Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

I just noticed that Dyson's map post today is an octagonal Tekumel tube station map.

Originally Posted by Bren

I wonder if $120 prices for used books have gone to the heads of the the Foundation folks making them think they can turn Tekumel into the RPG version of DeBeers Diamonds.

Based on what Chirine has told us on this thread I wouldn't be surprised.

Shemek.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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!

Its clarified a tonne of stuff for me. I think it's a great resource, as I mentioned earlier.

Shemek.

Originally Posted by Omega

Speaking of.

At one con. Think was Nova or Neo in MN. Someone ran a session where they used EPT to recreate the old Republic serial Undersea Kingdom with Crash Corrigan.

Haven't heard of either; sounds like it would be a very cool game, though!!!

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

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!



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(?)

Yes; Gamescience did S&G I and II as boxed set volumes, and then ran out of money - which was one of the reasons that Phil stopped working on it.

Well, I don;t know. I have everything that Phil ever did for Tekumel, as well as all of the publications that were done by all of the various companies, in digital format. The Foundation asked me, in the summer of 2012, how long it would take to post all of the publications up on DriveThruRPG for them, and I said that we could get the first half dozen large books up in a week, and the entire back list in under three months. It would take less then six months to get all of the remaining publications, like my 'zines and the other stuff we did - like the "Best of the Journals" books - up for people.

Never heard anything back on this; they did take some of the files, like the digital version of the Jakalla Underworld that my Missus did, in order to give them to some of their favorites in the OSR butt that was it. I also offered the entire digital collections, both mine and Phil's, to them again in the spring of 2015 but I was blown off. A friend of mine, who's a software guy, also did a database of all the collections in order to provide us with an index; I offered that to them as well, and got the same non-reply.

So, I don't know what to tell you about all this. I am, and have always been, an archivist; I collect and store the data. Anything else, that's for other people.

From AsenR:
Sounds like a good plan to me. Supplement it with social media and forums...

Exactly. It's a variation on what we did in the pre-Internet days, but it plays to Tekumel's strengths and avoids a lot of the pitfalls. We also now have what used to be called 'desk-top publishing', so a lot of barriers to getting a strong publication base up and running are no longer the issue that they were for us.

You lived at a very different place from me.
Very true. AGI paid me nothing on a daily basis; I got a per diem of $35 a day on convention trips, and that was it. I worked my 'regular job' to pay the bills, and all of my spare cash went to fund the Tekumel stuff. Most of the expenses for the first five years, when it was me and my little DBA, came out of my pocket. The miniatures paid for themselves, as our costs were absurdly low, but the paper products were always done at a loss. The AGI edition of "Deeds of the Ever-Glorious", for example, took thirty years to sell off the print run of 250 copies. The paper goods were a huge drain, as they required a lot more in the way of 'overhead' then the miniatures production did.

I heard once that someone involved with Glorantha said to a fan "I don't want to hear about your Glorantha", though it's an unconfirmed event. But despite not being sure that it has happened, I'd say that it is an attitude that might have helped Phil.
There are many parallel Tekumels, and many parallel Gloranthas, and many parallel Creations, and...you get the idea.
It would have, and he should have, but he had some real issues over the perception that he was going to 'lose control' over the world. The Foundation still has that, and a number of proposed projects that I knew about died as a result.

Say "hi" to my group next time you're there. Or, if they've moved out of there, go to the homes of the Threns and the First Born, and witness the devastation they left in their wake. Or should I say, "where the Therns used to be".

I will; got the tharks, thoats, and the new Helium troopers done today. Very, very pleased, as I also chaged out the bases from the old browish texture to a nice Barsoomian fine red clay. makes them look a whole lot better!!!

You, Uncle? Just keep doing what you're doing!

Thank you! I shall try!

(That was a comment to Gronan; while I agree with his favourite thesis that we do all of it for fun, I think it important to emphasize that "fun" can be increased by doing the research. Many people seem to miss that part when they hear his message. And from what I hear, he himself (and all of you) were doing some research into the things that amused you - cue Gronan fighting with swords, and testing armours, and Gygax having had fun with polearms, and that's just the wargaming part of it!
Like many things, this part seem to have remained unexplained, or the fans might have missed the memo. Cue also Gronan's explanation of what "scale sheer walls" means, as opposed to some DMs interpretation of "only Thieves can climb in D&D").

