Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Maybe that is the disconnect.
Since the original start was as barbarians coming ashore in Jakalla, it is not clear that it is required for the characters to know more than that they have arrived at a city that the Player can think of as ancient Bombay India.

The perceived need to do a study of the background before play never seemed required, to me anyway.
In fact, to me, it turned away a lot of people that otherwise might have been interested in "something different".
Now, the implication is that, to play you need to take advanced courses in Tekumel and if you don't you can't avoid Playing It Wrong.
=

Agreed. What I do is give a very concise overview of the world, and I do not talk for more then about fifteen minutes on this. My notion is that the players will be able to find about all this cultural stuff as they play - the way we did, back in the day. When we got started, all we had were a few copies of EPT - the thing was expensive, after all - and we had to listen to Phil drop casual side notes as we played. We must have liked it; we stayed for a few years, and did a little publishing stuff for him and for Tekumel along the way.

I keep saying that you don;t need to know the whole thing before you play or GM; work into it, and you'll have the same sense of wonder that we did.

Yes, the 'academic' / 'graduate studies' approach has turned a lot of potential players off - if I had a dollar for the number of people who have played in one of my games, talked to me over the phone, visited my house, or e-mailed me and told me that they wished that they'd talked to me before visiting 'official Tekumel fandom' - because, as a noted arr-pee-gee pundit once remarked "You make Tekumel sound like fun - I'd be well able to retire.

The 'Official, Authorized, Approved' Way To Play that got started in the 1990s by several of Barker's Own is a lot more about a few people trying to bolster their position as The Sole Authority for Tekumel, and that's when the Right Way To Play Tekumel Nonsense got started; they told me, in as many words, that they wanted to be the TSR of the late 1980s and early 1990s - lots of centraized control, lots of One True Way, and lots of money in it for them.

< shrug > I'm here to play games and have a good time.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Where is this implication? What is its provenience, and its niche.

For I wish to hunt it down and kill it.

It's your gaming buddy, starting in the 1990s. The one who drove Kathy out of the group. The one who runs his How To Play Tekumel The Right Way lectures at game conventions. The one who insists that GMs and players have to learn Phil's languages to be able to play in Tekumel. The one who says that, quote, "only a bisexual person of color can properly interpret Tekumel". The one who told me that is was my duty to him to locate the information that would prove his contention that Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson stole the idea for RPGs from Phil Barker, so he could publish his book and prove Jon Peterson wrong. The one who told Ambereen that the only reason that my daughters, son-in-law, wife, and I spent six months taking care of Phil before he passed away was so that we could get control of the Tekumel IP. The one who told Luke Gygax that I wasn't fit to run games at Gary Con. The one who recently had a spat on the Official Facebook page with one of his fellow Directors, telling the latter that Phil's texts needed to be "properly interpreted" in order for them to be allowed in The Canon.

Look at the videos, my General. They put up one of his 'Tekumel Language Camps' on You Tube for you.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

For me this is the crux of the problem when it comes to creating a wider appeal for Tekumel. The thought that someone is playing it wrong is beyond absurd to me. Play it however the F**K you want! Who cares if there�s a glottal stop, or post labial inflection in the word? I guarantee you that I have been pronouncing pretty well everything wrong over the last 20 years. If I wanted to could I figure out how it should be pronounced? Sure, why not? Am I going to? F**K No! Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things whether I play the OAL exactly the same way Phil did?
This type of attitude reminds of the type of mindset amongst a group of people I avoid like plague in my other hobby: The Dreaded Rivet Counters. These are the guys who will sit and bash a new model kit because it�s a scale 1mm short, or because the glacis plate on the model has a slope that is 1 degree off the real one. The thing is though, they are experts on every kit�s shortcomings, but do not actually ever build any models. What is the point of this? While they wag their fingers and bitch about the errors in the newest Tamiya kit, I go to my workbench and start gluing some plastic together. I�ve got a display case of finished models to show. They have only a stack of unbuilt kits to show. In the end whose �better off?� It�s the same with playing T�kumel. Just roll some dice and don�t worry if it�s Ahoggya or Ahoggy�. Damn, this attitude really cheeses me off sometimes!
Here endeth the nerd rage. And there was great rejoicing!
Unfortunately, as Gronan mentioned in a previous post (#120): �Sadly, Phil fell into villainous company who thought RPGs were "ART!" and that "ART!" meant grim and dark and nihilistic, and who knew how to manipulate Phil. Tekumel has been the worse for it in my opinion.� These villainous people still seem to hold all of the �power�, so to speak, and they are too arrogant or stupid, to see that their way will only lead to the extinction of Tekumel. It�s sad really.

