Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Funny, I reacted with "Swords and Planet for the win" the first time I read a summary of Tekumel's history. I mean, isn't it obvious by the different dimensions and relics of a more technologically advanced era?
At the same time, Tekumel is brilliant for allowing Referees more used to fantasy to run it as a fantasy setting. I just don't know why more people aren't playing it!
(It might be because a lot of people are looking for the One Right Way to play Tekumel. But there isn't one, and they get frustrated).

Good for you - you found it out, and that's really cool. In my experience, most gamers have never read any Sword and Planet stuff - quite a few have never heard of Fafherd and the Grey Mouser. And I agree with you - there is no one right way to play Tekumel, I think. As Phil himself said, "here's my world, now make it your own."

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Funny, that. I remember a similar advancement mechanic being much reviled. I just can't find links right now, but the really funny part is that the arguments against it seemed to boil down to "depends on the Referee's cooperation" and "isn't traditional" (whatever traditional was supposed to mean).
Life is ironic.

Wow. Not that I'm surprised, as our tradition in games was to use miniatures on the table for both tactical games and as tactical displays; I've been told that real RPGs don't use miniatures because Gary Said So. Ah, right; what are all those 40mm Elastolins doing, then?

Originally Posted by AsenRG

Interesting enough, Reimond Feist's stories feature an invasion from a clan-based world with no steel and no riding animals, situated in another dimension...

Kelewan is Tekumel, actually. Ray was in a D&D campaign out on the West Coast when his GM opened the rift between the worlds and used EPT as the model for the alien world. When Ray came to write his books, he contacted TSR for permission, and they were happy to grant it to him as they'd fallen out with Phil. I talked to Ray years later, and he was Not Amused to find out that TSR had given him incorrect information.

(This has been a scandal in the publishing trade for years, and a very sore point with a lot of folks on either side of the fence.)

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Wow. Not that I'm surprised, as our tradition in games was to use miniatures on the table for both tactical games and as tactical displays; I've been told that real RPGs don't use miniatures because Gary Said So. Ah, right; what are all those 40mm Elastolins doing, then?

Shrug. By the time Gary was running Greyhawk the Elastolins were across town in Don Kaye's garage.

I don't know if Gary would have used them if they'd been handy, but I can state that in the 1972-1975 period Gary never, ever used miniatures while running Greyhawk.

Which proves nothing other than that he didn't use miniatures and Dave did.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

ask Old Geezer about the trash collector machines,

Aiieee! Aiieee! Aiieee!

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I can devote it to resolving everything...or I can use a proto-wargame/boardgame for the domain stuff, Stress Meters for the reactions of NPCs and PCs alike under stress, and a combat system in case of, well, combat. Possibly a different system for spellcasting and research, too. (And of course, I can always choose not to bother, if the result is obvious). All of this would be almost the opposite of Frei Kriegspiel, right?

Nope.

In Free Kriegspiel the referee can use any number of charts, graphs, dice, tables, sines, cosines, tangents, knives, forks, and spoons of energy he or she desires.

The difference is that the referee is the final arbiter. Somebody rolled an instant kill, either player or NPC? The referee is completely within their purview to overrule the dice and say "No."

However, the wise referee does this judiciously. Now, in original Free Kriegspiel, and in Braunstein, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, only the umpire had access to the rules. We knew that a guy who was nekkid was easier to kill than a guy in plate armor, but we had no idea of what the mechanics were.

That's not the case now, so the referee needs to be more open about it if the players know the rules. However, a good instance was a game of "DBA" (a miniatures wargame) I played. The dice said that a group of light infantry, charged by an equal number of plate armored knights on armored horses, routed the knights with almost no losses. Now, based on a pretty good knowledge of the medieval period I'd have no trouble as referee saying "That could not, did not, and will not ever happen, period."

To summarize, the rules are to support and help the Free Kriegspiel referee, not to tell them what to do. So your example is absolutely not out of line with Free Kriegspiel in the slightest.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Aiieee! Aiieee! Aiieee!

I sense a fun story!
Once again I conjure thee, Old Geezer, Tell Us What Happened!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Good for you - you found it out, and that's really cool. In my experience, most gamers have never read any Sword and Planet stuff - quite a few have never heard of Fafherd and the Grey Mouser. And I agree with you - there is no one right way to play Tekumel, I think. As Phil himself said, "here's my world, now make it your own."

