Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Bilharzia

Surrender your socks

Ahhh...still it requires more than just socks and a bayonet.

Originally Posted by Bren

A WW2 game that includes a die result of Bayonet vs Tiger Tank = Killed Tiger is stupid rules design. If you see light foot routing heavy charging cavalry as the same magnitude of stupid yet your rules include that as a result in the combat table why not, oh I don't know, fix the bad rule?

Actually, my solution is to never play that game again. There are plenty of rules sets around.

I agree it's shit rules design, but the game is inexplicably popular in some quarters.

So, I've run Tekumel off and on for a couple of decades now. I started with the TSR version and then moved on to Swords and Glory, Tri-stat and now I've picked up Bethorm and I'm getting the itch to run again.

One of the few things that has bugged me about Tekumel is how piece-meal all of the GM information is. We get a new system every few years, but we never get much in the way of the 'workings' of the setting. Looking for anything usually requires chasing down out of print books or scouting strange bywaters of the internet.

An excellent example in this thread alone: I never knew until now that the Nluss and Nom were artificially bred species. I assumed they were simply genetic variations which bred true over time as their populations were relatively isolated. This casts a whole new light on both of those people.

I think what I'm getting at is that it's very frustrating to see glimpses of the world-building but to never get any of it simply stated.

So what I'm wondering is if there's any plan to make any of that available. Will some of it be talked about in your book perhaps. Full disclosure: I already plan to purchase it, but this would make it so much more fun to read. I wouldn't want every big question answered, just some. Just enough that I can feel as if I know a little more than what my players know when I hand them the old S&G cultures sourcebook.

Anyway, I really hope I don't sound like I'm whining, I've enjoyed reading this thread immensely and I look forward to reading more of what you have to say.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Shrug. By the time Gary was running Greyhawk the Elastolins were across town in Don Kaye's garage.

I don't know if Gary would have used them if they'd been handy, but I can state that in the 1972-1975 period Gary never, ever used miniatures while running Greyhawk.

Which proves nothing other than that he didn't use miniatures and Dave did.

Agreed. When I was playing a bit with Gary (after the stockholder meetings, which is when I got to know him) he wasn't using miniatures in his RPG games.

What I'm on about are the people - the on-line High Priests of the Great God Gygax - to take an off-hand comment by Gary in a Dragon article that MINIATURES ARE NOT TO BE USED. I'm continually bemused by the 'rabbinical scholars' who pour over every obscure letter or article by either Dave or Gary to try and determine The Right Way To Game - hence my comments about the 'mythology of gaming'. I wish I had a dollar for all the times I've been told just how Phil MUST have gamed Tekumel from people who hadn''t been born when you and I started playing in the old coot's games.

(Satire Warning: Wait!!! Phil Barker is the Egg of Coot!!! See - Chirine used the Sacred Word in his comment, so it must be so!!! Etc., etc., etc.)

And before anyone gets bent about my comment about 'rabbinical scholars', I get this metaphor from my cousin, who is one. He's bemused by the 'hair-splitting' he sees in RPG forums - it's much more intricate then what he and his colleagues do in their studies, he says...

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Aiieee! Aiieee! Aiieee!

Oh, go on - you know you want to. I don't want to step on your lines, Glorious General.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Nope.

In Free Kriegspiel the referee can use any number of charts, graphs, dice, tables, sines, cosines, tangents, knives, forks, and spoons of energy he or she desires.

The difference is that the referee is the final arbiter. Somebody rolled an instant kill, either player or NPC? The referee is completely within their purview to overrule the dice and say "No."

However, the wise referee does this judiciously. Now, in original Free Kriegspiel, and in Braunstein, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, only the umpire had access to the rules. We knew that a guy who was nekkid was easier to kill than a guy in plate armor, but we had no idea of what the mechanics were.

That's not the case now, so the referee needs to be more open about it if the players know the rules. However, a good instance was a game of "DBA" (a miniatures wargame) I played. The dice said that a group of light infantry, charged by an equal number of plate armored knights on armored horses, routed the knights with almost no losses. Now, based on a pretty good knowledge of the medieval period I'd have no trouble as referee saying "That could not, did not, and will not ever happen, period."

To summarize, the rules are to support and help the Free Kriegspiel referee, not to tell them what to do. So your example is absolutely not out of line with Free Kriegspiel in the slightest.

Agreed. This is what we did all the time when we played. Seemed to work for us...

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Kelewan is Tekumel?
Ok, now I know how to get some people interested in Tekumel!

Do you also happen to know how close the events in Mr. Feist's books follow the events in that campaign?

From what he told me, the earlier books are very, very much 'campaign reports'; the later / latest ones are extrapolations from the events of the campaign.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

In a historical game, "the dice are the dice" is not a rule I personally will abide. Light foot are not going to stop and rout heavy charging cavalry, period, just like somebody's not going to make a Tiger Tank explode by stabbing it with a bayonet in a historical WW2 game.

Sometimes the dice need to be ignored.

Agreed!

Except in "Panzer Pranks", by Lortz and Lortz. Any resemblance between that game and WWII is purely a coincidence, but WOW! is it fun to play. The Americans fight as fanatics to defend Coke machines, the British will stop operations for afternoon tea, the Russians use vodka to fuel their tanks, and the German's most deadly weapon is the Goulashkanone.

It is, as far as I know, the only game where the Combat Results Table has modifiers for the 'shooty' and 'explody' noises being made by the player.