Questioning chirine ba kal

**chirine ba kal** · 09-13-2015, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I think perhaps part of Heritage's over-enthusiasm was part of the whole "Gold Rush" mentality Chirine and I have talked about before.

No, it didn't bring huge numbers of new companies investing in gaming instead of high tech stocks or something; what it DID do was change the expectations of what was "a strong company."

Jon Peterson has chronicled TSR's sales in the late 70s... $300,000 in 1976, double that in 1977, and just shy of $1M in 1978. This was the most unheard of thing anybody had ever heard of, and the rate of sales continued to increase into the 1980s. Much like the US housing bubble of 2004-2008, everybody was convinced that this state of affairs would continue forever. Sinking major money into plastic injection molding looks a good bet when you think the marked has only started to grow.
In actuality, and with the benefit of hindsight, 1983 or 84 is when the bubble popped but good, and it wasn't coming back.

It's why, I'm afraid, when people STILL say "how can we make RPGs mainstream," my answer is 'We can't.' D&D was featured in "E.T.", the top-grossing movie in history for several years. You don't GET more mainstream than that. But those things happen once. You might as well try to revive the hula hoop.

Yes. I'd tend to agree with you on this. look at what happened to us with Adventure Games - the bubble popped, and all of the regulars were out the door. Us 'boat people' in Dave's own phrase, simply found other housing and kept on going. We worked at a minimal level, doing it for the fun of it, and we lasted another four years. Then the 'artistic types' took over, and here we are where we are today.

Hula hoops sell better, too.

**Bren** · 09-13-2015, 11:35 PM

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

There: I think we're all caught up.

I think you missed one.

Originally Posted by Bren

Here's a question, but first a preamble for context. When I GM I mix in NPCs who are rather dim. In part that is because in my experience there are in the real world a fair number of folks, some in positions of power or influence, who are, shall we say, not the sharpest tools in the shed. In part that is because all the NPCs being clever all of the time sounds dull. And finally, a few dim NPCs give the players a chance to be clever without too much effort. Which given the stresses and strains of everyone's busy lives, is sometimes nice.

When you and Gronan describe your experiences, I get the impression that Phil, Gary, et al never seemed to intentionally play an NPC dumber than were they, the GM. Is that accurate or am I missing something?

**Chgowiz** · 09-14-2015, 09:41 AM

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

First off, thank you for your really informative and useful posts - this is the first time I've been able to get an unbiased version of events from somebody who was actually in there, actually doing something instead of pontificating over The Future Of The Hobby.

I wish I was unbiased, but quite honestly, I wouldn't piss on "scottsz" if he was on fire. In my opinion, he pissed all over Zak's blog because nobody gave a flying fuck about his long winded mental masturbation on his blog about some dry module that he made sound as boring as fuck. So unbiased? No, but as far as what I saw, yes, those are the facts, and backed up by emails or blog posts. Except where fuckhead nuked his blog.

Could there have been other things at work? I suppose, I'll be the first to admit that I don't play the political games too well and the whole OSR publishing thing turned into a political and business intrigue game. For me, the best move was not to play.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

The version I got, from Dr. Raymond, was very different and tended to greatly magnify his leadership and influence in both the OSR and TARGA. He's always been a very 'political animal' kind of guy, and his view of events - as he communicated them to me - was that 'his' TARGA needed to take a leading role in the industry to make sure that disreputable things like "I Hit It With My Axe" didn't tarnish the reputation of the hobby and the people in it. (Especially Dr. Raymond, who's been on a search for legitimacy for quite a long time. Early 1990's, in my experience.) He's been wanting to be A Major Publisher for about the same amount of time; it tends to color his viewpoints on things.

I can't speak to that and I definitely won't speak to Victor's motives and methods that I don't know anything about. I had no beef with Victor during the few months I was a part of TARGA. From his emails and discussions with me, he supported the idea of "put asses in chairs" and TARGA not being the "OSR police". So I don't know nothin' about nothin' on the things you're talking about.

**chirine ba kal** · 09-14-2015, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by Bren

I think you missed one.

Yes, I did - sorry about that! Answer on the way, and thank you for the heads-up!

