Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

I remember this. That's about the time that I decided to carry lanterns for 10 Khaitars instead of a torch for one and a pot of oil for one; a lantern gives you fire and oil together in one easy-to-throw package, and it even has a handle for your safety and convenience. "Burning end towards enemy."

I still have your lantern, Glorious General, from your Adventure Of The Quest For The Sarcophagus Of The Ancient Pot Roast; it's been joined by a lot of other lamps in my adventurers' kit, over the years - IKEA, your best source for Tekumel gaming supplies!

Tell our audience about your adventure in my house - they might find it illuminating!!!

(Sorry. Just couldn't pass that one up...)

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Phil never really understood or grasped the notion that GMs needed to be given more information with which to run games - he simply did it off the cuff, like Arneson did, and then went back and took notes for later. I kept after him for the better part of a decade to write some introductory stuff, but never would - he just wasn't interested.

Very true. And Phil was a smart, smart cookie and very thoroughly educated. His head was just plain full of stuff that a typical college age gamer... or later, a high school age gamer... just doesn't have in his or her head. I once razzed him about something... I think perhaps discovering that "Sacbe" is a Mayan word for a raised roadway. In a rare moment of candor (usually if you pulled Phil's leg he'd pull yours back) he said "after this many years I don't even remember where I heard things any more." Now that I've hit 60 myself, I know what he means in a way my 20 year old self didn't.

And Phil was an academic through and through, from the top of his shiny little bald head to his fuzzy little toes. He was interested in what's NEW about Tekumel (or anything else), not rehashing what he thought was a sufficient introduction when he wrote the original EPT back in late 74. I think that may be why he had so many half-finished pieces of Tekumel. He used to quote frequently the old academic aphorism of "publish or perish," and I think part of what Tekumel recreation for him was that when he got tired of a project he could set it aside.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

And I think I am part of the problem, too. I read at about 2,000 words a minute, with a measured 95% comprehension and retention, so when I run Tekumel I simply draw on all of the material that I've read and collected over the years. When I started with Phil, I soon became his informal archivist; anything generated in the game sessions, Phil would keep the original and I'd get a photocopy - this is where my huge archive come from, as well as what's in my head. I have what's been called an 'eidetic memory', they tell me, and I can remember the slightest details on things - I think this comes from my model-building, maybe.

He ain't kidding, folks. Chirine's recall really is astonishing, and yeah, in our younger days many of us (yes, including Phil) would check what he said, and by Avanthe's perfect breasts, yeah, he was right. I mean, nobody's got near-perfect recall, right?

Guess again.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I still have your lantern, Glorious General, from your Adventure Of The Quest For The Sarcophagus Of The Ancient Pot Roast; it's been joined by a lot of other lamps in my adventurers' kit, over the years - IKEA, your best source for Tekumel gaming supplies!

Tell our audience about your adventure in my house - they might find it illuminating!!!

(Sorry. Just couldn't pass that one up...)

Heh. That's actually a chapter in my book.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Well, all right, then. Here we go...

So the players are wandering around some long-buried installation of the Ancients, when this huge machine starts following them around. They've been playing with Phil long enough to figure out that Everything Is Out To Get Them, so they assume that this is some sort of robot sentinel. They avoid the thing doe as long as they can, but it finally catches up to them. Melee occurs, and they find that their puny swords and such have no effect on the machine - spells are equally ineffective, and things are looking pretty grim when a giant mechanical arm comes out of the top of the machine, grapples a player around the middle - Craig Smith, I think - hoists him up over the top of the machine and begins to shake him vigorously while he's upside down. All of his stuff gets shaken loose, and it falls into a big hopper on the back of the machine. After the stuff stops falling off of him, the machine sets him back down and rolls away from the party.

They follow it, hoping to get Craig's stuff back. The machine rolls to a collection station, the hopper tilts back into the chute, and all of Graig's stuff gets dumped into the new machine. It goes into the chute, a transparent shield closes, there's a hum of machinery, the stuff vanishes, and the lights come on.

The players, all SF fans, realize that they've been 'collected' by the trash collection machine, and the 'trash' has been dumped into the matter-converter to be recycled as energy for the complex.

Ask my players about their encounters with the Ru'umbas, the little machines that clean the floors in the ancient Space Marine bases...

Thank you! Now I recall.

I will give Craig Smith credit... he was never afraid to laugh at himself. And once we figured out what was up, we all laughed uproariously. That's vintage Tekumel, that is, and it's also vintage "Sword and Planet" post WW2. Sword and sorcery, SF, and sword and planet all got a bit more sense of humor in those years. Fafhrd could wind up dead drunk, shaved bald, and tied to a bed as an acolyte of Issek of the Jug, but those things would never happen to Conan or John Carter.

When he was in the mood Phil could enjoy an old fashioned pratfall as well as the next man.

And then he'd combine this with his uncanny ability with language.... like the time we found a sentry robot that didn't speak any of our languages, but gradually through about half an hour formed a rudimentary understanding of Tsolyani. Phil didn't TELL us this, he demonstrated it by the robot gradually speaking more and more complicated phrases and having a conversation with us.

We named it "George."

