Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Luca

This is hearthbreaking, and I've never even played Tekumel.

I really hope that material can be someday, somehow put out in the open.

It was, it is, and one can only hope.

In the meantime, all the data is safe; I have multiple backups in multiple locations.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

I think one of the biggest problems with playing is to get the players engaged.

Like with "Pulp" as it is described now, the majority of the potential audience doesn't relate to the source material.
Many basic assumptions have changed over time.
For example, rocketships, what shape are they?
Who even uses "Rocketships" any more??

I think if it was repackaged as an anime it would be far more successful at generating interest.

This is why "how it was done back then" is so interesting to me.

I can create my own D&D clone game with a non-elf setting but there are few with the particular mix that EPT has.
When deriving from the original, it helps to know what the original actually was.

Games with only human opponents bump up hard against the "Politically Correct" barrier.

How much was your opponents being human critical to game play?
From many of your descriptions, talking your way out of things was common.
=

Oh, yes; I agree with that. 'Pulp' is now a largely forgotten genre, except for the game publications by various companies - and I've noticed that they tend to supply sample adventures for players, as the original material is so difficult to find.

Your point about 'rocketships' is entirely correct; I've had to explain to people what these are, and in some cases what 'rockets' are. They are an obsolete form of technology, these days, and thus 'outside the envelope' of what people know.

I hate to ask this, but what's the 'politically incorrect barrier'? I mean, I see things like the "Are Orcs Racist?" thread go by, but I don't have any real grasp on what the issues are. Which probably makes me sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed. It's like the current fashion for LGBT inclusion in games; back in the day, we didn't care much about it or worried about who was and wasn't LGBT; we just got on with the game, and tried to stay alive. These days, I feel like I have to ask new players for their Official LGBT Certification papers in order to be able to let them play...

Anyway...

Whether or not our opponents were human or not never did seem to make much difference in our game play; either they were out to kill us, or we'd be able to negotiate something with them. Human or non-human, we'd work kind of hard at not getting into fights with them; melees very quickly got deadly, especially against heavy-duty beings like the Shen or Ahoggya, and as a matter of simple survival we'd try to find a way not to have to start slaughtering people. We spoke a lot of languages, and we could usually find a common tongue to communicate with people we ran into.

"Oh, too bad, your PC is dead, roll up another one" was not the way we played; we thought that our 'win' was from keeping our PCs alive, and moving them along their career paths. Tekumel is a very deadly place, especially if you go off the beaten path, and simple survival was a very big deal. In the Underworlds, combat was pretty common, as most of what we faced was not sapient and not open to discussion; same in the 'wilderness' areas. If we faced a sentient life-form, of whatever variety, we'd try to talk them out of killing us, and we usually managed to work out a pretty reasonable deal with them. We didn't kill them, they didn't kill us, and everybody walked away from the situation alive. That may sound kinda dull, but it did very - very, very! - often lead to much more exciting adventures, where the people (again, of all species) would suggest that we might want to have a look at something that had been giving them trouble, and maybe deal with the problem for them. (For a suitable reward, of course.)

Getting into combat was not a common thing with us, and when it was it was A Very Big Deal. It should be kept in mind that we'd played these same PCs for years, and we felt we had a vested interest in keeping them alive. When we did go into combat, we did so very hard, very fast, and very, very much out to win. We pulled no punches whatsoever, and even in the early days of the campaign we got a well-deserved reputation for being ruthless killers if we were provoked. This, in turn, led us into yet more interesting adventures, as having a squad of ruthless killers who were quick, fast, and clever was considered to be A Very Good Thing to have around by a great many people who could make it worth our while to put ourselves into danger on their behalf.

I killed a lot of people, of all kinds, over the years. I also worked with and for a lot more people, again of all kinds, as well. On the whole, the latter out-numbered the former, and everybody walked away with something nice.

Does any of this help, at all?

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Hello,

If you would could you talk a bit about Lord Fu Shi'i? Where on Tekumel he comes from? Who he really serves and to what ends(if any)? I'm curious about what his side of Tekumel is like. Does he play a bigger role in the Professor's meta game?

Also what were the Professor's plans for the future of Tekumel? Did he have his whole meta game planned, or was it developing as you went along? Did the Professor reveal the secrets of Tekumel to you guys in the end? Is it something you can talk about? Would it disrupt the fabric of time causing the destruction of Tekumel's pocket universe...? Maybe I don't really want to know...but thanks.

