Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Spinachcat

Chirine, please tell us the terrible story!!

Ah, "You're a braver man that I am, Gunga Din!"

The Akbar and Jeff Travelling Tekumel Road Show was our name for the decade we spent trying to sell Tekumel products to the gaming hobby. The name is taken from the "Life in Hell" comic strip, for reasons which will become more clear as we go along. We started doing this at Dave Arneson's company, Adventure Games, where we were referred to as (with no small contempt on the part of the 'real' AGI staffers, whom were all gaming or re-enactment buddies of Dave's) The Tekumel Boat People. We lived in the basement of the building at 1278 Selby, where the water came up through the floor when it rained and down from the ceiling when somebody flushed the toilet. As a result, we had put down pallets and hung plastic tarps to keep the - shall we say - 'wet' off the merchandise. The casting machine - I had bought the 25mm Tekumel line from Ral Partha - was out in the garage, and there was no heat in either location in the building. It did make life interesting, trying to cast up figures and pick orders.

Tekumel was always the bastard step-child at AGI; the only reason why Dave had it in his catalog was to piss off everyone at TSR, especially the Blumes. Being the dumb fans that we were, we didn't realize just how much we were going to be stuck in the middle of The Great Feud until we did our first Gen Con, and we got crapped on by everybody from TSR for being there - with the exception of Gary, who was always unfailingly nice to me personally. Dave put no more then very token amounts of money into the line, nor did he put anything into marketing or distribution as well. Everything came out of my back pocket, as I got only $35 a day from Dave and that only then actually out at a convention - I had to pay for my own food and expenses out of that. In return for this astonishing sum, I put in eight hours a day running miniatures games and then six hours a day running RPG games to try and promote Tekumel. We had to supply all our own displays, all our own equipment, and all our own time to get the products ready for the shows. Then we'd do the set-up, shilling the merchandise, and tear-down. (A lot of money came out of my back pocket, with no hope of ever getting it back, too.) Not much food, not much sleep, not much of anything, and all we had to show for it was the satisfaction of knowing that we were doing our best to talk about a world-setting that we loved.

While we loved Tekumel, we ran into a lot of real ass-holes at conventions, who were more then ready to tell us what a crappy world Tekumel was, what crappy products we had, what crappy figures we made, and what crappy people we were for not supporting 'System X' or something. Lots and lots of abusive jerks - gaming has never been short of them, let me assure you. We'd have to stand there and take it from them, keeping happy smiles on our faces, because we were there to sell the merchandise and had to let them kick us in the balls as often as they wanted to.

And behind the scenes, everything we were trying to do was being undermined by the people back home, mostly in Phil's other group, who'd tried their own had at being A Big Publishing Company, and not done very well. See also the comment from the same people made recently:

Me: "Why are you always bad-mouthing us?"
Them: "Because you are so good at what you do, you're making us look bad."

I've been screwed over by gamers in all sorts of ways, from people who thought that they could run a game convention better that I could (they couldn't) to people who thought that they could run a game company better then I could (they couldn't) and who whined and complained about it when they actually had to do some actual work to people who have right flat out stolen stuff off the table and from our house - there's been a lot of that, over the decades - because they are gamers and entitled to whatever they want.

(My wife is still amazed that I still like gaming, after all this time, and commented that I have the patience of a saint. Give the hundreds of ass-holes I've had to deal with over the years - see other posts back up-thread for more examples - she may very well be right. But she also paid for the double-face deadbolt locks on the house, and came up with our very restrictive policies on visitors.)

So I can sympathize with anyone who calls it quits. I walked away in 1987 and I walked away again in 2012 over the same old people doing the same old thing. Been there, done that, got the cases of T-shirts I got stuck with after the client stiffed me on them.

Originally Posted by Spinachcat

Wow. That blows chunks.

I was an Akbar & Jeff fan too. Cool comic.

BTW, were the TSR people asshats to all other RPG publishers? Or just the Arneson Heretics? Way back when, I'd heard some stories of TSR people trying to get Chaosium pushed out of early GenCons, but not from any reputable sources.

Why didn't Dave support Tekumel? Was it just bad business sense? I get the motivation to piss off TSR, but considering the need for AGI to make a profit, its weird that you weren't supported.

It did, and still does in a lot of ways. I get a lot of would-be tycoons trying to get in my front door, as they're convinced that they are the hottest thing since sliced bread.

It depended. if you were successful, the various minions would give you hassles; if you were a nobody, and flying under the radar, they left you alone because you didn't count in their view of the world.

AGI never 'needed' to show a profit. It was funded entirely out of Dave's D&D royalties, and to the best of my first-hand knowledge no AGI product ever paid for what it cost to print, let alone sell. AGI was pretty much Dave's way of getting back at TSR for getting so much crap from the people down there; he pushed the creation of GAMA for the same reason - it was, for all intents and purposes at the time, the 'anti-TSR coalition' in the industry. Which industry consisted of TSR, and some pocket change that everybody else fought tooth and nail for.

