Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Uncle,

I love that Sakbe road!!! Which brings me to my question. Could you please tell us what you know about "The Young Master"? Thanks.

H:0)


PS I know May have asked before. Whatever you could tellme would be great...

Thank you! It was the very first project I did after I got my nice little table-top table saw. We never had anything like this, back in the day, as extruded foam wasn't available and the other options open to us were just not practical.

Ah, the Young Master. No, you hadn't asked, before (I think). He was (and still is, for all I know) a religious leader up in the mountains east of Hekellu, and from the Tsolyani point-of-view a pretty major pain in the ass. He was behind a lot of the trouble in the Chaigari Protectorate, trying to gather the tribes into some sort of loose alliance to get us out of Chaigari and maybe loot Hekellu in the process. We did the micro-campaign out to Sirsum and back to repress him and his allies, which we did pretty handily at the Battle of Anch'ke by killing about half his followers. This kept him fairly quiet until the start of the Tsolyani civil war, when he took the opportunity handed to him on a platter by the withdrawal of the Legion of the Translucent Emerald from Hekellu to come down from the hills and sack the city. The last Tsolyani Governor of Hekellu got killed in the fighting, in a heroic last stand in the flames of the collapsing New Palace; nobody knows what happened to his wife and two daughters, as they disappeared in the chaos and have never been found.

(Personally, I didn't shed any tears over Hekellu getting sacked and burned. We'd had an immense amount of trouble with them, almost open rebellion, and it was a real trial to keep the place more-or-less quiet during my tenure there. I felt sorry for my replacement, who inherited a real mess - hostile tribesmen in the hills, traitors within the walls, and no troops to speak of. It got him killed.)

Phil drew on his knowledge of the Northwest Frontier for this person and the events. There was a local holy man who led the tribes in a very similar rebellion against the British, and Phil took a lot of the 'local color' from this campaign. May I suggest a book by somebody you might have heard of?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9404,

better known as: "The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War" by W. S. Churchill

Phil, once we were in too deep to get out, finally 'confessed' and suggested the book. I got a copy, and have never regretted it. It's a great source of material for GMs in a campaign.

This micro-campaign was Phil at his best, with the usual (for that time and place) blend of 'straight role-playing' mixed with 'skirmish wargaming'. We never did meet the holy man himself, just a lot of his followers who were out to kill us; we did unto them, before they could do unto us. For more material, I can also suggest the War on the Nile, the campaign against the Mahdi. Same sort of leader, charismatic and dangerous.

Does this help?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Thank you! It was the very first project I did after I got my nice little table-top table saw. We never had anything like this, back in the day, as extruded foam wasn't available and the other options open to us were just not practical.

Ah, the Young Master. No, you hadn't asked, before (I think). He was (and still is, for all I know) a religious leader up in the mountains east of Hekellu, and from the Tsolyani point-of-view a pretty major pain in the ass. He was behind a lot of the trouble in the Chaigari Protectorate, trying to gather the tribes into some sort of loose alliance to get us out of Chaigari and maybe loot Hekellu in the process. We did the micro-campaign out to Sirsum and back to repress him and his allies, which we did pretty handily at the Battle of Anch'ke by killing about half his followers. This kept him fairly quiet until the start of the Tsolyani civil war, when he took the opportunity handed to him on a platter by the withdrawal of the Legion of the Translucent Emerald from Hekellu to come down from the hills and sack the city. The last Tsolyani Governor of Hekellu got killed in the fighting, in a heroic last stand in the flames of the collapsing New Palace; nobody knows what happened to his wife and two daughters, as they disappeared in the chaos and have never been found.

(Personally, I didn't shed any tears over Hekellu getting sacked and burned. We'd had an immense amount of trouble with them, almost open rebellion, and it was a real trial to keep the place more-or-less quiet during my tenure there. I felt sorry for my replacement, who inherited a real mess - hostile tribesmen in the hills, traitors within the walls, and no troops to speak of. It got him killed.)

