Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Or, someplace to avoid, like The Garden of the Weeping Snows...

Story? I mean really, you just drop that in there and leave it. 

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

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

Well it sounds like you got an experience to me.

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Pero en espa�ol 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.

Not a problem. I thought you might want the English version just because you seem interested in stuff like words. When discussing an expert in certain fields, especially archaic ones, maestro, maestre, master all have pretty similar meanings. So Master in English. �Master� can be a tricky word to use because, especially in American English, there is another meaning to master that has nothing to do with expertise in an endeavor or field of study, but everything to do with slavery and its aftereffects.

Originally Posted by EOTB

You know what? I'm scrapping the post that I was going to write. I get it.

I get it. You are a telepathic Internet psychologist. And you want to share your abilities with us. But you know what, you don't need to engage in telepathic analysis to disagree with someone. You can just state your point of disagreement, point out the contradictions in their argument or any factual inaccuracies, and provide your sources without your dime store psychology.

Me, I�m here for the stories. Do you have any interesting stories?

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Stories are good.
Stories from Actual Play of EPT are even better.
=

I can't recall much from the EPT games in the 1970s so I got nuthin' there.

I was a player in a con session run by Sandy Petersen with RQTekumel. We were in the underworld somewhere fighting some kind of monster. My character was badly wounded...only it wasn't described as badly wounded...it was "the monster reaches over, plucks out your eye, stares at it for a moment, then eats it." :jaw-dropping: I don't remember what else went on in that session, but I sure as hell remember that. I wish I could remember what monster that was. Is there one that is particularly found of eating real eyes?

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.

Hi Chirine. It's Michael/Chgowiz - from the GaryCon game and we've talked since then.

I'd like to share with you what happened to TARGA, at least from my viewpoint. I was heavily involved with TARGA, and I was the guy who tried to organize the fundraiser for the Gary Gygax statue. This was very personal to me, as I like to fundraise, and at the time of TARGA's ... well, it didn't implode as much as whither away, in large part (in my personal opinion) thanks to scottsz and his "Old School Rant" blog.

Here's what I had to say to Tenkar when he repeated the story that was incorrect...

http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/06...ber-targa.html

Michael SJune 24, 2014 at 11:10 AM
There were two things involved in the TARGA dust-up, and since my name and a couple of misunderstandings are being bandied about, let me tell you what happened from my perspective.

TL;DR version:
TARGA was a confused mess, but I worked with it, in a blind faith that we could have nice things. TARGA was unfairly put into the position of being the OSR police when a fuckwad blogger got his panties in a bunch over Zak's (new at the time) blog. I felt kicked in the nuts by the nerd-waaah-brigade and left TARGA, because of what I was seeing as opposed to what I wanted - to just have fun playing games. I could have cared less about Zak. I still could care less about Zak. scottsz (Old School Rant) is a piece of shit.

--------------
The long version, Part 1:

Going back to 2009 (and you can go follow along in the TARGA blog for this), TARGA was set up by some folks with the purpose of... well, that was the big first issue, what the fuck was TARGA supposed to do? Originally, I think Victor Raymond had set it up to promote "International Traditional Gaming Week" and various bloggerati got involved. With the increase in interest in old school gaming, it morphed into this "thing" that some folks thought was the spokesperson of the so-called "OSR", some folks thought it should be something else. A cluster-fuck of committee-think. There were a number of emails, even phone meetings between myself, Jamal, Victor Raymond, Rients, ahhh... I think Raggi was there, but I honestly don't remember.

What I do remember is the sheer frustration. All I wanted TARGA to be was just another way to get people to sit down and play games. Some of the more publishing-related folks, Jamal for sure, and I think Raggi, now that I am writing this and remembering, wanted it more about publishing. The conversation got hung up on "what is old school" and various related bullshit, but in the end, a few of us, myself included, got a rough mission statement hammered out: http://traditionalgaming.wordpress.c...new-focus-you/ Put asses in chairs was the way I phrased it, but we said "put butts in chairs to play games." (YDIS folks, please insert homophobic comments here. C'mon, you know you want to.)

I became the cheerleader and kept the TARGA blog and news going, with a couple of others, but everyone was pretty much doing their own shit. Some people still tried to make TARGA into the old school police, but I ignored it, I didn't give a flying fucking rats-ass, as long as you were playing and it was roughly not 3e+, I welcomed it. I can't speak for the other TARGA guys. It was still an unorganized mess.

