Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I keep hanging in there. The layout will arise, some day. I have to do something with all that stuff...

Agreed about Phil's troubles with his publishers. He was voted "Most Difficult Author in the Game Industry" by GAMA; Mike Stackpole ran the 'awards' ceremony, and I got to get up and give the acceptance speech. I still have the 'Ralphie' in the basement; they'd managed to get a heap of the Ralph Cramden figures from the TSR "Honeymooners" board game, and Stackpole used those as the 'trophy'.

Phil's basic problem with 'external' publishers was that they ran their businesses as businesses, and were in business to make money. Phil had lived and worked in academia for almost all his working life, and tended to think of 'publishers' as being like the in-house press shop that most universities had. Phil had a very 'academic' approach to publishing, which - I suspect - is why most of his Tekumel publications have such a 'textbook feel' to them. He kind of got away from that with his novels, as he wrote with a very 1940s - 1950s voice in them; they do read like a lot of the texts that are from that same period in F/SF history. Phil had kind of the same issues with us 'internal' publishers; he had his ideas, and we tended to treat the thing as being a business that had to pay for itself. It never did, of course; it took about thirty years to sell off all 250 copies of "Deeds of the Ever Glorious".

Personally, I think Phil would have been delighted to have the modern version of the Internet to work with; he could have done anything he'd wanted to, put it up on his own website, and sold the PDFs or files with little or no overhead. Back in our day, the economic and production hurdles to get anything published - let alone marketed! - were why there never were any really economically viable Tekumel products. Aside from EPT itself, of course, but that was - by Brian Blume's own statement - the right product in the right place at the right time. The only other product that sold well (for the game industry, of course) was "Ebon Bindings", with about 1,000 of the four editions being sold over the decades.

Miniatures were a very different story, but that was because of the very intense marketing effort and the very low barriers to having product. Back in the day, Phil had a very hard time getting his head around the notion that the lead was what was supporting his books, not the other way around.

These days, it's a very different story; I've watched all too many Kickstarters founder over the high costs of miniatures production. It's a very different market, and a very different hobby these days.

I realized I have thoughts on this but am too pooped right now, but don't want to forget.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Ah, keeping the Legion fed. What a joy. On the Sakbe roads have your marching orders ready and sign for everything in the Legion's name. And that's a good reason to start the day's march early, first legion to the campsite gets the dry places to sleep and the best grub.

Milumanaya? Gods. A nightmare.

More later...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Hmmmm. The basic game minus the later stuff is still excellent.

....am I still daft enough to start amassing huge amounts of beadboard packing shapes?....

Interesting thought, there, and in line with the question we were asked at Gary Con two years ago about running The Great Mos Eisley Spaceport Raid once again. Certainly, we could amass the stuff to do it with, and book the space at a game convention; it would not be all that hard to run.

However, I think it would be a flop. First, RPG players who subscribe to the 'I hate miniatures!' school would flee from the sight; very few RPG players would understand the Braunstein nature of the beast and not get into the spirit of the thing; and I suspect that what's left of the miniatures hobby would freak out over the setting. So, I think we'd get very few players, which does cripple the game pretty badly. (Look how hard it is for Maj. Wesely to get players.)

If you did want to do this, I'd suggest doing it at FFG in their Event Center as a Big Special Event, tied in with their game. That way, you'd get the players needed to make the game a success, and who are used to the idea of little (plastic, in this case) people on the table. You'd largely avoid the fanatic OSR types and the edition warriors, too; different segment of the market.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I realized I have thoughts on this but am too pooped right now, but don't want to forget.

Understood. I'll look forward to your thoughts on this; personally, looking back on our time in the hot seat, I think we were doomed from the beginning. I've come to the opinion that Phil came along about twenty years too soon; he would have done much better in this modern world of desktop publishing and PDFs.

On the other hand, looking over the contents of the basement, we did manage to have a little fun along the way...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

More later...

"No cucumbers, Chirine? Not even for ready money?"

"No, my General, not even for ready money." (with apologies to Oscar Wilde)

It's been entertaining of late, my General, doing the research on to to feed a legion. (Or any other large body of troops, for that matter.) While I'll be briefly touching on this as I do more of our military adventures in Three, and Five, the real exposition will happen in Six as it gets to be a plot point.

For RPGs, it also provides an endless source of adventures for players, trying to get the convoy through or trying to save it from the opposition. Heck, even cities needed regular supply runs to stay alive. (Although, once again, we get to that blurry grey area between 'real RPGs' and skirmish miniatures - back where that Arneson fellow lived.)

Heroism abounds; anybody remember Camerone?

