Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hrugga

If you may could you give us an idea about what was the "mind set" of the nonhuman races on Tekumel during your adventures. Some of the stereotypes I know. Such as the Tinaliya are very literal. Shen will eat your children and you if you don't pay attention(do not mess with their eggs). Ninínyal will sell you your own stuff for double the price. The Knobbed Ones are an uncuth lot that smell and would pee on your walls without thinking twice...etc.

I especially like the Pachi Lei. For whatever reason, I love The Professor's illustration of them. I do know they have a tendency to lose control now and again.

Any insight into nonhumans would be helpful. So when the time comes, I can give the kids a good idea of what they are like.

Thanks,

H :0)

PS Please let me know if these sorts of questions are too elementary(I have not read the S&G sourcebook cover to cover yet).

No, they are not too elementary - if they are helping you enjoy Phil's creation, then they are very important to me.

You have the non-humans down pretty well. Use your favorite rules for NPC reactions to suit, and over time you'll develop individuals in each of the races - keep notes on their index cards.

Phil played this same way; he set the broad outlines of what the various non-humans were like, and then would let the dice develop them further.

The Pachi Lei are pretty decent folks, and pretty 'normal'; the Pe Choi are the 'most human', and tend to have a dry sense of humor - especially where we humans are concerned!

Have you got more specific / detailed questions?

Originally Posted by nDervish

Here's a somewhat bigger, though sadly less specific, question that's been coming to me over the last few days, then leaving as soon as I got near a keyboard:

In practice, how similar were Tekumel, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk? I don't mean surface details like English vs. Tsolyani names or elaborate titles or the basic geography, but rather the mood and the atmosphere of the games. But that still sounds like "Tekumel was Indian- and Meso-American-flavored while the others were European-flavored" would be the obvious answer... I don't feel like I'm explaining my question at all well.

Looking at Bethorm and the latest Swords of the Petal Throne draft, I get the impression of Tekumel being a setting where status and politics are everything and that this makes it something very different than "just another D&D setting". But, reading this thread, I see that you did a lot of the same kind of things in Phil's game as you did in Dave's or Gary's, and you've mentioned that you frequently ignored Prestige, which makes me question whether Tekumel might not have been as different as I thought or if it might in fact been different, but in a completely different way than I thought.

Is that any clearer than mud?

It may be the weekend before I address this, but I've got a fair bit to say on the subject. In the meantime, you can get a hint by rereading post 1490.

Originally Posted by nDervish

Here's a somewhat bigger, though sadly less specific, question that's been coming to me over the last few days, then leaving as soon as I got near a keyboard:

In practice, how similar were Tekumel, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk? I don't mean surface details like English vs. Tsolyani names or elaborate titles or the basic geography, but rather the mood and the atmosphere of the games. But that still sounds like "Tekumel was Indian- and Meso-American-flavored while the others were European-flavored" would be the obvious answer... I don't feel like I'm explaining my question at all well.

Looking at Bethorm and the latest Swords of the Petal Throne draft, I get the impression of Tekumel being a setting where status and politics are everything and that this makes it something very different than "just another D&D setting". But, reading this thread, I see that you did a lot of the same kind of things in Phil's game as you did in Dave's or Gary's, and you've mentioned that you frequently ignored Prestige, which makes me question whether Tekumel might not have been as different as I thought or if it might in fact been different, but in a completely different way than I thought.

Is that any clearer than mud?

I think so, at least from my standpoint. I agree with Gronan - have a look at #1490 as a lead-in for this.

First off, "Bethorm" is, in my opinion, just about the best 'simulation' of the way Phil looked at rules; simple combat system, complicated magic system. I had the chance to play a pre-publication game with Jeff and Amanda Dee, and it felt like one of Phil's old games.

I think what we're looking at here is something I'd call 'style'. (I'll come back to 'prestige', which was never a game thing for us, but has become a very real 'real-world' issue and thing for some folks.) Gronan pointed out that with Phil, the game world came first - he started working on it in his teens, and first started 'serious' work on it in the 1940s. Despite what some Tekumel fans have claimed, that Gary and Dave stole the idea for the concept of the RPG from Phil, all the evidence we have is that when Dave and Phil started gaming at CSA, both Bill Hoyt, Gronan, and Dave all suggested that he take his pre-existing world setting and write a game set in it. EPT was the result.

I'll let Gronan talk about Greyhawk, but he's right that both Blackmoor and Greyhawk were created as settings for games - see also the old C&C Society newsletters, which Jon Peterson summarized in his book. Tekumel was an existing world-setting that was used as the settings for games; Greyhawk and Blackmoor were evolved as settings for games into world-settings. When we played with Dave, there was no over-arching timeline or history of Blackmoor that existed like one did for Tekumel. The Blackmoor timeline grew and evolved as a result of the games played there, while in Tekumel our games were set within the over-all timeline and 'future history' that Phil had created in the '40s and '50s. I have a lot of his very early work in my archives, and there is very - and mean very - little drift between the early material and the stuff we published in the 1980s. You could run a Tekumel campaign with just the 1950s material, and nobody would notice any difference between it and the later material.

