Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

It all goes back to WRG, by the same author, and the British fondness for tournament play. The series of WRG/DBA/DBX rules get more and more abstract as they go along, and become more like board games then they do what you and I would consider 'miniatures' games. 'Free Kriegspiel' is a very dirty term amongst the fans of the series, from what I've seen.

They - the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society, especially - used to tout the series as being the most historically accurate sets of rules in the universe. I felt differently, especially after the Origins in Baltimore that we went to in the very early 1980s where the HMGS was running The National Tournament for historical miniatures. In the WRG/etc series, the battlefield terrain is chosen by the players, usually three features each, and placed on the opposing player's side of the table. In the final battle of the tournament, each player picked three 'swamp' terrain pieces, and gleefully place them on their opponent's side of the table.

Me, I started laughing my fool head off, much to the annoyance of the 'serious wargamers'; the game instantly stalemated, as one player had a Chinese Warring States Chariot army, and his esteemed opponent had a late medieval army of French Gen d'armes super-heavy cavalry...

You'd have laughed your head off, too...

Well, a charge-based army facing off amid six swamps aren't really going to have much decisive action, that's for sure.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Thank you for your wonderful comments!!!

I agree with you entirely - this same issue has been driving me crazy for decades.

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.

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.

Speaking from my perspective as one o Phil's many, many publishers over the years, it does bother me that there has never been a really comprehensive look at Tekumel ever done. Sadly, Phil would get bored pretty easliy with the writing/publishing process, and as a result a lot of the extant literature is made up of half-finished works.

Sore, I'd love to see all of Phil's work edited/organized/collated and published, but that's not something that is going to happen under the terms of the Tekumel Foundation's "exclusive license for the commercial exploitation of the Tekumel IP" any time soon. I worked for them for a couple of years as the formal archivist for Tekumel, and wound up quitting over this very issue; I am, and have always been, a 'populist' who feels that all of Phil's work should be published; I am not an 'elitist', who believes that Tekumel is the preserve of the perceived OSR elite and publication needs are to be driven by the needs of 'prestige' and 'position'. As far as I know, from my dealings with them, the Foundation has no really solid plans to publish much more then the back list of the books and such.

Which, given their situation, is not very surprising. They have no people, no resources, and no money to work with; all of the various projects I've been involved with with them have taken four to five years or more to accomplish, of they've been done by 'outside people' who are willing to invest their own money and man-hours on Tekumel.

My book, for example, will be all about how we gamed with Phil and what we learned along the way in some fifteen years of gaming with him. It will not be an 'official Tekumel' work, as I will be publishing the thing as a free down-load - fan fiction, if you like. Have a look at the published publications policies on the Foundation's website, and you'll see why.

Sadly, I have been asked publish the book by somebody with real money, with full-color covers and lost of artwork. I've told then that they need to talk to the Foundation in order to be able to do this, and that's been the last I've heard of anything. I plan on finishing the book; I'm up to 108,000 words, and expecting to go to 300,000 in six volumes. I'll keep plugging away, bit for now all you'll be able to get from me are threads like this and my little blog.

If you want to see more Tekumel being published, talk to the Foundation - they have the rights to the IP, and they guard them very carefully. I am, as they have told me, "just another fan".

Ask more questions; I'll tell you what I can.

Question time is my favourite time!

Did Phil base his gods on the Indian paradigm of Stability, Change/Destruction and Re-birth?
If so, who represents the re-birth? Is it some of the other races?
Or is it the humans themselves?

How important is ritual purity in Tekumel? Maybe it's treated in some place I've never seen.

How much does performing religious duties (or them being neglected) impact your position in the society? Can you make a grand donation in exchange for a lot of prestige? If it's grand enough to make people talk, would the local authorities feel compelled to offer you an office, even if they wouldn't normally favour your clan - for personal reasons or because it's a low clan?

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."

Sounds like Molotov cocktails with the added bonus of giving light.

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...

So, he was mugged by a trash-cleaning machine?

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...)

IKEA as a source of Tekumel gaming supplies reminds me of Old Geezer admitting he added a McD to the center of a dungeon, so the monsters could feed.

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.

I can relate to that...but it basically means that we're out writing the lacking parts.
It wouldn't be a first, I admit.

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 had near-perfect recall as a young puppy, though my speed of reading was much lower. So, chirine, how did you obtain this speed?

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.

Well, I think Conan suffered for the short length of the stories. They seem to have some hints of humour, but it's just that, hints.
Admittedly, Conan and John Carter usually start in a similar position at the start of the story. In the middle of the desert with no water sounds equally embarrassing for the character, but not quite the same.

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."

Did you play this out in Tsolyani?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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!

Well, that does explain quite a bit about the quality of his work.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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.

Since when "grimdark" and "nastiness" are opposite of "having fun"? If they are, I'm doing them wrong.
Could you ask him that next time?

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.

Well, yeah, sounds right.

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...

Sounds par for the course, actually.
Was wifophagia (or however it's written) permitted and if not, how much was he fined for it?

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."

Villainous company0?
Ahem, art can be grim, dark and nihilistic, but it doesn't have to. Do you mean they were focusing too much on the grimdark aspects?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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.

There's always hope for the future. Of course, people that like grimdark, would play a grimdark Tekumel. The others won't, no matter what's in the setting book, IME.

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.

Ahem, chirine, have you considered that mastering a made-up language is more or less the definition of "nonsense about languages" for many players? It all depends on what's your comfort level in engaging with languages and stuff.
I've sure heard the above about Klingon-speakers from some of my players.

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.

That's why I'm likely to be an avid reader of both your book and OG's book, when they come out.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

9. I hope you'll be amused at our attempts to stay alive!

Before something horrible happens, you and OG need to get this stuff in writing.

So a new generation of "scholars" can start the "True TRUE Way" cults.

Actually I have a self interest of confirming that I'm not forgetful and the way you played WAS the way I remembered and not just how I wished it was.

I keep trying to go back to EPT and run a GAME but there are so many new expectations that it never gets far.

Have you ever been able to tell if your play style is transferable?

When you run a game at a public event, do you ever see "the lights come on" in the faces of any players?
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