Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Greentongue

When you are ready. We wouldn't want people judging a draft as a final document.
Me, I just enjoy a good tale whenever I can get them.
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I've posted an excerpt that originally appeared on the Blackmoor forum - apologies if you've already seen it there. Here's the outline of the whole thing:

To Serve The Petal Throne - The Adventures of Chirine ba Kal

This series of books are the adventures of the original Thursday night gaming group of Prof. M. A. R. Barker, over some fifteen years of gaming. The text is taken from the logbooks and audio recordings made during those game sessions, with additional enlightenment from the Professor as thought needed for the education of the reader.

The work is divided into six volumes, for the ease of the reader:

Book One: The Chalice Of The Flame

Relating the beginnings of the original Thursday Night Group, and their adventures up until the revealing of Prince Mirusiya hi Tlakotani…

Book Two: Beneath The Blazoned Sail

Relating the further adventures of our heroes, on their first voyage to the Southern Continent with Captain Harchar of the Clan of the Blazoned Sail, and what befell them there…

Book Three: Advance Standards!

Relating the epic adventures of our heroes as they go to war, on the Northwest Frontier, and their battles lost and won…

Book Four: Across The Sea Of Worlds

Relating the adventures of our heroes on their second voyage of discovery with Captain Harchar, and the strange places they visit…

Book Five: The Golden Seal

Relating the adventures of our heroes as they march forth on the marches, trying to preserve the City and Province of Hekellu and the Chaigari Protectorate, and the many and strange occurrences on their way…

Book Six: To The Distant Shores

Relating the continuing epic (and not so epic) adventures of our heroes as they attempt to age gracefully in a time of strife and civil war…

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

4.1702 Maritime Melees, Or, Dealing With The Locals
The Shores of Háida Pakalla, Winter, 2360 A. S.

Thanks Chirine! I really enjoyed that. It's not to different to how we play now. It reminds me of the sea battles we've done, though sadly our ships did not have such superior gunnery. And the writing is similar to what I strive for and may, on a good day, achieve.

Originally Posted by Bren

Thanks Chirine! I really enjoyed that. It's not to different to how we play now. It reminds me of the sea battles we've done, though sadly our ships did not have such superior gunnery. And the writing is similar to what I strive for and may, on a good day, achieve.

Thank you! All I'm doing is telling it like it happened - yes, Dave mimed spitting over the rail, as part of his sea captain persona.

And yes, he was very heavily armed; he thought was that he dealt in low-volume, high-value, and quite illegal cargoes, he would attract a lot of unwelcome attention from undesirable people. As for his ship-handling, may I suggest "Don't Give Up The Ship" by Gygax and Arneson?

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Of course that just makes waiting to get my grubby hands on the entire series that much harder ... Thanks ...
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You're very welcome. The current plan on the part of my publisher is to have the six books released in a hardback format, with lots of good illustrations. I will simply be handing him the manuscript, and he'll take it from there.

I am current;y at 108,000 words, of a projected 300,000; each of the six volumes is planned to be about 50,000 words long, in order to make my career more manageable to read. Each volume can be read as an individual book, as I'm going to include a timeline and other data in each to make the whole campaign understandable.

We have with Phil for over a decade - closer to fifteen years, really - and I have a lot of stories to tell...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

As for his ship-handling, may I suggest "Don't Give Up The Ship" by Gygax and Arneson?

I don't think I ever played it. I had friends who were into naval warfare, mostly Fletcher Pratt I think, but I never ended up doing that. Napoleonic warfare would be anachronistic for the 1620s though. Mostly what I meant was, from the description of the battle the crew and officers of Captain Harchar's ship seem more competent than their opponents. Such was not really the case in our two sea battles. Also there were no wizard-priests.

The first battle the PCs were passengers on a Dutch warship and we helped capture the enemy vessel, a Dunkerquer pirate, but the PCs managed to piss off the Dutch captain and he put them ashore on the nearest coast, which just happened to be next to the town Steenbergen just as Luis de Velasco y Velasco, 2nd Count of Salazar was capturing the town. Cue flight of the PCs south, capture, escape, and trapped in the siege of Bergen op Zoom.

