Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Uncle,

Fantastic! Sounds like fun! I'm glad you enjoyed and were able to bring joy to those present. Meet old acquaintances and make new ones...Now my most noble Lord, I have a request. Would it be too much to do an ABCs of Tekumel? Not your run of the mill, A is for Ako...But something more obscure, off the normally treaded sakbe road. Maybe like Q is for Qutmu, who took the high road for playing with the undead, etc. Something to help fuel our imaginations. Kind of like what The Professor did in his writings. It is totally up to you. Let me know if it too much.

Like many here, I have been making my own Chirine baKal's Guide to Tekumel. Taking notes on a daily basis for future use. Great stuff here. I just want to thank you again for your dedication. If you choose to "bite", it's up to you how you want to handle it. One letter a day, a sentence or two to spark our minds...Thanks.

H:0)

Thank you! It was indeed a lot of fun - I hadn't met a lot of these guys before, so it was nice to be able to put faces to names. These were the 'first generation' guys, playing for the 'third generation' daughter, while the 'second generation' guy (me!) was telling stories to the 'fourth generation'. I love this kind of thing, and then to go back and hang out with all my 'second generation' friends and tell more 'fourth generation' people (their kids) what we got up to was a real joy.

I like your idea! May I make a suggestion? If you and everyone else would like, all of you propose the 'ABC' topic, and i'll do my best to answer. Would that work?

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

I do have the Tita's Vol 1 Part 3 printing, as well as the DW Parts 1 & 2. However a while ago I also picked up a copy of the S&G printed by Gamescience (1983) that does indeed have all three parts of Volume 1 in it - blue and white cover, stapled pages. I'd not come across it before as I'd only seen the DW copies.

The Tita's Vol 2 is a mighty tome, later stripped down a bit for Gardasiyal I think (?)

Vol 3 would be really interesting to see.

There you go! The Gamescience edition is the original S&G I, and Phil was not at all pleased with it. Lou Zocchi's first run at the book was his usual nine point type with one point leading, in three columns, and it was simply unreadable. After a lot of back and forth, and a pretty hefty bit of arm-twisting by Dave Arneson, Lou redid the book in the published two columns with larger type. He did leave out the accent marks, as well as the black plate from the cover artwork - and poor Chris Davis sat in Lou's un-air-conditioned warehouse putting in all the accent marks by hand. he had a nasty cardiac condition, and died shortly after getting the work done - as an unpaid volunteer, I might add. (I still think it killed him, but I don't know for sure, and I am certainly not accusing anybody of anything.) A section was also left out on page thirty-two, leaving a space and no errata page was ever published. Phil was very upsent over the lack of artwork, as well as having other issues with the edition.

The DW version is next; Tadashi-san redid all the text, put the missing section back, and did what he could. He did what I call S&G Ia.1 and Ib.1, and after he closed out his warehouse Tita's was asked to sell all the remaining stock. Which is where we get Tita's S&G Ia.2, Ib.2, and then Ic - there being no DW edition of this. The Tekumel Foundation, after saying that a new and cleaned up version of S&GI would be released, did a reprint of S&G I, complete with missing pages. You do get Krista Donnelly's (I think it's hers) index, the Tekumel Games "Index to S&G I" being long out of print.

Phil was so upset with what had happened with S&G I, I wound up doing S&G II at AGI; Sarah Prince, the brilliant typesetter - she was hired by the company that made the machines, as she could get the machines to do things that the manufacturer's engineers said was impossible - did the typesetting and I did the page layouts and keylining. I commissioned the new artwork, and Sarah and I used a lot of the 'stock art' we had on file. Phil did the summary booklets; we just printed those. Phil also did the wonderful maps, going back to his original 1950s maps to get everything in. Tita's reprinted S&G II, which I call S&G IIa, and it is indeed a huge chunk of paper.

Phil gave up on S&G III, and it exists only in an unfinished manuscript and attached notes. I have what is probably the most complete version, as I have all of the other peoples' work in my collectiona s well as Phil's stuff. I also have copies of the cover art, which is up on the www.tekumel.com site.

S&G III was the starting point, as you say, for "Gardasiyal", and I use that as my 'working copy' of S&G III.

I agree; why not let the fans have a look?

From AsenRG:
If I may observe it...doesn't that mean that we're back at the point where Tekumel works? That is, it is a fan operation now (I don't mean the Tekumel Foundation). We can just use the materials that are available, but learning or teaching the setting is...well, it mostly depends on contact with fans.

Yes, I think you're right. One of the Foundation's basic issues with itself is that it does not know what it wants to be; one wants to be a 'professional' and 'academic' organization, one wants to be simply a 'literary agent' (which actually makes sense), and one wants to have Tekumel out there being enjoyed. Nowhere in there is any plan to foster the fans and the fan base - there are "issues with creative control", as it was put to me, and "severe concerns about the fans causing a dilution of the brand identity". I kept citing the way that ERB, Inc. manages to maintain their control of the commercial side of the Barsoom IP quite well, and also encourages a very active fan community at the same time. I was told that that business model didn't fit in with the Foundation's mission and business plan; I asked to see those documents, and was told that I could see them when they were ready. That was some four years ago.

So, yes, I do think that an active fan community that is actively encouraged to participate in the world would be a very good thing; it's the model that I used in my time, 1978 to 1988, as 'the publisher', and we built up a very strong and active fan base that was literally two orders of magnitude larger then what we have today. And that was without e-mail and the Internet. Yes, I do understand that the times have changed - but, I would submit, this thread is the kind of thing that will keep Tekumel alive; it is exactly what we used to do with the letter columns in our 'zines, and now through this thread. I'm not keeping Tekumel alive; all of you are.

