Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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.

Mine was in Eastern Kansas in the early to mid 1970s. And to be fair, my High School was big (my graduating classes had around 800 kids) so we had a lot of teachers and our school district was wealthy so we were unlikely to be typical of much of anything.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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.)

You say this and then you don't give us pictures? You big tease. I want pictures of creepy minis.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Chirine,

Good, yes. I was on the right track...

Since you mention it, The Nom(Humanspace deckhands) "special" pigmentation is for what reason? I do not recall that as being one the past discussion(I might have forgotten).

Also could you expand a bit about the Human/Phe Choi abominations. Could you actually describe them...

Thanks,

H:0)

The Nom are human, but have jet-black skin. It protects them from radiation. When they are out in the sun, on their big sea-going ships, they do not suffer from the effects of Tekumel's sun - and they sail around the seas on the equator.

No. I'll post a picture.

Originally Posted by Bren

Mine was in Eastern Kansas in the early to mid 1970s. And to be fair, my High School was big (my graduating classes had around 800 kids) so we had a lot of teachers and our school district was wealthy so we were unlikely to be typical of much of anything.

You say this and then you don't give us pictures? You big tease. I want pictures of creepy minis.

Cool.

To hear it to obey:

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Again, to hear is to obey...

Also could you expand a bit about the Human/Phe Choi abominations. Could you actually describe them...

Please refer to the photos. We literally tripped over these in the underworld in Hmekuyal, and had a very nasty time.

To generate: roll as for Pe Choi, except for INT and PSY; roll for these on the human tables. They have the same chitin exoskeletons as Pe Choi, as well as the usual four arms and two legs. DEX as for Pe Choi; also have the Pe Choi ability to see in the dark and sense 'wrongness' as in EPT. They do not have the Pe Choi fear of water, as they breathe through their noses and mouth; these are also mammals, not insectoids.

We do not know if these beings are immortal or not, or if they have survived in enough numbers to be a viable population. They seem to be employed by the Temple of Dlamelish as guardians. They do very well at that, as we found out - the hard way.

Empress Dashiluna The Green-Eyed was not a nice person, if you want my opinion, and her antics while Seal Empress caused us a lot of trouble - and led directly to The Affair Of The Malchairan Emerald.

Phil scared the crap out of us, once again...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

[From AsenRG:]
The Circle Dance sounds good, indeed, and I think I remember having read something about it.

Anything from the mountain clans, though? And/or from the Tsolei isles? Jakalla? Those are the three locations I can see myself delving in most readily.

Right. Here's where the Sourcebook is so handy; Phil did a huge multi-page list of festivals all over the Known World, and I'd go there. Let me see what I can do for you.

I'd be really grateful!

I wonder - are those Mega-games a separate invention, or have people running them heard about MAR Barker's group, or a similar one?

They are a much older tradition, dating back as far as the invention of Free Kriegspiel, and got started with the beginnings of military simulations - what the UK called TEWT, Tactical Exercises Without Troops. It cost a huge pile of money to run live exercises on the ground, and running the same exercise on a game table was both cheaper and easier. Much the same level of simulation, but minus the cost.

Phil's gaming had very little influence on the mainstream of gaming, I suspect. While he was a founding member of the Society of Ancients, he was far too much over on what became the RPG side of things and got sort of sidelined.

Right, it sounds unlikely, then.
Then again, we know (from his blog, too) that Dave Morris was playing Tekumel in the 80ies. And he was an influential figure in the 80ies FRP scene in the UK, due to having published "Dragon Warriors"...he was even writing to Phil, leading to the Court Case of the Sold Steel Sword.
So there might be some crossover, but it's not really likely.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Now if we could only teach a good chunk of gamers that the correct response to an ambush is NOT "That's not fair!"

My players learned that.
It helps that my default answer to "that's not fair" is "life isn't fair", coupled with total lack of empathy to the objection.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Especially when they had to push aside the "warning flags" to get into the trap.
=

This makes it so much more fun for the GM...

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...

Well, if he wanted fair, he should have got three times less figures...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Oh, mercy me, yes! The players approach a sealed door liberally festooned with signs in half the known languages of Tekumel, all saying "DANGER! KEEP OUT! YOU WILL ALL DIE!"

So, of course, they crash the door; no precautions, no posting a sentry, no nothing. And the usually cheesy half-dozen undead behind the door slaughter the first four players through the rubble, and manage to seriously maim the rest. Never mind the undead magic-user they were guarding; she never got a shot in...

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.

Same objection here.
Complainer: "Waah! Asen's being mean to meeee!"
Asen: "No, I'm mocking you. If I start getting mean, everybody would notice the difference."
Bonus: it's a new player and everybody else in the group looks at him or her and nods. "He's saying the truth, you would have noticed!"

(Variant: "You're abusing your GM powers."
Asen: "If I wanted a PC dead, I'd declare you got sudden cardiac arrest. And it's what would happen. Now can we play this scene where you actually would have had a chance, if you weren't trying to play me instead of the game?")

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.

I guess that's the difference between a coach that's also a teacher and a teacher that's also a coach?

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?

Now Bren, you are being mean to the poor soul!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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.

It's the best solution for some players, alas.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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...

Well, you get a breeding program and life vats even in Dune...

And I'm sure it was a nice moment when you managed to creep Phil!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Cool.

To hear it to obey:

I like them. They seem like something some nasty people would use as a honour guard.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Please refer to the photos. We literally tripped over these in the underworld in Hmekuyal, and had a very nasty time.

To generate: roll as for Pe Choi, except for INT and PSY; roll for these on the human tables. They have the same chitin exoskeletons as Pe Choi, as well as the usual four arms and two legs. DEX as for Pe Choi; also have the Pe Choi ability to see in the dark and sense 'wrongness' as in EPT. They do not have the Pe Choi fear of water, as they breathe through their noses and mouth; these are also mammals, not insectoids.

We do not know if these beings are immortal or not, or if they have survived in enough numbers to be a viable population. They seem to be employed by the Temple of Dlamelish as guardians. They do very well at that, as we found out - the hard way.

Empress Dashiluna The Green-Eyed was not a nice person, if you want my opinion, and her antics while Seal Empress caused us a lot of trouble - and led directly to The Affair Of The Malchairan Emerald.

Phil scared the crap out of us, once again...

Brilliant!

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Gross...They don't seem like they like to talk much...I'm sure the temple has other uses for them as well. Are there both females and males?

Thanks,

H:0)

If they're used by the temple of Dlamelish and a population is possible, you can bet there would be both males and females!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Cool.

To hear it to obey:

Those are a bit unsettling. Very nice.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Cool.

To hear it to obey:

Sweet Karakan I'd forgotten how horrific those damn things are.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Well, you get a breeding program and life vats even in Dune...

In the later books it turns out that the "vats" are actually Telexiu females.