Well, "campaigns on an alien planet" is part of the sub-title of EPT. I think Mr. Barker wanted to point us in the right direction!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Wow. Not that I'm surprised, as our tradition in games was to use miniatures on the table for both tactical games and as tactical displays; I've been told that real RPGs don't use miniatures because Gary Said So. Ah, right; what are all those 40mm Elastolins doing, then?

Yeah, and in turn, I'm not really surprised, either.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Kelewan is Tekumel, actually. Ray was in a D&D campaign out on the West Coast when his GM opened the rift between the worlds and used EPT as the model for the alien world. When Ray came to write his books, he contacted TSR for permission, and they were happy to grant it to him as they'd fallen out with Phil. I talked to Ray years later, and he was Not Amused to find out that TSR had given him incorrect information.

(This has been a scandal in the publishing trade for years, and a very sore point with a lot of folks on either side of the fence.)

Kelewan is Tekumel?
Ok, now I know how to get some people interested in Tekumel!

Do you also happen to know how close the events in Mr. Feist's books follow the events in that campaign?

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Nope.

In Free Kriegspiel the referee can use any number of charts, graphs, dice, tables, sines, cosines, tangents, knives, forks, and spoons of energy he or she desires.

The difference is that the referee is the final arbiter. Somebody rolled an instant kill, either player or NPC? The referee is completely within their purview to overrule the dice and say "No."

However, the wise referee does this judiciously. Now, in original Free Kriegspiel, and in Braunstein, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, only the umpire had access to the rules. We knew that a guy who was nekkid was easier to kill than a guy in plate armor, but we had no idea of what the mechanics were.

That's not the case now, so the referee needs to be more open about it if the players know the rules. However, a good instance was a game of "DBA" (a miniatures wargame) I played. The dice said that a group of light infantry, charged by an equal number of plate armored knights on armored horses, routed the knights with almost no losses. Now, based on a pretty good knowledge of the medieval period I'd have no trouble as referee saying "That could not, did not, and will not ever happen, period."

To summarize, the rules are to support and help the Free Kriegspiel referee, not to tell them what to do. So your example is absolutely not out of line with Free Kriegspiel in the slightest.

That's exactly it. Under my example, you don't need rules that expect the Ref to be the final arbiter - if they do, he still has to consider whether what happened is within his ideas of likely.
Personally, I wouldn't forbid even the knights being routed, if the probability of such an event is small enough it's unlikely to happen ever again. Who knows all that might happen in a fight?
I don't pretend to know it all - or rather, for all I know, everything is possible - so the dice are as good as anything else. And better to be limited by dice than by the information the GM has, given that many, many GMs simply don't have nearly enough information. Often, the people that wrote the rules have put more research into coming with specifics.

Of course, from the players' perspective it's the same, Frei Kriegspiel or not, as long as the GM is good. You tell your plan, point out what are the advantages, and the Referee rolls some dice and tells you what happens. Given that half my group doesn't even want to learn the rules, I could as well run Frei Kriegspiel if I wanted!

In a historical game, "the dice are the dice" is not a rule I personally will abide. Light foot are not going to stop and rout heavy charging cavalry, period, just like somebody's not going to make a Tiger Tank explode by stabbing it with a bayonet in a historical WW2 game.

Sometimes the dice need to be ignored.

Originally Posted by Old Geezer

In a historical game, "the dice are the dice" is not a rule I personally will abide. Light foot are not going to stop and rout heavy charging cavalry, period, just like somebody's not going to make a Tiger Tank explode by stabbing it with a bayonet in a historical WW2 game.

Sometimes the dice need to be ignored.

A WW2 game that includes a die result of Bayonet vs Tiger Tank = Killed Tiger is stupid rules design. If you see light foot routing heavy charging cavalry as the same magnitude of stupid yet your rules include that as a result in the combat table why not, oh I don't know, fix the bad rule?

Originally Posted by Bilharzia

Perfectly possible as long as the bayoneter is wearing socks.

You kind of lost me there. Plug the engine air intakes?