Here's part two:
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/06...ber-targa.html

Michael SJune 24, 2014 at 11:11 AM
Part 2

Then came the fucking fundraiser.

http://traditionalgaming.wordpress.c...-auction-2010/ lays it out. Gail Gygax wanted to make a statue of Gary Gygax and so we were going to raise money by selling old school games and donate it. I ran ebay auctions, organized the shipping of items to me, and to the winners. I pretty much did it all myself, not giving other guys grief, just setting this up so you know my perspective. I carried the ball, gladly, and we raised $500. I was really damn proud of that, and I went to GaryCon to help give the check to the Gygax family.

That's when scottsz showed up with the precursor to YDIS - Old School Rant. He had been doing snarky/funny posts until he decided he didn't like Zak's new blog and he didn't like that TARGA had linked to Zak's blog. (http://traditionalgaming.wordpress.c...march-20-2010/)

That GaryCon weekend, when he posted some screed on his blog and rallied the nerd-waaaah-brigade over Zak, I was all happy that we had raised $500. I was pretty goddamned proud of that fact, that people had come together and raised some cash for what seemed like an innocent, but decent cause. I came home to a shitstorm of posts, counterposts, and all sorts of stupid-ass drama. All the good we had done was lost in the really fucking stupid, petty furor over one pissant piece of shit being all up in arms over some artist-type who worked porn and was doing video podcasting over gaming. Big. Fucking. Deal. (I still wouldn't piss on scottsz if he was on fire.)

So it got nasty and ugly and suddenly TARGA was put into the position of being - WRONGLY - told to take sides. WTF? It wasn't like we were saying that we should have CARCOSA-esque real life rituals, it was a FUCKING BLOG. Why the fuck should TARGA take a stand? It felt like nobody gave a shit about "putting asses in chairs" or fundraising or the hard work, all they wanted to was nerd-waaah-rage and to take sides.

One of the ways my Aspergers (and yes, YDIS folks, I'm diagnosed. Have fun with that.) manifests itself is through an extreme view of right/wrong, black/white and when I perceive injustice. This pissed me off to no end and it was the blinders coming off my eyes. I'd just given a speech in August when accepted the Swords & Wizardry ENNIE (on behalf of Matt Finch & Co.) about hobbyist DIY'ers having a voice... and our voice was a bunch of crying. Over a blog. I'd been involved in what I thought was some cool stuff, writing and playing games and meeting people and just having fun... and it was lost for a bunch of crying. Over a blog.

So, I took my ball and went home. After awhile, my Aspie calmed down, I got my act together and started playing and blogging again, but my blinders were off. I started seeing ugly sides of RPG and OSR publishing. I started seeing some shit that just didn't match with what I wanted - just to play games. Put asses in chairs and have some fun. So, eventually, life happened, and I left. I still call it the "so-called OSR."

TARGA died and long live TARGA. I think if more folks had just cared about putting asses in chairs and not being the outrage-nerdrage police that seems to rear itself every so often, it would have been more fun and not ended the way it did.

Now you might have knowledge of "Darth Vaders" but I was there for those phone calls and let me tell you four things:

1. Nobody could fucking agree on anything except that it was a good idea to "put asses in chairs to play games"
2. Nobody wanted to be the cops or arbiters of what was/wasn't old school. It was leaning towards a "you'll know it when you see it" deal.
3. TARGA was not going to go anywhere unless it was about organizing games. Which, twice for a self-proclaimed "International Traditional Gaming Day", it was.
4. If you know "more", please feel free to share, because I'm sure there was shit going on that I don't know about.

I think if TARGA had been more about just playing games, which is where I was hoping it would go, and less about publishers, and had been a grassroots thing, it might have worked.

No, you know what? Strike that, fuck that. We don't need an organization, we just need people to shut the fuck up and play games. Have some damn fun.

Originally Posted by Bren

I can't recall much from the EPT games in the 1970s so I got nuthin' there.

I was a player in a con session run by Sandy Petersen with RQTekumel. We were in the underworld somewhere fighting some kind of monster. My character was badly wounded...only it wasn't described as badly wounded...it was "the monster reaches over, plucks out your eye, stares at it for a moment, then eats it." :jaw-dropping: I don't remember what else went on in that session, but I sure as hell remember that. I wish I could remember what monster that was. Is there one that is particularly found of eating real eyes?

Thunru'u, "The Eater of Eyes".

Originally Posted by EOTB

You know what? I'm scrapping the post that I was going to write. I get it. Phil told stories to you, and now you want to take up the mantle of storyteller to other people. So you go from place to place on the internet looking for people who want you to tell them stories, and leave - with pretty much the same spiel - any place that doesn't show a certain level of interest. And I don't want to overly detract from the storytelling, which is rightfully in demand here.

But I notice in your response that you avoided the strange accusation about TARGA and consultantgate, something sure to feed vitriol here, of all places, since it served as the epicenter for consultantgate.

