Quote from: chirine ba kal;959031Red Flight, Battleaxe Six; Interrogatory: What are you flyboys on about now? Over.

Call for a little CAS, and look what happens. Betcha the Marines never have this happen...

Battleaxe Six, Red Eight.  Please let your FO know that "SHOOT THEM SHOOT THEM SHOOT THEM" works better if he remembers to turn on his laser designator.  These proton torpedoes are a little too hot to get sloppy with...

Well, Tekumal hasn't ever been of much interest to me but I always enjoy the gaming history and miniatures discussion.  I think it's a great thing and I'm grateful to Chrine and Gronan for putting up with us.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;959064Don't quite follow your banter, sport.  (UFB?)

Un-Fucking-Believable, in reference to the absurdity of closing the initial thread, oh Glorious General.

Chirine,

Which of Pavar's deities is prominent in the Hekellu/Chaigari region? Would this be considerd Vimuhla or Ksarul "country," or is one of the other gods or goddesses more popular?

Question about the arc of the hobby.  Or maybe just the market.

BTW thanks for starting a new thread.  I quit reading the other one at about 50 pages.  Just too big.

So now where I live (admitibly a small place) we have two gaming stores.  They carry D&D in a couple different flavors.  New and new only in one.  The other has a small random and savagely used selection of other gaming stuff. Like the smallest discarded detritus of a lost empire.

That and a few other things (converstaions with my used book dealer) gives me an Idea that the glorious empire really did exist once.  

A half dozen systems, with rule books, supplements and modules.  A brisk trade in used books as gaming groups tried stuff out, played through modules and traded them back in.

Cheep figures new and used under glass and plastic.

Is it real?  Did it ever exist?  Have you been there?  

There seems to be a tonne of stuff now but its all online.  Has it always been that way?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;959063We really can't make this shit up, can we.

No, we can't. What I think some folks have difficulty with is that our lives have been made up of the stuff of legends, and theirs' haven't.

"Everything you do so well, you make us look bad."

When I look back at the people we used to game with - and still do, for that matter - it strikes what an amazingly gifted bunch we hung out with. I am sorry that it seems to make some people feel inferior, somehow; that's kind of sad, 'cause all we were doing was making stuff up and having some fun - and we still do, I think.

Quote from: David Johansen;959066Well, Tekumal hasn't ever been of much interest to me but I always enjoy the gaming history and miniatures discussion.  I think it's a great thing and I'm grateful to Chrine and Gronan for putting up with us.

Understood! What you like is what you like, and I for one am not here to try to convert you to The One True Faith. I'm here for exactly what you say - and if you can use any of our half-baked notions, go to it!

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;959070Un-Fucking-Believable, in reference to the absurdity of closing the initial thread, oh Glorious General.

If it's a site issue, it' a site issue. I'm content with what's needed.

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;959071Chirine,

Which of Pavar's deities is prominent in the Hekellu/Chaigari region? Would this be considerd Vimuhla or Ksarul "country," or is one of the other gods or goddesses more popular?

It's a pretty mixed bag, from what we saw in our time there. Dlamelish is very big - hence the legion - but Ksarul and Gruganu are as well; I think there was another legion based there devoted to Gruganu, but I'd have to look it up. Some very odd pockets of old Vimuhla people - which is where my legion comes from - and some strong Sarku people in the city of Hekellu proper.

Out in the Protectorate, it's less about Pavar and more about the tribal stuff - more like Yan Kor, actually. The further out from Hekellu you get, the less 'civilized' it gets.

From the EPT rules the separate nations were distinct colors  (blue/ red/ green/ black/ brown...)

In Flamesong it was specifically mentioned about colored walkways that only specific people were allowed to walk on.

Were colors important, besides in mass battles to distinguish the sides?

Were coded areas and/or walkways something you often encountered?
=

Quote from: Headless;959098Question about the arc of the hobby.  Or maybe just the market.

BTW thanks for starting a new thread.  I quit reading the other one at about 50 pages.  Just too big.

So now where I live (admitibly a small place) we have two gaming stores.  They carry D&D in a couple different flavors.  New and new only in one.  The other has a small random and savagely used selection of other gaming stuff. Like the smallest discarded detritus of a lost empire.

That and a few other things (converstaions with my used book dealer) gives me an Idea that the glorious empire really did exist once.  

A half dozen systems, with rule books, supplements and modules.  A brisk trade in used books as gaming groups tried stuff out, played through modules and traded them back in.

Cheep figures new and used under glass and plastic.

Is it real?  Did it ever exist?  Have you been there?  

There seems to be a tonne of stuff now but its all online.  Has it always been that way?

Understood!


Re the Glorious Empire...

