Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

It got to be a running joke, to the point where I made a little folding deck chair to go with my personality figure when we went off on voyages with Capt. Harchar.

Not an exaggeration. He really did.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

How much are "chops", carved seals, or engraved stamps used?

Assuming they are ...
Are there specific ones for clans, lineages, families, individuals and official usage?
Are they important and treasured for their representative power?
Can they be duplicated or are there ones that cannot be?
=

Oh, yes, very much so. The 'crown jewel' of the Imperium itself is the Kolumel, the 'Seal' in the Seal Imperium. The thing is an ancient artifact, and has the ability to emboss the image of the Seal into anything. Period, anything. As an Imperial officer, I have the Kolumel engraved on my suit of armor's shoulder plates in token of my serving the Imperium.

Short answer: yes, very much so.

Everybody uses seals and 'chops' to sign things; it saves time and writer's cramp. I have several seals in my collection - they are Chinese and Mughal, and not Tsolyani - but they do show players what this stuff looks like and how it works.

And yes, they are very important and valuable - both for their intrinsic worth and for what they represent. They can be duplicated or forged, of course, with one single exception: the Kolumel is simply impossible to forge, as are the embossed impressions it leaves in any material that it is used on.

I should also mention that the scribes also use block printing to run off copies of regularly issued documents; the cheapest copies of the Imperial citizenship papers are done this way, and normally one pays a scribe to do a niceer version to show everyone. I still have the printed one that Phil gave me in 1976, as well as the really nice one that I did later on.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Well, this was back in the 1974 - 1976 era; nobody really had much of any experience running a long-term RPG campaign.

I've just never seen it run that way. Even back in 1974. Typically travel in the wilderness moved faster than real time since you might travel several days without an encounter that took up a lot of time. Exploring in the dungeon again moved faster than real time, taking 10 minutes to search a room took less time than it took me to type this sentence. Unless there was a wandering encounter. That might be avoided more or less in real time and might be fought somewhat slower than real time (1 minute combat rounds kept the pace close to real time.) Overall, D&D time seemed to move around real time speed for PCs who might explore a nearby dungeon once a week, but once PCs went wilderness exploring game time moved much faster than real time.

When we switched to Runequest around 1980 wilderness travel worked about the same, but combat (now in 6 second rounds) moved significantly slower than real time. Every game since 1980 combat has moved slower than real time. Also post D&D, games increased the share of time devoted to dialog at the expense of time for exploring and fighting.

Since the 1990s my gaming has included a lot more splitting up the PCs. This makes dialog slower than reality since you might need to play out 3 separate scenes sequentially (or by cutting between locations) that in the game would all be occurring simultaneously. Back in the 1970s people rarely split off from the party.

And dialog and combat sometimes gets slower than real time because some folks I game with don't have eidetic memories, so they do want to right down clever dialog. I like the result, but I hate the delay. And everyone is too lazy to right up a transcript of the game so recording wouldn't really help. Maybe in a couple more iterations the computer will do acceptable speech to text conversion.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

As far as Korunme's career...

I started off as a barbarian just off the boat. I was one of the very first group of EPT players using the green covered ditto rules.

We were in the foreigner's quarter of Jakalla at first. Very soon, Al Muscielewicz, my first wife, and I formed a "mutual defense pact" so that one of us would stand watch while the others slept. The cheap flop spots in the foreigner's quarters are not safe. Rather like many modern homeless shelters, sad to say.

Very soon, Moose established himself as heavy muscle for disputes among the fishermen on the river, I was fighting in the arena for pay, and Anka'a was providing halftime entertainment as a nude bareknuckle boxer. Thus we got enough money to rent a room with a door that actually had a bar.

About the time that I had advanced enough in level that I could leave the foreigners' quarter safely, I joined the army because I figured it would give me a chance to see the world, experience exotic cultures, meet fascinating people, and kill them. I figured it would be a chance to get the "lay of the land" while at the same time being a soldier would give me a place in Tsolyani society. Other players as mentioned above were trying to ingratiate themselves into high society, play political games, etc. I just wanted a place where I knew what was expected of me. I figured if the Tsolyani army was like every other army in the world throughout time, there would be cheerfully smiling sergeants who would be only too happy to tell me exactly what was expected of me.

It also meant I didn't have to worry about the perils of being a foreigner in Tsolyani society... a soldier is a soldier.

Well, I ended up a Kasi (commander of a cohort of 400) right away. My crawl up the ranks to Molkar (commander of half a legion) and eventually Kerdu (General) of a Legion took some years. I was promoted to Kerdu of the Legion of Mnashu of Thri'il just after my marriage. The previous Kerdu Mnashu had recently been killed and my clan put me forward as the ideal candidate to take the post; young, strong, brave, willing to follow orders, not too bright, and completely expendable.

I eventually drifted out of Tekumel when I hit grad school. Korunme's wife Nlel had just become pregnant.

As far as future career, I expect ol' Korunme would come home once in a while when the Army let him, shag his wife senseless while he was home, and then wander out into the frontier again, maybe to return some day, maybe to return only as a "We regret to inform you" letter from the Imperium. Children would be raised in the clan house.

If I were lucky, I'd live out my twenty years in service and retire, perhaps get a small villa somewhere where I would live with my wives and children. I'm sure Nlel would love some junior wives to boss around, and since Nlel is both smart and kind to me, I'm sure the junior wives would be pretty.... but not QUITE as pretty as Nlel.


In such ways are foreigners assimilated into the Tsolyani Empire.

