Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Yeah, I suspect at some point in resolving said mess,adventurers shall be needed.


Glad you had a great time, Uncle! And I'm also glad you have found people that would appreciate your style, I just knew it was bound to happen.

Oh, yes, very much so; this is the kind of complicated situation that Phil loved to pose, and we'd have to deal with it. Some of his best nights came from these situations.

It's been pretty busy around here, lately. I'm getting interest from several groups of people. One is interested in a Ye Olde Style Tekumel campaign. the other in a Ye Olde Style Barsoom campaign. Games will be infrequent, due to people's very busy schedules, but that's fine by me.

It's going to be a very interesting mix; both groups have very experienced gamers and complete novices. (For one person, this will be her first time gaming at all.) It'll be nice to have the game room full of friends, again, instead of the vaporware merchants we've been seeing for far too long.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Oh, yes, very much so; this is the kind of complicated situation that Phil loved to pose, and we'd have to deal with it. Some of his best nights came from these situations.

It's been pretty busy around here, lately. I'm getting interest from several groups of people. One is interested in a Ye Olde Style Tekumel campaign. the other in a Ye Olde Style Barsoom campaign. Games will be infrequent, due to people's very busy schedules, but that's fine by me.

It's going to be a very interesting mix; both groups have very experienced gamers and complete novices. (For one person, this will be her first time gaming at all.) It'll be nice to have the game room full of friends, again, instead of the vaporware merchants we've been seeing for far too long.

This is great news. Hopefully you'll keep us updated on the campaign details either here or on your blog. Too bad you couldn't get a big dog and train him to sniff out and attack all "vapourware merchants" on sight.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

This is great news. Hopefully you'll keep us updated on the campaign details either here or on your blog. Too bad you couldn't get a big dog and train him to sniff out and attack all "vapourware merchants" on sight.

Shemek

I can do updates and accounts either way; I'm concerned that they'd be too boring for people. And, I don't seem to game the same way most folks do, so I'd also be concerned about being irrelevant for gamers. We'll see, I guess.

The Tekumel group will choose how they want to start off - the classic 'boat people' introduction or the 'start in the society' gambit. Or a mixture of both, maybe; I did a mixture for the old game group, and that worked well for the time we had (2002 - 2014) playing. I think the rules set that they picked was original EPT; I'm leaving it up to them, but it would be handy as I have half a dozen copies and could 'issue' everybody their own copy for their use. The Barsoom group will have to make the same decision about rules, but they'll be starting out 'in the setting' as a band of mercenaries for hire.

The Missus would love a big dog - Giant Schnauzer, for choice - but we took the easy route and simply don't let anyone in the door anymore unless we've interviewed them in advance in an outside venue. Then the Missus, Queen of the Internet, does the background check on them. Gamers and fans in general usually pass the barriers, but anyone working for or connected with a game company (of any kind) automatically fails due to the antics of several people who fall into this category. It does help us a lot that the Tekumel Foundation has threatened such people in the industry with "severe consequences" if they even talk to me, so I just quote that to people and it works like insect repellent.

What I think surprises people is that we've learned the hard way that we have to do this. These antics seem to be part and parcel of a certain part of today's hobby and industry, sorry to say - my favorite is the guy from A Very Big Video Game Company who blandly assured me that his latest attempt at fraud was "simply standard business practice in the video game industry". (The lawyer enjoyed letting him have it, right between the eyes.) My other favorite was the guy from A Very Small Game Company who offered me all-expense-paid trips to Gary Con and North Texas RPG Con in return for my turning over my blog and forum threads for him for editing. Without asking if I was interested in going to conventions, either. (The lawyer liked him, too; it's not everyday that the defendant e-mails the plaintiff the evidence and makes the lawyer's job so much easier.)

So, unless we know you and like you, you don't get in the door. The vast majority of people have no trouble getting to see the basement, but some folks just can't seem to 'get' the concept that I am not a public utility.

<shrug>

Let's roll some dice!!!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Well, we never met any 'atheists', as we'd understand the word. Plenty of cynics, like the majority of the Undying Wizards, who seem to be 'aligned' or 'allied' to one of the gods, but don't 'worship' them. Again, it's a huge difference in education - the UW are aware that 'the Gods' are simply more advanced beings, unlike most of the population. On the other hand, there were also no 'pantheists', either. One worshipped one of the gods, more then anything else from clan and family traditions, but nobody that we ever met had multiple deities that they worshipped. It just didn't come up for us - except when the UWs would show up, and then we'd nod politely and get away from them as fast as possible as they were always a pain in the ass.