Given what we had, and our skill set, if Dave had put the kind of money, energy, and attention into Tekumel that he did into projects like "Mutant", the history of gaming would have been very different. Please keep in mind that I liked and respected Dave, and still think he's a great guy; it's just that after a great many years of trying to 'give the secret of my success' to him and his buddies on how to sell the product, he and they never did understand what made the game hobby and industry tick. Dave was - right up to the day AGI closed - utterly convinced that what gamers really, really wanted was to play black-powder historical games, both board and miniatures styles. This 'role-playing thing' was all nonsense, and just a passing fad with no staying power. Dave's product line consisted of games done by his friends who had gotten messed around by TSR, and that was pretty much the basis for the company.

Tekumel, being one of those 'role-playing things', just never had any support internally at AGI. I had originally contracted with AGI to publish my miniatures rules, and a 'game developer' was appointed to 'develop' the rules into a product. I never had any meetings with the guy; never heard anything back from either him, Dave, or AGI as a company. After the year's contract ran out, I got the rules back, did them at my own expense as a 'lunch-time project', and they sold pretty darn well (if I do say so myself) over the decades. Same thing with all of Phil's texts; print runs of 250 for each, and that was it. We had it all, at the beginning of the 1980s, and it was all simply frittered away.

(If I sound all cranky, it may be because I've spent the day in the game room getting new shelves up to re-organize the files and archives. I'd rather have been painting, thank you. I've had forty years of cleaning up after other people's bright ideas, and it's gotten old. Sorry.)

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yep; one of Phil's more amazing nights, too. I think it was when we were trying to get home after that stupid little mud-brick castle siege, when we stumbled into a tubeway car station out in the middle of the desert. Of course. Phil's nasty deserts all started to look the same after the first couple of times we were in them, so it could have been later on...

You may be right. And you are CERTAINLY right that one damn desert looks like another.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

It did, and still does in a lot of ways. I get a lot of would-be tycoons trying to get in my front door, as they're convinced that they are the hottest thing since sliced bread.

It depended. if you were successful, the various minions would give you hassles; if you were a nobody, and flying under the radar, they left you alone because you didn't count in their view of the world.

AGI never 'needed' to show a profit. It was funded entirely out of Dave's D&D royalties, and to the best of my first-hand knowledge no AGI product ever paid for what it cost to print, let alone sell. AGI was pretty much Dave's way of getting back at TSR for getting so much crap from the people down there; he pushed the creation of GAMA for the same reason - it was, for all intents and purposes at the time, the 'anti-TSR coalition' in the industry. Which industry consisted of TSR, and some pocket change that everybody else fought tooth and nail for.

Given what we had, and our skill set, if Dave had put the kind of money, energy, and attention into Tekumel that he did into projects like "Mutant", the history of gaming would have been very different. Please keep in mind that I liked and respected Dave, and still think he's a great guy; it's just that after a great many years of trying to 'give the secret of my success' to him and his buddies on how to sell the product, he and they never did understand what made the game hobby and industry tick. Dave was - right up to the day AGI closed - utterly convinced that what gamers really, really wanted was to play black-powder historical games, both board and miniatures styles. This 'role-playing thing' was all nonsense, and just a passing fad with no staying power. Dave's product line consisted of games done by his friends who had gotten messed around by TSR, and that was pretty much the basis for the company.

Tekumel, being one of those 'role-playing things', just never had any support internally at AGI. I had originally contracted with AGI to publish my miniatures rules, and a 'game developer' was appointed to 'develop' the rules into a product. I never had any meetings with the guy; never heard anything back from either him, Dave, or AGI as a company. After the year's contract ran out, I got the rules back, did them at my own expense as a 'lunch-time project', and they sold pretty darn well (if I do say so myself) over the decades. Same thing with all of Phil's texts; print runs of 250 for each, and that was it. We had it all, at the beginning of the 1980s, and it was all simply frittered away.

(If I sound all cranky, it may be because I've spent the day in the game room getting new shelves up to re-organize the files and archives. I'd rather have been painting, thank you. I've had forty years of cleaning up after other people's bright ideas, and it's gotten old. Sorry.)

The rest of all y'all folks need to realize that a LOT of this is shit we only found out much, much later. Lambs to the slaughter we were, in some ways.

"We are two little Hmelu who have lost our ways..."

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

...Please keep in mind that I liked and respected Dave, and still think he's a great guy; it's just that after a great many years of trying to 'give the secret of my success' to him and his buddies on how to sell the product, he and they never did understand what made the game hobby and industry tick. Dave was - right up to the day AGI closed - utterly convinced that what gamers really, really wanted was to play black-powder historical games, both board and miniatures styles. This 'role-playing thing' was all nonsense, and just a passing fad with no staying power. Dave's product line consisted of games done by his friends who had gotten messed around by TSR, and that was pretty much the basis for the company.

