Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Greentongue

I was thinking closer to Barsoom than to Gama World but I would think "In My Tekumel" that you could move the needle either way and still be good.

I guess the taking the stuff off their hands would need to be handled carefully?
How did that work (or not work) for the games you know about?
=

Oh, right; good point. Barsoom is indeed very close to Tekumel; we don't usually have the tech stuff as much to hand as they do in Helium, but in some spots we do.

If you needed to get the stuff away from the players for in-game reasons, there are all sorts of 'low-impact' ways to do it. First and most common was that the thing simply stops working, and you wind up donating it to a temple or clan as a gift. It's really old stuff, after all, and is occasionally going to fail. Usually at the worst possible moment, too. Secondly, they sell it for the money; PCs always need money, and this is a good way to get it. Ditto for patrons, too; Lady Mnella in Jakalla regularly sends PCs off on adventures, and she collects part of the loot as her return on her investment. Other nobles and the Tlakotani do it as well. Fourth, government requisition; the owner does get compensated, so they don't lose any money. Fifth; other parties of PCs - yes, this does happen - hear about the goodie and steal it from you. (Which can lead to more adventures, as you try to steal it back). Fifth, you just plain lose the thing on an adventure. (Had a player drop an Eye once; missed a Dexterity roll, and dropped it down the tubeway shaft.) Sixth, it malfunctions and blows up. I've had this happen, several times; see #1, above.

All of the above has happened to us in Phil's games, and to my players. It's a pain when it happens, but it does happen. Give a good sound reason that makes sense in the setting, and I think you'll be all right.

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

Ok - how about Eyes? I've always wondered why they are the shape that they are, not really a practical shape for someone to use, so I figure that they were originally part of something else - robots, Ru'un, or the like? But if so why have a stud to work them and not electrical connections?

Great question! I've made sample Eyes to Phil's specifications, with LEDs and batteries so that they do something when you push the stud. You do have to hold them in the tips of your fingers to use them; our assumption was that they were originally not made for humans with opposable thumbs to hold. The Tinalya, on the other hand can hold Eyes very well, and we got the impression that they were the ones who'd invented the format - they are the most 'technic' people on the planet.

And, truth be told, I have tools in my tool cabinets that are just as hard to hold. They were all made for a specific purpose, and I have other tools that do the same thing but are better fitted to my hands. Some of the 'antique' tools that I own are useless to me, as I simply do not know how to pick them up and use them.

Objects intended for use by the machine beings do indeed have contact pads and fittings, and are pretty much just scrap metal. I can use an Eye, as the push stud works well enough.

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

As an aside, we just started playing though Jeff Dee's "High & Dry" scenario. The party have been sent off by their clan to find out why their client clan has not sent the expected dna grain delivery and extract shamtla. The party consists of a herdsman with a kuni-bird and some bolas, an Aridani farmer who is short-sighted and has a bad temper, a junior priest-sorceror of Belkhanu, a follower of Karakan, a follower of Vimuhla who has hennaed his hair to make it fiery red and is also good at giving out fashion tips(!), and a priest of Ksarul who is partially deaf from a lab explosion, with high lineage, addicted to hnequ weed, and his own litter with two teams of bearers and a couple of floozies (the player decided to blow his money on the litter and his erm, "companions").

I'm expecting things to go badly...

And they will, too! Sounds like lots of fun, all round!!!

Originally Posted by Omega

That is a strange genesis. Thanks.

I picked up a copy of the chargen book at either MiniCon or NovaCon. Thought it was interesting. But for years could never find the other books in the set. Currently have one book left to acquire and that will leave the boxed set and beastiary to track down some day.

Have a review pending eventually. Great production, looks great even by 90s standards. Only low points were that the rules are a little scattershot, and the section titles were too punny and detracted a little. Brutally fun though. If occasionally a fraction heavy handed.

You're welcome! The books are good, as is the beastiary - although the stats given seem to be for EPT, which is a little annoying. The boxed set, while still looking good from a graphics sense (1), is of lesser quality in terms of physical production; the pages are not on as nice a paper. The UK fans were particularly vocal about this, as they were paying very high prices for the game and didn't feel that they were getting their money's worth.

(1) I found the 'archetypes' artwork really delightfully funny; somebody had taken Phil's copies of the photos of my Tekumel players in their costumes from a local convention, and sent them to the artist for him to use as source materials for the drawings.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Well! Let's kick open this can of worms, shall we?