Shemek.

Precisely. And it's pathetic, too.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Finally have a few minutes and don't have to type on a phone...

First, the "BAND OF HEROES." D&D 2nd Edition really gave this a big push, explicitly so. This is the edition that eliminated demons and assassins, after all. PCs were supposed to be Nicely Handsome Good Persons doing Nicely Handsome Good Person things. D&D is and has always been The Big Dog, so it's no surprise this took off. Combine this with the fantasy book explosion of the 80s being almost exclusively of the "Good Guys Save The World" style, and it's no wonder that many people default to a band of heroes joined at the hip.

Miniatures. Well, for well over a hundred years wargames have been on a continuum of free to rigid. CHAINMAIL is fairly close to the "free" end, whereas WRG is more "rigid." Board games, from Parcheesi to Advanced Squad Leader, tend to be more "rigid."

My experience seems to show that rigid games are easier for the players to pick up cold with no knowledge of war, or gaming, or anything else, in terms of "sit down, read, and go", whereas free games work better if there is a fair bit of knowledge by the referee at least. The first RPG I saw that required miniatures was "The Fantasy Trip," which grew out of a couple of hex-and-chit skirmish wargames. TFT combat is quite rigid. I remember the first time I played D&D with some people who had cut their teeth on TFT; I'd been using miniatures in a "show the approximate situation" way, and they wanted a much more fixed representation of what was going on.

Add to this that around 79 or 80 TSR switched its marketing to teenaged boys who would most likely not have been familiar with miniatures wargames, and you get a more rigid version of the rules. Then with 3rd Edition and the addition of miniatures they created a very rigid, rules intensive way of using miniatures.

Chirine and I both cut our teeth more on the free end of the spectrum, and he runs his extravaganzas that way. I think that's one reason he often has more success with neos or non gamers; they don't have things to unlearn. Rigid games seem too confining and complicated to me, and people used to more rigid games find free games unformed and vague. It influences a lot of stuff; for instance, if we're in a chamber and Chirine says "You hear a faint chiming sound and see a bluish white glare approaching," I will not say, "What is in the chamber;" rather, I will say "Is there something in here that I can take cover behind?" See the difference... I pose the question in a way that makes my intentions into part of the question.

Actually, I'd love to game more with miniatures, but the first problem as above is that I want to use them to set the stage and spark the imagination, not build a to-the-picoangstrom scale model of the combat.

And secondly, as Chirine has so eloquently described, the logistics of gaming anywhere other than lair sweet lair can be a major nightmare. To get to GaryCon last, I first had to take an 8 hour bus ride to GET to Minneapolis, and THEN get my sorry carcass down to Lake Geneva. I don't have Passepartout to load my packages, parcels, and portmanteaux, just me; so I limited myself to one medium large suitcase to carry a week's worth of clothes PLUS everything I needed for gaming. If Paul Stormberg wasn't supplying so much, I wouldn't be able to play miniatures or run CHAINMAIL.

I mean, I'd love to do a "Guns of Naboo" style Braunstein; the paper model SF stuff out there is lovely and fun to assemble, and I know little cheats like using 36" lengths of music wire to make tall spindly structures that are sturdy enough to use. I'd love to have Jedi fighting on an inch-wide railless walkway four feet above the table.

But I have no way to CARRY all that jazz.

Well, yes; this. Much as I love games and models, they are an issue to transport. What I have found interesting in my 'outreach' to games is that the idea of getting together at somebody's house for an afternoon or evening of fun is just not there any more. It's either at a convention or the local FLGs, or nothing. So, for me, it's nothing. Add in the WRONG WAY TO PLAY nonsense - for any game or setting - and any interest I can muster goes right out the window. Might do something at the next Recon, though; been asked to by some old friends who go.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

I found this on line, and thought I would share it here. Not sure if you've seen it before.

Shemek.

Yes, I have. About the beginning of 1977, when I was sorting and organizing Phil's files. I found this and the short story about the Petal Throne, along with the artwork he'd done at the time for this fanzine. I thought that they were both really cool, and suggested that he republish them. A lot of his other early work got reused in EPT, as well. I think Phil's early works are fascinating, and it's one of the reasons that I got involved with Tekumel in the first place.

My gut feeling - and for this I am a heretic - is that the closer you get to Phil himself, the better you will be able to understand his creation. An archivist is helpful, to find everything in the library, but an 'interpreter' should not be needed for an intelligent and /or educated person.