**chirine ba kal** · 09-14-2015, 10:43 AM

Originally Posted by Bren

Great! Thanks.

Here's a question, but first a preamble for context. When I GM I mix in NPCs who are rather dim. In part that is because in my experience there are in the real world a fair number of folks, some in positions of power or influence, who are, shall we say, not the sharpest tools in the shed. In part that is because all the NPCs being clever all of the time sounds dull. And finally, a few dim NPCs give the players a chance to be clever without too much effort. Which given the stresses and strains of everyone's busy lives, is sometimes nice.

When you and Gronan describe your experiences, I get the impression that Phil, Gary, et al never seemed to intentionally play an NPC dumber than were they, the GM. Is that accurate or am I missing something?

Hmmm. Great question. My context for my answer - because I think it provides a useful data point, not 'cause I'm being snotty - is that my face time with Gary was pretty limited, and I think he 'revved up' the game a bit; face time with Dave was more extensive, so we played more of a 'normal' game (for the time). With Phil, we were there for years, so that's where a lot of this will be coming from.

The NPCs I met in Greyhawk all seemed like pretty average folks; some came across as smarter then me, some as dumber. All pretty much in the same 'normal range' as you'd meet on a street corner. Pretty much the same with Dave; again, pretty normal folks. Now, having said that, I think it should be said that in both 'D&D' campaigns, I spent a lot more time interacting with beings that were trying to kill me, so opportunities for conversation were a little constrained. There may have been some clever orcs, and some stupid ones, but I didn't have the opportunity to find out.

So, as far as I could tell, I never met an NPC in their games that was dumber then the GM.

Phil, on the other hand, had rolled up about 1,500 of his NPCs before he started playing, and some of them make telephone poles and fence posts look like Einstein. The vast majority of them were pretty average folks, same as for Dave and Gary, but as we spent a lot more time in Phil's world-setting interacting with the NPCs, we found out pretty quickly that Phil was very good at playing smart people, and even better at playing dumb ones. The theater lost a good - I'd say very good - actor in Phil, and all of his NPC portrayals were very convincing. I learned, years later, that he'd based some of them on real people; I've met some of his models for the Vriddi clan of Fasiltum, for example.

We had to deal with some truly stupid and incompetent NPCs over the years. Their clans were fully aware that they were not the brightest lights in the firmament, and found them nice safe jobs in the government and the temples where they would do the least amount of harm and keep things moving along. Which, of course, is where we'd have to deal with them, and Phil took obvious delight in playing these people and watching the 'live players' get more and more exasperated with the 'artificial players'. After a session with some of these NPCs, getting out on a adventure and facing A Dire Peril was a relief.

So, in Phil's case, we did see NPCs dumber then the GM. Waaaay dumber.

I think it depended on the social frameworks of their world-settings, myself. Speaking in very general terms, Dave and Gary seemed to think more in 'adventure-focused' directions, and Phil tended to think more in 'social interaction' terms. I think, and this is a supposition on my part, that this may stem from Phil's outlook as a writer of books who saw gaming as a sideline, and Gary and Dave's apparent outlook as gamers who did books as a sideline. I should note that I never did come right out and ask any of them about this - I was just happy to be able to have some of their time...

So, I don't know if I actually answered your question - if you want more, let's continue this. About all I can do is give you the observations I made over the years, and we can go from there.

**chirine ba kal** · 09-14-2015, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by Chgowiz

I wish I was unbiased, but quite honestly, I wouldn't piss on "scottsz" if he was on fire. In my opinion, he pissed all over Zak's blog because nobody gave a flying fuck about his long winded mental masturbation on his blog about some dry module that he made sound as boring as fuck. So unbiased? No, but as far as what I saw, yes, those are the facts, and backed up by emails or blog posts. Except where fuckhead nuked his blog.

Could there have been other things at work? I suppose, I'll be the first to admit that I don't play the political games too well and the whole OSR publishing thing turned into a political and business intrigue game. For me, the best move was not to play.

I can't speak to that and I definitely won't speak to Victor's motives and methods that I don't know anything about. I had no beef with Victor during the few months I was a part of TARGA. From his emails and discussions with me, he supported the idea of "put asses in chairs" and TARGA not being the "OSR police". So I don't know nothin' about nothin' on the things you're talking about.

