Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

From AsenRG:
Glad to hear your back injury is getting better, Uncle. That description of healing made me laugh...

Thank you! I lifted something the wrong way last Friday, and couldn't walk much at all last Saturday. Spent a lot of time flat on my back, and I'm pretty much back to normal a week later.

Well, that was our 'rule of thumb'. It worked well in practice, over the years.

Well, I guess the Professor, like all humans, had his flaws...too bad publishing was one of them, but then, if it was exchanged, he might have published and promoted brilliantly one of the many settings I call simply "not worth the attention"...
I'd rather have the current situation, if it was a choice between those two.

Agreed; Phil's wonderful creation was worth it, though.

Bwahahaha!
Who was playing the General, BTW? That's totally a plan some PC had concocted!

Dave Houtla, in the Monday Night Group.

True for most settings, BTW. It's just even truer for Tekumel.
I must point out that a lot of settings that came lately are about as much "swords and planet" as Tekumel. One of them, namely Exalted, was in the top 5 of the most popular games at some point, and maybe still rates in the top 10...

Agreed; I've never seen the game, aside from copies on the shelf at the FLGS.

Again, and contrary to popular opinions apart from having the list of canonical spells, running Tekumel really doesn't necessitate a very specialized system. Lots and lots of systems (all the effect-based ones, for starters) can do the spells on the fly, too. Even some retroclones would be able to do that.
If anything, getting the social aspects of the setting right - like Flashing Blades does with 17th century France - would be the much greater challenge. Again, almost all systems would be equally successful at that.
So yeah, I'm sure Arrows of Indra could be used almost "out of the box". Then again, Honor+Intrigue would be, in all likelyhood, even easier. And Bethorm is already what I'd use if I hadn't started by adapting a different system.

This. I think so too, as it's a world-setting and not tied to any particular set of rules. Bit of work, and you're there...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Sigh again.

For those not familiar with the story; at some point somebody (no, I don't know who) decided Tekumel stuff needed to be put on a more "professional" basis and a corporation was formed. Yours Truly was prez, and I even negotiated a princely $5 an hour wage. Living the Dream!

Chirine, may he be forever blessed, continued faithfully soldiering on, despite the fact that if anybody actually deserved to get paid for promoting Tekumel it was him.

Or maybe he was too smart to fall for it. Hey, wait a minute...

[snipped]

At the end of it all I was so exhausted and demoralized I not only stopped playing Tekumel, I stopped gaming completely for 15 years. Maybe it's a good thing it was me and not Chirine after all; I wouldn't wish that whole experience on anybody. "No reward is worth this."

Well, yeah. Tekumel simply did not work in a 'professional' setting; it thrived in a 'fan' setting, where we did it for the love of the thing and for the fun of it. My problem with my little fan operation was getting pneumonia on one of the AGI Gen Con trips, where to save money AGI had everybody stay in tents in a cheap campground. I nearly died, and since everything was in my name at that point there would have been all sorts of issues. When Tekumel Games was formed, I frankly jumped at the chance to off-load the hassle and issues (and the 'politics around the throne'!) and get back to what I love to do - build, paint, write, run games - and I ran, not walked, to the nearest exit. I got handed the hot potato back again after Gronan resigned; Phil then gave it to Tom after I got it rolling again as a fan operation, Tom tried to do it again as a professional operation, it failed again, Phil handed it back to me again, I got it running again as a fan operation, and then handed it right back. It failed yet again, and I refused to take it over yet another time. Which is when I finally quit.

And I stopped playing at all from 1988 to 2002, which is when I was asked to run some games for poor Rick. I have shied away from the business side of things ever since, and am now avoiding the 'politically correct' side of things. Better no gaming then miserable gaming, is my thought.

And, my General, you left out the car shedding the transmission in Provo, Utah, on the way back. That was another $1,500 out of pocket.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Huh! I've heard of them being mounted in the heads of staffs and in standards, but never rings! The closest we got was when I threatened to do Temple of Ksarul Secret Decoder Rings - send in two box tops, and...

Tune in next week kids and remember to drink your Ovaltine. 10 xp if anyone gets the reference.

