people off, and once off on the adventure we didn't really need to have Graduate Degrees In Tekumel Culture. We just played - we'd all read the Lankhmar series or the Conan books, including Phil, so we *knew* what we were supposed to be doing - and we just got stuck in and did the adventure. Heck, 95% of The Corpora came out of notes we took in our game sessions, and then published.

    I do not, and never have, expected players to know a damn thing about Tekumel when they start playing - or, as we saw at the Free RPG Day sessions, Barsoom or Ancient Egypt - and if there's something that the players need to know and would know, I always give that to them as painlessly as possible. The idea, at least in Phil's mind, was to have adventures and explore the setting.

    If I were in your shoes, I'd get a copy of Fritz Leiber's books, file off the serial numbers, and send the PCs off on a job. Or get the Conan and Brak Mac Morn books and do the same. More informed players can be whisked off to adventures where you've been reading the Barsoom series. Back in those early days, we - Dave, Gary, Phil, Rob, Gronan, and Yours Truly - had all read a lot of the same books and seen the same movies. So, we all had this shared pool of experience to draw on, so we had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen and what we should do about it when it did. Get a big box of popcorn, and sit down on a weekend with movies like "Scorpion King" or the older "Conan" flicks. Plot devices abound, as do lots and lots of great ideas that you can use in games.

    Heck, you could ask the folks on this thread who have read my little opus if any of that would be useful to generate ideas for adventures.

    It's doable; I do it every time I run a game at a convention or at the FLGS. Loads of ideas out there; you'll have to do a little chopping and channelling, but that's part of the 'OSR' ethos (I think). Do I wish there was a really nice basic adventure for Tekumel out there? You bet, and I've been asking for it for decades. If somebody wanted to mine TSTPT for them, they be more then welcome to do it!

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    Quote Originally Posted by chirine ba kal View Post
    We just played - we'd all read the Lankhmar series or the Conan books, including Phil, so we *knew* what we were supposed to be doing - and we just got stuck in and did the adventure. Heck, 95% of The Corpora came out of notes we took in our game sessions, and then published.
    That may be the key. I think back in the day, people that played had exposure to a lot of the same source material that the original designer had in mind when they played.
    I don't believe it is as easy now to get a group of people with the same background. I suppose it is good that there are so many derivative works as that helps with basic exposure.

    Quote Originally Posted by chirine ba kal View Post
    Do I wish there was a really nice basic adventure for Tekumel out there? You bet, and I've been asking for it for decades. If somebody wanted to mine TSTPT for them, they be more then welcome to do it!
    Things like "A Matter of Honor" would be good except it requires "The scenario calls for two players who are experienced T�kumel hands, each assigned a so-called 'senior PC' character."
    You could have the GM run them.

    "The Silver Hm�" sounds good at first glance but having unknowns involved with such seems counter to what I have gathered about the setting.
    It could be an Inter-Clan debt settling instead of Imperial?

    I guess I was thinking along the lines of "Credit & Cash" but looks like they would require at lot of social interactions by players (the deep end) and again would you have new players doing these sensitive missions?

    Have you used the 1110. INITIAL ENCOUNTERS IN JAKALLA with its IDENTITY OF VISITOR[S] and its NATURE OF MISSION?
    While the assumption is that it is foreign scum being offered the employment, is there a reason "country cousins" wouldn't work?
    =

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    Quote Originally Posted by Greentongue View Post
    That may be the key. I think back in the day, people that played had exposure to a lot of the same source material that the original designer had in mind when they played.
    I don't believe it is as easy now to get a group of people with the same background. I suppose it is good that there are so many derivative works as that helps with basic exposure.


    Things like "A Matter of Honor" would be good except it requires "The scenario calls for two players who are experienced T�kumel hands, each assigned a so-called 'senior PC' character."
    You could have the GM run them.

    "The Silver Hm�" sounds good at first glance but having unknowns involved with such seems counter to what I have gathered about the setting.
    It could be an Inter-Clan debt settling instead of Imperial?

    I guess I was thinking along the lines of "Credit & Cash" but looks like they would require at lot of social interactions by players (the deep end) and again would you have new players doing these sensitive missions?

    Have you used the 1110. INITIAL ENCOUNTERS IN JAKALLA with its IDENTITY OF VISITOR[S] and its NATURE OF MISSION?
    While the assumption is that it is foreign scum being offered the employment, is there a reason "country cousins" wouldn't work?
    =
    Agreed! It's something that a lot of gamers these days can't seem to get their head around - I suspect that because they've had forty years of published game material available, that's their 'shared culture'. We didn't have that; we had forty years of books and films to work from, and we tended to immerse ourselves in that.

    Also agreed, and I think it's impossible these days. I have found that I have much, much better game sessions with non-gamers then I do with experienced gamers; the former have no preconceptions and go with the flow of the setting, while gamers bring all the preconceptions of their usual game system and obsess over game mechanics - there's little or no engagement with the setting. In short, the exact opposite of how we played back in the day (here in the Twin Cities at Coffman, to be exact, as I'm sure other people also played this way) and how I play now.

    I would not call any of the three linked scenarios 'basic' or 'introductory'. They're all very good, but I'd use them for a game session with people who had had some experience with Tekumel. (This is a recurring problem with anything written by mainstream Tekumel fans; they tend to write for their level of experience and level of detail, and not with the new player in mind.) I go a lot simpler, as I've said, and keep it fast and exciting; detail comes with play, not with classroom instruction.

