Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Nope; I wish it had been. What I was told by some of the Big Names in the OSR was that my playing Ye Olde Games "from the bad old days" was a sure sign that I was not a Real Gamer, and having BadWrongFun in my game group. Which I thought was funny, but then these are the people who brought us TARGA.

The target shield had been invented long before them. They just want you to think it was them!
(Also, I just had to google Targa, so I can't comment yet. But my reply was a joke on them being Darth Vaders).

And for me, what made it even funnier / sadder is that I do not consider myself a 'gamer'; I think of myself as a model builder, and that my games are an excuse to show off what I can do with bits of foam and paint. Think 'Blue Peter' with percentile dice - "Here's one that I made earlier..."

I'm kinda surprised.
I mean, I know you put a lot of effort into preparing for games, but I've always thought that you're doing that in order to have models for games, not the other way around.

Looked at the game you suggested. "Length" and "width" of the dice is a new on on me, as are "wiggle" dice. From my perspective, it's a nice little game, but the mechanics savor of reinventing the wheel. I generally do the same 'one roll' with a set of percentile dice, and go from there. See also my game videos, on my YouTube channel. I think that in practice, this game would move along smartly, which is something I look for in games; the game session bogging down in mechanics really spoils the fun - which is what we used to call what I think is now called 'immersion', which I think is something else entirely.

Well, "height" and "width" are just "quality" and "speed" of the success, so that's understandable - they're supposed to be new if your base is D&D and similar systems.
Not sure what you mean by "reinventing the wheel", though. It does what it sets out to do, and puts a new spin on some things. Is it groundbreakingly different? No. Does everything need to be new in order for the game to be worth playing? Also no, in my experience - though answers might vary on this one.
(BTW, I used this little booklet, along with some GM-facing stuff from bigger versions of the same system, to run a campaign that lasted a couple years. Well, except I set it in 1674 China. Still, I think those rules are just the right amount for new players, and almost all the players were new to RPGs in this game).

Agreed; if it works for you and your gamers, then it's good. I was just reminded by the guy's obsession with Dave's shirt by some of the marital arts people we used to know, who were always asking Gronan what the secret of his success was. H would reply, "Practice for a couple of hours each day for a year", and they would be very upset as it wasn;t the answer they were looking for. "No! No!" they would cry, "Teach me your Secret Blow that stops my opponents in their tracks!!!" Gronan would look baffled, and try again. It never worked, sad to say.

Surely they'd understand that the secret blow is "capture the centerline and hold it"? Of course, in order to achieve this, practicing a couple years would help...
(Yeah, I know, the people that insist on a Secret Blow are among the least likely to "get" this:P. But one could hope Gronan at least tried that approach, too).

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

"Cleopatra" (1934) - DeMille and Colbert are back, in yet another epic; Phil was hugely amused at the historical inaccuracies, but loved the look of the film. Miss Colbert is the model for Queen Nayari of the Silken Thighs, by the way, and you'll see why in this movie.

I'll admit, when reading about Queen Nayari, I exclaimed "Cleo!"
Which attracted the curious look of my wife from across the room. Then she realised I'm reading a new system or setting, and didn't even bother asking.

Originally Posted by Bren

The idea of the naive neophyte in search of the one secret, unstoppable blow has a long, long history. This is just one of the more recent incarnations.


Just read this recently in Pierre Pevel's book, The Cardinal's Blades.

Heh, this is a good one. I prefer the explanation of "secret strikes" in "The teacher of fencing" by Arturo-Perez Reverte, but this one also addresses part of the reason why many people keep looking for the unstoppable strike...
Still, I admit they're almost tied!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

The mark of the truly good staff officer is to be able to divine the intentions of his commander, and then to have the needed information or resources to hand when the commander requires them.

I've had this panel's image on file for about a month now, Glorious General, figuring that it might just be needed...

`

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

And this was the same thing we did in Phil's campaign; Phil would throw some Dire Peril at us, and we'd think out way out of it because we'd thought about the possible situations in advance and had a 'drill' for dealing with the crisis.

Phil: "Hah! Your legion is suffering from an outbreak of dysentery!"
Gronan: "Oh, really; here, let me see the report, there, Professor. Chirine?"
Chirine: "Here you are, Glorious General! As per your orders, the latrines were all dug well away from the water supply, and they're working fine."
Phil, disgusted: "Fine. Be that way. You get attacked by bandits in the middle of the night."

And so on, and so on, and so on...

Reminds me of the people from our fencing school when they were running Exalted for them. All the Dire Perils were predicted in advance, likely reactions of the enemy were predicted and exploited...
And I'm not even talking about fighting, they were running an intrigue, followed by a trade war!

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Remember when we were escorting Vrisa and her hubby and Origo and a few others who happened to be travelling north towards Milumanaya with the Legion and we saw an old ruin, and Phil did everything but put up billboards with flashing signs saying "Player Characters Go Here?"

(For the rest of you, the non-military PCs went into the Underworld and had their adventure, and Chirine and I calculated that if they went down about the time the front of the Legion passed the entry, they were back out before the rear guard of the Legion had finished passing the entrance.)