(I am not talking about rules systems - I am talking about the world-setting.)

'Early' Blackmoor, as published, is very different from 'late' Blackmoor, as published.

Our games in Phil's campaign were quite similar to the ones that Dave ran, with the very strong difference being that we had a lot more cultural material to work with. Originally, Blackmoor was pretty basic historical medieval, and you were pretty familiar with the tropes involved. With Tekumel, we had to feel our way into a very different culture - Mughal India. All of the tropes were very different, and our personal status and power made all the difference to the way we had out adventures. As I've remarked, Phil stopped handing out XP after a while, and instead gave us cultural rewards - offices, stipends, spells, etc.

Unlike in Blackmoor, we were part of the society we lived in, and we had to live in that society according to it's rules and customs or we'd suffer badly. We didn't have rules or game mechanics for how to do this in the game; we had to learn, both in game and from talking to Phil 'on the side'. Dave didn't really get into world-setting development until much later on, and Phil helped him a lot with this.

It's a 'style of gaming' thing; we assumed that we had to play the parts of our PCs, and so we did what a lot of people would call 'immersion' or 'play acting'; at the table, you could always tell when you were speaking to Kathy, and when you were speaking to Vrisa. Two very different people, and two very different voices.

So, yes, our adventures do look and sound like those in Blackmoor and Grehawk, but the setting against which they were played out was very different. No 'murderhobos', running around killing things; we had to have a good reason for it when we did things.

'Prestige' was never a game thing with Phil. We had reputations, based on our histories, but no 'prestige' stat or mechanic. Chirine had a reputation as a very reliable officer and soldier, as well as a ruthless killer. Which was true, actually.

Does any of this help? Am I even beginning to answer you? Let me pause, and give you a chance to weigh in...

I've split this off, as it may not be all that useful to the discussion.

'Prestige', in Tekumel gaming circles, has over the past two decades come to mean the prestige that some folks feel that they are due as old-hand gamers out at Phil's. Some fans refer to these people as "Barker's Own", and they do consider themselves to be an elite of the elite, and as such enjoy great and powerful prestige - or at least feel that this is their just due.

I had a player - Gronan knows who - who routinely told the younger players in my gaming group that as one of Phil's 1974 players, they were entitled to first pick of anything the group / party picked up in their adventures, and that as a 'senior' player they should automatically be in charge and in command of everything. Everything revolved around this person - and it had nothing to due with the PC they was playing. It made for some very 'sub-optimal' game sessions, and eventually most of the younger players got tired of it and dropped out of the group.

As a game mechanic, though, 'Prestige' is pretty useful - didn't "Flashing Blades" (shows how old I am!) have this?

Originally Posted by nDervish

It seems that there are a disappointingly large number of dysfunctional elements clinging to humanity.

Fixed yer typo.

Also, a quick thought before I dash off to work... Blackmoor and Greyhawk, at least at first, were about as 'medieval' as a Hollywood costume drama with a CHAIMAIL-like combat system (i.e. plate protects more than leather but you move slower, etc). Gary even used to say his inspiration for the "alternate combat system" was the fight between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone at the end of "Robin Hood."

"The Middle Ages just as they were in Hollywood."

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

As a game mechanic, though, 'Prestige' is pretty useful - didn't "Flashing Blades" (shows how old I am!) have this?

FB uses Social Rank (SR) which is a statistic based primarily on the character's birth and current rank and position in society. One's combat abilities, while crucial in surviving a duel, are nearly irrelevant in increasing one's Social Rank.

Some examples of Social Rank from my game.

Guy de Bourges: born an untitled noble (SR 8); he was made a Knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost, giving him the title of the Chevalier de Sainte-Marie-du-Bois (SR 9) which supersedes his birth rank.
Hypothetically, if Guy was made a Baron (SR 10) that would be his new rank.

Seigneur de Chambre: born a manorial lord or seigneur (SR 9) he possesses great wealth which gives him +1 SR for a total (SR 10).

Father Signoret: born an untitled noble (SR 8), he is a priest (SR 4) and a secretary to Cardinal Richelieu (SR 6), neither of which increases his social rank above that of an untitled noble.
Hypothetically, if Father Signoret was appointed to a Bishop’s Curia (SR 8) having two ranks at SR 8 would count as the next higher rank, i.e. (SR 9).

Captain Gaston Thibeault: born the son of a wealthy merchant; he is an accredited Fencing Master (SR 6) and the Captain-Lieutenant of the Cardinal’s Guard, which counts as a Guards company, giving him (SR 9).
Hypothetically, if Gaston loses his position as the head of the Cardinal’s Guard he would drop back to (SR 6) unless he could find another position e.g. in the army. Not surprisingly, Richelieu believes this social rank gap is a good incentive for maintaining Gaston's loyalty.

Originally Posted by nDervish

I think you've got the general idea of what I was asking, yes, but I think I'd like to hear a bit more at this point about how you saw the setting influencing the style. What I'm getting from what you (and Gronan in #1490) have said so far is that the main difference in how the settings affected the games was that Phil actually had a fully-developed setting on day 1, while in Dave's game "there was no there there" - the setting didn't influence the game much because, for the most part, the setting didn't exist to have an influence.

