Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

Originally Posted by Dulahan

So actually got my game going again... A series of delays (some good - consisting of a Guest GM running a really sweet Hollow Earth Expedition game session for us! Can't get him to commit to Tekumel game, but he wanted to run that, and he's fun, so there we went! investigating a Hollywood actress' disappearence in 1936 and running afoul some super weirdness, but I digress...). But yes, session happened!

...and was a quick TPK.

PCs were suitably awstruck by the tubeways, and came up in some ruins in Ranallu, exploring it, I'd had a plan for them to explore a bit around there and end up in Birchan and some local messes going on to learn about and report back home or something.

But then they went and did something stupid. When surrounded by natives they couldn't communicate in a language they knew with, the Nluss blooded one panicked when someone was trying to take her weapon. Seriously, you're surrounded, SURROUNDED, by 8 people. There's three of you. They're not actively attacking just obviously asking for weapons. Don't attack! They actually made a good account of themselves, felling 7 of the enemy before the last one got our last hero.

With some of the groups I've had in the past I wouldn't feel too bad. They know the ropes. This one though? In discussing afterwards I learned that the two new players (Who've only ever done some D&D like 15-20 years ago back in High School before! So essentially new to RP other than these sessions and the aforementioned digression)? They admitted they thought this would be no different than fighting Kobolds in D&D. Just a quick, fun encounter to gain XP. I definitely failed in communicating that's not how the game works, and explaining things, but didn't realize that was their expectation either. So in that I'm feeling like I might've made too many presumptions in what they knew and would expect in a game. So there's a touch of feeling like I screwed up and what was supposed to be a fun exercise in communicating and RP like with the robot in the last session turned into a bloodbath.

It also sucks they have to do CG again and we need to start over somewhere! Unless I do something I'm a bit loathe to do in pulling some sort of Deus Ex Machina to save them this ONE TIME. But that cheapens the experience too. Maybe a Wizard from the College forcing them into a favor or something equally "you sure this is a good thing?" But yeah, it's just too convenient. But again, I do feel a touch bad about this one. As they really obvious didn't know this was a risky situation and that IS my fault for not conveying right.

So anyways, that's the likely grisly end of a trio of the Clan of the Scroll of Wisdom who made the mistake of thinking adventuring was easy!

Well, they did something stupid. We ran that risk every Thursday night for over a decade. We survived, by not being stupid.

Have another run at it; they'll learn.

Hi Chirine, I hope all is well with you and yours.

I had a question about the costumes. We've seen pictures of them on mannequins, we've seen pictures of people wearing them back in the day (at cons I guess?).

So I was browsing tekumelcollecting.com and noticed the pictures of the Professor at that costume ball in 1950 where he made his own (winning) Tekumel-ish costume, along with someone else's "soliani" costume. It occurred to me that the whole sca/larp/cosplay (I hope I'm using the right terms and correctly) side of things might have been something that would have appealed to him from way back (as in, before any of those things existed as such).

I think you may have touched on this before, but would you care to reminisce about the origins and evolution of the dress-up side of Tekumel back in the 70s or 80s, who was most involved, the reactions of outsiders, and also the role/input/response of the Professor himself in all that?

Thank you

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Me too but, it seems video is King in today's world.
=

Understood; but the idea that people won't watch anything in black and white really startles me - there's a amazing amount of useful material out there for GMs and players, if they'd only look. "Thief of Baghdad" to "Casablanca"; I don't know how many games I've managed to run over the years based on these.

Originally Posted by Zirunel

Hi Chirine, I hope all is well with you and yours.

I had a question about the costumes. We've seen pictures of them on mannequins, we've seen pictures of people wearing them back in the day (at cons I guess?).

So I was browsing tekumelcollecting.com and noticed the pictures of the Professor at that costume ball in 1950 where he made his own (winning) Tekumel-ish costume, along with someone else's "soliani" costume. It occurred to me that the whole sca/larp/cosplay (I hope I'm using the right terms and correctly) side of things might have been something that would have appealed to him from way back (as in, before any of those things existed as such).

I think you may have touched on this before, but would you care to reminisce about the origins and evolution of the dress-up side of Tekumel back in the 70s or 80s, who was most involved, the reactions of outsiders, and also the role/input/response of the Professor himself in all that?

Thank you

We're doing all right; I'm home sick, today, dehydrated and electrolytes out of kilter. Pumping fluids, and being careful...

Oh, my. You do ask the interesting questions! We used to call it 'costuming', until the anime folks started using the Japanamation term 'cosplay'.

Doing costumes has been around as long as fandom has; Forrey Ackeman did a costume from "Shape of Things to Come" for the first World Con back in 1939, and it's been part of the genre ever since. Phil was very much part of this as well, as the photos from the 1950 World Con of him and his group show. He was also very involved with the Pettingers' World Con wins in the 1980s and 1990s with their costumes of the aspects of the Gods that he'd drawn specifically for them. He was also very involved with our costume building, as we did a lot of the work in front of him at game sessions. (I made a lot of mail, on Thursday nights.) He'd provide detailed costume sketches at the drop of a hat, and these were very useful - doing Tekumel costumes is actually pretty easy, once you break them down into their individual components. I have photos of him reacting to the Tekumel costume party at the local F/SF convention in 1987; never saw Phil dancing, before...

The vast majority of us were all fans, and when I had the notion of doing Chirine's armor for wearing at conventions, people joined in with a will and helped build parts of the costume; Gronan did the steel breast-and-back, for example, Erica Simon the tunics, Janet Moe the lappets and cape, Lynn Litterer the neck guard, and so on. We all thought we were having fun; we liked doing this kind of thing, and as time went on people started building their own character's costumes. By 1987, we had something like twenty people here locally, and a few elsewhere who did their own costumes, and we have some of these in my little museum. We were just doing it because it was fun - we were having a lot of fun with Phil in our adventures, and this just seemed like a way to have some more fun. We wore our outfits at both conventions and local game store events - just for the fun of it, more then anything else. I have a lot of photos of all this in my archives, so doing a list of the people would be pretty easy if there's interest.

The reaction out in fandom and gaming to our costumes was pretty intense and enjoyable. Chirine was out first - I was the first 'gaming' costume at Gen Con, I'm told - and got a lot of attention as I stood around flogging the merchandise at conventions. Later on, my Missus' Temple of Ksarul temple guard's armor is still knocks 'em dead when people see it, as does Princess Vrisa's 'party suit' that Phil designed for Kathy and we built. We'd try not to enter costume shows - 'masquerades' - as we'd usually sweep the awards; the running joke was "The Tekumel people are here, give them the 'Best in Show' and let's get on with the masqerade!" because we took a lot of time and effort to do good costumes. A lot of us were in theater and re-enactment at the time, so when you asked me to turn out Chirine's belt pouch you'd get everything he'd normally carry, from Kevuk dice to Kaitars; we worked to a 'Must be as real as possible' standard, and it did seem to impress the heck out of people. Phil loved the reations and attention that we got; it helped him a lot to know that people liked his world, at a time when he was not getting a lot of positive feedback from the game industry.

And we're still doing costumes; my daughters have done two, which are in the game room, a high-status Lady and a young clan-girl out for a day at the market shopping. I have a lot of props and furniture for Tekumel, collected over the years with suggestions from Phil - one game I'd love to run is that the players are an OAL search team, and have a limited amout of time to go through a room and find The Evidence. I have everything, including the traditional 'chest with secret compartment'.

So, that's an introduction to the subject - it's actually kind of vast, given what we did back in the day, and a part of Tekumel history that very few gamers know about. Does this little essay help?