Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Oh, yeah. How many times have we heard that line, before? Remember the first Minnesota Campaign, where I ran that big Tekumel siege game using Phil's wonderful modular city wall set, and one of the defending players whined and moaned that the game "wasn't fair" because he didn't have as many figures to defend the town walls as the attacking army had...

And he was still whining about it some thirty years later, too...

And when you say "Next time try tactics..."

"WAAAH! CHIRINE'S BEING MEAN TO MEEEEEEEE!!!"

I wish I were exaggerating, folks.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yep. The rules for high school athletics , at that time, stated that all coaches had to be teachers and not paid professionals. They were to 'volunteer' their time coaching. Of course, the schools then hired professional coaches - who were very good, actually - and got them teachers' credentials. They were then placed as history teachers, where they could do no harm and get on with their coaching duties.

Coaches were not always history teachers.

My High School teacher for Trigonometry was a coach and so was my Statistics teacher. The trig coach taught the advanced math trig classes. He knew his stuff. I think my cross country coach taught history, but none of the history teachers I had were coaches. I can't speak to that coach's knowledge of history, but he was a successful coach with multiple state championships in X-Country and Track.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Oh, yeah. How many times have we heard that line, before? Remember the first Minnesota Campaign, where I ran that big Tekumel siege game using Phil's wonderful modular city wall set, and one of the defending players whined and moaned that the game "wasn't fair" because he didn't have as many figures to defend the town walls as the attacking army had

Next time give him more figures. Make them 95% militia. Then turn the siege as an actual siege and make him break out before the food runs out. Alesia anyone?

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

And when you say "Next time try tactics..."

"WAAAH! CHIRINE'S BEING MEAN TO MEEEEEEEE!!!"

I wish I were exaggerating, folks.

He's not. It's why I only taped Phil's RPG sessions, 'cause the players there were a lot more, er, 'mature'. When I taped my stuff that's on YouTube, I made sure to warn all the players that any tantrums would be immortalized on the Internet forever.

Originally Posted by Bren

Coaches were not always history teachers.

My High School teacher for Trigonometry was a coach and so was my Statistics teacher. The trig coach taught the advanced math trig classes. He knew his stuff. I think my cross country coach taught history, but none of the history teachers I had were coaches. I can't speak to that coach's knowledge of history, but he was a successful coach with multiple state championships in X-Country and Track.

That's actually a relief to hear. My experience was in southern Minnesota in the early 1970s. What got to me was that the coaches were actually really good coaches; they hated being stuck in the history classes as much as we did.

Originally Posted by Bren

Next time give him more figures. Make them 95% militia. Then turn the siege as an actual siege and make him break out before the food runs out. Alesia anyone?

Agreed. I had thought about this, but simply wanted to get on with the game for the dozen other players. I refuse to play with this person, and haven't since the late 1970s. Luckily, he's never been much of a game person, so I've been able to avoid playing games with him pretty easily.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Hello,

I was reading a bit of The Blue Room Archive. I came across the names of some beings that I have not heard of before. I looked through my archives. I could not find any references to them. I'm wondering if you can help. The names are:

Heheganu and Hehecharu

A gentleman was sharing his theory of where the creatures of Tekumel descend from. Part of his theory was saying that the Heheganu and Hehecharu are descended from Humanity.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

And:

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Ahh!!! I might have found the answer to my own question in The Man of Gold...but just to be sure, I await your answer...

Yes, these peoples are discussed in "Man of Gold"; they are part of 'The Brotherhood Of The Half-Human' a loose association of various sentient peoples. Their populations are small and limited in location, and they tend to shy away from any sort of 'large-scale' contact with 'mainstream' humanity. Most people are unaware of their existence, and they kind of like to keep it that way. Seasoned adventurers do know about then and try to stay on their good sides, as they will provide some help to folks who treat them properly and respect their cultures.

As for where they come from, keep in mind that the Lords of Humanspace were not 'nice people'. They had a habit of selectively breeding their human - and other! - subjects to enhance traits that they needed. The tall Nlyss, for example, are thought to be the descendants of the original military garrison of Tekumel; the Nom, with their special pigmentation, are thought to be the descendants of the 'deckhands' of the Ancients' starships. Similarly, the two populations of 'natural' telepaths - in Lost Bayarsha and in the Nyemesel Isles, are also considered to be products of an ancient breeding program - both share the same 'markers'.

So, these are either the results of breeding programs, or populations of stranded tourists - it's one of the mysteries, quite honestly.

One thing to remember - as this does get forgotten by quite a few fans - Phil was writing about this before DNA was discovered. So, you get the 'life vats' and the very long-term breeding programs (and other such pulp tropes) as the reason for these kinds of beings.

See also the nasty, nasty research project done by Empress Dashiluna The Green-Eyed to combine the Pe Choi with humans. I did the miniatures, as we were dealing with these in the campaign, and it was one of the very, very few times I ever stopped Phil dead in his tracks; he hadn't considered what the final product of the program might be...

(I still have them, too, and they still give me the creeps.)

Does this help? This is the very short version of the discussion we had about this...