After the Spanish gave up the siege, the PCs took passage on a Dutch merchant vessel that was attacked by a Barbary Corsair. The merchant captain was a coward and ended up losing his ship to the Corsairs. Meanwhile, the PCs managed to lead part of the crew in a boarding action and captured the Corsair galley. Both sides ended up sailing off in the other's ship. The cowardly Dutch captain ended up as a prisoner of the Corsairs.

Originally Posted by Bren

I don't think I ever played it. I had friends who were into naval warfare, mostly Fletcher Pratt I think, but I never ended up doing that. Napoleonic warfare would be anachronistic for the 1620s though. Mostly what I meant was, from the description of the battle the crew and officers of Captain Harchar's ship seem more competent than their opponents. Such was not really the case in our two sea battles. Also there were no wizard-priests.

The first battle the PCs were passengers on a Dutch warship and we helped capture the enemy vessel, a Dunkerquer pirate, but the PCs managed to piss off the Dutch captain and he put them ashore on the nearest coast, which just happened to be next to the town Steenbergen just as Luis de Velasco y Velasco, 2nd Count of Salazar was capturing the town. Cue flight of the PCs south, capture, escape, and trapped in the siege of Bergen op Zoom.

After the Spanish gave up the siege, the PCs took passage on a Dutch merchant vessel that was attacked by a Barbary Corsair. The merchant captain was a coward and ended up losing his ship to the Corsairs. Meanwhile, the PCs managed to lead part of the crew in a boarding action and captured the Corsair galley. Both sides ended up sailing off in the other's ship. The cowardly Dutch captain ended up as a prisoner of the Corsairs.

Oh, right; gotcha. Great sea story, too!!!

[And I assume that you know that the Barbary Corsairs raided as far as Ireland and Iceland, too... ]

'Napoleonic' sea warfare isn't all that different then what went on in the 1600s; the Anglo-Dutch wars or the Anglo-French are very easily played wth DGUTS, as the technology is much the same - land warfare in the two periods is very, very different, of course. The major changes between the 1620s and the 1810s is the revolution in signaling and the huge paradigm shift in tactics; Home-Popham's signalling book caused both a tactical and a mental revolution. If de Ruyter had had it, there'd be a pretty good chance that the sun would have never set on the Dutch Empire.

[All of this from a conversation with Dave Arneson; I am an ECW buff, and we got on the subject when I was setting up my ECW-period 'Tangier' campaign. You story about your players rings true - it would have been par for the course back in that campaign. ]

Harchar and his merry band of "honest seafaring merchants" were really, really good at what they did, which was delivering the highly illegal goods anywhere they might be sellable. His big merchantman was also not what it seemed above the waterline; below, it was a very fine hull form an a lot faster then it looked - and much more nimble, too. Phil pointedly asked Dave if this was 'authentic', and Arneson trotted out all sorts of ship plans to show Phil why French ships were always so in demand by the British; Dave's ships were, in Napoleonic terms, French frigates with British crews. He also bought the very best weaponry he could get, the very best crew that he could find, and when you add in his own personal skill as a ship-handler and -fighter you just didn't mess with him if you valued your life and ship. People kept learning this the hard way, over the years...

(Tekumel is not a friendly environment; we humans are not at the top of the food chain, and so people get really good at what they do really quickly; otherwise, they get dead.)

All of those guys were really fearsomely competent: Arneson, Maker, Wesley, Soukup, Funk, Gaylord, Bjugen, Jenkins, the whole lot of them. When you faced them across the game table, you expected to have them do everything they could to rip your heart out and feed it to you with Tobasco Sauce on it. They were not 'power gamers', or what I think is called 'min-max players'; they were just that good, and that's the school of play that OG and I joined in with.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Oh, right; gotcha. Great sea story, too!!!

[And I assume that you know that the Barbary Corsairs raided as far as Ireland and Iceland, too... ]

Thanks and I do. That's why the Corsairs were in la Manche (or what the Goddamns hubristically call the English Channel).

If de Ruyter had had it, there'd be a pretty good chance that the sun would have never set on the Dutch Empire.

