Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

How goes the book? Can we get a status update. Any chance of some pages/stories you could share with us?

Shemek.

It's going pretty well; I have two full weeks of vacation coming up, and I am expecting to get a lot done. I'm getting a little leery of sharing small bits; I would like people to see thing in their campaign context. I'll see what I can do...

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

One more question. Phil mentions that the city of Ssuganar was the old Ssu capital, and that during the fall of the Dragon Warriors Empire the Ssu reoccupied it before being driven out by Gamulu. Is Ssuganar an area in Pecháno that still gets a lot of attention from the Ssu. Do they still raid into it, even though it is so far in Pechani territory?
Also, looking at the Tekumel maps I notice that there is a city in Ssuyal called Ssu. Do you have any information on this city that you could share with us?

Shemek.

Longer answer in an hour - off to rescue Second Daughter from work!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I don't think we ever understood a lot of why Phil did what he did.

"The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low."

Wallace Stanley Sayre

I'm thinking Sayre's thoughts might be applicable to a lot of the furor in gaming in general and to problems among the aficionados of Tekumel in particular.

I'd prefer to remember the good times that we had with him which were very good indeed.

Then you should.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

One more question. Phil mentions that the city of Ssuganar was the old Ssu capital, and that during the fall of the Dragon Warriors Empire the Ssu reoccupied it before being driven out by Gamulu. Is Ssuganar an area in Pecháno that still gets a lot of attention from the Ssu. Do they still raid into it, even though it is so far in Pechani territory?
Also, looking at the Tekumel maps I notice that there is a city in Ssuyal called Ssu. Do you have any information on this city that you could share with us?

Shemek.

The forum just burped, and I lost my first try at a reply...

The old capital is pretty much abandoned; it was badly trashed by the Lords of Humanspace and then again by Lord Gamalu. About all that's left are waist- and knee-high concrete rubble piles; there is a tubeway car station, one of the ones that will take a troop carrier, and evidence that the Lords of Humanspace had had a garrison there. The Ssu regularly send parties into the ruins to see what they can find; supposedly, the underground levels have some pretty rich pickings, but you're likely to run into a lot of Ssu.

The new capital is all mostly underground. There are some 'warehouse' buildings on the surface, and the triangular pyramids that cover the tops of the lift shafts that lead downwards. Some of these are mechanical elevators, and some are real honest-to-Heinlein Sword and Planet drop shafts. The city is mostly tunnels; laid out in 30 and 60 degree patterns; they seem to like triangles and hexes in their planning. There is supposedly a aircar 'hanger', but we didn't see it; likewise, there's a rumor that they have an in-system space ship in a hidden dock. We did find some Lightning Bringers, and these had a nasty accident, on the theory that it's often better to spike the other guy's guns before he can use them on you...

Does this help any?

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Well, that's a shame.

Yep. Had the thing pretty much up and running, and when I called around and told everybody who'd wanted to run trains that it was time to come on over - and maybe help out a bit - there was this resounding dead silence. The layout eventually got demolished, to make room for the first two daughters. You can see what was at:

http://members.bitstream.net/minetyoo/

Had a lot of fun building this; took a trip to Weymouth to see the Quay Tramway, and several visits to be with friends in Minety. The pride and joy of the layout were the working semaphores from Ratio, in the UK; these have miniature lever frames, and work just like the real thing in mechanical signaling - no electrics at all! It's now all in storage, awaiting better days...

Originally Posted by Bren

"The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low."

Wallace Stanley Sayre

I'm thinking Sayre's thoughts might be applicable to a lot of the furor in gaming in general and to problems among the aficionados of Tekumel in particular.

Then you should.

Precisely. And Agreed, too.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

This forces companies to produce _something_, just to stay "current".

Companies that make money by selling products are forced to produce some kind of product so that they can have products to sell.

• Since RPG rules are durable i.e. they are not consumed in their use (in contrast to items like soda, pizza, pencils, and graph paper), once a customer has bought one copy of a set of rules they seldom need to buy a another copy of the same set of rules.

• The market size for purchasing TT RPGs is small and doesn't grow at an appreciable rate. Arguably, it may not even grow at a rate fast enough to replace customers who exit the market. So producing more copies of the same rules doesn't provide a sufficient source of revenue in perpetuity.

• So for companies to continue to earn money for shareholders they have to produce new game products of some kind, e.g. game supplements and rules expansions, canned adventures or scenarios, and of course, new versions of rules.