Back in 1976 some numbnuts in a fanzine said "D&D is TOO IMPORTANT to entrust to Gary Gygax!" No, I'm not kidding.

Gary's response was "it's not entrusted to anybody, everyone can do what they want with it." Personally, I think he should have said "You want to be in charge of OFFICIAL D&D? Okay, for $20 Million it's all yours, Sparky!"

Gods. What part of "commercial product for sale" do they not understand?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, the 'academic' / 'graduate studies' approach has turned a lot of potential players off -

As a percentage, the number of Americans with college degrees has gone up 300% since 1970. Combine this with a comment made by my Old Testament prof and advisor that "over the last twenty years incoming students no longer know how to read different types of literature differently" and you have a recipe for subjecting everything to ridiculous levels of pseudointellectual scrutiny.

Just look at some of the OSR/Original D&D forums; they are overanalyzing the game and its mechanics to a ridiculous degree and coming up with an incredibly complex system of mythology to explain it. For instance, in OD&D the magic user's XP per level is not a smooth progression. THOUSANDS of words have been spent on this. The fact is, Gary drew up a chart and then diddled around with the numbers for a year or so until the game played the way he wanted. Rules weren't created in this atmosphere of intense analysis.

Sort of like how a cheapie little space opera movie filmed in 1975-1976 has been subjected to forty years of frame-by-frame analysis by weenie-heads who seem to be unable to just shut the hell up and watch the movie.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Finally have a few minutes and don't have to type on a phone...

First, the "BAND OF HEROES." D&D 2nd Edition really gave this a big push, explicitly so. This is the edition that eliminated demons and assassins, after all. PCs were supposed to be Nicely Handsome Good Persons doing Nicely Handsome Good Person things. D&D is and has always been The Big Dog, so it's no surprise this took off. Combine this with the fantasy book explosion of the 80s being almost exclusively of the "Good Guys Save The World" style, and it's no wonder that many people default to a band of heroes joined at the hip.

I see. Did those changes lead to the Explosion, or did they just become popular because of it?

Chirine and I both cut our teeth more on the free end of the spectrum, and he runs his extravaganzas that way. I think that's one reason he often has more success with neos or non gamers; they don't have things to unlearn. Rigid games seem too confining and complicated to me, and people used to more rigid games find free games unformed and vague. It influences a lot of stuff; for instance, if we're in a chamber and Chirine says "You hear a faint chiming sound and see a bluish white glare approaching," I will not say, "What is in the chamber;" rather, I will say "Is there something in here that I can take cover behind?" See the difference... I pose the question in a way that makes my intentions into part of the question.

Fun fact, some people would deem that too storygamey!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

From AsenRG:

Still having connection issues - I hope this works...

Hope your "Net1" resolves them soon!

We've had an abundance of traders and dogs since the earliest recorded history...

Understood. This proverb may go bask as far as ancient times...

It is possible. I simply didn't know.

Amazing. Not in the good sense.

It was a very traumatic game session, both for the players and for myself. I think of the players who come to my house as my guests, and I like to make them welcome and feel that they are 'at home'. This guy was the same one with the age-inappropriate murder mystery , who was so wrapped up in his writing and his presentation that he ignored the players increasing discomfort, and my own. He then capped it off with this pair of 'royal visits', and did a great job of killing off the game group and my interest in gaming.

You have the patience of a saint (a saint that's not Boris I Mihail).
Which is to say, I'd have probably booted him earlier.

Of all the stupid reasons out there...
Not to mention, they're forgetting that you get as much as you give. If they want to only receive, they should try boxing and keep their guard down...

But to them these are very important things - it's all about their brand identity, and how they can exploit Tekumel for their own personal reasons. Phil and his creation have been largely lost in the rush; when I was told that Phil's vision of how his creation must be 'properly interpreted' - and that Phil himself was excluded from the category of 'proper interpreters', I knew that it was time to go...

I concur.

And that's how I imagine games should go.

Me, too!

No surprise. I learned quite a bit about "how games should go" from Gronan, back when he was Old Geezer, Bren, you yourself, Raggi (yes, the Lamentations of the Flame Princess's guy) and old-school Runequest/Traveller fans that aren't present on this forum. I'm still learning, too, but in a way, I'm following the same school.

Last Saturday, we played without knowing the rules. We just trusted the GM to account for whatever we do, whenever it should matter! I'm pretty sure the NPCs didn't have stats, for example, and the target numbers were being set according to whatever we were doing. No proof, though, since we didn't know the target numbers.
And what do you know? Everybody had fun, from the guy with 17 years of play experience, to the one who was playing his first session. Only objections were when there was miscommunication - and not always even then...I didn't even mention when I had misunderstood what the GM asked.