Phil drew on his knowledge of the Northwest Frontier for this person and the events. There was a local holy man who led the tribes in a very similar rebellion against the British, and Phil took a lot of the 'local color' from this campaign. May I suggest a book by somebody you might have heard of?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9404,

better known as: "The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War" by W. S. Churchill

Phil, once we were in too deep to get out, finally 'confessed' and suggested the book. I got a copy, and have never regretted it. It's a great source of material for GMs in a campaign.

This micro-campaign was Phil at his best, with the usual (for that time and place) blend of 'straight role-playing' mixed with 'skirmish wargaming'. We never did meet the holy man himself, just a lot of his followers who were out to kill us; we did unto them, before they could do unto us. For more material, I can also suggest the War on the Nile, the campaign against the Mahdi. Same sort of leader, charismatic and dangerous.

Does this help?

Uncle,

Great!!! Helpful, yes as always!!! Would you have any other information about him? Such as his religious doctrines...Thanks.

H:0)

PS Thank you Uncle. I just downloaded your reference for a future read. Only 844 pages...now I have electronic pile-up as well!!! See post 5056... :0)

Excellent book, Uncle, and one that I hadn't seen despite having lots of respect for the author. Thank you!

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Hear, hear!!! I have a stacks of tomes waiting for me!!! Work is in the way(not to mention Wife eyeing my piles, thinking where she can put them)!!! So for me in about two months back to normal!!! I'm sure I will have even more questions for uncle!!!

H;0)

I know the feeling.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Hear, hear!!! I have a stacks of tomes waiting for me!!! Work is in the way(not to mention Wife eyeing my piles, thinking where she can put them)!!! So for me in about two months back to normal!!! I'm sure I will have even more questions for uncle!!!

H;0)

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I know the feeling.

Sigh!

Shemek

If your wife is eyeing your piles, you'd better see a proctologist.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I disagree with feinting and Invisibility since Invisibility is definitely under Surprise, and feinting has its own rules. But yes, I should amend that to surprise, numbers, magic, or Reasons, though I lump most such Reasons under Surprise.

Still, most of them wouldn't happen in duels or one-on-one fights, which was my point.

Duels are extremely rare, and so are one on one fights for that matter. And the insistence of later games in treating an adventuring party as a series of one on one duels is one of my major complaints against them. If a band of Orcs is hiding in a side passage and attacks the PC party from the side, the notion that "they don't get flanking because they don't attack from two sides at once" is so fucking ridiculous that whoever thought up that rule, and anybody who thinks it is a good idea, needs to be punched repeatedly in the nutsack until they smarten up.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Interesting. I've always assumed that 'facing' applied, especially in the case of surprise or a melee, as that fits in with my own experiences. And being a miniatures player, that was probably reinforced by the kind of games I'm used to playing. The 'custom of the house', all these years, has been "Do I get a chance to face the thing?" followed by "Roll percentile dice, your dexterity of less." as we used to do in EPT. Other rule sets was a straight percentile dice roll, with the GM/referee making a counter roll for the attacker.

I dunno; I like 'facing', as it does provide an extra little bit to the combat, and rewards tactics and thinking. Old-fashioned, probably.

RPG writing got taken over by people who never played a wargame in their lives, and the hobby has suffered drastically as a result. The rules have been rewritten for D&D so that "tactics" now work like they do in most computer games; use your "special gizmo" attack at the right moment, or, more usually, mash a certain series of buttons in a certain order.

"wargame" is now a term of derision in most RPG circles.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

If your wife is eyeing your piles, you'd better see a proctologist.

Ah Glorious General!!! I am getting older. Funny about a year ago, I had just such a problem. 28 days out of work...!!!
Thank God for civil service!!!

H;0)

PS I had originally used stacks, but changed it for piles!!! Hahahahahahaha!!!!