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I have a copy of the manuscript in my archives, but the book was never finished; Phil got up at about 150 pages and then stopped; my copy has all the notes that Gronan made when he was stuck trying to make something of it, so I've got about 200 - 235 pages in loose leaf format. I do not have any loose notes for this book, which would be normal practice for Phil in his writing. It wasn't until he really started using computers that he'd bother with drafts.

Too bad we can't get this cleaned up and published, even as is. Would be nice. Correct if I'm wrong but didn't Tita publish a version of the Sourcebook that not only included the contents of the Different Worlds Vol 1., and Vol 2., but also these 150 pages? I seem to remember that Tita's Sourcebook had a bunch of extra stuff that wasn't in the Different World Volumes. I'll have to check my gaming book shelf later...

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

And I stopped playing at all from 1988 to 2002, which is when I was asked to run some games for poor Rick. I have shied away from the business side of things ever since, and am now avoiding the 'politically correct' side of things. Better no gaming then miserable gaming, is my thought.
.

Glad that both you and the Glorious General found your way back to Tekumel. It's nice to be able to converse with people who were "on the ground", so to speak.
A long interval or break between gaming appears to be quite common for long term gamers on Tekumel. I know that I didn't do any real gaming for many years.

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

My problem with my little fan operation was getting pneumonia on one of the AGI Gen Con trips, where to save money AGI had everybody stay in tents in a cheap campground. I nearly died

Damn, I had forgotten about that. He's not exaggerating, folks; he was sicker than a son of a bitch for a month or more.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Better no gaming then miserable gaming.

AMEN!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

And, my General, you left out the car shedding the transmission in Provo, Utah, on the way back. That was another $1,500 out of pocket.

Oh son of a BITCH! DAMMIT. Okay, technically it was the timing belt, and it was Wamsutter, Wyoming. Which is right at the Continental Divide. And is in the middle of the "Red Desert" of Wyoming, which fucking looks like Mars. And there's nothing there but a cheap motel, a horrific greasy spoon diner (I actually like the classic greasy spoon like Mickey's; this was more of a "ptomaine ptrap.") and the BIGGEST service and repair station I've ever seen. They had a fleet of tow trucks, including at least two that were big enough to use as ARVs.

And we sat and cooled our heels for something like eight or ten hours as they sent for parts to be delivered by courier. Which cost, of course, they passed on to us. Yikes and owie.

We were in good company, though; if your car is gonna shit the bed driving cross country, the Continental Divide is the place it's gonna happen. The tow trucks never sat still. The big ones were big enough to haul an entire semi rig, trailer and all, in; the "small" ones still had more than enough beef to drag the cab unit up the hill after cutting the trailer off.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Tune in next week kids and remember to drink your Ovaltine. 10 xp if anyone gets the reference.

Shemek

It's a crummy commercial! Son of a bitch!

I actually sent in something like 40 box tops for a 12" GI Joe type thing when I was 5 or 6 years old. Man was that ever a cheap piece of crap.

What always gets me, with running the store, is the sense of entitlement some people have.

It's like you owe them for that $40 book you gave a 20% discount on and have to put up with their crap for eternity.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

It's a crummy commercial! Son of a bitch!

You'll put your eye out kid.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Thanks for making this old man feel young again! And I'm glad your back is starting to feel better.

You know, I honestly think D&D is at its best when you let go of pretension and let the universe be a pastiche of whatever tickles you. And Tekumel too; Phil was just building his pastiche out of what he happened to know from his travels! So for the rest of us, go ahead and wallow in Cecil B DeMille epics, old Mummy movies, Arabian Nights stories, the various Sinbad movies and TV shows, and anything else "exotic" you can think of!

It's a GAME, dammit! Games are supposed to be FUN!

And tip your servers. Those kids work hard.

You're welcome! I had to pause while the hamsters in our Internet connection had a rest; we're having a tech from our IP come by tomorrow to try and diagnose our connectivity issues.

I don't know what I did to myself; I got through the shift, last Friday night, but then had trouble walking last Saturday morning. I'm doing a whole lot better, and you can bet I'm going to be a lot more careful; I am having to come to grips with my old age, and it's taking a while!

Agreed; Dave loved Toho monster movies. "We made stuff up, and we had fun!"