Turner Classic Movies ran "Wind and the Lion" yesterday, much to my delight, and (so I am told) will be running the massive Harrison-Taylor-Burton "Cleopatra" on Friday. Pack a lunch; it's an epic of the Cecil B. DeMille school of film-making.

Picked up the new 1/900th quinquereme yesterday, in honor of Actium; it reminded me of Anthony's big honker of a flagship. Now, all I need is a golden barge; I have the decorative young ladies-in-waiting to fling flowers at the astonished citizens. Got some turning circles, too; "Out oars!"

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Look how hard it is for Maj. Wesely to get players.

It's hard for Maj. Wesely to get players?

If you did want to do this, I'd suggest doing it at FFG in their Event Center as a Big Special Event, tied in with their game. That way, you'd get the players needed to make the game a success, and who are used to the idea of little (plastic, in this case) people on the table. You'd largely avoid the fanatic OSR types and the edition warriors, too; different segment of the market.

This, Uncle, is spot-on, that's all I can say.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Understood. I'll look forward to your thoughts on this; personally, looking back on our time in the hot seat, I think we were doomed from the beginning. I've come to the opinion that Phil came along about twenty years too soon; he would have done much better in this modern world of desktop publishing and PDFs.

There's some truth to it, but then, his contribution might have had a harder time being noticed, given the amount of competition.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

It's hard for Maj. Wesely to get players?

This, Uncle, is spot-on, that's all I can say.

There's some truth to it, but then, his contribution might have had a harder time being noticed, given the amount of competition.

From what I've been seeing, yes; he doesn't do a lot of blatant self-promotion, being the kind of modest person he is, so it does take some effort to drum up enough players for a game. Which is too bad, if you ask me; more RPG types could use the experience with it.

Yep; it's that I've been seeing.

Agreed! I do think he'd be kind of lost in the rush, but he - as well as all of us in the hot seat over the years - would have been a lot happier and I daresay a lot more productive. A lot of gamers these days have a hard time grappling with the difficulty back in the day of making any products available due to the then-existing barriers to production and marketing. Which is what killed AGI, to a great extent. Thin product line with too high an overhead, and very minimal marketing efforts. Looking back on it, and looking at the sales numbers, we 'boat people' were a lot more cost-effective and productive with our little efforts. Sigh. Too bad, really; there were some really good products, there, and some of them found homes after the collapse and are still with us today.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

From what I've been seeing, yes; he doesn't do a lot of blatant self-promotion, being the kind of modest person he is, so it does take some effort to drum up enough players for a game. Which is too bad, if you ask me; more RPG types could use the experience with it.

I understand modesty might be an issue. No, honestly, I do...
But the idea that any Referee, not to mention one who has been running games for Gygax and Arneson, would have trouble finding players still almost boggles the mind. How many players are looking for anyone willing to run a game?

Agreed! I do think he'd be kind of lost in the rush, but he - as well as all of us in the hot seat over the years - would have been a lot happier and I daresay a lot more productive. A lot of gamers these days have a hard time grappling with the difficulty back in the day of making any products available due to the then-existing barriers to production and marketing. Which is what killed AGI, to a great extent. Thin product line with too high an overhead, and very minimal marketing efforts. Looking back on it, and looking at the sales numbers, we 'boat people' were a lot more cost-effective and productive with our little efforts. Sigh. Too bad, really; there were some really good products, there, and some of them found homes after the collapse and are still with us today.

Oh yes, productivity would be a huge advantage. With the kind of effort you boat people have been putting in, had you focused all of those into editing things Phil had written and layout, you could have had the second biggest shop at Drivethru/RPGNow after WotC!

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I understand modesty might be an issue. No, honestly, I do...
But the idea that any Referee, not to mention one who has been running games for Gygax and Arneson, would have trouble finding players still almost boggles the mind. How many players are looking for anyone willing to run a game?

Oh yes, productivity would be a huge advantage. With the kind of effort you boat people have been putting in, had you focused all of those into editing things Phil had written and layout, you could have had the second biggest shop at Drivethru/RPGNow after WotC!

Understood, but he's running a game that nobody's really heard of or that has a tie-in with one of the big-name brand games that people see on the shelves. One has to be a 'name brand' these days, with a commercial tie-in to something that's on the shelf, in order to get people to stop by and take a look. No product, no sales, no interest. I've seen some really excellent miniatures lines fade away into oblivion because of this; great figures that are good for all sorts of games, but the Official, Authorized rules sets that they were created for got very little marketing support or exposure and so the lines dropped out of sight.

Dave's Braunsteins are heaps of fun to play, but they don't have the 'name recognition' that attracts casual players.

Agreed; if we'd had all of the stuff that dribbled out over the past thirty years all at once, we'd have had it made. See also 'no product... etc.'