Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Greentongue

chirine: You say the you start people off with a position in society in your games. Do the players get a booklet of the contacts they know with why and for what?
How do you start them with the integration needed to function in a very social game?

Can you give examples?
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No, they don't get a booklet or anything. While I could do a personalized summary of all their relations and contacts, I prefer to do the 'country cousins' gambit, where the PCs come in and stay at their clan-house. From there, we role-play how the locals take the new people around to meet everybody in the clan and then in the outside world; the PCs all get introduced to their relations and contacts in a social setting, like at parties at the clan house or temple or in 'work-' or 'life-related' settings. (I do provide note-pads for the players, and folders for the PC sheets and notes; these are color-coded by religion, the same as were Phil's index cards, and like with Phil and our games with him the players are responsible for their own lives.) And, or course, the world continues running right along, so there are normally all sorts of opportunities for adventures on offer.

An example. Well, what I like to do is a pre-game discussion with the player to see what they are interested in playing. I do not use the random tables given in S&G for rolling up a player's clan, temple, and family; I know people who do this kind of thing, and the PCs usually get abandoned after a few sessions. Once a player indicates what they want to do, we come up with a PC and a little bit of their personality, and then get on with the game session.

So, had a friend of the first two of my daughters who wanted to play; had the conversation with her to introduce her to Tekumel, and she liked Dilinala. had her roll a couple of d100 to get an idea of lineage and such, and we came up with her 'backstory' of being an administrative priestess of the Temple who worked as a temple courier who was from Hauma and who was being transferred to Jakalla for outstanding performance in her duties. So, she duly arrived, reported for duty after settling in at her clan house, and off she went on her round of introductions and greetings. It all worked pretty well; the player has moved on to go to college, but the PC is still there, doing her job and getting occasional promotions.

Does any of this help?

From Neshm hiKumala: It sure helps a lot, yes. Thank you. But, of course, now I have more questions!

The above sentence suggests that there may be other air-ships, ones not manned by any of the wizards. Would that be a fair reading?

Yes. There are pockets of working ancient technology in remote areas, and not all of them are beinr used by Wizards - or humans, for that matter!

Also, "this got mentioned in the NW Frontier booklet": by Jove, we need a centralized encyclopedia or guide for all this information! It's all so spread out over so many books over so many years.
Yes, one can always dream.

I'm sorry. I so used to having all this information right to hand. The thing you mention has been proposed t the Foundation by at least two people that I know of- I'm always being asled to be a consultant on projects like this - but as I understand it neither has gone anywhere.


Love the humour here.

Question: would Chirine and his companions immediately recognize the strange man at the helm of that magical flying chariot as one of the Undying Wizards, or would they gradually come to that realization, either by asking "the man" directly, or by suddenly remembering an old tale about such wizard or other? Would their mind be blown by that, or would they accept it as something that happens from time to time, 'cause you're on Tekumel and in Tsolyanu and this how stuff rolls sometimes.

As 'adventurers', this kind of thing is our usual business, so we'd accept it and get on with the job. When stuff like this shows up, one assumes that powerful beings are involved, and one treads carefully. So, yes, to all of the above. Phil assumed that we'd think fast, and think on our feet.

And just to be clear, these Undying Wizards are closer to being gods than to being human beings, are they not? They were humans in the past, though, correct? How far into the past? When Tekumel was still part of the Humanspace? I guess it depends on the Wizard.

Not really; they are mostly humans, with a few non-humans rumored to be out there. The 'undying' part comes from their - as Phil put it - 'getting lucky in the genetic sweepstakes' and not being subject to the aging process. They are not immortal and can be killed, but because they've been around so long they really are very powerful and very skilled at staying alive. So, not gods, but on speaking terms with them.

What would the people of Avanthar chat about the following day? Of some weird "UFO" in the skies of the city? Of an attack by the Red Hats or the Baron's armies? All of the above?

Yes, as well as rolling their eyes and simply ignoring the whole incident. Remember that the gods are very real, and so stuff like this gets ascribed to them or other powerful beings beyond the ken of mere mortals.

As a follow up to my question on the PCs' realizing that they are chatting with one of the legendary "wizard" figures, this suggests to me that Tsolyanis and other people are overall quite used to witnessing super weird and freaky occurrences, like a weird object flying through the skies, or like a nexus point suddenly popping at the top of a temple, or like a strange creature suddenly appearing and vanishing in the middle of a market. Would that be correct?

We educated people are used to it, but that's because we deal with it all the time. Everybody else either ignores it, calls is a divine manifestation, or panics. Seen all of the above, in the same incident.

