Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

2. My experience has been that these type of things are often more memorable than the majority of battles fought. The guys in my group still bring up events that took place 30+ years ago, and are remembered because they were catastrophic fails. The best laid plans of mice...

That's been a major problem for me in my reminiscences about playing D&D with Gary back in the early 70s. I didn't keep notes (hell, I was a high school kid) so when people ask "what was it like" about all I can say is "fun." Except, as you say, for the disasters.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, "Successful dungeon adventures are all alike, but unsuccessful ones each go wrong in their own uniquely horrible way."

From Shemek hiTankolel:1. Cool, and thank you. If you can get this posted I'm sure it would be helpful to a lot of people, even those not prmarily interested in miniatures.

I'm still surprised that this series still isn't out. The digital versions have exisited for at least five years, and it doesn;t seem like it would take much to simply upload the files to the web.

3. I get it and I'm not trying to stir the pot, but I have to ask, at the risk of sounding belligerent or obtuse, why bother? You and Gronan are the experts on the subject at hand. You are willing to share your knowledge. No one is trying to profit at Phil's expense. This forum, to me at least, is like sitting around at the local pub or hobby shop and shooting the bull. I wouldn't write Mr Tamiya and ask him if I can talk about his 1/35 JS2 with my fellow modellers. Why should I have to ask others if I can talk about Tekumel? No offence, but stroking people's egos is not something that I really worry about these days. I'm kind of getting to appreciate what you've had to go through. One final point: I agree with you let's drop it and not cause any unnecessary aggravation. Here endeth the rant. :rant:

Agreed; I have a lot of fun doing this - I had a lot of wonderful conversations, like this one, over the excellent fish and chips in the Union Pub in Wakefield, across from my railway club's exhibition venue. It simply floored me that the guy next to me had been a driver for the Gresley A4s - it was like talking to Phil about Tekumel, to hear him tell me what it was like of the footplate of those incredible machines.

People talking about and exchanging information about their hobby has been a basic foundation block from the beginning - see also the "Domesday Book", where Gary and Dave first began to share their adventures. I believe in that kind of thing, and I'll keep doing it. To quote Phil: "Here's my Tekumel, now make it yours."

4. Hear! Hear! Kind of like when my old group found some Gamma World energy weapons and inadvertently blew a hole in the city wall, causing the visiting vizier from a neighbouring kingdom to be dropped in the street from his palanquin, when his panicked slave bearers hit the dirt. A Benny Hill chase ensued much to everyone's amusement.

And there you go - welcome to Phil's Tekumel, where thing like that happened quite a lot...

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Just out of curiosity what colour scheme does the Gurek of Ngakku sport? What colour did you use to represent their flesh?

Shemek

Bronze mail and helmet, green cloaks, linen tunics; brown leather boots, belts, and other such bits. For their pallid look, use what you would use for Caucasians - it's light enough to be seen on the table, and stands out against the darker 'Samoa' / 'Red Earth' of everybody else.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Enjoy!!! At your service.

H;0)

And watch the movies, too. Shot pretty much on location, the attacking Zulus are the attacking Zulus - the people making the movies were always hearing from the extras, saying, "Well, my grandfather said that..." and having the Zulu king played by his great-grandson...

They said that is made a heck of difference in how they approached the film-making...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

That's been a major problem for me in my reminiscences about playing D&D with Gary back in the early 70s. I didn't keep notes (hell, I was a high school kid) so when people ask "what was it like" about all I can say is "fun." Except, as you say, for the disasters.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, "Successful dungeon adventures are all alike, but unsuccessful ones each go wrong in their own uniquely horrible way."

Me too. I don't remember a lot of the minutiae, and my attempts at note keeping were complete disasters back then. I remember major encounters (especially the disastrous ones ) and the fact that it took the guys several years to to get to 5th level. I have always loved low to mid level adventures, and so that's were they stayed. Didn't seem to be an issue with the guys as we played at least once a week back then and everyone religiously showed up to every game session. Now a days I could care less about XP, and what not. We play a few game sessions, and if the player wants to go up "a level" he demonstrates what he has done in game to warrant this increase, and I make a role. Sometimes progression is fast, and sometimes it aint. I also started using G Drive as a means of centralizing party docs, images, etc and this has made keeping track of things easier.

