Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Had a wonderful "Close Action" game yesterday at the quarterly meeting of the Minnesota Miniature Gaming Society. A pair of Spanish 70s vs. three Portuguese 54s off Uruguay - I thought of you, Pundit! - in 1777; great game, very hard-fought and well-played by a bunch of the old CSA veterans - only one of who was actalluy pretty familiar with the rules. It was like I'd stepped back in time to Coffman Union some thirty years ago - same sportsmanship, same sense of fun, and same level of sheer brilliance.

Lovely when you find a game where tactics are more important than learning the rules!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

1. Yes, Jim was a player out at Phil's with us from about 1985-6 to about 1991-2. He was purged, along with all of the other people who were my friends. He finally gave up on Tekumel after he failed to get any sort of satisfaction over the use of some of his copyrighted artwork without his permission in some of the publications that they did ("Mitlanyal" and "Gardasiyal", if I recall correctly). I very strongly doubt her's looking at this forum; he's a professional writer and artist, and I expect he's moved on to other things.

2. Yes; the attack on Bassa's palace will be a big part of Book One. It was a pretty big adventure, involving Thomar, one of the Keys that imprison Lord Ksarul, the Black Ssu - Phil had just gotten his new figures from Ral Partha, so he painted them up just for us - and the revealing of Prince Mirusiya. We did this fight in miniature, so I have a lot of notes and plans.

As an aside, Book One is proving to be the hardest one to write. My first couple of years out at Phil's saw the group doing a lot of almost random 'dungeon' crawls, and it wasn't until this adventure that Phil's campaign really gelled; so, I'm trying to set our adventures in the context of his world, and it's a tough slog...

3. I'm sure it's on file in Bey Su and Avanthar, in a folder someplace on the shelves.

4. Understood. I do seem to work better in a Q & A format, for some reason.

Had a wonderful "Close Action" game yesterday at the quarterly meeting of the Minnesota Miniature Gaming Society. A pair of Spanish 70s vs. three Portuguese 54s off Uruguay - I thought of you, Pundit! - in 1777; great game, very hard-fought and well-played by a bunch of the old CSA veterans - only one of who was actalluy pretty familiar with the rules. It was like I'd stepped back in time to Coffman Union some thirty years ago - same sportsmanship, same sense of fun, and same level of sheer brilliance.

1. Sigh! How many times have heard this story from you on this thread? What a damn waste is all I can say.

2. I really look forward to this. For some reason I have always been intrigued by the Ssu, and finding out what happened in Bassa's castle has really piqued my interest.

3. Lost in a bureau no doubt.

4. Q & A it shall be then!


I'm not familiar with these rules but they sound fun. The only serious naval type game I played was Harpoon back in the day, and then only a couple of times. Didn't seem to be much interest in naval warfare up here back then, at least not in the circles I gamed in.
It's wonderful when you game against gentlemen (gentlepersons?). No hysterics, no "best armies money can buy", or cheating. It's been a long time since I've war gamed under these types of conditions.


Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

I'm not familiar with these rules but they sound fun. The only serious naval type game I played was Harpoon back in the day, and then only a couple of times. Didn't seem to be much interest in naval warfare up here back then, at least not in the circles I gamed in.
It's wonderful when you game against gentlemen (gentlepersons?). No hysterics, no "best armies money can buy", or cheating. It's been a long time since I've war gamed under these types of conditions.


Shemek

Chirine and I both cut our teeth in (different) environments of "The referee designs the scenario." Amazing how much that helps (though it won't cure all problems.)

Welcome, Neshm hiKumala!

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Lovely when you find a game where tactics are more important than learning the rules!

The "Close Action!" rules are actually very easy to learn - as long as you think like a ship captain, it's all mostly about learning the 'programming language' that the rules use to sail and fight the ships. You have to think both tactically and as a resource manager - you have to keep one eye on your crew, one eye on the 'terrain', one eye on your fleet, and one eye on your opponents. It makes for a really fun and dynamic game!!!

I had an incredibly good time - one of the players was late, so I offered to give him my ship. As I was the Spanish flagship, he became the ship's captain and I became the squadron commodore. In theory, I had nothing to do for the entire rest of the game; in reality, I had to command my squadron - reading wind and tide working with my two ships' captains, and trying to divine the intentions of our opponents from their movements and actions.

I role-played, just like we used to do all those years ago, even though we were playing what is basically a board game done with miniatures. Three of the players were CSA vets - you can probably guess who - and the look on the three 'young' players as we sailed around shooting each other up and having a great time was well and truly priceless. They saw what we used to do, and they found it pretty durn cool.

Gods, it was fun. I twirled my mustachios, shouted defiance at our foes, and wrote up a decent report for Madrid as to why our pair of 70s were now matchwood.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

1. Sigh! How many times have heard this story from you on this thread? What a damn waste is all I can say.

2. I really look forward to this. For some reason I have always been intrigued by the Ssu, and finding out what happened in Bassa's castle has really piqued my interest.