Yes, I think it did, in spots like The Dungeon in Lake Geneva and The Little Tin Soldier Shoppe and Uncle Hugo's SF Bookstore here in the Twin Cites. Back before the Internet, little indie stores had no competition, and if you wanted to get something you had to go to the very rare conventions or the local store. Mail order was very difficult, as it was very hard to even find the addresses of most publishers, and most of them didn't want to deal with mail order - too much overhead, and sales to distributors brought in more money more reliably. (Convention sales were the icing on the cake.) Model railroad and hobby stores used to exist that worked in the same way, too.

These days, used books are more or less worthless, and what few retail stores that still exist will touch them. Miniatures have very, very little resale value even when painted and based; 'used' raw metal has no value at all in today's retail environment. Stores must stock the 'big name brands' to get any sales, the days of being able to potter around in the back corners and look for lost treasure are long gone. Lines that have no support from the publisher / manufacturer have a shelf life measured in nanoseconds, and get dumped in the 75% off bins. (I will admit that I get a lot of great figures, that way.)

Once the Internet arrived, and became easy to use, all this went away - no money = no money. The small publishers / manufacturers have turned to the Internet to sell their stuff, because it's the only way to reach a large enough audience to survive. We are in the age of the 'boutique' website.

So, yes, I've been there, and I do kind of miss those times.

Quote from: Greentongue;959266From the EPT rules the separate nations were distinct colors  (blue/ red/ green/ black/ brown...)

In Flamesong it was specifically mentioned about colored walkways that only specific people were allowed to walk on.

Were colors important, besides in mass battles to distinguish the sides?

Were coded areas and/or walkways something you often encountered?
=

Generally, all of the countries have a particular color that is used a a trim or basic color, so you can tell everybody apart. Temples also have this, and being able to 'read' the possible combinations is learned at an early age.

The walkways are specific to the Engsvanyali provice of Mihallu, and are not seen in modern settings outside of Mihallu. (They still use these. The snobs.) The highest compliment that one can get in Mihallu is "He never strayed from his color."

Yes; you can tell anyone from anyone by what they wear; a Priestess of Avanthe will be dressed in blue, a Karakan worshipper with red and gold trim. The Five Empires are very place- and status-aware, and colors and glyphs all play a very big part in this.

No, not outside Mihallu. In the Five Empires, you do see platforms and seating that is very organized as to status and place, but they are not particularly formally coded like in the Engsvanyali system. What you get is the major-domo 'suggesting' that you walk on the 'nice carpet' or on the 'better tiles' to show your status. Much like Ancient Egypt - see also the palace floors in Malkata or Amarna - which is where I suspect Phil nabbed the idea from.

Historical footnote:

The recent photos of the miniatures game using Phil's figures are from the recent Gary Con, where the Tekumel Foundation ran a "Legions of the Petal Throne" game.

Quote from: Headless;959098Question about the arc of the hobby.  Or maybe just the market.

BTW thanks for starting a new thread.  I quit reading the other one at about 50 pages.  Just too big.

So now where I live (admitibly a small place) we have two gaming stores.  They carry D&D in a couple different flavors.  New and new only in one.  The other has a small random and savagely used selection of other gaming stuff. Like the smallest discarded detritus of a lost empire.

That and a few other things (converstaions with my used book dealer) gives me an Idea that the glorious empire really did exist once.  

A half dozen systems, with rule books, supplements and modules.  A brisk trade in used books as gaming groups tried stuff out, played through modules and traded them back in.

Cheep figures new and used under glass and plastic.

Is it real?  Did it ever exist?  Have you been there?  

There seems to be a tonne of stuff now but its all online.  Has it always been that way?

I think the peak of the hobby was roughly 1978-1983.  I remember going to the first GenCon at Parkside and looking around the dealers' room and thinking, "This is all SO COOL."

Production was pretty difficult and expensive, so production values were pretty low; Judge's Guild wasn't atypical.  Once photocopiers got more common and you got places like Kinko's, that helped.  A lot of games were typed and photocopied.

But at that time a table in the GenCon dealers' room was something like $20.  You got a lot of people flogging stuff, like my "Dungeon Tiles" set that is grey painted masonite with a stone pattern silkscreened on.  Crude, but imaginative.

And then you got people like Scotty Bizar publishing any and everything he could think of, including getting the license for a Flash Gordon game briefly, as well as "Armies of the Hyborian Age" and "Down Styphon!", rules in the world of "Lord Calvin of Otherwhen."

I truly believe it was the imaginative peak of the hobby.

Ran a nice little Tekumel dungeon crawl at the weekend. I was at a weekend con in Sheffield UK and ran a game that had folks from the temple of Thumis looking for a stolen image of Thumis that had been taken to embarrass the conservative faction of the temple. As it was an introduction to the world of the Petal Throne I ran it more as a "this is just like any other FRPG and not impenetrable at all" game and the fact that they didn't know much about the creatures they saw except for a description and some INT based information/rumours made it a load of fun - do we fight or run? For a starting game I ran it using Brett Slocum's Petal Hack, a very simple OSR ruleset to make the focus on the setting not the rules.