Understood, and thank you for your observations - they fit in with other data I have.

I agree with you about the politics, too. They have been very corrosive, and done more to harm the hobby then anything else.

Very, very interesting...

**AsenRG** · 09-14-2015, 03:55 PM

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Vol. One, "The Chalice Of The Flame", from "To Serve The Petal Throne".

I have a number of stories about the place, all of which are kinda long. Phil loved to get us down there, as Nyelmu was a great (?) way to send us off on quest; most of which were likely to get us killed in various nasty ways. Phil really liked Nyelmu; we all thought that Nyalmu was pretty bizarre, even for an Undying Wizard. More then once, we thought that it might be polite to send a sympathy card to the Jakalla Underworld's Overlord, who is responsible for keeping the batty wizard in his palace prison.

Patience; I'll get there.

The question is, did you send the card eventually?
And was the Overlord just as batty

?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Understood. I have lots and lots of audio tapes of the game sessions with phil in the later 1980s, when we could afford cassette tapes and recorders. My lovely wife has all the gear needed to transcribe them, as she used to to this kind of thing professionally, but she's unable to do it anymore.

I can hire a service to do the work, but there's going to be a fair amount of expense involved. Unless I can get that kind of funding, I'm afraid you'll have to work with my summaries of game sessions in my book; it's the best I can do, I'm afraid.

Do I smell a Kickstarter

?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Yes, but only in specific areas like the space marine base at the South Pole. Otherwise, it was pretty rare to find tech stuff; lots of it tended to make us invincible, so Phil tended to ration it out a bit.
We got our asses handed to us, on several occasions.

(Which is why I normally carried a little whisk broom and dust pan in my pack while off on adventures; you swept up your casualties, dumped the ashes into the Helmet of the Three-pointed Star, pushed the button, and hoped for the best. Sometimes it even worked.)

They also had, on thankfully very rare occasions, 'energy rods' that worked like energy rifles, and much more rarely actual hand weapons.

Battles between us with our sorcery and 'Eyes' and them and their sorcery and stuff got pretty spectacular; Phil's version of blaster battles...

Before the advent of energy weapons the phrase "sweeping casualties" meant something different, didn't it

?
Back then, you'd sweeping them in the report. Which is a sign of negligence.
After energy weapons, it's a sign that you'd rather have them living again. Which is a sign of caring about your troops, if anything.
Interesting how technology of your enemies changes the language...
(No, no particular conclusion from this, I just thought it's funny).

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Thunru'u. Thomar the Wizard had one as his butler, and when we asked hom to pack us a picnic lunch for the assault on the palace of Bassa, the chap packed us an assortment of eyespoons as well as the food and drink. He - I think it was a 'he' - spoke with a bit of lisp, which I put down to his having a beak instead of lips; we had a hell of a time keeping a straight face, as Phil voicing the character sounded waaay too much like Daffy Duck.

In typical butler form, the worthy gent was scandalized that we didn't have a good set of sterling silver eyespoons, and we got a crash course on how to use them and keep them polished. I think Eyloa still has them.

Sounds like a true gentleman! Manners should be kept in everything and so on. Small wonder he was hired as a butler!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed; The wife has been very patient and very supportive, but it all still adds up. I had to get a garden shed for the scenery tubs, about thirty-five of them...

I'd probably have to evacuate the flat we're living in.

Probably. Phil came to RPGs from miniatures, and it did have an effect on him. Normally, he was pretty good about it, but we did give his beloved Saracen infantry a really hard thrashing - Gronan is a very good man on the table, and Phil didn't stand a chance.

Well, sometimes the NPCs win, sometimes they lose. At least Phil had players who know when to cut their losses and run.

Well, yes; the Eyes are tools of the Ancients, and are their versions of screwdrivers and pliers. They do just about anything, including what you extrapolated. (Typical Livyani, too.)

Yes. A screwdriver that produces screws out of nowhere and drives them in the whole even when the whole is smaller than the screws...
The normal everyday technology of high-technology races is just begging to be re-purposed, isn't it?

