Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

With the proper interpretation of Tekumel, done by someone with the right credentials. Who can correct your grammar and vocabulary, in order to have a more meaningful discussion of how the verb structures of Salarvyani reflect the deeper aspects of the society.

Isn't all that inherently and obviously included in the phrase "read it in the original Tsolyani"?

If we allow unsanctioned and uncredentialed people read Tsolyani without qualified assistance and supervision , next thing you know someone will be nail a list of objections on someone's door which kicks off a century or two of holy wars.

Originally Posted by Bren

Isn't all that inherently and obviously included in the phrase "read it in the original Tsolyani"?

If we allow unsanctioned and uncredentialed people read Tsolyani without qualified assistance and supervision , next thing you know someone will be nail a list of objections on someone's door which kicks off a century or two of holy wars.

When some folower of Karakan nailed 95 Mrur to the door of the temple of Sarku, it did make for some gossip.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

You are correct, my General. When you talk about eating the tribesmen's cloaks, you really should provide a set of tables and dice rolls for how the cloaks are boiled, how they are eaten, and the digestive results. Remember, more rules provides a more accurate simulation of how Phil played. Oh, and you need to define the 'cook' class, too.

Never mind that Phil would have simply talked this through, with a D100 roll to see who got sick; that's not how things are done, in today's RPGs. More rules, preferably in a massive tome that you can use as a doorstop. (Which is why I liked "Arrows of Indra": great game, with only as many pages as is needed to get the points across.)
.

Well, Phil did produce some doorstops of his own. But to be fair to his memory, back in the 80s "More rules are always better" was pretty much the predominant paradigm. Hence things like his siege rules. Something like 400 or 500 pages I seem to remember. Exhaustive, but also exhausting; there were simply too many rules to play. We tried.

Incredibly well researched, though. With a bit of work I'd bet I could turn it into a doctoral thesis on pre-gunpowder siege warfare.

Phil LOVED sieges and was always frustrated by trying to manage the intersection between realism and playability.

Originally Posted by CRKrueger

Don't they also have to be a non Cis-gendered person of color?

That's the 'right credentials' part, I am assuming, although the 'right credentials' keep shifting with the political tides. It'll all change in a short while.

Originally Posted by Big Andy

This question comes from the group of 12 year olds I am running a Tekumel game for.

With all of the festivals the various temples celebrate, is there anything like Halloween? Some Sarku run holiday, maybe? Maybe not full on pumpkin carving and kids getting candy (or rocks) but something similar?
This came up after your comment about the temples putting on fireworks shows sparked (pun intended, sorry) an appearance in game and made them think of the 4th of July, which in turn made them think of Halloween.

Since there is some kind of explosive powder in use, how about something like Greek fire? Anybody use some weird chemical/sorcerous concoction to burn up their enemies? Or at least put inside siege missiles?

And all this nautical talks reminds me of a question I have pondered. Does anyone ever embark on Viking style raids? I know there are some pirate types but, at least from the books, they seemed to prey more on shipping than raiding towns.

Yes, there are a number of such festivals; Phil gave a long and detailed list in the Sourcebook, and it's possible to have a full round of parties throughout the year. He even gives the locales for the strictly local festivals; it was all part of his meta-game. We'd come rolling into some town, and the festival would be in full swing. Mayhem usually ensued as we got involved - I got married to my Senior Wife at one in the Nyemesel Isles, in one of Phil's very best game sessions.

'Greek fire', although probably not the exact same formula, is a popular weapon and is used extensively. Back in the day, one of the players had a backpack worn by a bearer with glass spheres full of this stuff, with the idea that it would be handy against Undead. You can imagine what happened when the hapless bearer missed a Dexterity throw and tripped...

