No problem. He had his last big whammer of a heart attack and passed away the day after Thanksgiving in '97; I had to sign off on the morphine that he wanted to end the pain. Made for a very tough time. I do miss him, especially on days like today; he survived everything that the Pacific War could throw at him.Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya
How did the "paying for a kid" trick work back in the 50ies, Uncle? (Also, quite un-Tsolyani, I'm sure most of us don't care about the legalities around your heritage - I can certainly guarantee for myselfThank you!
Understood; no offense taken or offered. I just have different life experiences then most people. My dad paid $5,000 for me in '56, on the grey market; I have the original contract and cancelled check. I also have various birth certificates, with very different dates of issue. They all do seem to agree that I arrived on Dec. 6th, though. So, I really am a bastard, and I have the Official Paperwork to prove it. Very Tsolyani, really.
Agreed with all your points. The book will tell our stories, and some of Phil's. Nothing more, nothing less.
And I have been taping conversations for decades; you would be simply amazed at what people will say in front of an open microphone that they know is there and recording....
But if we can turn it into game fodder...I have already used Chirine, shortly, in a campaign, and it worked great, so why wouldn't we do it one more time?
And the taping part is wonderful! Consult a lawyer, but I doubt anything can stop you from publishing a list as I suggested...
He sounds like a great man to me, FWIW.
"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward." - Rocky
Ah. My deepest and sincerest condolences. He was quite a man. God grant that he may rest in peace, and rise in Glory.
And survived the Pacific with an elfin sense of humor intact. Remember the time we got some firework rockets with bent fins and they proceeded to chase us all over your dad's back yard while he stood there and laughed himself sick at our frantic scramblings for cover?
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
Do you feel that the high tech as presented in Traveller is too "modern" of a portrayal for Tekumel?
Should there be more knobs, sliders and switches on "high tech" equipment?
What about robots? We have Ru'un and Yeleth as examples.
From your experience, are robots humanoid or more built for a function?
=
From AsenRG: How did the "paying for a kid" trick work back in the 50ies, Uncle? (Also, quite un-Tsolyani, I'm sure most of us don't care about the legalities around your heritage - I can certainly guarantee for myself
My about-to-be mother was unhappy that all her friends were having babies, and she wasn't. She also didn't want to have to do all that messy stuff, and wanted something 'off the shelf'. My about-to-be dad mentioned this to a friend of his, who was a judge, and who happened to know a young unmarried lady who was 'in a family way' - and with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks, no less. A very specifically-worded contract was drawn up, the judge got $2,500 for fixing the paperwork and legal stuff, and my birth mother got all her medical expenses paid for and a $2,500 payment. All very grey market, and dubiously legal, but they got away with it because the only applicable laws were the old anti-slavery statutes that we're still on the books. The authorities didn't want the enormous scandal that a trial under those statutes would have cause, so here I am.
The Tsolyani don't worry about 'bastardy'; one is born into a clan, and that's pretty much that.
But if we can turn it into game fodder...I have already used Chirine, shortly, in a campaign, and it worked great, so why wouldn't we do it one more time
Feel free! Let me know if you need anything.
And the taping part is wonderful
I follow the state and federal laws on this, and it's saved my bacon on a number of occasions. The phrase, "let's play the tape, then" has an amazing effect on people.
He sounds like a great man to me, FWIW.
Both he and my stepfather were very special people, and I miss them both.
Agreed!
And yes, it was a very special Fourth of july.
His sense of humor could pop out at the most unexpected moments. When I was signing up for Army ROTC, the FBI was very concerned over my ten identical fingerprints and lack of proper documentation. My dad was 'invited' in so as to prove that I was a real person; they asked him for his ID, and he fixed the captain doing the interview with a stern gaze and asked him what his clearance was. The captain did a double take, and after an exchange of code phrases and hushed phone calls to unlisted phone numbers, my dad finally revealed his US government ID. Which was from the Atomic Energy Commission, and had a clearance level so high you had to have a 'Top Secret' rating just to look at the thing.
So, what was my dad doing? Do a Google search for 'SNAP-25'. My dad helped take us to the moon, and I still have the slide rule and drafting instruments that he used to do it.
Hmm, the government is quite secret. When I google Snap-25 all I get is something on genetics. Although the suggested search adds the words 'atomic bomb,' when I try that search I still just get the genetics. Well played, government.
My father was in that oxymoronic organization, Army Intelligence, during the Cold War. He was proud to tell me that he had a class Q clearance, and knew where all the silos were.
Never played Traveller, really, so I'll hazard a guess here. I'd say 'yes', because Phil's view of the technology of the Ancients was a lot more 'Art Deco Streamline Moderne' then anything else. There are not a lot of immediately identifiable controls on his devices, and it a lot of cases we couldn't even begin to figure out what the thing was, much less what it did and how it worked. I think if you go to the website of the Minneapolis Institute of Art you can see a lot of examples of this technology, or look up the 1939 World's Fair. For Phil, that was what the future was going to look like.
Which was, it has to be said, very unsatisfying for a great number of Tekumel fans over the years, who expected that Tekumel's high tech would look like Star Trek, Star Wars, or anime rather then the 1940s and 1950s scientifiction, space opera, or ERB books that Phil had grown up with and been inspired by. In a lot of the games I used to run at conventions and such, I had to graft on a lot of knobs, etc. to keep the punters happy.
Phi's 'robots' range from the mechanical to the humanoid, depending on their function. We ran into and were chased by everything from the very humanoid Yeleth to the very 'mechanoid' combat Ru'un to the simplest of garbage collection robots. Here again, I'd suggest looking at 1940s and 1950s SF publications - the 'pulps', as it were - for the kind of thing that Phil described to us.
Does this help, at all?
1:58 in this trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vEI1GZraAk
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
Try SNAP 27.
Even the the "cutting edge" storygamers for all their talk of narrative, plot, and drama are fucking obsessed with the god damned rules they use. - Estar
Yes, Sean Connery's thumb does indeed do megadamage. - Spinachcat
Isuldur is a badass because he stopped Sauron with a broken sword, but Iluvatar is the badass because he stopped Sauron with a hobbit. -Malleus Arianorum
"Tangency Edition" D&D would have no classes or races, but 17 genders to choose from. -TristramEvans
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