Quote from: bconsidine;1029363Iron Wind is/was Ral Partha, correct? Wonder if they'll re-release the old "not Tekumel" chaos figures.

Blaise

Specifically, these are the Bob Charette 'Chaos Pikemen', 'Archers', 'Crossbowmen', and 'Heavy Infantry' I think you're talking about. Yes, these have been rereleased, and you can get them from the Iron Wind web store. These are the figures I use for my legion, All-Consuming Flame, and it's been great to finally fill out the ranks.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1029380Specifically, these are the Bob Charette 'Chaos Pikemen', 'Archers', 'Crossbowmen', and 'Heavy Infantry' I think you're talking about. Yes, these have been rereleased, and you can get them from the Iron Wind web store. These are the figures I use for my legion, All-Consuming Flame, and it's been great to finally fill out the ranks.

Oooh, all this talk is making me nostalgic for the days when I both had time to paint figures and the eye sight and patience to do so!  I still have my small collection of very fine brushes, suitable for detailing eye balls and other such minutia.

Honored Uncles - I have a smattering of mostly unrelated questions, one of which may be opening a can of worms..

Firstly - Shen - cold blooded (like proper reptiles) or warm blooded (like birds and predatory dinosaurs)?? They seem to act more like the later - especially if they have a 'human' appetite rather than a slow metabolism ala proper reptiles.  A love of warmth is still fitting for a creature with no fur and perhaps a lower amount of body fat.  

Secondly - magic and metal.  Obviously a sorcerer carrying un-enchanted steel is going to be in for a rough time.  What about the metal used by the ancients?  If a sorcerer is carrying around, say the severed arm of a Ru'un, is that going to cause problems, or does it by it's nature count as enchanted??  Do these same rules regarding metal apply when you were in Blackmoor??  Is this a case of 'different plane, different rules?'

Lastly - the potential can of worms.  I understand that some people are vehemently against minatures in D&D.  How the heck to they handle combat??  I've always played with figures - as the friend who first introduced me to the game used them.  When I joined a rather large game (that I later played in for years) there were 10 players at the time - all low level, mostly fighters or fighter types.  The simple scale of 10 PC's vs 30 gnolls (2 HD humanoids) was crazy - how can you run a combat like that? Apparently it took an HOUR per round of combat.  The DM was most pleased when I joined the game, bringing my collection of about 400 figures and a proper battle mat to the game.  Gone were the arguments about where everyone was standing when the area of effect spell went off, whether or not someone's pet mountain lion could get a flank attack etc.

How do people run large combats without figures or some other stand in items?  Is somehow using bottle caps and dice ok, but 25 mm figure somehow heresy??

Gary ran a D&D combat of 300 orcs vs 15 to 20 players and NPCs, without miniatures.

It took 45 minutes.

We all understood wargames which helped.

We also ask leading questions; "Can I get a clear shot at the guy waving his arms and chanting," rather than "where is each and every orc."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1029475Gary ran a D&D combat of 300 orcs vs 15 to 20 players and NPCs, without miniatures.
It took 45 minutes.
We all understood wargames which helped.
We also ask leading questions; "Can I get a clear shot at the guy waving his arms and chanting," rather than "where is each and every orc."

Heresy! Bring pitchforks! You clearly understand wargames wrong! You must roll, and interpret said roll, for each figure individually, to slow things down as much as possible! And the other player, and their seconds and their second's seconds, must be involved at all steps to make sure you don't cheat and to slow it down even more! Measuring must be with a micrometer or it won't be accurate enough! Location of each and every orc accurate to within 1 electron! No shooting wizard guy without arguing for at least 10 minutes per side! And then having the exact same argument over the exact same minis shooting at the exact same wizard guy the next turn! Then grumbling about whatever the decision the rest of the game!

Unfortunately, although most wargamers can take care of business, handling examples like this without blinking, I've seen people say and do stuff like this at flgs tables many times. The WarmaHordes crew seems to be the worst in this area for this kind of stuff.

I love Theater of the Mind but I also love dropping minis, and I've never had anyone complain.

I have always figured the Shen to be warm blooded, like dinosaurs, but figured the Pe Choi were not. I do wonder about where the Hluss and Hokun fall.

Warhamburger seems to have really poisoned the well of miniatures gaming in a lot of people's minds, which is unfortunate as hell.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1029512Warhamburger seems to have really poisoned the well of miniatures gaming in a lot of people's minds, which is unfortunate as hell.

I think I may fall into this category, at least when it comes to fantasy battles. Fortunately, the 18th Century wargaming crowd has largely been spared, at least those who prefer the SYW.