Yeah! What you said! We had a lot of fun doing stuff like this, back in the day, and that seems to have gotten a little lost over the years. I see a lot of people looking at 'secondary' and 'tertiary' sources, these days, but a lot of the 'primary' sources we used - along with Gary, Dave, et al - seem to have been forgotten about or lost. Payne-Gallway's "The Crossbow" is, for me, a good example of this.

It certainly says a lot about both Dave and Malia.

It does, doesn't it?

Well, I guess we could run a KS to pay off the Foundation to let us release the text-only file Chirine has as a free downloads for the fans, maybe with free artwork. The cost of the KS would be scanning his document (at standard rates for scanning), making a PDF out of it (or two PDFs-one with pictures of the original documents, another with the text compiled).

Could be. The Missus is the one who did the side-by-side version of the original play-test edition of EPT (the 'mimeo' version with the green cover) for the Foundation, so the technology and procedure is well-established . As I said in a previous reply, we already have everything in digital format, so the work is pretty much done.

Everything else that doesn't go to Kickstarter, would go to the Tekumel foundation, basically paying it off to autorize the release of the document to the public domain for free reading and creation of derivative works, that is, games.

That's a business decision, not an archival one.

And here's the kicker: do you fancy running a KS according to the above?

No. Absolutely not. I have had thirty years of abuse, my wife twenty-five, my daughters five, and my friends another twenty-five for our efforts to publicize and promote Tekumel. I'm happy to be the archive, but I want nothing to do with the business side of the house. I want to paint my figures, write my account of our adventures, run some games, and tell people about Phil's creation. Anything else, you'll have to find somebody else.

From Big Andy:
Throughout the various editions there is reference to selling things like eyes, magical amulets, various other devices of the ancients. Where is this done? In the marketplace? Are there shops run by certain clans? Or is it more of a "you have to know a guy" (whether at a temple or legion or clan or whatever) kind of a thing?

Yes, to all of the above.I would not buy items like this in the market place, though; they are most likely fakes, defective, or very 'hot'. I / we always asked round in the clan or temple if anybody knew somebody reliable, so it was always closer to a you know somebody who knows somebody kind of thing. Safer, cheaper, and more fun to role-play.

Did you ever find something that was worth a bazillion kaitars but there was no way to get it out of wherever it was that you guys spent an inordinate amount of time trying to anyway? Like a some huge thing in an underworld that wouldn't fit through a doorway, with you guys trying to figure out how much it would cost to excavate it out?

Gods, yes, regularly and often. Found a perfectly good air car once, and no way to get it out of the underground chamber that it was in - the access tunnel had been collapsed by an earth quake (we even found somebody who got buried, like the Roman soldier in the tunnel at Dura Europos) and we'd have needed a year and a huge crew just to get the tunnel cleared. No way could we have kept it quiet, so we simply marked down the location and figured we'd come back 'later'...

This is one of the most frustrating things to me about Tekumel. So much stuff has been created that is now out of print but it is not a matter of it being a defunct company. I accept companies going out of business. I accept that things go out of print. And I accept that sometime rights get all tangled up. That stuff happens. But when it is just sitting there doing nothing it is frustrating, especially when it is/was actively listed for sale. They are things that have been printed, there are proofs available to e-publish, which costs next to nothing. I know some of the older stuff may not be in the best typeset or layout but if it was ok to sell through Tita , it should be ok as a pdf. If it is being converted as a new project and will be coming out soon, cool, I can wait, but the volume of stuff that no one can get to, arrggh! I have been trying to get the Best of Journal articles from Mark Pettigrew to get the Underworld creation stuff for a while. Carl is out of stock, no pdf is available for me to buy, and second hand market is $120 and up for a 20 page booklet. The Art of Tactical Sorcery that Chirine mentioned up thread, not available. And so many others.

I agree with you, said the guy with the basement full of this stuff. And it all ready to go, in digital form. I was then, and am now, completely baffled with the current regime. In the meantime, I'll keep everything 'in the deep freeze', waiting for other times.

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

Well, I don't have any experience of running a KS, so probably not! You'd really have to know what the Foundation wanted, how long the processing would take and the hourly rate for that, plus all the proof reading, corrections etc, which I'm guessing would add up to a fair bit, all of which would mitigate against a successful KS in the first place. However, I would be up for contributing something towards it.

Most of the work needed has already been done, mostly by my Missus, who donated her time. So, most of the expense is already taken care of, as well.

Speaking of wealth we couldn't carry, I remember Kadarsha wetting his pants over a sheet of "red gold" about 5 x 10 feet by a couple of inches thick. It was some sort of relic, covered with sigils and other etcetera. And do you know how much that much gold WEIGHS?