    'Country cousins' work just fine; I've done that for years. My game group from 2004 - 2015 ran that way, with over 20 players introduced to Tekumel in that time. Seemed to work for them, I gathered.

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    Default A question from Chirine...

    This has been in the forefront of my mind since a rather unhappy conversation I had at a party on Friday, and I'd like to float it for people to comment on...

    I have, as has been mentioned a few times in the course of this thread and the one before it, a pretty 'ancient' outlook and style of gaming. Has this any use or relevance in today's gaming hobby? Or, am I wasting everyone's time and bandwidth by carrying on and on and on about how we used to do things back in the day?

    This has also come up in conversations with game designers who e-mail me and want me to push their products on my blog. I've never played any of their games, nor are they the kind of thing that I'm interested in playing. None of them seem to have read anything on the blog, nor do they seem to care; it feels like they got my e-mail address off the blog, and are 'cold calling', and gotten the blog's URL off of some list that they saw on some Internet 'list of websites" or something. I've tried to explain who I am and where I come from, and I keep getting blank looks - they know who Mike Mearls is, for example, but not Dave Arenson or Gary Gygax.

    Friday's conversation kind of left me cold, and did nothing to enhance my interest in the modern or local gaming scene. I was having the conversation with one of the people I used to know at CSA back in the day, and I got the very real impression that I'm both obsolete and useless to the modern gamer.

    Am I wasting your time with my games, my stories, and my miniatures? Inquiring minds want to know...

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    Quote Originally Posted by chirine ba kal View Post
    Am I wasting your time with my games, my stories, and my miniatures? Inquiring minds want to know...
    For even a mighty oak to grow a seed must be planted.
    While you may feel that sometimes you are "preaching to the choir", of a different church, having insight into the origins validates people that want to grow their own Bonsai of Tekumel.

    Besides 1,000+ posts and 22,000+ views, on the Second Thread, indicates some level of interest in the subjects being discussed.
    IMHO
    =

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    There are always individuals, and waves, that become interested in how our games were played when they were new. Conversely, there are always those who dismiss everything that came before. Fortunately we get to choose who we want to associate with. At least, I've taught plenty of young people how I game. And Chirine, so have you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by chirine ba kal View Post
    This has been in the forefront of my mind since a rather unhappy conversation I had at a party on Friday, and I'd like to float it for people to comment on...

    I have, as has been mentioned a few times in the course of this thread and the one before it, a pretty 'ancient' outlook and style of gaming. Has this any use or relevance in today's gaming hobby? Or, am I wasting everyone's time and bandwidth by carrying on and on and on about how we used to do things back in the day?

    This has also come up in conversations with game designers who e-mail me and want m to push their products on my blog. I've never played any of their games, nor are they the kind of thing that I'm interested in playing. None of them seem to have read anything on the blog, nor do they seem to care; it feels like they got my e-mail address off the blog, and are 'cold calling', and gotten the blog's URL off of some list that they saw on some Internet 'list of websites" or something. I've tried to explain who I am and where I come from, and I keep getting blank looks - they know who Mike Mearls is, for example, but not Dave Arenson or Gary Gygax.

    Friday's conversation kind of left me cold, and did nothing to enhance my interest in the modern or local gaming scene. I was having the conversation with one of the people I used to know at CSA back in the day, and I got the very real impression that I'm both obsolete and useless to the modern gamer.

    Am I wasting your time with my games, my stories, and my miniatures? Inquiring minds want to know...
    Wasting my time...??? Uncle, absolutely not!!! Irrelevant...??? Uncle, absolutely not!!! I would not worry so. We are all having fun here. As Greentongue pointed out. The size of this "Oak" speaks for itself. It is part of my daily routine like coffee!!! Thank you for being here. And of course for answering our questions.

    H:0)

  9. #1209
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    Quote Originally Posted by chirine ba kal View Post
    Friday's conversation kind of left me cold, and did nothing to enhance my interest in the modern or local gaming scene. I was having the conversation with one of the people I used to know at CSA back in the day, and I got the very real impression that I'm both obsolete and useless to the modern gamer.
    I think I know the conversation you're speaking of. But I don't agree with that person's viewpoint; yes, the miniatures we have today are better done, but even he said modern miniatures games were too large and bloated.

    As far as Braunstein/RPG type games, I would not use the term "obsolete" so much as "non-mainstream." We are the equivalent of model railroaders who scratchbuild; we are just no longer the main emphasis of the hobby.

    It is unfortunately true that neophilia has a strong hold in this hobby and that any number of people will tell you that anything that isn't the latest and greatest is bad just because it isn't the latest and greatest. On the other hand, a wise man once said "I do not seek the approbation of idiots."
    I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.

    Formerly known as Old Geezer

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  10. #1210
    What about my Member? Shemek hiTankolel's Avatar
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    I don't think you're wasting bandwidth at all. For those of us interested in Tekumel you are providing a valuable insight on the campaign setting, game play, and the creative inspiration behind it all. I for one think that it's great to be able to interact with someone who was there on the ground, so to speak. I just wish that you would share some more anecdotes with us regarding specific, in-game encounters, like you did in the early stages of Part I. Although I would love to hear more about your adventures, I can wait for the final draft of TSTPT. For those who don't care about Tekumel et al they are free to ignore the thread. You occasionally get trolls, like those idiots who showed up in Part I, but for the most part there are more positive attributes, which can be associated with the thread, than negative. As far as I am concerned I really that hope you don't get discouraged and stop participating. The only reason that I am on this site is to "Question Chirine baKal". Thank you for being so accommodating and taking the time to answer our questions!

    Shemek
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