For that matter, though the Temple of Vimuhla was a tour de force, Phil's 12th - 13th century Anglo-Norman castle and outlying walls were no slouch either!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;842817Yes, to both. Phil - he was still 'Phillip Barker' at the time - drew the first maps of the Dying Earth for Jack Vance as part of his fan activites. As OG says, they wrote back and forth over the years that Phil was in fandom.

Kinda makes an interesting sidelight on all those discussions of 'Vancian magic in D&D' you see go by on the Internet, don't it? Phil was very familiar with the concept - would anyone like to consider the 'Eyes' and their 'spells in storage' in light of this?

Ooo! ooo! Whole new Internet mythology gets started right here on The RPG Site!!!

The Eyes are a kind of Vancian magic I like much better than the original, that's for sure!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;842821For that matter, though the Temple of Vimuhla was a tour de force, Phil's 12th - 13th century Anglo-Norman castle and outlying walls were no slouch either!

I'd agree with that! They were really lovely models, with full interiors and working doors and gates. Pity about what happened to them; Phil's later gamers let the mice get into everything. I took six dead mice and a little over five gallons of mouse poop and bedding out of the Temple of Vimuhla, getting the model ready for Phil's memorial service; the city walls, the Norman keep, and the Scottish tower house never got cleaned up, sad to say - I got pulled off the project by his literary agents, who have control of his collection. I rebuilt the Temple's storage box, where it's been sitting since the middle of 2013.

Quote from: AsenRG;842846The Eyes are a kind of Vancian magic I like much better than the original, that's for sure!

I'd agree! They are the 'hand tools' of the Ancients, and very useful. O' course, you have to know which Eye you have...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;842820"Gonad didn't have enough brains to be afraid!"

"No not me, no not....!"

I liked the colander being used by Gonad as a helmet, myself...

Quote from: chirine ba kal;842753Observation: Gertie, the mighty golden dragon of Blackmoor and terror-object of players,  was a lump of grey Plasticene clay.

These days, based on the conversations that I overhear in the local game emporium, you'd never get her on the table - she's not an 'officially licensed product, authorized for use with *whatever*'. From what I've seen and heard, there are still people out there who play like we did - and do - but they seem to be 'off the grid'.

I'd say that's a miniatures wargaming thing and not a role-playing game thing, even where miniatures get used and at game store and convention events. Lump of clay, if it had even a vaguely dragon shape, probably isn't even in the bottom quarter of things I've seen used.

Quote from: rawma;842892I'd say that's a miniatures wargaming thing and not a role-playing game thing, even where miniatures get used and at game store and convention events. Lump of clay, if it had even a vaguely dragon shape, probably isn't even in the bottom quarter of things I've seen used.

Could very well be, but I thought that the D&D and Pathfinder books the people who were doing the talking indicated that they were RPG players. I could very well be wrong, of course; I'm told that D&D 4e was a miniatures game, by OSR people, and I've never really looked at Pathfinder.

Over the years I have gathered that there were close to miles of tunnels between "points of interest" in the upper levels of the underworld.
That the deeper one went, the smaller the total area occupied.
The deeper the level, the fewer the connections and those areas became more vertical than horizontal.
Is this a good description?

If I stacked groups of city maps with most sections filled in, would that be a close approximation?

What about the "City of the Dead" is it layered? (If so, how?)

How was underworld movement handled?

Also, I had seen posted that as a character rose in "level" the more followers/servants they had at their beck and call.
Were character entourages composed of clan members, slaves, hirelings or some mixture?

Did these entourages follow characters into the underworld?
If so, how many and how was that managed in actual play?
=

I'll only touch on the last point.

Large groups of low-level NPCs in the underworld of EPT work about as well as they do in a D&D dungeon; horribly.  One failed morale check and you have pandemonium on your hands, not to mention once you get past the 1st or 2nd level ordinary men at arms are useless and simply become hiPurina Monster Chow.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;842873I'd agree! They are the 'hand tools' of the Ancients, and very useful. O' course, you have to know which Eye you have...

Finding out is half the fun the GM has with it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;842967I'll only touch on the last point.

Large groups of low-level NPCs in the underworld of EPT work about as well as they do in a D&D dungeon; horribly.  One failed morale check and you have pandemonium on your hands, not to mention once you get past the 1st or 2nd level ordinary men at arms are useless and simply become hiPurina Monster Chow.

:popcorn:

Quote from: chirine ba kal;842905Could very well be, but I thought that the D&D and Pathfinder books the people who were doing the talking indicated that they were RPG players. I could very well be wrong, of course; I'm told that D&D 4e was a miniatures game, by OSR people, and I've never really looked at Pathfinder.

