Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hermes Serpent

Related to modesty bars.

One thing springs to mind is that if a web site includes pictures of figures unclothed then someone somewhere is going to label it NSFW in a blacklist and that is going to be use to block access to the said site from some work computers.

The unrelated bit.

Recently on G+ someone posted asking about a game and its suitability for playing with youngsters as it contained risque pictures. He got the usual 'Southern US prudes can't tell us what to do' from the Euro contingent. He responded that it wasn't him that was a prude but he couldn't have these kids (no age specified but probably early teens from context) exposed to non Christian religions as their parents would go gaga.

Pat Puling's fan club is alive and well living in the southern US.

Good points - I lived through Pat Pulling.

Interestingly, I had my brother in a while back, accompanied by my 13 year-old niece. She was fascinated by all the game stuff in the basement, and asked all sorts of very good questions about Tekumel; she asked about being able to play in a game that I'd run, and I deferred to her father - who has copies of EPT, etc. at home - and he was of the opinion that he'd suggest that she wait a couple of years. What I found fascinating was that she fully accepted that, as she trusted her dad and uncle to give her good advice; she's looking forward to a 'family game', and I'm looking forward to running it.

On a similar note, I was talking to my brother-in-law, who happens to be an evangelical Christian pastor, while visiting him, my sister, and their family. We were talking about RPGs, and some of the kids asked about playing in a game. I thought we were headed into shoal waters, but my brother-in-law let the family know that he thought that it was a great idea - he and my sister have no objections to RPGs in general, and the only stipulation that they had for me was that I respect their views on things for their kids; they especially mentioned that they thought an Ancient Egyptian game would be a lot of fun. They, and their kids, had no issues with little lead people in various states of dress - they fully endorsed the idea of historically accurate people, and their only proviso was that I had to do the research and do the various figures in the very best way I could; Moses, should he appear, had to be in proper Israelite costume, with none of this Hollywood Biblical stuff. Oh, and I'd better get all those Egyptian Gods and Goddeses right - the kids are very well educated, and will be able to spot my fudging anything a mile off...

Originally Posted by Neshm hiKumala

Shemek makes an excellent point.

I actually hesitated before leaving that line about this not being canon in.

That term sort of kills the possibility of Tekumel as a playable fantasy world, as it suggests that one cannot run it unless one does it the manner in which Barker did it.
I actually love the "non-canon" stuff, that is, the "'second order' stuff", as Chirine puts it. Those reports, maps, ideas, etc. show what Tekumel is and can be around an RPG table: alive, fun, full of wild situations, scary, etc. The 'second' and further orders indeed show that people outside of Barker's circle have gotten hold of the world and made it their own, thus saving it from complete excitation.

I may be wrong on this, but it seems to me that talks of what's canon or not are not common in, say, the Glorantha community, or any other deep fantasy world community. The fans of these settings seem to enjoy their world of choice and share their experiences of it. To my knowledge Tekumel is the only one where canon-talk is recurrent.

And I made the mistake of bringing it up ... again!
Bad Neshm, bad!

No problem; I'm just trying to get my head around the idea of 'canon', as all I know about the term is from my time hanging around with the Baker Street Irregulars. (I'm so old, I always thought that when people were talking about 'Holmes' I thought they meant the detective...)

I agree with you; a lot of people built on what Greentongue refers to in his post - Phil's exposition of his world - and used that common basis to add to that world. In quite a few cases over the years, phil added to his campaign what people did in theirs - the 'shared world' made for a lot of good games!

I don't know enough about Gloriantha to be able to comment; what brought this whole thing into sharp relief for me was the very negative reaction that quite a few people had to the Tekumel Foundation's very strong insistence that in order for Gary Con to have a room full of Tekumel programming, the convention had to put up big posters announcing that the games being run "were Not Official, Not Authorized, and Not Approved for use with Tekumel(TM)". Okay, so what did that really mean? In the event, all of the volunteer GMs that I had lined up quit over this (and some other similar issues) so the room got cancelled. I was, and still am, surprised that an opportunity to promote Tekumel as Phil did it - a lot of the people who had agreed to come with me had gamed with him - was passed up.

See, I always thought that Tekumel was 'a big enough tent' to accommodate anybody who wanted to explore Phil's world. Which is why I'm trying to get a grip on the seemingly very narrow parameters of what is and is not 'proper gaming'...

Originally Posted by DavetheLost

In the opinion of this heretic far too many fandoms are overly obsessed with canon and midrash. In gaming it is not unique to Tekumel. People will scour the most obscure publications to "prove" that they are the standard bearers of the One True Way and everyone else is guilty of BadWrongFun.

This has caused me to be much less active in games that have strong fandoms and a canon of resources about the background. The endless arguments about how many Orcs can defeat a legion of Klingons just cease to be fun. It's elfgames not religion.