Yes, very much so. The Vriddi up in the island of Vridu in the northern sea are infamous for this, as are the Tsolei inlanders west of Livyanu. The pirate 'lords' of Haida Paklla also do this kind of thing, to the annoyance of their neighbors. 'Regular' pirates, which you can find on almost any coast - sort of like in the English Channel, in certain periods - tend to stick with robbing passing ships. Unless, of course, the passing ships happen to have hired a 'local guide', in which case there are usually no problems either way.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

When some folower of Karakan nailed 95 Mrur to the door of the temple of Sarku, it did make for some gossip.

If he'd used copper nails, there would have been no problem.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Well, Phil did produce some doorstops of his own. But to be fair to his memory, back in the 80s "More rules are always better" was pretty much the predominant paradigm. Hence things like his siege rules. Something like 400 or 500 pages I seem to remember. Exhaustive, but also exhausting; there were simply too many rules to play. We tried.

Incredibly well researched, though. With a bit of work I'd bet I could turn it into a doctoral thesis on pre-gunpowder siege warfare.

Phil LOVED sieges and was always frustrated by trying to manage the intersection between realism and playability.

Very true; "Fortress Beseiged" is something like 345 pages long, and we once worked out that it would take as long to play out the siege as it would have to run the actual siege.

I mean, I can see this in historicals, especially in the WRG era; what's astonished me has been the number of times I've been handed a inch-thick tome and told that this is the newest RPG. It takes forever for most people to read that kind of thing, and I do wonder how often people manage to run a game in that system. Different tastes then mine, I would venture to say.

It's why I haven't bought a new RPG in years. I look briefly at it and go "too many fucking rules."

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed! I find myself with not one, but two groups forming, with a lot of interest in all three of the world-settings I support. I will keep you posted on what happens, of course.

Three settings? Tekumel, Barsoom...which is the third one?

Originally Posted by IceBlinkLuck

Hey Chirine, long time lurker on the board as well as Tekumel fan.

So care to share some of your speculations? I've always been interested in the backstory of the Tekumel Deities and what they are under the masks and misdirection. Also, I've been reading the thread with great interest and enjoyment. Hopefully it will never end!

I'd bet on them being some of the original colonists who found what they can do...
Oops, Lord of Light was mentioned already, right?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

This highlights one of the issues that a lot of Tekumel fans had and still have with my original Thursday Night Group; we were so busy surviving in Phil's world that a lot of these issues and questions just never came up We 'played the world' as it was presented to us - as a golfer would say, 'we played it as it lay'...

This thread will go on for as long as people like you have questions...

Best way to learn things, I've found. It's why immersion courses work so well for foreign languages.

Kindly prepare to answer questions until the Second Coming, Uncle!

Originally Posted by Greentongue

I have heard that this novel was involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light
=

Yep, it was mentioned, alright...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, it does, and it works just fine. You can get funny little noise-makers that make a crack when you pull the string, and all sorts of fun novelty items that do things when you light the touch-paper. The Temples of Hnalla, Thumis, Hry'y, and Ksarul will put on fun displays of this kind of thing for holidays and festivals; this kind of chemical know-how is something that they know about. I'd expect that the Tinaliya do as well, but they're not talking. The Temples of Karakan and Vimuhla eschew such vulgar displays, and have sorcerers put on shows for the big holidays.

It's been asked quite a lot over the years why the Tekumelyani don't use gunpowder in warfare, and the answer that Phil always gave is people like me; I am much, much more powerful and tactically mobile that any sort of black powder artillery could be; the next step up the escalation ladder from Yours Truly is a Lighting-Bringer. Phil always said that in his Tekumel it was a cultural thing, stemming as you posit from the weaponry of the Ancients; black powder weapons are long-forgotten, on a dead planet half a galaxy away.

Phil didn't like the black-powder era, and refused to game in it. Period. His contention was that it would stink up the house and leave dark stains on the carpet on his game table.

There was also a big period when gunpowder was invented, but not guns. You need high-precision instruments and materials that are in short supply in order to make a barrel, too, so the idea of using them as mass weapons might be out...
I mean, early guns win battles when they're used as an weapon you can hand to new recruits, compared to needing a lifetime of practice for shooting the bow.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Again, he's not kidding, folks. Phil had a total aversion to anything after about 1300 AD.