And there you have it folks; a decade and more of gaming with Phil as a PC digested into a short post.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Another advantage to the life of a career soldier... "Dammit, Jim, I'm a general, not a detective."

Of course since it's high-society I'd no doubt be called upon to be the "sharp edge" for the priest of Thumis handling the investigation, and then have to cope with the fact that the perpetrators are trying to silence HIM...

Ain't that the truth...

Originally Posted by Bren

Man I hate it when dipshits and psychopaths give backstabbing a bad name. It just ruins the fun for the rest of us.

Actually...

So, okay, they all liked that sort of thing. Good for them as long as I'm elsewhere.

Well, Phil wasn't one to let his NPCs simply stand by and be victimized. Being as fond of Jack Vance as Gary was*, his NPCs could cheat, backstab, betray, and skulldug like experts. So "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

It reached the point where that group's entire evening would consist of almost nothing but betrayal and backstabbing. To the point where literally it reached the point where the PCs, IN CHARACTER, sat around at dinner parties discussing how their host was going to betray them, and placing bets if they'd be killed or captured for ransom.

Petard, 1 each, player characters, for the hoisting of by their own.

*I remember the day Phil got his hardcover autographed copy of Cugel's Saga right off the press. He was positively giddy.

Originally Posted by Bren

I've just never seen it run that way. Even back in 1974. Typically travel in the wilderness moved faster than real time since you might travel several days without an encounter that took up a lot of time. Exploring in the dungeon again moved faster than real time, taking 10 minutes to search a room took less time than it took me to type this sentence. Unless there was a wandering encounter. That might be avoided more or less in real time and might be fought somewhat slower than real time (1 minute combat rounds kept the pace close to real time.) Overall, D&D time seemed to move around real time speed for PCs who might explore a nearby dungeon once a week, but once PCs went wilderness exploring game time moved much faster than real time.

When we switched to Runequest around 1980 wilderness travel worked about the same, but combat (now in 6 second rounds) moved significantly slower than real time. Every game since 1980 combat has moved slower than real time. Also post D&D, games increased the share of time devoted to dialog at the expense of time for exploring and fighting.

Since the 1990s my gaming has included a lot more splitting up the PCs. This makes dialog slower than reality since you might need to play out 3 separate scenes sequentially (or by cutting between locations) that in the game would all be occurring simultaneously. Back in the 1970s people rarely split off from the party.

And dialog and combat sometimes gets slower than real time because some folks I game with don't have eidetic memories, so they do want to right down clever dialog. I like the result, but I hate the delay. And everyone is too lazy to right up a transcript of the game so recording wouldn't really help. Maybe in a couple more iterations the computer will do acceptable speech to text conversion.

Oh, I agree with you; that's the way Phil did it, and he kept on doing it that way during all the time I gamed with him.

I don't think it really made any difference to the game play; for us, the game sessions were as much a social and working occasion as much as a game session.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Actually...

So, okay, they all liked that sort of thing. Good for them as long as I'm elsewhere.

Well, Phil wasn't one to let his NPCs simply stand by and be victimized. Being as fond of Jack Vance as Gary was*, his NPCs could cheat, backstab, betray, and skulldug like experts. So "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

It reached the point where that group's entire evening would consist of almost nothing but betrayal and backstabbing. To the point where literally it reached the point where the PCs, IN CHARACTER, sat around at dinner parties discussing how their host was going to betray them, and placing bets if they'd be killed or captured for ransom.

Petard, 1 each, player characters, for the hoisting of by their own.

*I remember the day Phil got his hardcover autographed copy of Cugel's Saga right off the press. He was positively giddy.

Yeah, that's a pretty good description of the way hat those guys played. It was a trial, and I was glad to leave. It still gives me a bad taste in my mouth to this day; my curse, throughout my life, has been to know what *could* have been. These guys wasted a lot of opportunity, I think.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yeah, that's a pretty good description of the way hat those guys played. It was a trial, and I was glad to leave. It still gives me a bad taste in my mouth to this day; my curse, throughout my life, has been to know what *could* have been. These guys wasted a lot of opportunity, I think.

Agreed. Among other things it permanently soured me on people talking about RPGs as "A NARTFORM."

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Agreed. Among other things it permanently soured me on people talking about RPGs as "A NARTFORM."

I have to admit that I am still - after all these years! - trying to get my head around this idea. For me, an I think for the vast majority of the people I have played with and run games for, it was all about sitting down with friends and simply having a fun afternoon or evening (or both) around a table. Laughter and fun were the order of the day - yes, we were pretty 'hard-core' and 'serious' about what we did, but I don't think we ever tried to think of or refer to what we were doing as 'art' of some sort - let alone a 'serious academic endeavor' of some sort.

Observation: Gertie, the mighty golden dragon of Blackmoor and terror-object of players, was a lump of grey Plasticene clay.

These days, based on the conversations that I overhear in the local game emporium, you'd never get her on the table - she's not an 'officially licensed product, authorized for use with *whatever*'. From what I've seen and heard, there are still people out there who play like we did - and do - but they seem to be 'off the grid'.

And I hate to have to say this, but a fair number of the 'OSR' people that I've tried to talk to have been of the 'serious art form' persuasion...

I'd like to be wrong. I'd like to just have some friends in for an afternoon and push some little toy soldiers around in the painted sawdust, without a lot of seriousness and angst.

Or am I being just a nostalgic old fart, longing for the supposed golden days of my youth?