Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by ChristopherKubasik

A very mundane question that might well have been answered 300 pages ago. If so, I apologize.

chirine ba kal,

How many players tended to be in a given session in Barker's games? How many players are in the Tékumel games you run?
How much play time session was about PCs running off to deal with their own errands and personal (if any) storylines? How much was spent with the PCs all working together as a "party"?

We might have touched on this, but it was only briefly.

Phil's game room had ten chairs, so that was the maximum. Normally, there would be eight to nine of us regulars; the seats on the south side of the table were for the 'gamer' players, who were pretty constantly in action. The north side was Artists' Row, with Ken, Kathy, and Chris all doing illustrations as we went along. I had the west end of the table to myself, as I had The Portable Traveling Library along with me and so served as the collective memory of the campaign.

I usually had eight to ten players in my two groups, and that's been pretty constants over the years. I'll happily 'surge out' to the sixteen - eighteen that I had at Gary Con a few years back, but that's for special occasions.

'Play time' / 'face time'? As much or as little as was needed - we gamed at Phil's for over a dozen years, and the same here in my most recent game group. Players were / are expected to be able to 'share', and not hog all the play time for themselves. Some nights, like the night Chirine met his Senior Wife, it was all his night; other times, it was all Gronan's or Vrisa's. It all depended on what was happening in our world, and who was the best-suited to deal with the situation. If I was pressed for a percentage / ratio, I'd say that the party as a whole got about half the game session hours over a year's worth of gaming, with the rest of the time usually split pretty equally among the individual PCs as needed.

We all got face time with Phil, and I still do the same with my players. It just varied as to how we used that time.

("storylines"? We had "careers" / "lives", more then anything else... I think... New phrase to me...)

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I've gotten Chevy Astro Vans as rentals a couple of times. They are very, very easy to drive; it's nice. Now, back in the mid 90s the engine was offset to the right so the passenger seat was a bit cramped for a six footer like me, but they may have fixed that. It was definitely one of those vehicles that makes you feel "I could drive this all day."

God, I get weary just thinking about some of the trips we made. Not to mention I am no longer as fond of driving through the night as I used to be.

This. We used to have a passenger Astro that seated six in great comfort; the idea was to us it in combination with the present cargo version for trips. Load all the gear into the steel box on wheels, load the people into the bus, and there you go. The current one has the engine housing in the center, so it's pretty good for trips if you're not the Missus.

Tell me about it. My back hurts just thinking about all those marathon trips we made for Dave while at AGI.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I was envying yor technical skills even before, Uncle! Now I'm amazed, pure and simple.

And it's the end result that matters, in this case.

Follow-up question on Tekumel. This time, I'd like a personal opinion from you and Gronan on a question that even you're unlikely to know the answer for sure (unless you have debated a hypotetical question with MARB).

What would Phil have thought (before the Feist fiasco) about a Tekumel group which, say, was playing in the Tsolyani Empire, but shifted the cultural inspirations/influences more towards the Far East?

It's not all that hard; I am, as they say, handy with tools, and the Astro is easy to keep up. Anything serious, and it goes to the garage that's been looking after it since we got it almost a decade ago.

I actually did have this discussion with Phil a couple of times, over the years. We were talking about how to interest people in Tekumel, and I was looking for similar 'real world' cultures to use as analogs. Classical China, Mughal India, the Aztec and Maya, and the Byzantine Empire were all suggested. Phil's take on it was that one could do anything they wanted in their own game group, all of these cultures that I mentioned - if done realistically - would be so entirely alien to an Amercian audience - specifically a Midwestern American audience in the then-1980s - that one would be better to look at the old pulps for cultural inspiration. Specifically R. E. H. and E. R. B., he suggested.

As I've said, he didn't mind it; what he objected to, in the strongest possible terms, was to people demanding that he change his world to include their their 'artistic vision' as part of Official Authorized Tekumel. Not that I blamed him; we had some really bizarre stuff come in the door, over the years.