But I'm also very interested in the differences in style, even apart from the influences of their respective settings.

Just to clarify (although I think you'd already sussed this), that's what I meant by the reference to "Prestige" - the Bethorm definition of Prestige as the average of Clan Influence and Professional Influence which determines your social standing, along with the general notes that a group of PCs should all have similar levels of Prestige and the description in section 3.4.4 Role-Playing Social Status that, if characters have a difference of 4 or more in their status, it's not considered appropriate for them to even speak to each other directly outside of exceptional circumstances. But it's sounding like that's something which has been built up over the years (possibly in the same way as the "you must learn Tsolyani" perception?) rather than something that Phil did himself.

I wasn't aware of the other "prestige" you mentioned in the second post. It seems that there are a disappointingly large number of dysfunctional elements clinging to the Tekumel community.

I think were getting there. Let me have another run at this, if I could.

I think we're onto something when we talk about 'style'; one of the things I get puzzled by in a lot of forum discussions is the talk about 'game mechanics for social interactions'. I am not denigrating this, not at all; I can see a real need for this, as Bren was kind enough to point out. When Gronan and I played with Phil, we had no such mechanics; the 'custom of the house' was that you, the player, did this yourself in the game by your words and deeds; Phil would roll percentile dice for the NPCs' reactions to your actions, and we'd play from there. There was, as I've mentioned, a lot of 'play-acting' at the game table; Gronan in his 'real person' was a very different guy then Korunme was, for example.

And, of course, Phil would play the NPCs - every time he'd roll the d100, he'd note down what the NPC thought on their index card, so he had it for the next time we talked to that person. Style-wise, there wasn't a whole lot of 'separation' between a lot of Dave's players and their PCs; Fred was Fred, King of the Orcs, and so on. In our original Thursday Night Group, the style of play was very different, both in tone and in mechanics. We very rarely looked at the rules - EPT, at that time - and simply went with the flow of the action; the usual need for a 'game mechanic decision' was to roll d100, and go from there.

Bethorm's 'prestige' mechanic - I've now re-read that section - is a pretty good way to simulate the play style out at Phil's; normally, in our day, we'd be doing pretty much the exact same thing by the seat of our pants. Yes, one notmally does not speak directly with someone much higher or lower then one's self, unless there are special circumstances involved. Gronan would normally not be talking directly to his soldiers; he'd give an order to their officer, who would translate that into orders for the troops. I got into trouble once, at the Battle of Anch'ke, for presuming to give some troops orders directly - their senior officer quite rightly nailed me for it, and then had the troops do what we needed them to do by giving the orders himself.

Likewise, in a 'civil' situation, one would normally talk to people close to or the same as one's own social level. This was a feature of Phil's Tekumel from the beginning, and it was one of the ways he'd get it across to us that we weren't in Kansas anymore. If I wanted a bath, say, I'd let the person who was running my quarters know about it, and they would make it happen; because we are not out in public, we can converse pretty freely. If we were out in public, i.e., in front of other people, I'd make sure to go through the 'chain of command; me to the chamberlain, that worthy to the head chambermaid or groom of the chambers, and that worthy to the servant responsible for my room. If I was a better Lord, I'd have my own valet, and this person would see to everything. (I never got around to hiring one. Sorry.)

Phil's style was to have the classic 'Action! Adventure! Romance!', but set in and amongst this world-setting he'd been creating for some forty years before he started gaming in it. I think he had an advantage over both Gary and Dave in that he knew how Tekumel was supposed to work, in his view, and so could simply let a lot of stuff run 'on autopilot' in the background while he got on with the story-telling and adventuring.

Playing in Phil's Tekumel was very, very different from what playing in Dave's and Gary's games were like; in my experience, the two of them were a lot more focused on the action, and a lot more - and this is relative - 'casual' about how that world-setting worked or was supposed to work. Phil, on the other had, was relatively less focussed on the 'game aspects', and a lot more focussed on the society and social side of the thing.

We learned, pretty early on, how to judge our relative social status vis a vis the people we were dealing with. One did not insult a peasant farmer; to do so marked us as 'ignoble' people, and thus not worth cooperating with. Likewise, one was polite to one's social superiors, it worked much better then being rude or annoying.

Phil never addressed this in any of his rules sets - I don't think it ever occurred to him to do so, as it simply wasn't the way he played. I think that "Bethorm" helps to address this, as a way to try and bring what Phil did more or less naturally into a form that can be used in a game.

Is any of this helping you? I'm trying to compress a lot of years in the basement into something useful...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Fixed yer typo.

Also, a quick thought before I dash off to work... Blackmoor and Greyhawk, at least at first, were about as 'medieval' as a Hollywood costume drama with a CHAINMAIL-like combat system (i.e. plate protects more than leather but you move slower, etc). Gary even used to say his inspiration for the "alternate combat system" was the fight between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone at the end of "Robin Hood."

"The Middle Ages just as they were in Hollywood."

Agreed! Looking forward to your thoughts on all this!!!