The Dutch also had the disadvantage of not being on a real island. They could flood their fields, but they were still much more open to French invasion than Britain and for a next door neighbor they had Louis XIV with the biggest, best army in Europe at the time. Twenty plus miles of sea between them and everyone, gave England a lot more luxury about picking and choosing their alliances.

...got on the subject when I was setting up my ECW-period 'Tangier' campaign. You story about your players rings true - it would have been par for the course back in that campaign.

There may be more sea battles soon. One of the PCs ended up with the corsair xebec which he outfitted as a privateer. He's now in Marseille. Some other PCs are on their way there to accompany Isaac de Ravilly to Salé, Morocco to try to conclude a trade agreement.

I doubt the PC xebec will be as skilled as Harchar though. The PC in charge, Hippolyte de Bouchard known as The Foul Corsair, is not the sharpest cutlass in the rack. And our playstyle is more character simulative than what we did back in the 1970s or how you all played in Tekumel.

All of those guys were really fearsomely competent: Arneson, Maker, Wesley, Soukup, Funk, Gaylord, Bjugen, Jenkins, the whole lot of them. When you faced them across the game table, you expected to have them do everything they could to rip your heart out and feed it to you with Tobasco Sauce on it. They were not 'power gamers', or what I think is called 'min-max players'; they were just that good, and that's the school of play that OG and I joined in with.

I think that is often the case with people who come to RPGs from a war gaming background. We had a number of folks like that back in the day. Over time, the play I do moved to more character simulation and most of the players I have now are more interested in that then in giving free rein to the player's tactical acumen. The guy playing the Corsair is easily the best at tactics of my players (he's one of the original group from 1974), but he reins it in while enjoying hamming it up playing a dumb pirate. Strokes, folks they can be different.

Originally Posted by Bren

Thanks and I do. That's why the Corsairs were in la Manche (or what the Goddamns hubristically call the English Channel).

The Dutch also had the disadvantage of not being on a real island. They could flood their fields, but they were still much more open to French invasion than Britain and for a next door neighbor they had Louis XIV with the biggest, best army in Europe at the time. Twenty plus miles of sea between them and everyone, gave England a lot more luxury about picking and choosing their alliances.

There may be more sea battles soon. One of the PCs ended up with the corsair xebec which he outfitted as a privateer. He's now in Marseille. Some other PCs are on their way there to accompany Isaac de Ravilly to Salé, Morocco to try to conclude a trade agreement.

I doubt the PC xebec will be as skilled as Harchar though. The PC in charge, Hippolyte de Bouchard known as The Foul Corsair, is not the sharpest cutlass in the rack. And our playstyle is more character simulative than what we did back in the 1970s or how you all played in Tekumel.

I think that is often the case with people who come to RPGs from a war gaming background. We had a number of folks like that back in the day. Over time, the play I do moved to more character simulation and most of the players I have now are more interested in that then in giving free rein to the player's tactical acumen. The guy playing the Corsair is easily the best at tactics of my players (he's one of the original group from 1974), but he reins it in while enjoying hamming it up playing a dumb pirate. Strokes, folks they can be different.

Very cool - I love this conversation, as it's nice to talk to somebody who knows about the corsairs lurking in the mists!

Agreed about having dear old Louis for a neighbor; all those loud parties involving all those soldiers!

I also agree with you about the different strokes and all that; if your group is having fun doing what they are doing, then that's what I'd consider the important thing...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Very cool - I love this conversation, as it's nice to talk to somebody who knows about the corsairs lurking in the mists!

Oh, I'm an ocean of trivia. It does seem odd to think of Barbary Corsairs from sunny Morocco raiding rainy Cork or Kerry though. I don't think I'd have wanted to sail the eastern Atlantic in any type of galley.

I also agree with you about the different strokes and all that; if your group is having fun doing what they are doing, then that's what I'd consider the important thing...

I tend to be in the middle on a lot of gaming issues. Things seem most fun when the players and the GM are mostly in synch on what they like. Your Tekumel stories sound like something I would have and still would enjoy. I'm glad you've decided to stay around for at least a little longer. I'll be watching for your adventure corpus. It sounds fun and I shamelessly steal gaming ideas from anywhere.