I haven't played Pathfinder, so maybe it's like that; there are a number of boxes of "Pathfinder Pawns". And I didn't play D&D 4e that many places or for that long, but that wasn't the case where I did play, even at the gaming store that sold miniatures and the Monster Vault (which had a large number of flat cardboard counters for D&D 4e monsters). Maybe I didn't play RPGs with the right sort of RPG miniatures players; when we used miniatures it was almost entirely for functional purposes and not as a pleasing spectacle, and you could live with mismatched miniatures and dice or whatever for the odd creatures. I've never seen anything as fancy as Dwarven Forge terrain used.

Another factor may be that it's on the GM to bring most of the miniatures, and it's hard enough to find good GMs as is, and it would limit the GM a lot if only NPCs for which they had a miniature could appear. But I can't recall any game where players were required to bring a single appropriate miniature of their character, although that doesn't seem to be a difficult standard to demand.

Quote from: Greentongue;842926Over the years I have gathered that there were close to miles of tunnels between "points of interest" in the upper levels of the underworld.
That the deeper one went, the smaller the total area occupied.
The deeper the level, the fewer the connections and those areas became more vertical than horizontal.
Is this a good description?

If I stacked groups of city maps with most sections filled in, would that be a close approximation?

What about the "City of the Dead" is it layered? (If so, how?)

How was underworld movement handled?

Also, I had seen posted that as a character rose in "level" the more followers/servants they had at their beck and call.
Were character entourages composed of clan members, slaves, hirelings or some mixture?

Did these entourages follow characters into the underworld?
If so, how many and how was that managed in actual play?
=

Yes, I'd agree with that. My copy of the Jakallan Underworld by Phil is like that. The 'top' level is huge - the map is a 22" x 36" sheet, but the two 'lower' levels are both 8 1/2" x 11" sheets and are more 'destination' levels. The 'top' level 'tourist traps' are all seperate area, with lots of tunnels and little rooms full of junk in them to keep the areas apart. All Phil's later Underworlds are much simpler; I think he got bored drawing lots of 'empty' tunnels, and usually cut to the good stuff pretty quickly.

I think if you did as you say, you'd have a pretty good approximation. Go for something spread out, with some really 'stacked' deep areas under the surface points of interest - your comment about the (Jakalla?) City of the Dead is well-taken. Phil tended to have the 'shafts' go down from the surface sites, kind of like a vertical mine. I have no idea why he never published any of them - they were all pretty good to play in, and his draftsmanship is astonishing.

Underworld movement was done verbally, until we got to a situation where getting out the lead seemed fun; then it would be by eyeballing the distances. used rulers once in a while, when they seemed needed. I used my set of wooden block for walls and such.

You get servants / hirelings if you pay for them; there's no relationship to what your level is in Phil's games for this. You had to pay them, and usually feed, house, and clothe them as well. It got very expensive, unless (like me) you had a steady income; the usual run of players out at Phil's never hired any, as they didn't have the income to do it.

When you did have an entourage, it was usually of hired 'contract worker', and negotiating the contracts was a game in and of itself. Yes, you'd have a mix, and the only ones that you could really trust were professional mercenaries and your clan-cousins.

We took a group of 'hirelings' into an Underworld exactly once in Phil's campaigns, and that was the assault on the palace of Bassa, King of the Black Ssu - and that was a military action, more then anything else. We always stayed small, nimble, and fast - it always worked out better, that way.

Quote from: AsenRG;842971Finding out is half the fun the GM has with it.



:popcorn:

Agreed!

Quote from: AsenRG;842971Finding out is half the fun the GM has with it.

"Hey, Kargan, does the Temple Codex list an Eye of Splattering your Hapless Apprentice Against The Wall?"

Quote from: rawma;843005I haven't played Pathfinder, so maybe it's like that; there are a number of boxes of "Pathfinder Pawns". And I didn't play D&D 4e that many places or for that long, but that wasn't the case where I did play, even at the gaming store that sold miniatures and the Monster Vault (which had a large number of flat cardboard counters for D&D 4e monsters). Maybe I didn't play RPGs with the right sort of RPG miniatures players; when we used miniatures it was almost entirely for functional purposes and not as a pleasing spectacle, and you could live with mismatched miniatures and dice or whatever for the odd creatures. I've never seen anything as fancy as Dwarven Forge terrain used.

Another factor may be that it's on the GM to bring most of the miniatures, and it's hard enough to find good GMs as is, and it would limit the GM a lot if only NPCs for which they had a miniature could appear. But I can't recall any game where players were required to bring a single appropriate miniature of their character, although that doesn't seem to be a difficult standard to demand.

I would agree with all of this, especially in our games over the years. What I'm mentioning is what I've seen at the big local FLGS and at the local conventions / events, where anything 'homemade' or 'unofficial' is very strongly discouraged by the FLGS or the event / tournament / convention organizers. The players I've seen in these are all pretty much the same way - if it isn't 'authorized for use with', it doesn't get on the table. The historical miniatures guys are still doing all the mix and match home-brew stuff, but that's been the nature of that genre since the 1960s.