Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Play half a dozen games of Diplomacy.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

From what I can tell, above ground, the "messes" are sorted out with tact and civility.
Below ground, and in our "Real World" far less civility is used.

I guess that is part of the "problem" we need to do social interactions via rules in Tekumel as maybe we have mostly forgotten/discarded now in "Real Life".
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Good point. I can think of a number of instances where simple civility and politeness would have avoided a nasty situation - both in-game and in real life.

(It's like the kinda surprised and shocked reaction I got when I asked the proprietors of this forum if I could add a link to my 'Chirine' cards. Okay. I guess I'm just too old-fashioned or something.)

Originally Posted by Greentongue

This is where I circle back to my previous point. While this is said to to important, the rules don't give a framework or structure for doing it.
I understand that like in OD&D, the GM provided this and not the written rules. For it to work, everyone has to have a common assumed context.
There is no requirement for it based on the original published rules.
It could just as easily be a planet in the "Flash Gordon" universe.
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Point understood. I think what we're looking at is the way some people back in the very early days of RPGs assumed how the games would be played. Arneson's Blackmoor games had this same issue; I don't know if Gary's Greyhawk games did at that time, so this may be an artifact of what's been called 'the Twin Cities' play style. Given that the original D&D has some of the same issues with not codifying social interactions, it could be said that both games assumed that the GM and players would have this shared assumptions; as you mention, and has been documented in "Playing at the World" (amongst others), that what we're looking at is a larger group of people here in the upper Midwest in the mid-1970s who all had many of the same contextual assumptions stemming from their board gaming, miniatures gaming, and PbM gaming.

And yes, Tekumel could very well be a planet in the 'Flash Gordon' universe, just as Barsoom and Arisia are worlds in the Tekumel universe that Phil took us to.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Which have you found to be the better choice?
Leaving an ancient item alone or trying to use it where you are?
What about if you have nothing with you that you know can overcome an opponent you are confronted by?
Is it worth taking a risk on the unknown powers of a found item?
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Well, normally we'd take the item with us, and test it out in the open where it would - hopefully! - do as little harm as possible to the surroundings. If, on the other hand, we were faced with a nasty situation like what you describe, we'd try the thing - nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Gronan would say - especially as we had nothing to lose. So, in that kind of situation, yes; sometimes taking a risk meant we'd survive the latest Dire Peril.

And then you get maniac button-pushers like Harchar and Origo (Turshanmu's nephew, for goodness' sake - you'd have thought he'd known better!), who'd just have to try the thing out right now. Which Phil was always hoping for, as mayhem would ensue.

Chirine,

Some questions on geography.
What is the name of the river that Thraya and Sokatis are located on?
Is the Forest of Gilraya, specifically Kerunan (near Sokatis) a wild and "unknown area," or have people settled in there, in large numbers, and started to log, build, etc?

Shemek.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

So you never felt that things were "rigged to go wrong"?
In your experience, did found items generally do things that were harmful to the person activating them or just things that were unexpected?
Any good examples?
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No. The devices did what the devices did; Phil was, as Gronan has remarked about our play style, quite honest about things like this. He had a clear idea of what the thing was supposed to do, and it was up to us to figure out how it worked. Things were rarely harmful, unless one was stupid, but the vast majority of ancient devices did very unexpected things - to us, anyway, as we usually had no idea what they were supposed to be in the first place. Phil got a lot of laughs out of watching us try to figure out what an ordinary household device from the 1930s 'Art Deco Streamline Moderne' era did. (The Minneapolis Art Institute has a lot of these things on display, by the way, and photos are on-line.)

Two come instantly to mind; the clothing steamer and the set of grease cups that you separate by pulling a ring on the spherical package. Hilarity ensued, but the Ssu Gronan used these on were simply annoyed.