Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Personally, Tekumel holds little interest for me but the historical perspective on the gaming industry and the miniatures discussion keep me interested in this thread.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Personally, Tekumel holds little interest for me but the historical perspective on the gaming industry and the miniatures discussion keep me interested in this thread.

Oh, sure, understood! Tekumel isn't something that appeals to everybody - and never will be! - but I'm delighted that I can come up with things that delight and inform...

I remember my cousin had Dave Arneson's The First Campaign and a copy of Swords and Glory (volume II I think). I don't know how he came across them living in Medicine Hat. My best guess is the Sentry Box in Calgary but I'm not sure how often his family got out that way after we moved to Raymond. Anyhow, I was aware of Tekumel by 1984 as a result. At the time my Dad was unemployed and I was mostly designing my own adventures and rules for D&D or Traveller, but I read whatever I could when I had a chance. Sometimes I think Tekumel really needs to exist as a series of beautiful full color coffee table books. Sure, that's what most published rpgs amount to these days but I just mean in the sense of an immersive visual journey tied together with beautiful prose. On the other hand there is something to the apocryphal mimeographed stacks of small type and crude hand drawn illustrations. Oh I know it's been produced with better production values and different systems and such but somehow, I tend to want rules separate from setting. I never understand the urge to publish stat blocks for everything, I guess. GURPS was way better before they started doing that.

Maybe Tekumel hasn't found the format that would bring me in or something.

You know, a series of coffee table books with gorgeous artwork and some explanatory notes isn't the worst presentation I could think of for Tekumel.

Thanks,

The thing is that it's this big, vibrant world and most people can't be dragged into reading even one page of exposition let alone ten. I find rpgs work best with broad and obvious settings. But National Geographic style pictures and maps and factoids can suck people in where no amount of text would. I'm not sure who could do the art Frank Frazetta of course but maybe that Tony Dizliteri or Charles Vess.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I remember my cousin had Dave Arneson's The First Campaign and a copy of Swords and Glory (volume II I think). I don't know how he came across them living in Medicine Hat. My best guess is the Sentry Box in Calgary but I'm not sure how often his family got out that way after we moved to Raymond. Anyhow, I was aware of Tekumel by 1984 as a result. At the time my Dad was unemployed and I was mostly designing my own adventures and rules for D&D or Traveller, but I read whatever I could when I had a chance. Sometimes I think Tekumel really needs to exist as a series of beautiful full color coffee table books. Sure, that's what most published rpgs amount to these days but I just mean in the sense of an immersive visual journey tied together with beautiful prose. On the other hand there is something to the apocryphal mimeographed stacks of small type and crude hand drawn illustrations. Oh I know it's been produced with better production values and different systems and such but somehow, I tend to want rules separate from setting. I never understand the urge to publish stat blocks for everything, I guess. GURPS was way better before they started doing that.

Maybe Tekumel hasn't found the format that would bring me in or something.

I agree with you, here, and this is something I talked to Phil about from the beginning. I pointed out that games / rules come and go, depending on fashion, and that he might find it more viable to concentrate on the world-setting aspects that made Tekumel unique. I honestly don't know if he ever absorbed that; and in the circumstances of the time, where everybody and their dog Rover was convinced that they could write a better set of RPG rules then those two losers Gyagx and Arneson (The contempt felt for those two was very real and very pervasive) really told against that concept.

I've run into the obsession with stat blocks myself, and watched countless games sessions at conventions and the FLGS where it was all about the mechanics and the world-setting cane in a very distant second. I was told, by a would-be Tekumel publisher, that the very first thing I would need to do for him was to come up with a bunch of new character classes and monsters (with new stats to match) in order to make Tekumel 'work' as a game. If I didn't come up with a way for players to do 'builds' - and for him to sell more stuff to them - then there wasn't any future for Tekumel.

The obsession with rules does boggle my mind - see also the moment when a guy in the FLGs told his buddy that they can't use Sherman tanks for WWII games "because we don't play that set of rules"...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

You know, a series of coffee table books with gorgeous artwork and some explanatory notes isn't the worst presentation I could think of for Tekumel.

