Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Oh, gods. We really liked EPT, but Phil got it into his head that he really needed to have a 'more realistic' and 'more detailed' set of RPG rules. he started an RPG called "Skein of Destiny", which had all of the information and game mechanics that later became the three volumes of S&G all in one book; he'd tell you all about chlen beasts, for example, then he'd give all the rules needed by players to deal with them, and then he'd give all the rules that the GM needed to run them in an adventure. He got up to 450+ pages of manuscript, and then realized that the thing was, for all intents and purposes, unplayable by anyone - back then, all he had was a typewriter, and so doing an index was going to be just as big a task as doing the game. So, he abandoned it (I got the manuscript out of the trash) and he redid the information and game rules as the three volumes of S&G. It comes to over 950+ pages of material; the combat and sorcery summaries, which are very playable games in and of themselves, are something like twenty and thirty pages long respectively.

Yes, he designed the whole thing by himself, which led to Dave Arneson telling him, quote, "Phil, you can't design rules in a vacuum." Phil simply dropped the manuscript on the table one night, as was his usual habit, and we used it to roll up PCs - and then never really used it again, as the number-crunching was simply too much, even for Phil. The Sourcebook is wonderful, but the RPG is a pain to use - even for me, and even after all these years.

I don't know why he did the thing. I suspect it was in reaction to Gary's various writingd in various places, and Dave's "Adventures in Fantasy"; and it may have had something to do with AD&D. Phil was always a very solitary writer, and we'd first see a book when he'd wave the manuscript around and he'd sent a copy off to a publisher. S&G was, to the best of my knowledge, never really play-tested, and not really used by Phil in his own campaign. However, the game is a monument to Phil's view of how he thought his world worked, and how it could work in the context of an RPG. There was a lot of our input into the world itself, but very rarely into any rules that he wrote.

He played a very simple game - 'you roll, I roll' - and then he'd just get on with the adventure. He would tell the tale, and run the adventure, and not look at the tables and such; he'd just do it.

Does this help, at all?

I think at least a part of what led to "Sore and Gory" was that the zeitgeist of the time was very much "Rules good, more rules more gooder." I suspect Phil was infected by some of his other players.

Here's something to reflect on... if you took the original 3 Little Brown Books of Original D&D and turned them into full size pages, assuming the same size typeface, the entire game would fit in one 64 page booklet. With about six pages to spare, in fact, so you could even clarify some of the fuzzy points.

This is a large part of the reason why when I see modern games saying "This new RPG is only 486 pages," my reaction is "Oh my aching asshole."

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I think at least a part of what led to "Sore and Gory" was that the zeitgeist of the time was very much "Rules good, more rules more gooder." I suspect Phil was infected by some of his other players.

Here's something to reflect on... if you took the original 3 Little Brown Books of Original D&D and turned them into full size pages, assuming the same size typeface, the entire game would fit in one 64 page booklet. With about six pages to spare, in fact, so you could even clarify some of the fuzzy points.

This is a large part of the reason why when I see modern games saying "This new RPG is only 486 pages," my reaction is "Oh my aching asshole."

I think you may be right; those guys did have some odd notions about games.

Agreed - the two 'summary' booklets make a perfectly good RPG in less then fifty pages. Everything else is source material...

Originally Posted by Greentongue

chirine ba kal
Are there restriction on using undead people for normal chores around the empire?
I recall an issue with using undead troops but what about using them for jobs that just require manual labor?
If there are restrictions, as I suspect there are, how are they enforced?
=

Wow! Talk about an exciting question!

Use of the Undead for anything, above ground and in the daylight is strictly forbidden by the Great Concordat, and is considered to be a very serious offense. This is why Qutmu got the high ride, in front of Sunraya.

Now, having said that, what the Temples of Sarku and Durritlamish do within their precincts and within the city of Sarku is up to them. Visitors of other faiths are not encouraged to drop by, so I would expect - based on our adventures with Phil and his novels, especially the pretty scary night we spent being chased by the Worm Prince and his minions around the temple of Sarku in Bey Sy - that these two temples would use their servitors for all sorts of jobs, from guards to construction crews to janitors. 'Dead men tell no tales', as they say, and I can see the priests and priestesses of these two temples delegating all the 'manual labor' to the uncomplaining and untalkative undead. (Ksarul and Gruganu prefer to use their artificial life-forms, like the Qol, for this kind of thing, so you can usually tell what temple you're dealing with by what you run into.)

Enforcement is by the Council of the Priesthoods, and then by the Imperium; the former usually brings the complaint, and the latter destroys the offenders. Normally, as long as the use of the Undead is discreet and within bounds, there's no issue - 'what happens in the Underworld stays in the underworld' - but if the local agriculture clans suddenly found Undead doing the shores on the Temple farm, they would complain about the loss of their ancient rights to the Council and the local Governor would send in the troops to wipe out the offenders.

So, while it isn't supposed to happen, Phil would simply send in the adventurers to see what was what and let the Mr'ur fall where they may. One would like to survive long enough to make one's report, but...

Does this help explain things?

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Yes, and timely too.
I have to assume that witnesses to such a thing would be at risk themselves.
'Dead men tell no tales' applying here as well.
Discrete people of the same basic "alignment" may be at less risk to join the 'work crew'?
A wink and a nod going a long way between clans with 'an understanding'.
=

Yep, that's pretty much it.
One thing - non-worshippers of Sarku and Durritlamish woult not be made Undead; that's a reward for the faithful, not for the unbelievers. The latter are simply food for the faithful...

Not to mention even the clans whose members worship Sarku still have people in them, which equals mouths to feed, which equals employment needed. Chirine touched on this briefly but it's worth reiterating; using undead to till fields (et al) puts people out of work.

Cf. slaves and their "right to work" in the Roman empire.