Shemek

Quote from: Horu hiFa'asu;1029440Honored Uncles - I have a smattering of mostly unrelated questions, one of which may be opening a can of worms..

Firstly - Shen - cold blooded (like proper reptiles) or warm blooded (like birds and predatory dinosaurs)?? They seem to act more like the later - especially if they have a 'human' appetite rather than a slow metabolism ala proper reptiles.  A love of warmth is still fitting for a creature with no fur and perhaps a lower amount of body fat.  

Secondly - magic and metal.  Obviously a sorcerer carrying un-enchanted steel is going to be in for a rough time.  What about the metal used by the ancients?  If a sorcerer is carrying around, say the severed arm of a Ru'un, is that going to cause problems, or does it by it's nature count as enchanted??  Do these same rules regarding metal apply when you were in Blackmoor??  Is this a case of 'different plane, different rules?'

I'm going to break this into two replies, if I may...

Warm-blooded, probably. Unless he mentioned it in either the article he did on the Shen or in the Sourcebook, it never came up in our games. They tired to kill us, and we tried to kill them; that's about as far as the anatomy lessions got.

Most of the time, the 'metal of the Ancients' is actually a ceramic-metal hybrid, and we didn't have any problems with this material. Actual meta, on the other hand, like the instanced arm of a Ru'un or anything else was asking to get blown up instantly. Which was always fun to watch, from a safe distance.

In Blackmoor, Dave played it Phil's way, 'cause it was part of Phil's campaign. We Tekumel visitors could not have metal on us (I was the exception, being a military sorcerer) and the locals could. They were a little too reliant on their magic, though, and we showed them what was possible with volley fire from massed crossbowmen follwed up with a little god old-fashioned Temple of Vimuhla stuff. The majority of the locals loved it - we were dealing with the minions of the Egg of Coot - and a good time was had by all. Except the minions, of course.

Quote from: Horu hiFa'asu;1029440Oooh, all this talk is making me nostalgic for the days when I both had time to paint figures and the eye sight and patience to do so!  I still have my small collection of very fine brushes, suitable for detailing eye balls and other such minutia.

Lastly - the potential can of worms.  I understand that some people are vehemently against minatures in D&D.  How the heck to they handle combat??  I've always played with figures - as the friend who first introduced me to the game used them.  When I joined a rather large game (that I later played in for years) there were 10 players at the time - all low level, mostly fighters or fighter types.  The simple scale of 10 PC's vs 30 gnolls (2 HD humanoids) was crazy - how can you run a combat like that? Apparently it took an HOUR per round of combat.  The DM was most pleased when I joined the game, bringing my collection of about 400 figures and a proper battle mat to the game.  Gone were the arguments about where everyone was standing when the area of effect spell went off, whether or not someone's pet mountain lion could get a flank attack etc.

How do people run large combats without figures or some other stand in items?  Is somehow using bottle caps and dice ok, but 25 mm figure somehow heresy??

Second reply:

Take it in small bits, and have fun. You'll enjoy it, and it's relaxing.

Okay - I don't get the hostility, either. Now, I freely admit that I love to build and paint things (so did Phil) so we had the stuff handy for games. We used the figures and stuff as our 'tactical display', and I don't think I can recall any game session where anybody actually measured anything when we were in combat. It was all the kind of thing you mention - who's in front of who, can I see this, can I get across the room. It did not slow down game play; we whipped smartly around the table in the combat round, with us rolling for us and Phil rolling for the NPCs. You either his or you didn't, and we sorted out the quick and the dead after all the shouting and screaming stopped. The combat you describe, with the numbers you describe, were exactly the kind of thing we did. I think it usually took about a half-hour of game time to resolve everything, and then the rest of the night to patch everybody back up and clean up the mess.

Me, I still run this kind of thing like I always have, just run it, 'cause if you're any good at the GM business you know how powerful your players and NPCs are in relation to each other, so it's easy (for me) to run this. I have people roll for the lucky / critical hits, and we move very fast.

We did do a lot of formal battles, which is why "Qadardalikoi" was written, but that was because we liked the big battles and we liked having an excuse to get the troops out of their boxes and on the table.

I think - and this is just a guess - that a lot of the hostility to figures is from the effects of 4e on the RPG game. I've seen 4e games, and they horrify me; they are bad RPGs, because they are dreadfully slow and dull, and bad miniatures skirmish games because they are dreadfully slow and dull. I was especially shocked by the squiggly wire temples for spell effects - talk about fitting a round peg into a square hole.