I've had games like this; they are wonderful!

Indeed.

That might be true.But if you want to not lose those people, just show them. Our newest player also admitted he had begun the session with doubt, after the session ended. In the same sentence, he also declared himself hooked on RPGs now.

Good advice, here!

Well, the trick is to make them want to try...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed. What I do is give a very concise overview of the world, and I do not talk for more then about fifteen minutes on this.

Can you make a youtube video of your overview? Pretty please? It might be helpful...

Yes, the 'academic' / 'graduate studies' approach has turned a lot of potential players off - if I had a dollar for the number of people who have played in one of my games, talked to me over the phone, visited my house, or e-mailed me and told me that they wished that they'd talked to me before visiting 'official Tekumel fandom' - because, as a noted arr-pee-gee pundit once remarked "You make Tekumel sound like fun - I'd be well able to retire.

Well, I like "academic" approach...but that's because to me, that equates to well-researched. And I can use that to make a fun game; poorly-researched stuff needs me to lay it a finishing paint.

The 'Official, Authorized, Approved' Way To Play that got started in the 1990s by several of Barker's Own is a lot more about a few people trying to bolster their position as The Sole Authority for Tekumel, and that's when the Right Way To Play Tekumel Nonsense got started; they told me, in as many words, that they wanted to be the TSR of the late 1980s and early 1990s - lots of centraized control, lots of One True Way, and lots of money in it for them.

There's no One True Way to run any setting. Those people fail at Refereeing 101 and at Game Development 101.
Refereeing: Since none of them is MAR Barker, obviously they're running it wrong.
Game development: Don't tell me how I should play. You might make polite suggestions. Then give me the setting and system material, and "unleash the Referees of War"!

< shrug > I'm here to play games and have a good time.

Me too! And one of my players just told me "Tekumel sounds like fun, from what you've described to me".
I guess I also commit the crime of using well-researched settings in a fun way...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

It's your gaming buddy, starting in the 1990s. The one who drove Kathy out of the group. The one who runs his How To Play Tekumel The Right Way lectures at game conventions. The one who insists that GMs and players have to learn Phil's languages to be able to play in Tekumel. The one who says that, quote, "only a bisexual person of color can properly interpret Tekumel". The one who told me that is was my duty to him to locate the information that would prove his contention that Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson stole the idea for RPGs from Phil Barker, so he could publish his book and prove Jon Peterson wrong. The one who told Ambereen that the only reason that my daughters, son-in-law, wife, and I spent six months taking care of Phil before he passed away was so that we could get control of the Tekumel IP. The one who told Luke Gygax that I wasn't fit to run games at Gary Con. The one who recently had a spat on the Official Facebook page with one of his fellow Directors, telling the latter that Phil's texts needed to be "properly interpreted" in order for them to be allowed in The Canon.

Look at the videos, my General. They put up one of his 'Tekumel Language Camps' on You Tube for you.

Note taken.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, I have. About the beginning of 1977, when I was sorting and organizing Phil's files. I found this and the short story about the Petal Throne, along with the artwork he'd done at the time for this fanzine. I thought that they were both really cool, and suggested that he republish them. A lot of his other early work got reused in EPT, as well. I think Phil's early works are fascinating, and it's one of the reasons that I got involved with Tekumel in the first place.

My gut feeling - and for this I am a heretic - is that the closer you get to Phil himself, the better you will be able to understand his creation. An archivist is helpful, to find everything in the library, but an 'interpreter' should not be needed for an intelligent and /or educated person.

But what are supposed to do the people that don't fit said description?

Originally Posted by Hrugga

My Lord Chirine, MADNESS!!! That is like saying, The Lord Creator can not understand his own creation...!!! Madness

H;0)

PS Sad on so many levels. That monster should be put into a room full of mirrors. For if The Creator can not interpret his own creation, how can the monster...

Well, then you're a heretic too. As Gen. George Pickett remarked when somebody asked him why his attack that hot summer day at Gettysburg had failed, "I always thought that the Yankees had something to do with it." It is indeed madness, and where we are today with Tekumel is a direct byproduct of the groundwork laid by these people in the middle 1990s. Elitism has been their 'business
model' for something like twenty years, and we've seen the results. Which, I think, is a pity; Phil's astounding creation deserves better.

Anybody got a question about Tekumel? This is getting me blood pressure up, again... Sorry...