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

1. Well, that's odd. I was assured that they had their very best people working on it, as that the troop lists had valuable information that was vital for doing RPGs. Wonder what happened?


2. Same here. These days, it seems to be all about one-shots, modules, pre-gens, and get-it-get-out-with-the-XP.

1. I checked the usual spots: Tekumel.com, Drive thru RPG, RPGNow, and no dice. I guess these were seen as being primarily for miniatures, which is probably seen by many as being not "real Tekumel".

2. Pardon me while I let out a big yawn, and try to stay awake. To each is own, and if that's what turns their crank then more power to them. None for me thank you. I'd sooner watch paint dry.

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

1. I'm still surprised that this series still isn't out. The digital versions have exisited for at least five years, and it doesn;t seem like it would take much to simply upload the files to the web.

2. Agreed; I have a lot of fun doing this - I had a lot of wonderful conversations, like this one, over the excellent fish and chips in the Union Pub in Wakefield, across from my railway club's exhibition venue. It simply floored me that the guy next to me had been a driver for the Gresley A4s - it was like talking to Phil about Tekumel, to hear him tell me what it was like of the footplate of those incredible machines.

People talking about and exchanging information about their hobby has been a basic foundation block from the beginning - see also the "Domesday Book", where Gary and Dave first began to share their adventures. I believe in that kind of thing, and I'll keep doing it. To quote Phil: "Here's my Tekumel, now make it yours."


3. And there you go - welcome to Phil's Tekumel, where thing like that happened quite a lot...

1. Like I said in my previous post.

2. No kidding. I can tell you enjoy it, just like I do, and everyone else on this thread does. This is what the hobby is ultimately about, and this is kind of what I think Phil's primary motivation for using an RPG environment, to develop what started out as "an intellectual exercise", into a fully fledged world. If he were starting this today he would probably be using software, and such.
I felt the same way when I was talking to Shep Paine a few years back. He was doing things in the 60's and 70's that guys still can't achieve today. Some of his dioramas may look dated, but other ones are top shelf. These could still go toe-to-toe with dioramas from today's top modellers, IMO.

3. But Chirine, everybody knows that this can't be the "Real Tekumel".
"Real Tekumel" is about labial-dentals, and alveo-palatals, and ignoble endings, not about such base things as guns and energy weapons, and silly Benny Hill style chases. Are you trying to trick us?


Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Bronze mail and helmet, green cloaks, linen tunics; brown leather boots, belts, and other such bits. For their pallid look, use what you would use for Caucasians - it's light enough to be seen on the table, and stands out against the darker 'Samoa' / 'Red Earth' of everybody else.

That sounds interesting. I think I have some of those miniatures still kicking around in drawer somewhere. I'll have to take a look.

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

3. This must be an "age thing". When I started playing D&D the notion of single unrelated scenarios was unthought of by me and my gaming circle. If anyone had suggested this the universal responsive would have been what's the point of playing a series of unlinked games? How boring! A campaign mindset was intuitive for us. After all, we played D&D primarily because we wanted to make our own fantasy epic like the Amber, or Elric, or Hawkmoon, or Conan stories. Damn, I feel old!

Same here. These days, it seems to be all about one-shots, modules, pre-gens, and get-it-get-out-with-the-XP.

Uncle, I must disagree that it's an "age thing". It's what I call "gaming ADHD", I suspect.
I mean, I wasn't born when you started playing with Phil. That kinda disqualifies me from the age stuff, right?

And yet, while I'll do one-shots, these are used between campaigns, as "palate cleaners", to test what we're in mood to play next.
I only create pre-gens at player request, when some of my players don't want to be bothered with mechanics.
In my view, modules are harder to follow than a normal campaign, so I don't use them. Won't bore you with a lengthy blog post I wrote on it...
And I don't even know what "get-in-get-out-with-the-XP" is supposed to mean. I'd guess it's special forces operations, but your PCs were doing that, too, so it's not that...
Oh, and I recently calculated that my average campaign, excluding the one-shots mentioned above, is the equivalent of over 100 normal-length sessions!

OTOH, what you're talking about seems to be the modus operandi of people that either don't get to play often, don't stay long at one game, or are just used to following modules. Seems like there were many of those in your time, too, or Gary Gygax wouldn't have started writing modules at all.

So yeah, these are different playstyles, but not really age-dependent.