And that pneumonia story sounds just awful.

It was, and just grim. I had no health insurance at the time, and could not afford medical care. So, I just had to tough it out, and live or die as it happened.

I wonder why. Were the stars just that wrong?
Anyway, better not to dwell on this. What was, was. On to the future, now...

See my comments above. The basic issue was Phil's perception that 'uncontrolled' fan activity was somehow going to ruin his world for him; as Gronan has pointed out earlier, Phil often had a hard time separating what was happening around his game table from the business reality / model of publishing his creation. As the fan base got more and more active, we handled more and more of the 'staff work', and while we always ran everything past Phil, he got tired of the paperwork needed to run the thing.

I mean, yes, I'm probably going to take a break from Tekumel at some point...but that's going to be a pause while running some fairly similar settings with slightly different basic assumptions.

Oh, yes, like me and my vacations to Barsoom!

Yes...and no.

Yes, D&D certainly works better that way. But D&D is its own beast (some would say it's an 800-pounds gorilla) even among RPGs. It just has people with different expectations...

No, I don't think the same logic should be exported to Tekumel, or to a host of other settings for that matter. Part of what makes Tekumel unique is that it's both made for adventuring, and well-researched. The fact that you can get a scene out of some earlier movies is at least in part due to the fact that the people writing those often had read books written by people like MAR Barker!
Try replicating the stuff one finds in new movies and make it seem plausible. I haven't managed to, and I was using a system and setting made in homage of those (Feng Shui 2). My players laughed, let me know they're not buying it, but played along for the sake of the game...after making sure that I'm not going to think they buy into those assumptions, other than for genre emulation.

Very, very interesting!!! My gut feeling is that you are right about this - and what can I do to help?

It would probably be worth it for the 20 or so people that believe it; but int he same vein, there are much better uses of your time and energy.

Agreed! I have a lot on my plate, but it's all worthwhile stuff. At least, I think so...

Great story, Uncle! Glad you witnessed it, and had a good time watching the game!
After all, you're The Archivist, are you not?

Oh, very, very much so!!! I did what I love to do, and have been doing since 1975, and enjoyed myself hugely. Seeing Malia is always a treat - she was about eight, when she was running around the AGI office at 1278 Selby Avenue, and we all adored her. I think it says something about Dave Arneson that when he and Maila's mother divorced, Maila chose to stay with Dave.

We had the ISP tech in today, and he upgraded the firmware in the modem and moved the antenna to get a better signal. We used to get maybe 35 to 40 Db of signal, and now we're getting 58 to 65 Db - the fact that I'm posting in 'prime time' here localy, should indicate that things are much better.

Working in the tharks - 'Green Martians', to be strictly accurate - and their thoats today while doing the laundry...

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Lord Chirine, so let it be written, so let it be done. I would love it. If my peers agree. Great. If not, well I will plague you eventually with many questions!!!

H;0)

Sounds good; this is, in my view, your thread and not mine. If people want to ask me questions, then I'm happy to answer as best I can. If there's something that people can take away from all this that helps them in their gaming, then I'm a very happy camper!

Originally Posted by Omega

Same thing with CCGs. Magic was that same lightning in a bottle and everyone and their damn brother wanted to catch some too. But 99% hadnt a clue and so you ended up with about ten thousand "giant growth" games and alot of very dead companies in very short order. And still do to this day. Retailers despise the things and its nigh impossible to drum into the heads of new designers that No. Copying MTG is not going to make you rich and heres the riot act list of why. For the umpteenth time. And even Magic is failing. In part because WOTC cant manage themselves worth a damn.

But I do think that Tekumel fills a need in certain players much like Call of Cthulhu does for others. And so its allways going to have fans dedicated to it.

Another good analysis of the industry! I don;t know how many CCGs I've seen go by that start big and then just die away.

I think you're very right about what Tekumel does for some players and GMs; it's been that way for probably the last forty years, I think. Accepting that, like Gronan and I did, is the sticking point for a few people. No, it is never going to be 'big', nor will it ever be 'popular'. Let's enjoy it, on whatever level, and get back to the game table...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Phil was so upset with what had happened with S&G I, I wound up doing S&G II at AGI; Sarah Prince, the brilliant typesetter - she was hired by the company that made the machines, as she could get the machines to do things that the manufacturer's engineers said was impossible - did the typesetting and I did the page layouts and keylining. I commissioned the new artwork, and Sarah and I used a lot of the 'stock art' we had on file. Phil did the summary booklets; we just printed those. Phil also did the wonderful maps, going back to his original 1950s maps to get everything in. Tita's reprinted S&G II, which I call S&G IIa, and it is indeed a huge chunk of paper.

Excuse me if I've got the wrong idea - does that mean that there was a printing of S&G 2 before the Tita's version? I've never seen one, but I guess they might be rare in the UK!

Phil gave up on S&G III, and it exists only in an unfinished manuscript and attached notes. I have what is probably the most complete version, as I have all of the other peoples' work in my collectiona s well as Phil's stuff. I also have copies of the cover art, which is up on the www.tekumel.com site.

S&G III was the starting point, as you say, for "Gardasiyal", and I use that as my 'working copy' of S&G III.

I agree; why not let the fans have a look?

Is there any realistic way that could happen though? I would guess between the Foundation and the amount of work it would take to get anywhere it might be very difficult(?)