Bottle caps and dice appeal more to the 'nostalga aspect' that a lot of OSR people have, and thus are billed as GoodRightFun instead of the miniatures' BadWrongFun. I think there's room in the tent for both, but I've been told that I'm dead wrong.

Shrug.

Quote from: Big Andy;1029508Heresy! Bring pitchforks! You clearly understand wargames wrong! You must roll, and interpret said roll, for each figure individually, to slow things down as much as possible! And the other player, and their seconds and their second's seconds, must be involved at all steps to make sure you don't cheat and to slow it down even more! Measuring must be with a micrometer or it won't be accurate enough! Location of each and every orc accurate to within 1 electron! No shooting wizard guy without arguing for at least 10 minutes per side! And then having the exact same argument over the exact same minis shooting at the exact same wizard guy the next turn! Then grumbling about whatever the decision the rest of the game!

Unfortunately, although most wargamers can take care of business, handling examples like this without blinking, I've seen people say and do stuff like this at flgs tables many times. The WarmaHordes crew seems to be the worst in this area for this kind of stuff.

I love Theater of the Mind but I also love dropping minis, and I've never had anyone complain.

I have always figured the Shen to be warm blooded, like dinosaurs, but figured the Pe Choi were not. I do wonder about where the Hluss and Hokun fall.

Agreed; seen it all too many times, myself. Which is why I am distancing myself more and more from the local gaming scene. I don't the attitude, and have other things that I could be doing. Or buying.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1029572Agreed; seen it all too many times, myself. Which is why I am distancing myself more and more from the local gaming scene. I don't the attitude, and have other things that I could be doing. Or buying.

I will say that in most local gaming scenes, there is always the "one table" or the "one group" at the lgs that the Warhammer/Warmachine gangs sort of tip toe around. The ones who take up one or two tables at the back, playing historicals like Shemek and the SYW, microgames, "off track" rules that cover the sci fi and fantasy like Warhammer but aren't Warhammer, and oddball niche games. And they do attract new players. I play historicals (I have large armies for either side for 30YW, WSS, and GNW), regularly play Song of Blades and Heroes in both sci fi and fantasy (and Tekumel!) , and love oddball games, having run things from Braunstein-ish spaghetti western gunfights or mountain men trappers vs Native Americans to various Weird World War 2 games to, more recently, World War Tesla (which I believe Gronan has played and enjoyed) with minis from my 3d printer. In every case, there are some warhammer player or some random wanderer that stops and checks it out and are obviously interested. Often they will either accept an invitation to play on the spot or to be invited to the next game.

Just because Warhammer/Warmachine have a death grip on wargaming doesn't mean there is no room for anybody else. If just 1 out of 100 of their players plays in any of my/yours/whoevers non-Warmachinehammer game, that's a decent amount of players. And you don't really need that many guys to have fun. How many players were there when you guys got started? A tenth of the weekly War-whatever "league" games? I know Gronan has said he never lacks for players in his OD&D games, even though most people he runs into are 5e/Pathfinder or whatever players. Just have fun, your way.

I know Professor Barker had bad eyes that limited his wargaming more and more as time went on. When did he finally stop? or did he? Do you think he would/could have played the 54mm that are floating around now?

Quote from: Big Andy;1029615I will say that in most local gaming scenes, there is always the "one table" or the "one group" at the lgs that the Warhammer/Warmachine gangs sort of tip toe around. The ones who take up one or two tables at the back, playing historicals like Shemek and the SYW, microgames, "off track" rules that cover the sci fi and fantasy like Warhammer but aren't Warhammer, and oddball niche games. And they do attract new players. I play historicals (I have large armies for either side for 30YW, WSS, and GNW), regularly play Song of Blades and Heroes in both sci fi and fantasy (and Tekumel!) , and love oddball games, having run things from Braunstein-ish spaghetti western gunfights or mountain men trappers vs Native Americans to various Weird World War 2 games to, more recently, World War Tesla (which I believe Gronan has played and enjoyed) with minis from my 3d printer. In every case, there are some warhammer player or some random wanderer that stops and checks it out and are obviously interested. Often they will either accept an invitation to play on the spot or to be invited to the next game.

Just because Warhammer/Warmachine have a death grip on wargaming doesn't mean there is no room for anybody else. If just 1 out of 100 of their players plays in any of my/yours/whoevers non-Warmachinehammer game, that's a decent amount of players. And you don't really need that many guys to have fun. How many players were there when you guys got started? A tenth of the weekly War-whatever "league" games? I know Gronan has said he never lacks for players in his OD&D games, even though most people he runs into are 5e/Pathfinder or whatever players. Just have fun, your way.