Oh; sorry. We should have been more clear. They eat eyes, not Eyes...

Yeah, got that. I guess I was tired when I read it, myself, because substituting Eye for eye and pretending not to understand sounded fun. Right now, it no longer does.
Although it could be, if read like an impersonation of the aforementioned Thunru'u butler

!

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Oh Blessed Karakan, I'd forgotten about the sterling silver eyespoons.

You know, to a young whelp raised on Warner Brothers, Bored of the Rings, and Monty Python, it sometimes seemed like Phil had no sense of humor.

That just ain't so; it was just a lot less Chuck Jones and more Oscar Wilde. We thought the eyespoons were about the funniest thing we'd ever heard of.

I guess not even knowing who Chuck Jones is actually helped me. Tekumel seemed like a world almost custom-made for a Referee with dry sense of humour since I first visited a site about it, long before finding the first rulebook.
Or maybe it was the examples of Tekumeli humor on the site that prompted this realisation. Sounds more likely, now that I think of it.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Much like Chirine's "Red Cataphracts" I had one or two units that were a terror to their enemies. My "Knights of the Garter" were rightly feared by every French knight on the continent. And in skirmish games, nobody got in Sir Polidor's way... more than once.

My "Scarlet Brotherhood", a Viking band with blood red shields, on the other hand had the reputation of i) never failing a morale check and ii) never living to the end of a battle. They had a lot of company when the Valkyries came, though.

Was that an accurate description of the Scarlet Brotherhood?
Short, bearded, keeping a list of their grudges so they wouldn't forget, obsessed with honour, seeking redemption for losing their honour through death

?
(I don't think you need me to explain the reference).

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Poser illos in games also don't do anything for me, but here the digital technology saves the day - I'm looking at illustrating both "To Serve The Petal Throne" and the second edition of my miniatures rules with color (!) photos (!) of the miniatures we used out at Phil's. It's cheaper for me to do it that way, and people might be amused to see the Glorious General and his troops in all their manliness advancing on the foe. Or Harchar and his pirates - sorry, "honest seafaring merchants"! - carrying out their wealth-enhancement strategies. Or Princess Vrisa, in her various suits of armor and party frock. (That last is for those of you who aren't interested in pirates. Sorry; "honest seafaring merchants".)

Is there a miniature of Princess Vrisa as a honest seafarer for the best of both worlds?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

So, I don't know if I actually answered your question - if you want more, let's continue this. About all I can do is give you the observations I made over the years, and we can go from there.

Personally, I find that interesting, so that's one vote for continuing. The final decision, of course, is with Bren

.

**Hrugga** · 09-14-2015, 06:13 PM

Hello,

As far as intelligent creatures/monsters go, the ones that are capable of speech, what language would they normally speak? The language of the Imperium? A forgien one? An ancient tongue? Their own language? I know Priest Harsan was learning the language of the Thunru'u in MoG. They also spoke to each other in Tsolyï¿½ni. I'm curious about some of the other creatures that you guys encountered at the Professor's table(excluding those that speak the secret tongue of Ksarul,etc). For example the Sro?

Also which creatures besides the inimical ones gave you gents the most trouble?

Thanks,

H :0)

**Gronan of Simmerya** · 09-14-2015, 06:53 PM

Gary and Dave's NPCs were as smart as they needed to be... but pretty much anybody who was more than an ordinary person was very smart.

Phil's NPCs and nonhumans spoke an amazing mix of languages. I remember one Thunru'u spoke Tsaq, which was ancient Yan Koryani. And so many people/beings spoke "The Secret Tongue of the Priests of Ksarul" it became a running joke.

**Hrugga** · 09-14-2015, 06:59 PM

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Gary and Dave's NPCs were as smart as they needed to be... but pretty much anybody who was more than an ordinary person was very smart.

Phil's NPCs and nonhumans spoke an amazing mix of languages. I remember one Thunru'u spoke Tsaq, which was ancient Yan Koryani. And so many people/beings spoke "The Secret Tongue of the Priests of Ksarul" it became a running joke.

Secret indeed...!!! Thanks!!! :0)

H

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