Gronan? Thoughts?

Thank you so much for the reply.

As for this:

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

("storylines"? We had "careers" / "lives", more then anything else... I think... New phrase to me...)

Words can be difficult. Sometimes vocabulary is tricky. I certainly didn't mean anything in terms of pre-planned plot. Simply the focus on a particular character which formed, as you say, their life, apart from the rest of the Player Characters.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

As I've said, he didn't mind it; what he objected to, in the strongest possible terms, was to people demanding that he change his world to include their their 'artistic vision' as part of Official Authorized Tekumel. Not that I blamed him; we had some really bizarre stuff come in the door, over the years.

Gronan? Thoughts?

Yeah, some weird shit came in over the transom.

At one point after seeing a museum exhibit on Chichen Itza I was twitting Phil about stealing the word "sakbe," and he shrugged and said "after this many years I no longer remember where most my ideas come from."

Originally Posted by ChristopherKubasik

Thank you so much for the reply.

Words can be difficult. Sometimes vocabulary is tricky. I certainly didn't mean anything in terms of pre-planned plot. Simply the focus on a particular character which formed, as you say, their life, apart from the rest of the Player Characters.

You're welcome!

Understood! Phil had his over-arching 'world in motion' / meta plots that went on, but we interacted with them rather infrequently. We did have an effect on events - like my preventing Prince Mirusiya from getting assassinated - but mostly they were 'background color' for our adventures.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Yeah, some weird shit came in over the transom.

At one point after seeing a museum exhibit on Chichen Itza I was twitting Phil about stealing the word "sakbe," and he shrugged and said "after this many years I no longer remember where most my ideas come from."

Yep. And they were some pretty adventure-filled years, at that.

Chirine,

I was wondering what you could tell us about the underworld beneath Fasiltum. Given its history of rebellion I'm sure its been burned and had parts of it razed several times over the centuries. Did you ever make it to that city, or hear anything interesting that you could relay?


Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

I was wondering what you could tell us about the underworld beneath Fasiltum. Given its history of rebellion I'm sure its been burned and had parts of it razed several times over the centuries. Did you ever make it to that city, or hear anything interesting that you could relay?

Shemek

We were there in late 2354 or so, when there was yet another minor rebellion after the one that led to Elara hi Vriddi getting arrested by the OAL. It was noted in one of the 'Imperial Dispatches', in the old 'Dragon".

The underworld is kinda of underwhelming, as Phil's underworlds go. The more 'modern' upper levels are sparse and full of Vriddi and Vimuhla people, who really don't like visitors. The 'Bednjallan' and 'Engsvanyali' levels are - again, for Phil - pretty ho-hum and not much of a challenge; they have been, as you surmise, been looted to a fine point, and are pretty empty. However...

The sting in the tail of the scorpion is the lowest level, which is Dragon Lords, and is the only known example aside from the one under Malchairan. It's chock full of very ancient and very sacred shrines to Lord Vimuhla, which means that there are also Nexus points to the past - you can also get to Kashi, from there - and some pretty well-stocked arsenals. At least several working aircars, and a tubeway station as well - one of the big ones that handle the troop carriers, not just the usual cars. Not a lot of the usual Underworld creatures - nothing from Sarku or Ksarul, for example - but really devoted locals who take their job of guarding these places very seriously. We had a lot of very hard fighting just to survive, and we were mostly Vimuhla people. I thought that it was more of a challenge then Jakalla, as the 'live garrison' was a lot more active then your usual Undead lot.

As for the city itself, may I suggest Jaisalmer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaisalmer

I think that Phil did a map of the city, but I'll have to look it up. Does any of this help?

Thanks Chirine, this helps a lot! Lots of fodder for mayhem to ensue.
Jakalla seems to be the "big underworld" in Tsolyanu, but is there one located elsewhere that rivals, or even surpasses, the one under Jakalla?

Shemek.