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Very true. And Phil was a smart, smart cookie and very thoroughly educated. His head was just plain full of stuff that a typical college age gamer... or later, a high school age gamer... just doesn't have in his or her head. I once razzed him about something... I think perhaps discovering that "Sacbe" is a Mayan word for a raised roadway. In a rare moment of candor (usually if you pulled Phil's leg he'd pull yours back) he said "after this many years I don't even remember where I heard things any more." Now that I've hit 60 myself, I know what he means in a way my 20 year old self didn't.

And Phil was an academic through and through, from the top of his shiny little bald head to his fuzzy little toes. He was interested in what's NEW about Tekumel (or anything else), not rehashing what he thought was a sufficient introduction when he wrote the original EPT back in late 74. I think that may be why he had so many half-finished pieces of Tekumel. He used to quote frequently the old academic aphorism of "publish or perish," and I think part of what Tekumel recreation for him was that when he got tired of a project he could set it aside.



He ain't kidding, folks. Chirine's recall really is astonishing, and yeah, in our younger days many of us (yes, including Phil) would check what he said, and by Avanthe's perfect breasts, yeah, he was right. I mean, nobody's got near-perfect recall, right?

Guess again.

I think you have Phil down pat, here. I think, like you, that he simply didn't feel like following things through.

Phil was astonishingly well-educated, and not just in a formal sense. He'd lived in rural South Asia for two years, out in the villages, on the same things that the locals did. He once commented that he's been so far out in the countryside what he'd been the very first 'Westerner' that the locals had ever seen...

And thank you for the kind words, too!

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Heh. That's actually a chapter in my book.

Wonderful!!! Put down on the list for a copy, please!

I have to say, it was both exciting and traumatic, even as the guy running the thing... :0

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Thank you! Now I recall.

I will give Craig Smith credit... he was never afraid to laugh at himself. And once we figured out what was up, we all laughed uproariously. That's vintage Tekumel, that is, and it's also vintage "Sword and Planet" post WW2. Sword and sorcery, SF, and sword and planet all got a bit more sense of humor in those years. Fafhrd could wind up dead drunk, shaved bald, and tied to a bed as an acolyte of Issek of the Jug, but those things would never happen to Conan or John Carter.

When he was in the mood Phil could enjoy an old fashioned pratfall as well as the next man.

And then he'd combine this with his uncanny ability with language.... like the time we found a sentry robot that didn't speak any of our languages, but gradually through about half an hour formed a rudimentary understanding of Tsolyani. Phil didn't TELL us this, he demonstrated it by the robot gradually speaking more and more complicated phrases and having a conversation with us.

We named it "George."

Happy to help - it's what I'm here for.

Agreed on the humor - when did this thing get so serious, anyway?

Interestingly, I have been criticized by A Big Name Tekumel fan for my book about our life with Phil being "too lightearted" and for "making Tekumel sound like fun" his opinion was that I should have more 'grimdark' and 'nastiness' in my account of our adventures.

I am not doing this; we certainly had a lot of quite scary and nasty stuff happen in the campaign over the years, but we also had a lot of fun during our times with Phil. I try to show this, in the book, and I'm told by other readers of the drafts that I'm doing a pretty good job of it.

Like the time where both Phil and Dave played the language thing to the hilt; Phil had sent us to Blackmoor, and Dave's tender clutches. One of the players managed to offend the locals - which, considering that this is Blackmoor, is amazing in and of itself - and in a wonderful parley between Phil and Dave in no mutually comprehensible language, they negotiated a settlement. Dave was speaking in Norwegian, and trying gestures; Phil was speaking in Urdu, and also using gestures.

It was hilarious to watch, let me tell you, and very well done; it was also successful, and the player found himself married to the sheep. The wedding was lovely (Princess Vrisa did a lot of happy crying, and caught the bouquet) and we all got nicely plastered. It was great fun, and the only person annoyed was the groom...

Sadly, Phil fell into villainous company who thought RPGs were "ART!" and that "ART!" meant grim and dark and nihilistic, and who knew how to manipulate Phil. Tekumel has been the worse for it in my opinion.

I always agreed with Pete Panchyshin; "I can be a dirtbag in this world."

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Sadly, Phil fell into villainous company who thought RPGs were "ART!" and that "ART!" meant grim and dark and nihilistic, and who knew how to manipulate Phil. Tekumel has been the worse for it in my opinion.

I always agreed with Pete Panchyshin; "I can be a dirtbag in this world."

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. The Tekumel of the mid-1990s bears little to no resemblance to the Tekumel we lived in for so many years. It's been profoundly saddening to listen to people who tell me "I wish I'd known about you, Chirine, before I got into Tekumel fandom!"; I keep trying to tell people about the sheer fun we had, back in the day, and the astonishment I see at that does give me hope for the future.

It's like the RPG game at did at Gary Con last year - that was one heck of a lot of fun for everyone, I gathered, and not a whisper of concerns about 'prestige' anywhere in sight. We just played what Phil created, and none of the nonsense about languages and such that I have been hearing from various people over the years.

Was it 'right'? Was it the 'One True Tekumel'? I have no idea, really; all I wanted to do was give people a look into our past as gamers and have some fun while doing it. Maybe I succeeded; maybe I didn't - but people sure did laugh a lot and have fun...