What I find refreshing about Respected Clan Elder Chirine's thread is that he is saying "This is how we did it with Phil, and this is how I do it now," while still leaving room for us to develop our own ways of gaming on Tekumel. I hope it would not prove fatal to our cordial relationships if I were to say that on my Tekumel there are bands of raiding Tharks and Warhoons employing outsize Hlyss as mounts, Thoats being not an option due to the lack of the ochre moss of Barsoom on which they feed. Not that I am seriously proposing this, but it is the sort of fantasy I grew up with. "Do what is fun!"

The Legion of Great Stuffiness and Superiority about All Things Tekumel and Looking Down Their Noses at the Mere Idea that Unwashed and Uneducated Pond Slime such as Yourself Could Even Dream of Playing Tekumel Without Doing So Exclusively in Tsolyanu almost completely put me off this wonderful world. Pre-internet I had EPT and Swords & Glory and it was good. Then I discovered the would be OAL...

Then I found Chirine Ba Kal and discovered that Tekumel could be fun again.

Great points - thank you!

I have some Thoats. And lots and lots of Tharks. My players, in the future, may curse your very name.

I am very touched at your final sentence - it's what i've been trying to do for the past forty years, and makes it all seem very worthwhile...

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

I don't recall if this has been asked before, but could you shed any light on the Temple of the Eye of the World? I recently saw this sight on a Tekumel map and was wondering what it was. Is it related to worship of the One Other, like the Isle of Eyes?

Shemek

When we went there - by tubeway car - it was where the controls for the planetary terra-forming engines had been located. Please do not touch the shards of the Egg of the World; Very Bad Things happen.

The shards still spin on their axis in the middle of the round and open temple; a circular bank of Mysterious Displays, Read-outs, and Controls surrounds the circular space - it's got a null-gravity field, by the way, with a tractor-pressor to move the shards around. Supposedly, if you can collect all the missing shards, the machines will repair the device and restore the manual controls.

Phil scared the kilts off of us with this one. No two kaitars about it.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Hey All,

Out of curiosity, how do you go about searching threads for a specific topic? For example, I'd like to know what the symbol of the Goddess of the Pale Bone is. I used the search box, but it only indicated that it was in a thread, but not where in the thread (not a specific reference). Thanks in advance.

Shemek

It's usually a bleached human bone - usually a femur - etched all over with little dancing figures.

As to how to do a search, you got me...

Bren, Asen, and Shemek, thank you for your fascinating replies. I think you've all made points that Phil himself made in the course of our time with him; I think that all of your viewpoints are ones he agreed with.

Thank you for letting me listen to this discussion!

Originally Posted by AsenRG

OK, that was sneaky from your side.

Well, the problem is that books don't generally get down to the platoon or company level. Bob Crisp's "Brazen Chariots" is more of a memoir then a tactical study; his favorite tactic seems to have been "Pick a jerry tank and shoot at it until it stops moving." And Hans von Luck in "Panzer Commander" rarely mentions anything lower than a battalion.

It's easy to pick up the strategy of blitzkrieg; translating that into small unit tactics is a lot harder to get good information on.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

When we went there - by tubeway car - it was where the controls for the planetary terra-forming engines had been located. Please do not touch the shards of the Egg of the World; Very Bad Things happen.

The shards still spin on their axis in the middle of the round and open temple; a circular bank of Mysterious Displays, Read-outs, and Controls surrounds the circular space - it's got a null-gravity field, by the way, with a tractor-pressor to move the shards around. Supposedly, if you can collect all the missing shards, the machines will repair the device and restore the manual controls.

Phil scared the kilts off of us with this one. No two kaitars about it.

I think I kind of frustrated Phil sometimes, because my response to stuff like this was "if it's not going to help us defeat the armies of Baron Ald, I really don't care about it."

And my character believed in swords and soldiers, not magic and mysterious weapons of the Ancients.

Originally Posted by Bren

1. I care.

But in just about every game group I've been in or run, there has been one person who can't pronounce things correctly and who often don't remember how to spell things correctly. What they can't pronounce (or spell) may be esoteric names of people, places, and things from a game world, or it may be words in some earthly foreign language, or even words in English* that aren't part of their vernacular. So I'm used to dealing with a lot of mispronunciation.

Does it ruin the game for me? No. Would I enjoy the game more with correct pronunciation? Without a doubt.

* I realize that English is a foreign language to some of you. If that bugs you...well then you probably are bugged a lot in real life. You can always pretend I said whatever language is native for you instead.




2. Choose Advanced Search and tell it to show “Posts” instead of "Threads."

1. You see, that is the difference between players like you, and those others I was talking about. For them it would absolutely ruin the game. Would I love to have everyone pronounce everything correctly? Sure, why not? Are they going to? No, certainly not. Will it impact on the "enjoyability" of the game? No, it wont.

2. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.



Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Bren, Asen, and Shemek, thank you for your fascinating replies. I think you've all made points that Phil himself made in the course of our time with him; I think that all of your viewpoints are ones he agreed with.

Thank you for letting me listen to this discussion!

Your welcome. Just throwing in my opinion.

Shemek.