H :0)

Well, let's see; we never got a whole lot of information on him, especially after he turned a nosy player-character (Eyloa) into a talking fish. What we do know:

He usually appears as a human. He's extremely powerful; we always assumed that he was at the level of the Undying Wizards, and really tried to stay away from him. At one point, somebody noticed that his eyes do glint red, which usually was the sign of a Mihalli shapeshifter. He's an ally of Baron Ald, but does have his own agenda and masters. We originally thought that he might be from the human empire ('the brown and purple empire, from their theme colors) on the opposite side of the planet from us, but then we got more information about the Hokun and the general feeling was that he was working for them. (There's not much information on the other portions of Tekumel, either; Phil always smiled and 'suggested' that we explore them to find out...) When we found out that it was the Hokun who had originally paid the Lords of Humanspace to terraform Tekumel for them, we got really uninterested in asking them or him a lot of pointed questions...

As for his role in the meta-game, we never found out. Phil played those cards very, very close to his chest. (Including doing index cards in Urdu.)

As for Phil's future plans, he left nothing behind in his files. (I looked. Oh, did I look.) His main focus / plot line / story when we played with him was the Mirusiya / Elara romance ( which he worked on from 1948 to 2004 or so); He sort of got a new plot line started in the unpublished novel, but it wasn't all that well developed.

The meta-game was never 'planned'; it grew very organically, and Phil pretty much pushed the 'start' button and let the thing run; his focus was on his novels, and the meta-game provided a lot of the background details for them, just as our adventures did. It developed quite a bit over time, starting with his 'Risk'-like game in the 1950s and then miniatures and then RPGs.

No, Phil did not reveal a lot of any Big Secrets; he preferred that there always would be mysteries for people to explore. He certainly did drop a lot of hints along the way, which was part of the fun of playing and working with him, but he always played things very close and didn't give up any secrets unless it was important. He was asked about this very thing over and over, both by us and at conventions; he'd always just smile, and politely suggest that you needed to go off on an adventure to try and find out - and drop him a line to let him know what you found, if you got back...

I certainly can talk about this forever, which would probably bore you to tears; let me say that one of the really wonderful things about gaming with Phil was having a front-row seat for the creative process as he developed and refined what he wanted to do. It was like out time with Gordy Dickson; we had a front row seat for the Dorsai, too...

Can you be more specific? Which particular mystery do you have in mind?

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Yes. Some people seem to be unable to take things In Game Context and get Personal.
The setting has many things that can be used to raise a fuss if that is your intent.
Doing so seems to make some think they are "A Better Person".



Experience points are the biggest issue. Which basically requires "Killing Things and Taking Their Stuff" as written in the EPT rules.
From your descriptions that wasn't the case so, to emulate your play, some conversion has the be calculated.
=

Understood. "NAKED! THEY'RE NAKED!"; "OMG! LESBIANS!"; etc. I used to have to deal with this a lot at conventions; Tekumel used to be considered the 'naughty' world-setting...

Ah! Gotcha! Yeah, the XP thing is something that Phil pretty much ignored after about the first two or three years of play. We'd just do the mission, survive, and get rewarded with ranks and position - which would also bring in the cash, with which we'd buy / learn new spells and skills. Phil would just do it off the top of his head, but I agree - coming up with a way to simulate this in a modern game is going to take some thought.

We'd usually hire a tutor or somebody, and then take a six-month 'vacation' in the game to pick up something new. Once we'd gotten that, it was back to the adventures...

The first time one of my players asked me if he could 'level up' I had no idea what he was talking about...

I tend to do the number-crunching in my head, and then tell the player what they have to work with. It keeps the game going, and seems to work out pretty well.

Actually, now that it comes to it, why hasn't Tekumal been done with Runequest? RQ has a very explicit cash and time to training system. It's more focussed on an anthropological view of fantasy, builds new magic systems to fit settings, And it's an incredibly stable and functional system. I'm not even a BRP fan and it seems like a perfect fit to me.

Originally Posted by Luca

I really hope that material can be someday, somehow put out in the open.

Seconded...

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Actually, now that it comes to it, why hasn't Tekumal been done with Runequest? RQ has a very explicit cash and time to training system. It's more focussed on an anthropological view of fantasy, builds new magic systems to fit settings, And it's an incredibly stable and functional system. I'm not even a BRP fan and it seems like a perfect fit to me.

It has been done. By Sandy Petersen. System seemed to work just fine when my PC got his eye plucked out. "Working fine" being a relative assessment determined from a certain point of view.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Actually, now that it comes to it, why hasn't Tekumal been done with Runequest? RQ has a very explicit cash and time to training system. It's more focussed on an anthropological view of fantasy, builds new magic systems to fit settings, And it's an incredibly stable and functional system. I'm not even a BRP fan and it seems like a perfect fit to me.

Beats me. From what I've seen, Gloriantha fans tend to stay in their patch, and Tekumel fans tend to stay in theirs.