Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Bren

I heard about Bardelys from Black Vumea's Really Bad Eggs blog. The book is also quite good.

I saw Napoleon at the 1980 US re-release at the Kansas City Midland Theater, a 3,573-seat movie palace built in 1927 in French and Italian Baroque with an exterior in a Renaissance Revival style in cream glazed terra cotta brick, adorned with engaged pilasters, winged figures, leaves, flowers, swags, volutes, urns, and arches. A four-story arched window rose above a copper and gold marquee that contained 3,600 light bulbs. The theater is well known for its over 500,000 feet of gold leaf, five giant Czechoslovakian hand-cut crystal chandeliers, irreplaceable art objects and precious antiques, and spectacular wood and plaster work. One couldn't have asked for a better venue.

I love Black Vumea's blog!

My 1980 "Napoleon" was at the Walker Art Center here in Minneapolis - nowhere nearly as great a place to see it, though!!!

Originally Posted by Greentongue

It seems that you prefer giving personal examples which is wonderful but are also spoilers for your books. I want the first book in my sweaty hands and to be surprised.

I feel bad asking game rule and setting style questions mostly.
I think my saving grace is that (hopefully) I'm not the only one that can use the answers.
I'd like to think many can use "training wheels" to get started not just me.
"Training wheels" of what gives the setting its unique flavor.

I think that one of the things that made the old games great was the unknown.
These days players can Google up the opponent and "solve" most situations.
Most of the thrill of The Unknown is gone.

I think that since EPT has been under the radar for so long, it still has a lot of that unknown remaining.
Especially if people realize they can make it their own* and ignore the wrath of the Setting Nazis.

*Mine being a mix of D&D, Traveller and Call of Cthulhu.
=

Um, all right, I can understand this, but I don't regard my stories as being 'spoilers' for the book. The book will be in six volumes, because it's going to run about 300,000 words. I'm already up to 108,500 words across the six volumes, with no sign of slowing down. My career in the campaign fits pretty well into six major phases, hence the six volumes. Also, 300,000 words is about three times longer then most novels come in at, these days, and if we tried to do it all in one volume it'd be thicker then a cinder block. (And a lot heavier, too.) We had about 2,500 real-time hours of gaming with Phil, so I have a lot of stories to tell.

If anything, I regard my stories here as 'bait', to get you to have a look at Phil's work and - when it's available - my own account of my times with him. If what you read intrigues you enough to want to have a look at Tekumel, then I've done what I promised him I'd do so many years ago.

And please don't be afraid to ask me questions, of any kind. That's what I enjoy doing, and why I'm here.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Chirine,

Would you happen to know who did the cover art? Just Curious.

More questions forthcoming...

H :0)

No, I'm sorry; I do not. I will ask Bill for you, next time I talk to him.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I love Black Vumea's blog!

Me too. He put me wise to Stanley Weyman who was a writer I was not familiar with. I'm sad that he's gone inactive as I really enjoyed his posts and his La Ballet de l'Acier Obsidian Portal site gave me so much of a head start for my Honor+Intrigue game and so many ideas.

Originally Posted by Bren

Me too. He put me wise to Stanley Weyman who was a writer I was not familiar with. I'm sad that he's gone inactive as I really enjoyed his posts and his La Ballet de l'Acier Obsidian Portal site gave me so much of a head start for my Honor+Intrigue game and so many ideas.

Yep, great blog.

And I can understand how it's hard to keep a blog going, too. There comes a point where one starts to wonder if anyone is listening, or that one has anything useful to say. I hope he'll be back; patience, I guess.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

In the EPT rule book there is table with loot types.

How often is coins actually the loot and not just common items of equivalent value?
Do these come from the transfers of wealth between clans for those "balancing" payments previously discussed?

Seems like a good way to generate an adventure would be to create a loot pile and work backwards to where it came from?

Say this was a "balance payment", would the originator still owe the money unless the receiver had taken receipt?
Can it be claimed by a clan if it is recovered by a 3rd party? Which clan?
If so, how would that work?
=

In my experience, 'coins' were coins. They might be of different historical periods, suitable for where they were found, but the numbers in the table represent the 'modern-day' cash value. The accounting was easier for Phil, that way, and it was also the style of play at the time.

So, you might have a hoard worth, say, 3,000 Kaitars / Gold Pieces, but it might be made up of the Engsvanyali 'Suor', which is a large coin worth about 100 Kaitars. The intention was to give the GM more options for further adventures.

Some hoards are the 'transfer payments', some are lost treasure hoards like you find all over the UK. It varies, and it's a possible adventure starter. So you have it exactly.

If this was a lost payment, unless the sender has a receipt from the delivery, they still owe it as a debit - and PCs get hired to recover the lost cash, if at all possible.

Yes. Think maritime salvage. If there is good solid evidence as to who the hoard belongs to, it's the custom to return the money to the owner - who is expected to provide the finders / salvors with a nice reward of some sort. This is an easy way into a good clan for new PCs, by the way.

Otherwise, without proof of ownership, it's normally 'finders keepers'. A box of goodies with no owner's name on it is fair game for any passing PC, really.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

That brings up the question of another type of adventure.
Since so many records are kept by the various clans, I assume they go back possibly millennium for some of the older, and possibly more important, clans.

Would there be title battles that PCs can become involved in?
Say to collect that lost document or seal that proves linkage in a chain of ownership?

Naturally there is the option of a Statute of Limitations but how was it handled that you know?
=

a. Yes, they do; so do the temples and some legions.

b. Yes, and yes. Verbal agreements are worth the parchment that they're written on.

c. There is no statue of limitations in the Five Empires, as far as I know. I quoted a precedent that was a thousand years old to Phil when Vrisa got arrested, and he had to admit that it was still valid.

(That was when he told me that 'Chirine, you've gone native.")