I know Professor Barker had bad eyes that limited his wargaming more and more as time went on. When did he finally stop? or did he? Do you think he would/could have played the 54mm that are floating around now?

All very good points, and I agree with you. What I'm seeing is primarily in the RPG scene, and especially in the on-line forums where there's a certain segment of the OSR. I see a lot of 'organized play' events, of all sorts, and the people in them don;t seem to be having much fun - no laughter, no smiles. I'd rather hang out with the Warhammer people, who may be just as serious about their gaming but are having a lot of fun in the process. I'm with you; there's room at the table for everyone - I just get tired of people telling me how I should play.

As far as I know, Phil was still playing miniatures in the early 1990s; his other world-setting, Megarra, was written then, and Gronan was listed as a player in the campaign.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1029653As far as I know, Phil was still playing miniatures in the early 1990s; his other world-setting, Megarra, was written then, and Gronan was listed as a player in the campaign.

Uncle,

Since you mention it. Can you tell us a bit about Megarra...

Thank you,

H:0)

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1029566I'm going to break this into two replies, if I may...

Warm-blooded, probably. Unless he mentioned it in either the article he did on the Shen or in the Sourcebook, it never came up in our games. They tired to kill us, and we tried to kill them; that's about as far as the anatomy lessions got.

Most of the time, the 'metal of the Ancients' is actually a ceramic-metal hybrid, and we didn't have any problems with this material. Actual meta, on the other hand, like the instanced arm of a Ru'un or anything else was asking to get blown up instantly. Which was always fun to watch, from a safe distance.

In Blackmoor, Dave played it Phil's way, 'cause it was part of Phil's campaign. We Tekumel visitors could not have metal on us (I was the exception, being a military sorcerer) and the locals could. They were a little too reliant on their magic, though, and we showed them what was possible with volley fire from massed crossbowmen follwed up with a little god old-fashioned Temple of Vimuhla stuff. The majority of the locals loved it - we were dealing with the minions of the Egg of Coot - and a good time was had by all. Except the minions, of course.

Excellent - thanks for the answers.  Splitting up posts, especially for divergent questions always makes sense.

I know you've mentioned how ceremonial objects made of metals sacred to the specific deity are allowable for sorcerer priests.  Do priests have what D&D would called a 'holy symbol'?  I don't recall seeing anything in the rules requiring one, like for D&D clerics, however 'magic' does work different in Tekumel.  

I'd assume priests of all kinds have various forms of jewelry, etc, indicating not only their religious affiliation but probably also their role and status?  Presumably with different variations for different formal occasions?

Quote from: Hrugga;1029655Uncle,

Since you mention it. Can you tell us a bit about Megarra...

Thank you,

H:0)

I found the campaign map an booklet in his papers after he passed away (six years ago today, I think) and it's a pretty nice medieval-era campaign with the addition of a nation of werewolves. I thought that it would be fun to publish it, as it would appeal both to RPG players and to miniatures gamers, but nothing ever seems to have come of the notion.

What Phil did was do a separate 'nation' for each of the armies he had in his collection of historical miniatures, and the players would send in their orders for the week / month. Phil would move the armies around the map, and then he and the players would fight any resulting battles on the table. All very normal for the kind of Tony Bath-style campaigns that used to be the norm here in the Twin Cities, especially at the Little Tin Slobber Shoppe. Phil, as always, did a really great job of self-publishing the thing, and I think it still holds up today as a campaign setting.

Gronan? Anything more to add?

Quote from: Horu hiFa'asu;1029699Excellent - thanks for the answers.  Splitting up posts, especially for divergent questions always makes sense.

I know you've mentioned how ceremonial objects made of metals sacred to the specific deity are allowable for sorcerer priests.  Do priests have what D&D would called a 'holy symbol'?  I don't recall seeing anything in the rules requiring one, like for D&D clerics, however 'magic' does work different in Tekumel.  

I'd assume priests of all kinds have various forms of jewelry, etc, indicating not only their religious affiliation but probably also their role and status?  Presumably with different variations for different formal occasions?

Happy to be of help!

Yes, I'd say so; each deity has stuff like this, such as the iron sacrificial sacrificial daggers of the Temple of Vimuhla, and in Phil's games these did not count for the metal limit as they were 'consecrated' objects.

Oh, gods, yes! You can instantly tell a person's lineage, clan, temple, and status from what they're wearing. Since the 'working' version of this is normally wood and chlen-hide, it' not as issue for this; the real metal versions are worn at parties and such, and is not worn when one is expecting to have to cast spells. Lots of illustrations by Phil, too, which he did for our games to answer our questions about "what does it look like?".