I can sympathize.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

This topic created a very lively and interesting discussion between Zirunel and I over on the Tekumel Yahoo group; I strongly recommend his booklet on naval matters( downloadable from his blog), by the way.

Link?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

They are considered to be inviolate, as they were a feature of the Priest-Kings court on Ganga, and nobody with any brains treats them rudely or improperly. They are a very tiny clan, but have very powerful friends at all levels of society. Messing with them is usually considered to be a huge insult to society as a whole, and society tends to react very badly to the insult.

When I was Governor of Hekellu, we had an incident of this sort, and I simply dropped by the offender's clan house with my guards and the local heads of the Black Y Society and Ndalu Clans. The problem was dealt with in short order, and the offender was last seen heading for Pechano to help you fight the Ssu. I think they might have given him a dagger, too, but he certainly left town in a very real hurry...

A whole dagger? Not a steel one, I guess?

I wonder, what would a normal NPC do if you need to sue one of them?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed. We learned lot about this from Phil as we went along, but it certainly didn't make it into the published literature - back in our time, and continuing up to now, the emphasis has been on the very 'gamey' aspects of Tekumel. Monsters, new character classes, game mechanics, and rules have dominated the discussions over the years, and social activities like this have tended not to have 'legs' with gamers. No interest by what has been the bulk of the audience meant no publication, as the financial barriers to publishing have been so high until now.

I'm fascinated by your comment; "To Serve The Petal Throne" has a lot of this exact kind of material in it, as this was a very important part of our games with Phil. And it may be why the folks over on the Tekumel Yahoo group don't like it, as it does not have any system- or rules- specific material in it. You get me sitting down and talking to a clan elder, not a set of tables for gaming that encounter. Self-described 'OSR people', over the years, have been all about rules and mechanics and not a lot about the world-setting; we, on the other hand, were all about the world-setting and not very much about the rules or mechanics.

So, in some sense, what we did in the original Thursday Night Group does not seem to resonate much with the larger gaming hobby; I've been told that we're 'irrelevant' to gaming, as we didn't generate enough rules and mechanics and did too much cultural stuff. That may be as is, but I'm writing an account of our adventures, not an RPG. I figure that people reading the thing can do their own games - as Phil said, "Here's my Tekumel, now make it yours..."

And allow me to thank you for that!
I can adapt my own rules just fine! It's the experience of playing in Tekumel that I find more important.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Unfortunately, getting a hold of the rules you mentioned is difficult and or expensive. I missed them the first time around and have been on the look out for them, at a reasonable price, for years. I'll just have to wait until you release the updated 2nd edition of Qadradalikoi.

Let me dig around; now that my entire set of archives is digitized, I have spare paper copies of everything. I'll also see how to get an electronic copy of the manuscript to you, as I certainly can use play-testers!

Playtesters for Qadardalikoi? Where do I sign up and how many virgins need to donate blood for the ink?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

The old Monday Night Group, or the later Thursday Night Group of the 1990s.

Ooooooh! Did I say that? Bad Chirine, wicked Chirine, naughty Chirine!

Ironically, when I read the question, I thought "players aren't bad enough for you" first...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

So we talk too much about the social aspects and don't generate rules, but we don't talk enough about the social aspects because we don't require the players to learn to speak Tsolyani?

I'm so confused...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29BoqCMRBFk

Frankly, I'd rather make them learn a living language. Mandarin or hindi might not be a bad idea, now that I think of it...

Originally Posted by Bren

I'm sure it makes much more sense if you read it in the original Tsolyani.

I'm sure the Glorious General could do that, though, so it's something else...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

When some folower of Karakan nailed 95 Mrur to the door of the temple of Sarku, it did make for some gossip.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

If he'd used copper nails, there would have been no problem.

If that's an actual event, can we get some more info on the motives, means and implications of this?