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yeah, that was one of the funnier game session! Phil was already in a cranky mood, as we'd fought off his local tribesmen pretty handily; I'd specified that we were using the same formation that Richard I used at Arsuf, using the Sakbe road instead of the sea to protect our flank; being cagy, I drew up the plans and made sure not to mention Arsuf by name. Phil would have recognized it instantly, being an authority on the period...

So, they came on in the same old way, and the Glorious General beat them in the same old way. Phil was hugely cheesed off, as he got a whole lot of his brand new light infantry killed off for n good reason or result. So, when the ruins showed up on the line of march, Phil almost dared us to take some of our troops in there to get them ambushed; we simply smiled at him indulgently, and told him "That's what the player-characters are for, to have adventures..." and sent them in.

They cleaned out the ruins and busted the ambush, and were back in time for dinner.

Just to keep the pressure on, I smiled sweetly and offered to get one of those brand new model railroad light-up billboards for Phil to have, when ever this kind of thing came up. He knew I'd do it, too, and in Tsolyani...

That probably earned you lots of XP!

Originally Posted by Bren

I'd include it somewhere as the run amok remains of some botanical garden lit by weirdly glowing globes that have continued running unattended for thousands of years...

...or are those globes truly unattended?

Bren, have you been reading my descriptions of the Underworld?
Oh, no, wait, there wasn't a garden, just the globes! Sorry about that.
OTOH, now I know what my Underworld has been missing! I thought of adding the remains of a hi-tech fitness, but not a garden, my bad!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

You have it. And the globe lights also appear as rod-shaped ones, and I've seen them as flattish disks. They are powered by other-planar energy, and do last for what amounts to forever. They have no moving parts inside, and simply stop working if you break them - like Origo did, when he tried to open one. They are not hollow, and we did managed to put him back together.

Funny questions time...
Apart from the Eyes, is there anything that can be described as big, glowing orbs with weird powers and inherent intellect?

Originally Posted by Bren

на английски е The Fencing Master.
But I liked it. I like everything by Perez-Reverte that I have read.
Gardens in the underworld are important. It gives the prey of the bigger monsters something to eat.

Pero en español es "El maestro de esgrima", y un maestro podria ser alguien que sabe como esgrimir, or alguien que puede ensenartelo!

Or in other words, I just translated the title, not bothering to check how it's been published in English. My bad.

Totally agree with your point on gardens. That's why I said I should have had more of them.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

a. TARGA fell apart because - from what I saw, standing on the sidelines - it tried to be 'the gatekeeper' for the RPG hobby. It had a major finger in the pie over the D&D 5e 'consultantgate' fracas, which is why I stayed well away from it. Yes, at least one of the movers and shakers in the organization thought he was Darth Vader.

...OK, that's now officially hilarious. Let's leave it at that.

b. Nope; I do build 'on demand'. but usually the models give me the ideas for the games; I do additional models to suit. The really great thing about being in Phil's campaign was that he was a never-ending source of inspiration and ideas for models - which is why I have so much on the shelves...

Heh. If I could do models, I imagine it would be games giving me ideas for models...
I can't, though, so the point is moot.

c. It's a good, solid game, I think, and well worth a look. My comment - and I should have been more clear - was directed at the thought that I've seen this kind of mechanics before, in several miniatures skirmish games, where the focus is on small 'warbands' and for which one tracks their 'XP' in miniatures games.

Ah, got it. I'm not familiar with said miniature games, so I didn't know it's got similar points with ORE.

They are a sort of 'cross-genre' type of thing, where RPG elements are blended with 'miniatures' elements to make a game that will tap into the RPG market.

Sounds interesting, but again, unfamiliar.

d. That's her!!!

e. No, he was just really cranky for about a month.

Then you did a good job. Though I'm not sure why a GM would be cranky over that. I've come to expect such stuff and enjoy it along with the players.

f. Yes; the AIs that run various things.

...if I hadn't sent you an Actual Play description, I'd have hesitated to say it, but that's exactly how those look in my campaign as well!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

a. TARGA fell apart because - from what I saw, standing on the sidelines - it tried to be 'the gatekeeper' for the RPG hobby. It had a major finger in the pie over the D&D 5e 'consultantgate' fracas, which is why I stayed well away from it. Yes, at least one of the movers and shakers in the organization thought he was Darth Vader.

Dude, what are you talking about?

TARGA fell apart years before 5E launched, and "consultantgate" had nothing at all to do with it - TARGA was dead well, well before that. TARGA was an organization that started without a mission, and then predictably failed to coalesce afterward when everyone had different priorities. It didn't try to keep anyone out of anything. If anything, it split apart because it tried to bring everybody in without any sort of agreement of what the purpose was.

I'm not part of the group of people who commonly term themselves the "OSR" either, as I like the original games and have no need for LotFP-style sims (or correspond/collaborate with their admirers much at all), but I do skim a lot of their online traffic looking for stuff to use, and I've never seen anyone try to keep you out of anything. (This of course doesn't mean it couldn't exist somewhere.)

Where were you told you and yours weren't welcome to collaborate?

Before I thought you were just confused as an observer that was unfamiliar with that community, but the bit about observing TARGA from the sidelines during consultantgate is so specific that's hard to fuck up accidentally. It does make me wonder if you don't keep dropping this anti-OSR bit every few days just to spread negative impressions about them, for whatever reason. It is something that seems very, very hard for you to get past for someone who claims not to care about it.