Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

From Greentongue:
Do/did you "punish" your player's characters when the player didn't conform to your vision of the setting, or do/did you warp the world to accommodate the player's vision.

No, to both. Tekumel is Tekumel, at least the way I learned it from Phil, and I don't change or modify it. As for players 'not conforming', I have yet to see that in any of my games over the decades. It may be that people who play with me are coming for that 'authentic Tekumel experience', but while I've seen some pretty eccentric stuff, it's all been well 'within the lines' of what Phil did in his campaign.

By "punish" I mean to have the world "push back" when their character didn't do what would be expected by the setting.

No. Not ever. The world works the way that the world works - at least, how Phil thought that it works - and as I do the same 'free Kriegspiel' / 'open sandbox' style of play that he did the world simply goes on running; I continue the meta-campaign, no matter what the players do, and they serve in the same roles that we did - odd eccentrics who provide humor and local color to the rest of the campaign.

I do have conversations with players in which we talk about how the world works - like the conversations we have in this thread - but once the game sessions starts, I am completely neutral and let the players do their thing. I have yet to have a situation where players insist on doing something utterly 'out of bounds.'

Considering that when EPT was first released there were few if any examples, how much "euro" is acceptable in a game played as if it was The 1st Time?

I'm sorry, I don't understand the use of the word 'euro' in this context. Can you explain it, please? Thanks!

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

And with his knowledge of the classics I'm sure he recognized the old Roman era farces that they threw into a large pot and stirred, which would tickle him even more.

Oh, very much so!!! I had a good laugh, many years later, when I got a book on Ancient Egyptian folk tales; I recognized more then a few of the stories I'd heard from various peasants and villagers, over the years.

That was one of the great bits about gaming with Phil. He was simply so educated, you learned simply by sitting at the table and listening.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

"STAND ASIDE, EVERYONE, I TAKE LARGE STEPS!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN-ttCBHyx8

Man that was beautiful. I'm going to have to re-watch that the next time I think the PCs are likely to run into an important NPC with the Arrogant and/or Braggart flaws. And since this is swashbuckling historical-fictional 1624 France that's likely to be at least every other session.

Originally Posted by Bren

Man that was beautiful. I'm going to have to re-watch that the next time I think the PCs are likely to run into an important NPC with the Arrogant and/or Braggart flaws. And since this is swashbuckling historical-fictional 1624 France that's likely to be at least every other session.

Wonderful! This film was part of our shared world-view, back in those far-off days, and we'd all seen it. Ditto for "Ben Hur"; we all knew what ancient sea combat looked like. Or how we all knew how underworld traps worked from seeing "Land of the Pharaohs". Phil had seen all of these 'sword and sandal epics', and so we had a solid base of information to work from. I'd get them from Netflicks, and settle in with a big bag of popcorn...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Wonderful! This film was part of our shared world-view, back in those far-off days, and we'd all seen it. Ditto for "Ben Hur"; we all knew what ancient sea combat looked like. Or how we all knew how underworld traps worked from seeing "Land of the Pharaohs". Phil had seen all of these 'sword and sandal epics', and so we had a solid base of information to work from. I'd get them from Netflicks, and settle in with a big bag of popcorn...

I remember watching Ben Hur on network TV. My parents let me stay up late on a school night to watch it. Though I had to first go to bed until my little brother went to sleep. Fortunately we were in the Eastern time zone so programming didn't start until 8PM, this was the 1960s so little kids went to be early, and my brother was a good sleeper.

Hi Chrine,

The question of intersecting parties came up on another thread. I know you guys experienced some of that in Tekumel, Blackmoor, etc.

Originally Posted by Bren

This was discussed on the Chrine thread maybe 1000 posts ago. As I understand it, they played weekly and a session covered 1 week of game time, so real time to game time was effectively 1-to-1. I don't know for sure how they synched up different parties, but the idea was if you played on Tuesday and looted a tomb and the next group played after Tuesday they'd find a looted tomb. So I assume that the week was counted from play date through play date + six days. And at least for Tekumel there was some correlation between real world dates and game dates.

I suppose things could still become problematic if say your group played on Tuesday. In game they walked 3 days to the Tomb of Undying Death and looted it the next day, so on Game Day 4. And on Wednesday (equal to your Game Day 2) another play group teleported or flew to the Tomb of Undying so they could loot it on your Game Day 3. What would they see? How would that get resolved?

I'll toss the question over to Chirine and see what he says.

How did Phil, Dave, Gary, you, Gronan, et al handle such temporal issues?

Originally Posted by Bren

I remember watching Ben Hur on network TV. My parents let me stay up late on a school night to watch it. Though I had to first go to bed until my little brother went to sleep. Fortunately we were in the Eastern time zone so programming didn't start until 8PM, this was the 1960s so little kids went to be early, and my brother was a good sleeper.

Me too, and The Ten Commandments, and Spartacus. Loved all of them, and if I see that they're on TV I still watch them, eventhough I've seen them a dozen times. These movies, and Wizard of Oz, were also the only ones I could stay up late for when I was a kid. Brings back a tonne of memories. Yul Brenner's "Pharaoh" is the quintessential Tsolyani nobleman for me.

Shemek.

Originally Posted by Bren

Hi Chrine,

The question of intersecting parties came up on another thread. I know you guys experienced some of that in Tekumel, Blackmoor, etc.

How did Phil, Dave, Gary, you, Gronan, et al handle such temporal issues?

I'd also love to know how this was handled. In the past I've always stayed away from these situations, as DM.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Bren

I remember watching Ben Hur on network TV. My parents let me stay up late on a school night to watch it. Though I had to first go to bed until my little brother went to sleep. Fortunately we were in the Eastern time zone so programming didn't start until 8PM, this was the 1960s so little kids went to be early, and my brother was a good sleeper.

Me, too! "Ten Commandments", same thing. Remember when "Johnny Quest" was on ABC in prime time at 9:00 pm Thursdays, as a one-hour episode right after the one-hour "Flintstones". My word, did I have to use all my powers of charm and tact to be allowed to stay up to watch it!!!