Tekumel, being one of those 'role-playing things', just never had any support internally at AGI. I had originally contracted with AGI to publish my miniatures rules, and a 'game developer' was appointed to 'develop' the rules into a product. I never had any meetings with the guy; never heard anything back from either him, Dave, or AGI as a company. After the year's contract ran out, I got the rules back, did them at my own expense as a 'lunch-time project', and they sold pretty darn well (if I do say so myself) over the decades. Same thing with all of Phil's texts; print runs of 250 for each, and that was it. We had it all, at the beginning of the 1980s, and it was all simply frittered away.

Now that's interesting. Would have never guessed this based on my unofficial Interview with Dave back in 2004. A couple things. Did know he was a grognard, and that he liked naval miniatures games. Always thought he was very much like me, and liked both wargames, and roleplaying games, with about an equal measure. These days I lean towards running RPGs more than playing, or wargaming, but I'm still open for just running or playing about any good game.

First time I played EPT was in a campaign around 1980 or so, then after that, it was 1987 before I met another guy that was willing to run the game. I never saw EPT as available, or even on display in any of the hobby shops, toy stores, or game stores that I frequented out in Colorado in the late 70's or early 80's. I heard about the game of course, and it always got great reviews and people who actually had played it spoke about having a good time playing it. After 1981 I didn't see anyone at Ghengis Con (That being the big annual wargaming & RPG convention in Denver) running EPT, and it was simply this mystical thing that was just spoken of, and not seen anywhere in my gaming circles.

Same thing with Dave Arneson. He was pretty much off my D&D radar after 1979 or so (more on this later), and he didn't get back on my gaming radar until about 2004 or so. I thought for awhile he just quit and was completely out of gaming all together. I took a sabbatical from any type of gaming myself beginning in 1986, and that break would last until 1991 or so, and then followed that up with another break from 1995 to 1999. These breaks were not caused by gaming, but by other real life distractions that expanded to envelope all the other aspects of my life. Now cold winters indoors in Indiana in the late autumn and winter now give me ample time to work on games in my spare time.

...Which brings me to my question. Once I did get back into gaming, I went looking for a copy of EPT. The original TSR boxed set was already sadly out reach, being in the hands of collectors that would bid hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for a single complete original copy of the game. I was talking with Lou Zocchi one day about some of my favorite older games, and I mentioned that I had always been looking for a copy of Empire of the Petal Throne, and he went into the back of his booth, and he fished up a copy of EPT: Swords & Glory Vol I. that had been sitting on the lee side of one of his magazine wracks and said I could have it for $20 (Which I snatched up of course), and after some further discussion ended up buying a perfect set of AWI miniatures rules that he also had in stock, that was a first edition, that had been originally published in 1976. If there's something you really, really want in gaming, even if you don't even think it exists, you can ask Lou about it. If he doesn't have a copy of what you are looking for, he knows someone who does and will hook you up,or will find someone who is interested in creating it for you. He also does real magic tricks.

When I asked him about the other EPT rules he simply said they were out of print, and that he had sold out the copies M.A.R. that he had licensed under Gamescience to him to make and sell. Now this book I had (the blue book) was originally published in 1983. Now Dave was still selling EPT at that time. Did he just do another license to Lou for some extra income, or is there another interesting story about all that?

Also, if anyone here happens to have an extra copy of Swords & Glory Vol II: Players Handbook, at a reasonable price, I'd be interested in picking it up, just so that I have the full Gamescience published set. Right now I just use D&D to run EPT, and that works perfectly well, but it would be kind of nice to have the complete EPT.

The unplanned interview with Dave Arneson

The original EPT is now available in PDF.

Also, part of what went on with AGI is that Dave, bless his memory, thought the tastes of he and his friends were more mainstream than they were. In my upcoming book (soon, real soon) I have a chapter talking about how TSR as late as 1975 had way more wargame products than RPG products. But in 1976 Dragon split off of Little Wars, and Little Wars died in 77 or 78.

By the time Dave started AGI, all the "wargamers with some RPG interests" like he and his friends already had D&D and had pretty much ignored AD&D. But the marketplace for that kind of gamer was saturated. He was, essentially, almost ten years too late, and never realized the saturation of what he wanted to be his market.

Also, the D&D bubble burst around the end of 83 and things were never the same.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

You may be right. And you are CERTAINLY right that one damn desert looks like another.

I dunno; I'll check my campaign notes and see. It's been a while.

Have we mentioned how much we hated desert trips?

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

The rest of all y'all folks need to realize that a LOT of this is shit we only found out much, much later. Lambs to the slaughter we were, in some ways.

"We are two little Hmelu who have lost our ways..."

Oh, yes, very much so. One of the sadder things about being interviewed by one of the recent D&D documentaries has sitting in or watching all of the interviews with the people we knew back then. Some of them were, and still are, real creeps.

Gronan and I learned the hard way to believe nothing, trust no one, and rely on ourselves for anything. Otherwise, there was a pretty good chance we'd get ripped off. Being nice people was a bad idea, we found...