Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I've been asked, every now and then, where I get my inspiration for the games I build. Well, all I can do is mention how some people do things over the water, and point folks here...

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2016/...-pictures.html

This is from the UK show Salute, run this past weekend. I suspect that I am more of a 'British' sort of gamer, then an 'American' one...

Thanks for the link. I am envious. There are a lot of great tables set up there; I really wish I was in the UK! I think I recognize a few of the games being played. A couple of the tables would be great for Tekumel.


Shemek

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Or perhaps we just go back far enough that we still participate in the common roots.

EDIT: I just realized I'm using "participate" in the Platonic sense here.

I think you're right about this. It does seem that we're doing an older, more trans-Atlantic style of gaming, doesn't it?

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Thanks for the link. I am envious. There are a lot of great tables set up there; I really wish I was in the UK! I think I recognize a few of the games being played. A couple of the tables would be great for Tekumel.

Shemek

You're welcome! I look at things like this to get ideas from - the vertical extender on my game table was inspired by this sort of thing...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

From AsenRG:
On a system level, that's beautiful in its simplicity.
(I'd make it "roll under attribute and compare the margins of success or failure", but that's all).

Agreed. Phil would, on occasion, ask what our stats for our PCs might be, and then use that number as the number to roll against. It's why EPT uses a d100 roll for stats. Most of the time, we'd be the ones expected to do the number crunching; we'd look at our stat, roll, and tell Phil if we'd made it or not. It was the custom of the house to tell the table what we'd rolled, so everybody could laugh and see what Phil would come up with. The custom of the house was that a drastically missed roll resulted in a comic failure, and a drastically made roll was a dramatic success. Phil loved to improvise bits of business, based on this; I think he would have been happy on the stage...

Phil strongly believed in 'keep it simple'; and keeping the game flowing around the table.

That's exactly how "roll under, compare how much you made it by" should work, and entire systems like Pendragon are based on it.

That's hardly surprising to anyone, I'd hope. A lot of people develop their characters the same way. Starting with what the system requires, than filling in the blanks as the game goes on.
It's also an informal trick for writers that getting people to read it and ask questions acts as a brainstorm. Phil was probably familiar with that advice, what with him writing novels and knowing Gordon Dickson!

It seems to be; there's the mythology that Tekumel sprang from Phil's head fully formed, and is a rigid inflexible mass. It was pretty well developed, from what I can see in the 1940s and 1950s documents, but the game play in the late 1970s and early 1980s caused him to develop areas that he'd only broadly sketched out. Tekumel, in the mass, was about 90% fully formed by the middle 1950s, and about all we did was fill in the spaces around the edges.

Well, yeah, getting inspiration for stuff that leaves you not-so-inspired is the point of the whole exercise with the questions. And by getting your PCs into the fray, he could ensure you were obligated to ask loads of questions!

Originally Posted by Hermes Serpent

If you enjoyed those pictures from Salute then I suspect that some of you would enjoy a trip to Historicon in Virginia and being able to game with Howard Whitehouse a Brit living in NY who runs amazing pulp games with very impressive scenery

For example:
https://i1.wp.com/static.flickr.com/...712e24857d.jpg

or
http://http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-26z1gsi6QEI/VL_Y_uv8cVI/AAAAAAAANJs/CSRayBJ8ROw/s1600/DSCF8553.JPG

Oh, yes, very much so! Howard runs some really cool games!

Originally Posted by AsenRG

That's exactly how "roll under, compare how much you made it by" should work, and entire systems like Pendragon are based on it.


Well, yeah, getting inspiration for stuff that leaves you not-so-inspired is the point of the whole exercise with the questions. And by getting your PCs into the fray, he could ensure you were obligated to ask loads of questions!

Interesting! I've never really looked at games like "Pendragon", so this is fascinating.

And we did, too. Phil realy enjoyed the questions, and it was amazing to watch him be creative on the spot.

Originally Posted by Big Andy

How did you guys first find your way into the Underworld? I know there are entrances all over the place in Jakalla but where did you guys first go in? Did you go in on your own or were you sent in?

Did you always carry a mace or did you start when you found a steel one?

What was the Glorious General's weapon of choice?

We had 'local guides' who would show us the entrances, and who were representatives of the surface property owner. I'd have to go back and look in my notes, but I'm pretty sure we went down through the necropolis the first time I went down there. As usual, it was on some errand for somebody - Lady Mnella, I think.

The Glorious General is a swordsman, and a noted one at that.

I started out with a mace; a I recall, there's a rule in EPT that 'Priests' - the EPT version of the D&D 'Cleric' - are required to use maces for doctrinal reasons. (Me, I think it was because Gary asked him to do it that way, so that EPT was more compatible with and for D&D.) So, I rolled for 'special stuff', which Phil did for all of the new players at that time, and I rolled a '00'; the net result was that I had a +4+5 steel mace from the beginning. We later came up with the 'back story' reason why an obscure priest from the Chakas had such a powerful weapon - I still have to write that bit for the book.

Later on, Phil relaxed this rule, and we carried whatever we liked. Maces still stayed very popular, with everybody, but I think I was the only 'real' priest in the party for many years - everybody else was a fighter or a magic-user. After I got commissioned into my first legion, I had a lot more options for weapons. By the time we got to Hekellu, the usual 'load-out' was:

Two knives, in hidden sheath on belt pouch, left side, rear
Short dagger, on belt, left side
Long dagger, on belt, right side
Short sword, on belt, left side
Mace, on belt, right side
Round steel buckler, left arm
Steel two-handed sword, slung over back on baldric

and:

Linen undertunic, padded over tunic, leather jerkin, steel mail hauberk and neck guard, steel breast and back, steel shoulder pauldrons, steel helmet, leather wristlets, greaves over leather boots.

If one is looking at encumbrance, the answer is yes, I can carry all this stuff. The armor weighs 38 pounds all up, and the weapons add another fifteen pounds. (The total weight is less then half the weight I carried in my Army basic training, by the way.) It's all in the time you spend practicing; you do get used to it.

And how do I know how much it all weighs? Because I own it.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Or perhaps we just go back far enough that we still participate in the common roots.

Dude you're old, but you are hardly pre-Revolutionary.

EDIT: I just realized I'm using "participate" in the Platonic sense here.

I blame the seminary.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed. Phil would, on occasion, ask what our stats for our PCs might be, and then use that number as the number to roll against. It's why EPT uses a d100 roll for stats.

The FASA version of Star Trek used d100 stats. I don't like stats on d100, but for some reason it didn't bother me for Star Trek.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

That's exactly how "roll under, compare how much you made it by" should work, and entire systems like Pendragon are based on it

Well, except for Pendragon using stats on (more or less) 3d6 and rolls using D20 instead of a D100.