Best description of the plot everOriginally Posted by Horu hiFa'asu
!
Best description of the plot ever
"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward." - Rocky
Very true! Saturday matinee serials, anyone?
Agreed! Simpler plots seem to work better, I think...Best description of the plot ever
Ever seen Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress"?
Chirine, I have a question about the deeper mysteries of Tekumel; why it is in a pocket dimension, the roles of the Mitlanyal and the Pariah God's in all that, Dormoron plain etc. etc.
I've seen all manner of theories and hints, some of them contradictory, but did the Professor ever provide real answers to these mysteries, either in game or in his records?
Please note I am not asking for the answers, I don't actually want to know. Just curious to know if answers exist, or if the Professor took the answers with him when he passed away....
Thanks
Understood. Phil was pretty upfront about this when they brought Tekumel back into normal space in '75; he announced that the Space Marines (in their snappy silver armored suits) were landing to restore Tekumel back to the rule of the lords of Humanspace and that, having won the battle as it were, the campaign was over and they could play something else. Mayhem ensured around the game table, and in the discussion Phil let it out that the Goddess of the Pale Bone was actually trying to restore all of the 772 'lost worlds' back into normal space - he had a really good laugh over the PCs being the minions of the 'bad guy aliens', and not the handsome good guys that they had all assumed that they were. The Twenty had dumped the worlds into pocket universes as part of their war against the Arisians; we serve the Boskones. See also the works of Phil's good friend, one E. E. 'Doc' Smith, if you want the background to Phil's 'sword and planet romance' / space opera thinking.
Now, to answer your actual question, is this the One True Reason? Or was Phil doing his usual "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" routine? There is no Certified, Notarized, Authentic source document that states all this, signed by the Professor and witnessed by anyone. What we have, like so many of Tekumel's more recondite mysteries, consists of scattered fragments of texts, Blue Room posts, and interviews he gave over the years. He loved to watch the fans speculate and bicker over their theories, and heartily encouraged it - he was right up front abut not knowing the True Secrets of Tekumel himself, and saw no reason why people could not figure it all out for themselves. The answers are there; you just have to dig them out.
Now, my first paragraph is not considered to be 'canon' by a lot of people; it's what he told me, and his players at the time confirmed. (They were pretty upset about it, actually.) All Phil did was leave us lots and lots of data points in his published and unpublished works, and figured that we'd be smart enough to connect the dots. I've got my copy of all Phil's files; there's nothing explicit in them on this, but we do have things like the seating plan of the Twenty+ at the meeting after Dormoron Plain. Which, by the way, was an internal dispute amongst the Twenty, Phil noted.
My problem with trying to explain all of this is that, unlike just about anyone else, I have all the dots to hand; I have my collections and notes, Phil's collection and notes, all my conversations with Phil over the years, and a huge amount of material that was generated - like the Blue Room posts - over the years. As a result, 'data mining' and 'data correlation' are a whole lot easier for me.
So, I don't know; does that help you at all, of have I just confused things more?
It's not just roleplayers. Warhammer has largely ignored formations since about fourth edition. Rick Priestly's Pike And Shotte mostly assumes the regiments assume the best formation they can manage and are well enough drilled that it's not worth bothering. At least woods are impassible terrain for many units. Can you imagine trying to maneuver a hundred men with twenty foot pikes through a dense wood?
I've heard that GW's Lord of the Rings Battle Game does a good job of making formations tactically successful without having specific formation rules. I only played the first edition once and eventually sold off the models. The elven archery was withering and deadly anyhow.
Really I mostly don't see the problem. A square or circle eliminates your flank and rear but reduces movement to half. Cavalry circles allow the entire unit to fire but makes them easy to scatter. Wedges have no flanks and allow a lot of attacks if they're successful in breaking the enemy line but get disordered when they don't. (ask me about all the ways GW tried to make wedges work for Bretonians) I know moving individual figures around can be a pain but it's easy enough to use movement trays but move figures off them when necessary. Columns move through gaps and along roads well but have long flanks and take time to reform.
Eighth edition Warhammer dropped turning and moving sideways in favour of a single reform maneuver. Man I hated eighth edition. The man eating trees and the rivers of lava that could only be detected by entering them. (you rolled the terrain special features when you entered terrain, even if you were wood elves or beastmen) Between that and the return to super characters and deathstar units (40+ figures of the most powerful unit in your army because 0-1 choices aren't always limited in their size)
Last edited by David Johansen; 11-01-2017 at 12:23 AM.
At last! The big revision! More monsters! more magic! Two page hit location table!
The Arcane Confabulation
Really?!? I'm astonished. I spent a lot of time and energy researching period formations for my ECW and similar regiments for games; I've used 'proper' tercios to great effect in various games that used various sets of rules. When I did my Tekumel miniatures rules, I had to account for the various formation that Phil described, and we got pretty good at using them.
If formations aren't important, why bother with miniatures at all, and stick with counters or blocks of wood?
I'm boggled. I think, more and more, that I'll be hiding in the basement from now on...
Ain't it the truth.Really?!? I'm astonished. I spent a lot of time and energy researching period formations for my ECW and similar regiments for games; I've used 'proper' tercios to great effect in various games that used various sets of rules. When I did my Tekumel miniatures rules, I had to account for the various formation that Phil described, and we got pretty good at using them.
If formations aren't important, why bother with miniatures at all, and stick with counters or blocks of wood?
I'm boggled. I think, more and more, that I'll be hiding in the basement from now on...
But in the case of Warhamburger, there is a logic to it: Make the latest and greatest models strong enough to beat anything old, and price them high.
My God, how the money rolls in.
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
Thanks, yes I certainly know about the Goddess as rescuer theory, and now you mention it, I think I had heard vague things about that game-ending reveal too, although this may be the clearest account I've heard. Still, for me it raises more questions than it answers.
First of all, what was the context for him trying to end it in 1975 (the same year EPT was published!!!!!!) Do you know why he decided to try and end his own game at that point?
Originally he oriented his game around the idea of "Solving the great mystery of Tekumel." In 1975 some of the players solved the mystery.
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks