Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Great!!! Thank you.

Follow-up question, the guesthouses are part of ones own clanhouse? Yes, I think...? What if a particular area visited has no clanhouse? Also arrangements are made ahead of time? Payment is from clan accounts and/or cash?

Would it be a problem to just show up? Thank you in advance.

H :0)

The clans do have guest quarters as part of the clanhouse, and normally one would expect to stay there. (No reservations needed, but sending a servant ahead is a polite thing to do.) However, the 'guesthouses' as we played them (and Phil wrote about) are commercial establishments run by individuals or clans and serve anyone who shows up on the doorstep. They are considered to be 'neutral territory', as they serve all comers equally, and causing a ruckus will get one in a lot of very, very bad trouble. The ones in the Foreigners' Quarters vary from bad to decent, and the ones outside in urban area or along major travel routes range from decent to exquisite - the one in Usenanu is particularly good, and would rate as a five-star establishment.

If a particular location did not have one of your clanhouses, then you'd probably stay with your temple - basic 'transit quarters', but free. If not the temple, then maybe a legion depot that you had connections with. If you have the money and the connections, the guesthouses are always good if there's one in the area. Worst comes to worst, you can ask for hospitality at the village headman's house, and they'll try to set you up with something if you are polite and look like you won't cause trouble.

'Reservations' can always be made, and this is considered polite to do. Payments can be done either by writ on your clan's account or by cash.

Yes, one can just show up on the doorstep, and one will be made welcome.

May I suggest a book for you?

"Japanese Inn", by Oliver Statler
http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/ind...e=Japanese_Inn

I have a much-treasured copy of this wonderful book; it's full of 'flavor' and history, and you can get a nice idea of what running an establishment like this was like. Phil had Mughal guesthouses in mind, and I'll try to find you some references on those.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Have you played any of the internet identifiable adventures?

If so, how much did you follow them as written?

Any that you know of that are good examples of how you create an adventure?
(Say for a convention or something.)
=

I'm sorry, but I don't know what those are. To the best of my recollection, I have never played any. That answer kind of takes care of your second and third questions, and I'm sorry that I don't have any good answers for you on that basis.

If I may, could I rephrase your third question into "How do you create an adventure?" Would that be all right?

So, based on that...

Let me use the March 2015 Gary Con game as an example. I wanted to have what is often called in the miniatures biz a 'signature' game, which is a game where the players get to experience something really neat that is a good example of whatever genre is being presented. In this case, I wanted to have a game that was as much like gaming with Phil as possible, and would provide an interesting time for players. I have very fond - and terrifying! - memories of running through the Jakalla Underworld, back in the day, so I pulled my copy off the shelf and looked through the notes that Phil had made. These are full of plot hooks and adventure scenarios that can be used, and I used on of these - a prisoner that had to be rescued.

The adventure then pretty much created itself; the prisoner's friends hire/borrow a team of experienced adventurers, and send them in as a Tsolyani version of the SWAT team to rescue their friend. After that, the thing pretty much ran itself - ask Gronan how it went, as I dragooned him into playing as the team's local guide. (It was priceless, when he looked at his PC envelope - "YOU BASTARD!" was his response.) I also provided two long-time Tekumel players and friends as players and Designated Experts, and they answered a lot of the questions that I would normally expect to field.

I also provided 18 male and 6 female semi-pre-rolled characters, each with artwork to show how they looked, a quick note on who they were, and their stats in EPT. The players chose their own skills and spells, with took about 15 minutes - I provided a half-dozen copies of EPT from my archives for them to use. (Each player also got a miniature figure, too, as a little gift from me for playing.)

It was, as I have mentioned, an awesome game.

As for other adventures, may I suggest a copy of Phil's "Deeds of the Ever-Glorious"? His histories of the various Tsolyani legions are chock-full of adventures just waiting to be played - I've used many of them, in my time, and they never seem to fail to delight, amaze, and mystify the players. Phil left us lots and lots of wonderful ideas, and they are well worth looking into for adventures.

You can also look at my little blog, and look for the posts on how I create my 'Braunstein' games. Same thing; I get ideas from all over. I once ran the movie "Casablanca" as a an adventure, and it took my players literally weeks to figure out what was happening. Even with my humming the songs, and doing lines like "Molkar hi Strasser has been shot! Arrest the usual suspects!"

And ask Gronan, too; He's been on the receiving end of my games for years. I genuinely don't have a good idea about where I come up with this stuff. All my games seem pretty straightforward to start with, but I always manage to put a few 'little wrinkles' into them for the players...

Does any of this help? Ask more questions, too, as I seem to work better that way...

Originally Posted by Greentongue

... and that sort of thing is just not available to us "common folk" ...

So, use the unobtainable to refresh the memories that you don't have ...


Seriously, I hope that the retelling of your adventures in your book will fill in some of the blanks and give inspiration for future adventures of others.


I feel bad if I'm the only one asking questions so I try to give others an opening.
=

Oh, I know; I hear you. Back when Dave Arneson hired me to be the 'Vice-President for Tekumel Affairs', my goal / brief / mandate was to simply get as much of Phil's work out into print as was possible, given our budget. "Deeds" was, I think, my favorite work - it's got so much of Phil's 'flavor' in it.

I was asked, point-blank, by the Board of Directors of the Tekumel Foundation during their June 2012 strategic planning session how long it would take me to get Phil's work and notes up onto the Internet and available via a site like DriveThruRPG. I thought about it for a few minutes, took mental inventory of what we had in the archives and in digital format, and broke my answer down into three 'phases':

A lot of the really useful material, like the Sourcebook, could be up in about a month. This kind of thing - Phil's published novels, the Sourcebook, the Adventure Games publications that I did - already existed in digital form, so all that would be needed was to get them into the right format for publication.

The rest of Phil's textual materials could be up by about the sixth month after being given the 'start' command. This would have involved digitizing all of the remaining materials, mostly via scanning. My missus had bought two new high-speed scanners for doing this, and I am very pleased to say that she finished the job by the time I had my brain bleed that September.

All remaining Tekumel materials could be up by a year after the 'go' command. This material would have been 'raw' materials, like maps and Phil's two unpublished and incomplete novels, but my feeling is that most gamers are pretty smart folks and could work with what they saw. The Jakalla Underworld would have been in this category, as the sheer size of the main level's map would have been a formatting issue.

I should note that this assumed that all of the Tekumel materials in my own collection would have been included in this, being added to the publications list as appropriate. I have an immense archive of materials that I've been accumulating since 1976, and I would have included all of the various 'zines and publications that I had done and collected, and also the photo archives we've built up over the years.

Now, I freely admit that this would all have been a lot of work, and a lot of accounting and record-keeping. (That's what computers are for.) But, it would have gotten all of Phil's works out into the gaming world again, and would have brought the Foundation some much-needed revenue. As an example of how this could work, my wife was the one who did the 'side-by-side' version of EPT that the Foundation is selling. She scanned in one of the 'mimeo' playtest editions, did the OCR work to fix the typos, and then did the same for the 'plain text' version that was next to the 'mimeo' version. It sold very, very well, the Foundation told me, and they were very pleased.

We never got the 'go' order. I've put everything into the deep-freeze, to preserve the archives.

The whole idea behind my book was exactly as you said, and why I wanted to simply put it up on the web as a free download. My goal is to tell you about Phil and his creation; that's it.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Greentongue don't feel bad, ask away!!! I'm enjoying it. My problem is that I'm trying to ask questions that, I would not be able to find myself. So I ask, when something worthy comes to mind...

Take care,
H:0)

And there you go. Ask away, anyone!