I ran across an interesting tidbit while I was googling "chirine ba kal" and "dinosaur", trying to find where people were taunting you so severely regarding your supposed obsolescence.

Consultantgate was after 5E's release at Gencon 2014 - the accusations erupted in roughly Aug/Sept, if I remember correctly. And yet in June 2014 you were commenting to another historical, "let's remember" sort of blog post discussing the death of TARGA (already years old at that point):



Here, the dislike of the OSR apparently has nothing to do with consultantgate (which hadn't happened yet).

Anyway...my point is that passive aggressively shitting on an entire community of folks isn't necessary to tell funny stories about Tekumel. And your apparent policy of refusing to name names but still shitting on entire groups of people through a label because of "private messages" and "emails" isn't better in that regard - you're not protecting anyone; instead you're condemning everyone, relying on *at best* a faulty memory, and at worst whatever rationale you think will create the strongest negative association in the listener.

So why not stick to telling stories? The good Tekumel ones? Hearing nameless faceless swipes at other people as side commentary doesn't enhance those stories in my mind.

You might want to widen out your search parameters a bit; I've been saying the same thing about the OSR for quite a while. The original incarnation of my blog had a lot more of this, so you might want to start there.

Regarding 'assuming the mantle', I didn't know that there was one. I'm doing the same thing that Dave Arneson hired me to do at and for Adventure Games, back in 1980, and which I've been doing in a variety of places for a few decades.

If you want stories without side comments, please give us all a list of guidelines for what you consider to be acceptable material; or, if you want, ask the proprietors of this establishment for moderation access and you can become my personal moderator to make sure I don't say anything you find troublesome. Failing that, if you like we can submit any questions people want answered to you, you can forward them to me, I can process them, and you can post the answers after you edit them for anything you don't like.

Another option is that you could simply make me an offer to buy the publication rights to "Tho Serve The Petal Throne"; that way, you can have the stories and the ability to remove any material that you don't like, all in the same bundle. Cash, money orders, and certified checks, please; I don't have the facilities for handling bullion and I don't extend credit to gamers (too many folks with good intentions and empty wallets, sad to say.)

As I commented in a reply to a gent who e-mailed me yesterday, I have been dropping forum accounts over the past two years; there just wasn't enough traffic to justify my time following them, sorry to have to say. I had been told, about four years ago, that having a big Internet presence would be good for me; I don't think it's really done much for me personally, as there's not a lot of discussion about the things I like. And it does take a lot of my very limited free time - time spent on the Internet is time I am away from my shop, or sleeping, and if there's no interest I have things I need to be doing.

This thread has been, for me personally, quite a lot of fun and well worth the time I spend on it; the people who have taken their time to ask me things have all been quite interesting and intelligent, like the gamers I had at Gary Con last year, and quite unlike what I usually see go past on the web.

Regarding the specific quote you cited, I was commenting on what I had been seeing go by with TARGA and some of it's leading lights' conflicts with Zak S. over "I Hit It With My Axe"; I regard the later fracas over consultantgate as an continuation of that train wreck, as it's mostly the same cast of characters having the same outrage over the same people. 'consultantgate' is also much easier for me to type then the 'long-form' of the original panic over: 'OHMYGODD&DWITHPORNSTARSONTHEWEBRUININGTHEREPUTRAT IONOFOURHOBBY!!!'. See also the lovely posts following; this is where I can in, on the whole TARGA stoty.

If it makes you feel better to regard me as an desperate attention whore, please feel free to do so. We aim to please.

Regarding my dropping accounts on sites, yes, I do. I look at the Internet on my terms, not yours. If there is nothing on the site that interests me, I don;t get an account. If there is, at that point, I'll get an account and participate in what interests me. If the traffic level goes below a certain point, and also if the site goes dormant for ninety days, I either close or abandon the account. My free time is very limited, due to my work schedule and my wife's health issues, and I have to be very careful where I spend it.

If you feel that's being 'passive-aggressive', and it makes you feel better, please do so; I don't mind.

Regarding my 'faulty memory', I am happy to report that that's the one thing we do have objective evidence for. I am just coming up on the third anniversary of my brain bleed, and my doctors tell me that the only area of my brain that was affected was the 'lizard brain' area at the base of my skull; I am a little more dyslexic then I used to be, and I can't tolerate extremes of temperature very well anymore, but all the tests that they can devise to test the memory areas in my brain all come up very positive; I haven't lost any memory functions at all.

And I also save *everything* for my archives. Papers, photos, phone records, e-mails, audio tapes, and video tapes. People say the stupidest things in front of open microphones.

If you don;t like my opinions, don't look at them. They'll only affect your digestion.