Agreed. The history of Tekumel publishing is littered with the corpses of more and more recondite rules sets that don't play to Tekumel's strengths and instead wallow in stats and number-crunching. Roll-playing, instead of the role-playing that Phil did in his actual games.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Thanks,

The thing is that it's this big, vibrant world and most people can't be dragged into reading even one page of exposition let alone ten. I find rpgs work best with broad and obvious settings. But National Geographic style pictures and maps and factoids can suck people in where no amount of text would. I'm not sure who could do the art Frank Frazetta of course but maybe that Tony Dizliteri or Charles Vess.

Well, I think you've hit it on the head. Play to the strengths, not the weaknesses.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I honestly don't know if he ever absorbed that; and in the circumstances of the time, where everybody and their dog Rover was convinced that they could write a better set of RPG rules then those two losers Gyagx and Arneson (The contempt felt for those two was very real and very pervasive) really told against that concept.

snip

The obsession with rules does boggle my mind - see also the moment when a guy in the FLGs told his buddy that they can't use Sherman tanks for WWII games "because we don't play that set of rules"...

I think the thing is that most people didn't play the game Gygax and Arneson wrote. They used bits and pieces and tended to run more character-focused-narrative games. In my experience the use of reaction rolls, henchmen and hirelings, and even domain building are pretty rare in actual practice.

There's also bad and inexperienced DMs and players who lack the emotional maturity to play a game that isn't focussed on their uber hero crushing everything in its path. And therein, I believe lies the source of the problem. Gygax and Arneson were experienced wargamers and dare I say it fully functional, mature, adults. Most people's experience with D&D is the result of playing with a fourteen year old DM who hasn't read the rules, hasn't read the module, and thinks he gets to win by killing the party.

No, the rules can't cure asshole but they can't create grown-ups either. I think Palladium's success with the younger crowd is a clear point of data here. Characters that start with an average of 50hp (30 SDC + 10 PE + 4 + Physical Skill bonuses), don't die as easily. The Strike, Parry, Dodge system is flat out brilliant, easy to learn, easy to play, and constrained to a functional modifier range. Palladium "broadened the sweet spot" and "bounded accuracy" in the early nineteen eighties. I still think Palladium's system was a major model for the changes in fourth edition D&D. I'm equally sure the designers wouldn't admit it on the rack while having molten lead poured on them.

On the other side of things:

As I've said before, the rigidity of people's brand name miniatures for the game mindset baffles me. I can get it from a store's perspective, companies like Games Workshop give a bigger discount for higher volume. I carry Battlefront's Flames of War but when I started out I had one little distributor who's since gone under and he carried The Plastic Soldier Company who make nice little kits and carry some really nice Russian kits at half to a third of the price of Battlefront. At the time Battlefront had a stug and a Sherman in plastic and the Sherman required extensive trimming and three spring clamps to assemble. Everything else was in resin and metal. Now Battle Front has a very nice plastic range, though their troops are closer to 1/87 than 1/100. The PSC half tracks have passenger figures that fit on the benches when the whole thing's assembled. But I don't bring in PSC anymore. The reason is simply that it undermines my sales of more expensive Battlefront products. Recently there've been rumours that the other stores are thinking about carrying Flames of War. If they do I may think about carrying PSC and letting Battlefront go. It'll depend on if they're ordering from Battlefront and doing a good job of stocking it or just ordering odds and ends through Diamond. In the latter case I'm all for it, I'll clean up when their customers start coming in looking for all the stuff Diamond can't get them because Diamond only carries core product and new releases and seldom stocks anything with any depth.

But yeah, there's plenty of reasons a retailer wouldn't let people use off brand figures. Though there's still the problem of on-line discounters and ebay purchases. I know they drive the local GW retailer nuts. But as you guys have learned, people will take everything they can get for free, badmouth you behind your back, and run to the new guy down the block when he offers a 1% discount.