Oddly enough, I was just talking to Neal Cauley about this yesterday; I was visiting Phoenix games, and Neal happened to be in. (He's sold the shop to some friends and retired.)

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Gaming here in the Twin Cities, back before the Internet, used to lag about a decade behind the rest of the game industry. Very few local gamers would travel to game conventions like Gen Con or Origins, so gamers would be exposed to new ideas only through the various local retail outlets - bookstores, mostly. On top of this, Phil's game group of the time was even more isolated, with very few of the players being connected to the local game scene or the hobby in general. (Keep in mind that they viewed themselves as a social and gaming elite, and experts in everything.) Dave Arneson once told Phil that this was not a good thing: "Phil, you can't design games in a vacuum." Also about his time, Dave had left Different Worlds, and Phil had severed his connection with them as well, both because Dave wasn't out on the West Coast and because Tadashi-san had learned (the hard way) that Phil's back list of old publications simply didn't sell without a very strong and active marketing effort or active fan base. Sitting in Phil's basement and complaining didn't move the merchandise.

So, one of the courtiers showed Phil some of the Steve Jackson books, and Phil's eyes lit up with dollar signs - if that jerk in Texas could make loads and loads of money with this kind of crap, then so could he. What we had all been asking him for was very different; 'Adventures on Tekumel' as just that; introductory adventures that could be picked up by anybody and played as a way to get players and GMs interested in the world-setting. Instead, the books' format was copied and in Phil's idea of what the game hobby should be like. By this time, Dave Arneson had gotten connected with the parent company of what would become TOME, who then became the publisher. TOME had no experience whatsoever in the RPG hobby and industry, and relied entirely on Dave's advice and Phil's reputation with EPT.

It wasn't a happy thing. Phil, as usual, didn't have any editing or playtesting done by 'outsiders'; it was all done internally, by the people who had a vested interest in the thing getting published, and the series also fell afoul of the 'politics around the Petal Throne' as to who Phil's 'favorite of the month' was gong to be. The books duly came out, with nice production values and decently-sized print runs, and didn't sell at all well; The lack of editing had produced a set of books that had rules that didn't mesh very well with each other, and Neal was called in to write something that would tie the books together and produce a viable RPG for Tekumel. The result was "Gardasiyal", which TOME thought was a complete in the box RPG - which it wasn't; one had to find and buy all of the other books in order to actually play the game. No amount of good production values will paper over a badly thought-out specification; the 'installed base' of the Adventures books mitigated against what should have been done, scrap the books and reuse the material in a decently edited set of RPG rules. And, of course, by this time TOME was running out of money for Tekumel stuff, so the actual product quality - which would have looked good in 1980 - was not up to the standards of the middle 1990s.

In a nutshell; the Adventures books and their follow on boxed set was the last gasp of the 'internal production system' out at Phil's, often referred to by the technical term 'Anything you can do, we can do better!'

The reviews were not kind.

This explains a lot. I've always liked Gardasiyal as a resource, the spell lists are great, but I would never use the rules to actually run a game with. They always felt somehow cobbled together. Now I know why.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

This explains a lot. I've always liked Gardasiyal as a resource, the spell lists are great, but I would never use the rules to actually run a game with. They always felt somehow cobbled together. Now I know why.

Shemek

Sigh. We can't make this shit up. Combined with my utter naivite about business (and a lot of other people's too) we ended up losing a good chunk of the original seed money when Tekumel Games incorporated.

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

Ok - how about Eyes? I've always wondered why they are the shape that they are, not really a practical shape for someone to use, so I figure that they were originally part of something else - robots, Ru'un, or the like? But if so why have a stud to work them and not electrical connections?

Its actually a fairly ergonomic shape as it fits in the hand so readily. but in Adventures it described the eye as about, well, eye sized with the stud in back. After some experimentation it seemed easiest to hold it partially between the index and secondary finger and depress the stud with the thumb. At GenCom met someone in a Tekumel costume and they held it in the same manner after experimentation proved that the easiest position after losing a few under the couch to other methods.

But I too would like to know how it was intended to be held.

addendum: and it got answered in the interim. Holding it by the fingertips seems odd as it would make depressing the stud awkward. I'll have to see about working up a illustration or get a photo now.