You've mentioned this event here in the past, but I love the idea of having a group of adventurers going about their often dangerous albeit pretty mundane adventures (as mundane as they can be on Tekumel), and suddenly being asked to "oh, could you attack Bassa's fortress for me?" My response would be, "Huh, what? Are you insane?!"
Shows you how utterly detached from reality these wizards are.
So, actually, how did the wizard convince you that you could even do it?!

Well, we'd had a year of my carrying Elyoa The Blue Fish around in a bucket of water, and with him trying to cast spells with his long flowing fins. It was getting really old, and we wanted to go home. So, the deal was that Thomar would restore Eyloa to human form, and we'd do 'this little errand for him'...

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Yes, it indicates the GM has a LOT of "up front work" that has to be done.
The GM has the info and the players have to "play it out of them".
Can't very well play "off the cuff".

Wish there was more detailed information of the organizations.
Some "A Day in the Life of a ___" would be worth it's weight in gold.
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Um, yeah, I'd agree with this - in the same spirit that Dave and Gary (and Phil, of course) had the mantra of "Know your world setting!" I have been told by quite a few players that I run Tekumel pretty much 'off the cuff', but I think that's because I've had about forty years of studying and playing in the place to fall back on. GMs back in my salad days were sort of assumed to have done a lot of thinking about how their world-setting worked 'on the ground', and I still work this way. Having a good memory, as Gronan has observed, also seems to help.

I geniunely don't know how I do it. Maybe Gronan can give some insights on this?

Agreed about wishing that more of Phil's stuff was available. he did an immense number of short little articles on all sorts of organizations and subjects, and I'm genuinely surprised that these are either unknown or unavailable; it'd take very little effort of make this material available on-line, and would go a long way to explaining how Phil 'did Tekumel' in his own games. I thought that a lot of these used to be on-line at DriveThru RPG, but they may have been taken down as part of the 'proper interpretation' policy that seems to be in force.

"To Serve The Petal Throne" has a lot of 'day in the life' stuff, and people seem to like having it set into the context of both our lives and adventures. I'm hoping that people will find it useful, that way.

Werl, I think "pay attention and think about it" has a lot to do with it.

And "What makes this setting unique?" In the case of Tekumel, it's the fairly rigid societal structures (as opposed to feudal Europe.)

That, plus if you read enough books and see enough movies, you get a really good "gut feel" of what makes "an adventure." Basically, who wants something, and who else doesn't want them to have it? There's your adventure.

And how does one describe "play off the cuff?" I could run a whole D&D adventure off the cuff, or for that matter, I could run a Star Wars adventure off the cuff. Every time I've watched any of the eight Star Wars movies counts as "preparation for the game," and every book I've read on either medieval history or pseudomedieval fantasy counts as preparation for a D&D adventure.

And once you know the names of the Five Empires and have generated half a dozen Tekumelyani names, and once you get some feel for the difference between modern "individual first" thinking and pre-Enlightenment "your role in society is more important than you as an individual are," go watch some old Ray Harryhausen movies and run an adventure. Because people are people, on some level. After all, Greek myths and legends are still fun reading.

Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Half a dozen pictures will give your players an idea of what they think Tekumel looks like. After that, an adventure is an adventure.

"It's called a Shen. This is what it looks like."

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Half a dozen pictures will give your players an idea of what they think Tekumel looks like. After that, an adventure is an adventure.

"It's called a Shen. This is what it looks like."

This exactly.
This is why I always keep my tablet handy so I can show my group what their characters have seen. It has worked like a charm over the years.

Shemek.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Werl, I think "pay attention and think about it" has a lot to do with it.

And "What makes this setting unique?" In the case of Tekumel, it's the fairly rigid societal structures (as opposed to feudal Europe.)

That, plus if you read enough books and see enough movies, you get a really good "gut feel" of what makes "an adventure." Basically, who wants something, and who else doesn't want them to have it? There's your adventure.

And how does one describe "play off the cuff?" I could run a whole D&D adventure off the cuff, or for that matter, I could run a Star Wars adventure off the cuff. Every time I've watched any of the eight Star Wars movies counts as "preparation for the game," and every book I've read on either medieval history or pseudomedieval fantasy counts as preparation for a D&D adventure.

And once you know the names of the Five Empires and have generated half a dozen Tekumelyani names, and once you get some feel for the difference between modern "individual first" thinking and pre-Enlightenment "your role in society is more important than you as an individual are," go watch some old Ray Harryhausen movies and run an adventure. Because people are people, on some level. After all, Greek myths and legends are still fun reading.

The Glorious General has my total support in this matter, that's exactly how I've always been doing my "totally improvised" sessions!