Chirine,
Just wondering, did Phil ever draw a map of the Northern Continent as it looked during pre-cataclysmic (ie Engsvanyali) times? If so do you have a copy that would be able to post without stepping on toes or getting certain people worked up?
Shemek.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
No, he did not, but a fan did one a couple of years back - I have a copy in my files, thanks to The Missus' regular web searches, and I think it's pretty nice. I will look it up, and see if I can't direct you to the website where it's posted. 'Not Official', of course, but very much in line with Phil's descriptions.Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel
Best way to look at this is with a copy of Craig Smith's NW Frontier maps; any depressions or the desert would be water - a shallow ocean, according to Phil - and any elevations or heights would have been islands. We're not talking very deep water, here, maybe twenty-five to thirty feet; the real depths would start off of what's the modern coastline.
EDIT: Here's the wonderful blog where the map should be found:
http://dualdais.blogspot.com/
Last edited by chirine ba kal; 08-21-2016 at 12:09 PM. Reason: added link
Thank you Chirine. You're a true gentleman and a scholar. I've been reading the game notes from the link that Greentongue posted and wanted something to follow along with, and get my bearings.
Shemek.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
You're welcome!
There is a lot of 'unofficial' stuff out there on the web being done by people who used to talk regularly with Phil in the 1980s and 1990s, and they have been very good about taking the notes from those conversations and letters and developing what Phil talked about into useful materials for games. I routinely add this kind of thing to my archives, so that I have it on file for my use in my model-building, games, and writing. This kind of 'cooperative world-building' was always Tekumel's great strength, back in the day, as it included so many fans in the creative process; Phil loved to talk about his world, and enjoyed seeing what people could do with it. He was actually pretty liberal about what constituted 'staying inside the lines' of 'his' Tekumel, and as part of my archival researches I can trace the influence of quite a few fans on what happened in his campaigns.
This is what one of the big strengths of Tekumel fandom, and what kept the thing slive and breathing for so many years. Back about five years ago, I was asked by the Tekumel Foundation for advice on how to involve the existing fan base, and I suggested the concept of a 'College of Cardinals', made up of Tekumel fans who would get together and see what could be added to the body of work that existed for Tekumel - it went hand in hand with the idea of an annual Tekumel convention here in the Twin Cities, where people could see all of the artifacts and materials what we'd accumulated in Phil's campaigns over the years. The Foundation chose a different path, a very exclusionary and elitist one of very rigid and authoritarian control of the IP; this is my basic difference from them - I believe Tekumel, as practiced by it's creator, is a pretty big tent that can include a lot of people.
That, and you realize that the Tekumel IP has an acutal market value that is very, very tiny; a few tens of thousands of dollars at the very most. Middle Earth or Star Wars it ain't.
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
1.This is exactly what I did with Pechano. I gleaned everything that I could from the Rulebooks, Sourcebooks, Armies of Tekumel, The Blue Room, and e-mails with Phil, cobbled them all together and filled in the blanks with my own stuff. My creation may not be genuine-guaranteed-certified Tekumel, but it's good enough for me, and pretty damn close to the "real thing". As Phil said to me once: "Enjoy Pechano, I don't really get out there very much", so I did and I still am all these years later.
2. This would be the ideal way to go, and I know it would ensure Tekumel's long term viability. As you know better than most, certain egos will simply not allow this to happen for, IMO, purely selfish reasons. To them being the Keepers of the Keys is more important than accessibility or greater exposure.
Shemek
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
I don't even think that it's really, primarily about the money, but mostly a control thing. "My way, or the high way" so to speak.
Shemek
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
I don't think it has even that much value, at this point. The last two publishers who were trying to negotiate for the use of the IP were each offering less then $5,000 for all the rights, and that was some years ago. The very last offer that I saw on paper was for $2,000 for all rights, for a term of something like five years. Getting the rights to publish would be the cheap part; the major expense would be trying to take the mass of materials that Phil created and reconfiguring it into products that would actually sell to the game hobby as it exists today. Let's face it - most of what was published was intended for support of obsolete sets of rules, and while there's a few of the old products that could be salvaged for reprinting most of the old publications need to be disassembled and rebuilt. There are also some unpublished 'crown jewels' that could be done up as products, but the bottom line is that, aside from his novels and 'Ebon Bindings', none of the old publications meet the demands for production quality that is a basic level today. All of the stuff we did was top of the line back in 1982, but not in 2016.
I have been asked how much of an investment it would take to get Tekumel going again, and my best estimate is around $100,000 to $250,000 at today's prices to go through and bring up just the existing texts to current standards for mass-market publishing. Which may be why the Foundation has been right up front about the OSR being their target demographic / market; I was told that the some 1,000 people that they believe are the OSR would accept any Tekumel products, at the same production level as we did back in the 1980s, because of the 'retro' appeal of all the old publications. I don't know if that's a realistic estimate; I never saw any market research to back that assumption up.
As you've said both here and elsewhere, Tekumel is a niche product in a niche market. It's strength is in it's fans, not in it's commercial sales.
1. Exactly. You are an example of what is possible - if Phil had had access to your notes, he would have used them in his campaign.
2. Agreed. One of the reasons why my idea foundered was that while the rest of the Foundation's Board was fine with a simple table and chairs up at the front of the meeting room, one of the Board (you can guess who) insisted that he have a more impressive chair then anyone else, to demonstrate that his personal prestige and status was higher then anyone else - including Mrs. Barker, one of the other directors.
At which point, after he delivered this statement, the Imp of the Perverse entered into me as it often does on occasions like this, and I suggested that we should have a special 'Chairman-President's Fanfare' to play as he entered the room and assumed his seat of honor. He thought I was being serious, and told me to come up with one ASAP. The rest of the Board took all of this badly, and the concept was dropped.
Oh, very much so, as he has pointed out many times to people. "Alice in Wonderland" meets North Korea by way of "Dilbert".
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