3. Lost in a bureau no doubt.

4. Q & A it shall be then!

I'm not familiar with these rules but they sound fun. The only serious naval type game I played was Harpoon back in the day, and then only a couple of times. Didn't seem to be much interest in naval warfare up here back then, at least not in the circles I gamed in.
It's wonderful when you game against gentlemen (gentlepersons?). No hysterics, no "best armies money can buy", or cheating. It's been a long time since I've war gamed under these types of conditions.

Shemek

1. Yep. Breaks my heart, as well. Phil's creation deserves to be more widely known.

2. It had some interesting moments. Thomar needed some muscle to go rob the place, and he had us. (Oh, hurray. )

3. Probably on a shelf, actually, or in a chest in a back room. The Tsolyani don't have file cabinets as such, for which I am truly grateful...

4. Thanks! I just seem to work better, that way. No idea why.

It was a truly wonderful game, and took me back thirty-some years to those nights at the CSA meetings. A paper time machine, if you will...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Chirine and I both cut our teeth in (different) environments of "The referee designs the scenario." Amazing how much that helps (though it won't cure all problems.)

It does, I think. Some GMs can make the most exciting world-setting dull and boring, and some can do the opposite with a mediocre setting. In this case, the GM poses us a pretty tactical problem, which was not going to end well for either side. And - LO! - it didn't. It was basically the Graf Spee Problem and in the same waters, too...

Originally Posted by Neshm hiKumala

Hello all.

I've been reading this most excellent thread for a while and am now coming out of the shadows to ask a question: Chirine, in your years of adventure, did you ever visit the Unstraightened City? I so, what do you remember?

Welcome aboard! Ask away - it's what I'm here for.

Yes, we did, and there's a lot of stuff on the place in one of the books. The short form is that somebody, back in the depths of history, developed a very strong dislike for a faction of the Undying Wizards called the Blasphemous Accelerators - who denied the hegemony of the Gods and wanted to bring Tekumel back into the technological world - and used one of the mighty weapons of the Ancients on the place. There was a lot of debate over whether it was a simple planet-buster or something else; one theory holds that the terraforming engines kicked in to save the planet, another holds that the Egg of the World was used on the city, and a more recent theory is that a variant of the inter-dimensional Three Light drive was used - basically, activate the star drive while still on the ground. (I favor this latter theory, myself, based on Certain Developments that happened later on in the campaign.)

The net result was the Plains of Glass, with the Crater of the Unstraightened City in the middle. We got to it by Nexus point - Eyloa, again - and left the same way after having a heck of a time getting one to open. It's kind of easy to get in, but getting out usually leads you to a random destination - which was more fun for Phil, of course. The place is just plain weird for anybody; nothing seems 'on-kilter', and you always have the feeling that Something is watching you. When Phil started using the words "non-Euclidian geometry" to describe the buildings, I got it but nobody else did. It's the one place on Tekumel where Phil had us make 'sanity' checks, like he did when humans tried to use the Mihalli Spheres of Immediate Eventuation. (That also ended badly.) Think of it as Teotihuacan meets Lovecraft, and you have it.

There is 'stuff' in the buildings, most of it completely unfamiliar. Worth a bit on the collectors' market, though. I'd be very careful, though; it's a place where you turn around and Charlie's simply vanished into thin air - the 'skin' of reality us very, very, thin in the city...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Welcome aboard! Ask away - it's what I'm here for.

Yes, we did, and there's a lot of stuff on the place in one of the books. The short form is that somebody, back in the depths of history, developed a very strong dislike for a faction of the Undying Wizards called the Blasphemous Accelerators - who denied the hegemony of the Gods and wanted to bring Tekumel back into the technological world - and used one of the mighty weapons of the Ancients on the place. There was a lot of debate over whether it was a simple planet-buster or something else; one theory holds that the terraforming engines kicked in to save the planet, another holds that the Egg of the World was used on the city, and a more recent theory is that a variant of the inter-dimensional Three Light drive was used - basically, activate the star drive while still on the ground. (I favor this latter theory, myself, based on Certain Developments that happened later on in the campaign.)

The net result was the Plains of Glass, with the Crater of the Unstraightened City in the middle. We got to it by Nexus point - Eyloa, again - and left the same way after having a heck of a time getting one to open. It's kind of easy to get in, but getting out usually leads you to a random destination - which was more fun for Phil, of course. The place is just plain weird for anybody; nothing seems 'on-kilter', and you always have the feeling that Something is watching you. When Phil started using the words "non-Euclidian geometry" to describe the buildings, I got it but nobody else did. It's the one place on Tekumel where Phil had us make 'sanity' checks, like he did when humans tried to use the Mihalli Spheres of Immediate Eventuation. (That also ended badly.) Think of it as Teotihuacan meets Lovecraft, and you have it.

There is 'stuff' in the buildings, most of it completely unfamiliar. Worth a bit on the collectors' market, though. I'd be very careful, though; it's a place where you turn around and Charlie's simply vanished into thin air - the 'skin' of reality us very, very, thin in the city...

I have always described Ssuganar using the term non-Euclidian geometry. I know that the hazards one encounters are far more physical than outer-planar, but I always have my idea of R'leyh in my mind's eye, when describing what's there.
Speaking of Plains, did you ever make it to the Plain of Towers?

Shemek