Having said that, one does leave offerings and make donations at other temples then one's own; we'd routinely make offerings across the Change-Stability difference to Avanthe, for example, despite being Vimuhla or Ksarul worshippers. Religion was a spectrum, not a series of non-cooperative sects like most real-world religions seem to be.

Does this help, any?

Could people change temple? Obviously more difficult if you've learnt any relevant spells.

EDIT: Oops, I see you answered this later on...carry on, don't mind me

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

Could people change temple? Obviously more difficult if you've learnt any relevant spells.

EDIT: Oops, I see you answered this later on...carry on, don't mind me

No problem; it's what I'm here for.

Still a good question, though. Generally, people who do this are pretty low level, and usually don't have any really nifty secrets or high level spells so it's usually not a big problem. (High-ranking people can expect a suggestion that they have a Mind Bar imposed by the temple that they are leaving, which can be an interesting plot point as well as a powerful inducement to not change temples.) I think all of this may a factor in why Phil had (in S&G; EPT is a lot more generic) 'universal' spells that every sorcerer probably knows, 'generic' spells that most sorcerers have access to, and 'temple' spells that are unique to a particular temple.

I'm an example of the difference between EPT and S&G; I know 'The Grey Hand', which is available to anybody of high enough level in EPT, and is a temple-specific (Gruganu, I think) one in S&G. Phil hand-waved my having this spell away by saying that you do get 'renegade' sorcerers who will sell their information and skills to the highest bidders, which got a reaction from one of the other people at the table of "Ah, player-characters then, eh Phil?" Mayhem ensued, as you might have expected.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Could the clan competency be mapped with venn diagrams?

Say the Red Axe is a clan that focuses on wood harvesting.
Are lineages sub-skills like carving, furniture making, building lumber, charcoal maker and other things wood related?
Would they have accountants, warehousing and logistic or would there be other clans that partnered for that?

How about the Blue Palm (Avanthe) that grow trees of various types for fruits and nuts.
Would the Red Axe (Vimuhla) work with them for sustainable forestry or would they be philosophically opposed to each other?
=

Yes, I think so too. It'd make it a lot easier to show what a clan is and what it does.

Yes; a clan will have a number of these 'specialists' in-house, to do the basics. Anything more advanced will be sent out to an allied clan for their more specialist treatments. If my clan-cousin the cabinet-maker doesn't think he can do a job for me, he'll contact his friend next door in the clan that's known for their cabinet-makers. He'll superintend the project for me, on behalf of our clan, but the actual woodwork will be done by the friends.

Yes. The 'alignment barrier' in Phil's games were pretty loose; the clans are very practical organizations, and this kind of cooperation is very common.

Someone, on another thread on this forum, posted that part of the problem with "selling" Tekumel to a wider audience was that social interaction between classes and clans was so alien to the Western experience, that it often turned off prospective players (paraphrasing one of his arguments). He specifically referenced the relationship with Highborn and Lowborn persons. One of the things he mentioned was that, essentially a Highborn person could do whatever they wanted to someone "beneath" them, and so long as restitution was offered they could always get away with it. Although I realize that strict adherence to "one's place" is the norm, and that one "knows their place" in Tsolyani society, and money talks, and all that, I still found it kind of hard to accept that this would be common every day behaviour: to get beaten up or killed because a person of lower status addressed a person of higher status (the example used). A Vriddi may be top dog in Fasiltum, but if one of their clansmen goes around continuously stepping on, and beating up everyone beneath them they're going to eventually stir up a hornet's nest and probably get a knife in their back. I'm not so sure that this would lead to a viable long term game.
This got me wondering. During the time that you played in Phil's game did this come up very often; i.e., were people of higher social class continuously bullying and kicking those lower on the social totem pole? How important (from 1 to 10 with 10 being the most ) was social etiquette in the game? Was this relationship maintained even amongst party members?

Shemek

Bullying a lower status person would be ignoble. The clan would stop it because it makes them look bad.