Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Greentongue

As deadly as Tekumel can be, how often have you had your group of players killed off?

How often was going down against overwhelming odds and how many were just some failed saving throws?
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In Phil's campaign, over the decade+ that we played with him, never; I think we had one or two casualties - dead, with a lot of wounded along the way - but we as a group played a very careful and very cooperative game. We looked after each other - as you say, Tekumel is very deadly.

In my various campaigns, once, due to a really stupid move by one of the very experienced players; he got a little too arrogant and self-assured, and screwed up very badly. The rest of the party started making bad saving throws against what he'd unleashed, and they all wound up dead. The one surviving NPC got them all carted back to Butrus.

I don't think they knew the concept of fudging.

Hard to say, because Phil played by Free Kriegsspiel methods; we'd roll dice, he'd roll dice, and then he'd tell us what happened.

Now, as a military commander, yeah, I took losses. But I tended to win, which helped mitigate losses. But you cannot win a battle without experiencing losses.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

So, as far as you know, no "fudging" of rolls occurred. You, and your players, lived or died by their skill or luck alone?
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No, nothing of the kind; we were honest players, and Phil was an honest GM / referee. 'Cheating at dice' is a concept we didn't have any time for, and we didn't play with known cheaters.

Yes, we did; it was all about being able to think on our feet, use our skills, and maybe roll some lucky dice.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I don't think they knew the concept of fudging.

We knew about it, we didn't believe in it, we didn't do it, and we were pretty offended by it. If I catch anyone doing it at my table these days, they're out and never allowed to come back. Ever.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Hard to say, because Phil played by Free Kriegsspiel methods; we'd roll dice, he'd roll dice, and then he'd tell us what happened.

Now, as a military commander, yeah, I took losses. But I tended to win, which helped mitigate losses. But you cannot win a battle without experiencing losses.

Agreed; from what we could tell at the table, he was not one to cheat. As I have said, it was a cooperative venture, between players and GM; there has to be a certain degree of trust between them for this to work. See also Gronan's comments on my Gary Con game and intellectual honesty.

Yep. We took our losses, learned from our mistakes, and got to be pretty good at the business.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

With the chance a "magic-user" could be taken into custody by a temple or the government, how often was this a concern?
Did people that had psychic powers have to be discrete when using them, if they were not part of an organization already?
If they were impressed into service, how restrictive did things become?
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I'm not sure that I understand the question.

There are no 'magic users' in the Five Empires who are not part of a temple; such people get identified pretty early on and become members of a priesthood / temple. There are no 'freelancers' like you find in D&D and other RPGs. As for being taken into custody, anyone can be arrested; one simply has to make any charges stick, and usually they don't if you're clever.

There are no 'psychic powers' in the way that they seem to be defined in D&D and other RPGs, with the one known exception of the natural telepaths of the Nyemesel Islands and the Lost City of Bayarsha. There are also natural telepaths in the Five Empires, who are also of this ancient breeding effort by the Lords of Humanspace and later rulers - like the Hokun - and these are also identified and trained from an early age.

'Psychic' magic, in the way Phil defined it, is the use of other-planar power without the use of 'props'; 'ritual' magic uses gestures and props to use larger amounts of other-planar power.

(I think that a lot of this is a result of Gary's view that players of the day were not ready for a 'sword and planet' type of game, which is why he marketed EPT as a 'fantasy' game. I could be wrong, of course.)