Quote from: The_Shadow;962468Recently I found this http://tekumelcollecting.com/2015/03/17/previously-unknown-m-a-r-barker-drawing-found/ which shows this early MAR Barker illlustration

It dates from 1950 but is strikingly similar in subject and style to the 2 or 3 full-page illustrations Phil did that were published in the original EPT rulebook.

I find these pictures strangely compelling. Phil has a naive but vivid style and his use of hatching and line is excellent. In the EPT rulebook, the picture of the preparation for the human sacrifice is well-known (notorious?) and the grotesquerie of the evil-looking priest and the disembodied leering masks in the background is very effective.

So, why are there so few of these pictures by Phil? Did he only go through a short phase in which he expressed himself in this way? Do the pictures in the EPT book date from the same period as that fanzine illustration?

They were all done in the same time frame, 1948 to 1950, when Phil was most active in fandom. The specifically Tekumel ones are all signed by one 'Firu ba Yeker', of the Clan of the Uttermost Secret, a retired Priest of Sarku and a fellow Chakan. From what I can tell, from internal evidence and his letters, these follow the art in his college notebooks (which I made sure to make copies of, as the original pages were in sad shape) and from before he went to South Asia as a Fulbright Scholar.

Yes, I do think this was from a short period of time in his life. There is this drawing, the Yilrana one, the Mi'itlanesh one, the sacrifice one, and two more unpublished drawings: one of Elara hi Vriddi getting arrested by the OAL and one illustrating the legend of The Two Brothers. I would think that they were time-intensive to draw, given the style, and so his output was pretty limited. Later on, in our games, he'd do much simpler drawings for us to show us something, and he'd whip off these pencil sketches while he was talking.

As a side note, the priest in the sacrifice drawing looks a lot like Phil's father, Loris, and the unfortunate lady is one of his college friends. We found the slide he took of her posing, and it's obvious that the two of them are laughing their heads off at the 'inside' joke. The leering masks also look a lot like some of the artwork on the cover of the menus from a tiki bar in Berekley, from that same time when Phil was there. One wonders...

Does this help?

Quote from: bconsidine;962571I'll bite. What is your real game?

Blaise

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!!! You, gentle reader of this massive thread, are literally the very first person to ask me this question in forty years. Consider yourself given the big prize!

A long, long time ago, I set myself the primary objective of being Phil's archivist, documenting the creative process that engendered Tekumel. My primary goal was to get a complete copy of all his work, and catalog and index it for future fans. Nothing more, nothing less. I made copies, I made notes, I collected artifacts, and now - all these years later - I've done it. I have everything; not the originals, as I'm not a 'collector' , but all the data. It's all in digital format, and we keep it all very, very safe.

As I got into gaming Tekumel, I set myself the goal of having all the miniature figures we'd need for any particular scenario or adventure; this is why there are over 5,000 miniatures in my basement, only about 200 of which are not intended primarily for use in game set in Tekumel. I've done that, too; I have anything and everything I need to run my games, and to do so in the kind of 'grand manner' that Phil and I dreamed and talked about for years. No masking tape on bare tables, here; I've brought my years of railway modeling experience to bear, and I'm told I do pretty cool-looking tables.

I set myself the goal to do the best I could do at anything I did, after some advice by a senior NCO; I think I've managed that, too. My wife has a roof over her head, plenty to eat, and health care for her many ills. I've had five young people become my daughters, and they've brought into our extended family a goodly number of other young people to be sons and daughters. I'd call that one a success, too.

I have set myself the goal of telling you our story as our alter-egos in Tekumel, and that's moving along; 128,000 words, and still being written.

My goals, all those years ago, were - and still are - to paint my figures, run my games, and tell my stories. Nothing more, and nothing less. looking back on it over the past forty years, I think it's been a success. Sure, there have been some bad patches, but I did get my Missus of some 27 years, and five really cool kids out of it all.

So, there we are. I win. Hands down.

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;962597Chirine,

A bit of a strange question, but if you had to transfer a kaitar into today's currency (say dollars for simplicity's sake) how much purchasing power would it have? Is it that a kaitar buys as much as a dollar does today, or five dollars, or ten dollars, or more?
The reason I ask is that almost everything in EPT is "x" number of kaitars and very few items are given a price in quirgals or hlash. Is gold so common a metal that it's value is not as high as it has traditionally been on earth? Perhaps this is just unique to the foreigner's quarter of Jakalla where, presumably, gouging is the norm, or is it a " national" constant? Or is this Phil merely simplifying things?
 Thanks in advance.

Oh! Good question! We never really discussed it, and I think Gronan in his reply to you has a good point. I look at it this way: three million of the little gold coins, each with 3 grams of gold in it, will buy all of the equipment needed to raise four full legions of Imperial infantry - 32,000 troopers - in full steel heavy infantry armor, and pay and feed them for five years.

If we look at the pay rates in EPT, I think it's possible to say that a kaitar might be equivalent to USD$5 or so, and that's a very rough approximation.

I think Gronan does have it though; since very few transactions are paid for in coin, and normally in writs, it's more likely to be a handy unit of accounting. Phil very, very rarely used the 'small change', unless we were out in rural areas where a silver coin was a village's net worth. We had to specifically carry coppers around to be able to pay for things; see also the old UKP 'fiver', which was very hard to break into change during the time it was in circulation.

Does any of this help?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;962599For the same reason that in OD&D a ten foot pole costs 1 or 2 gold.  Convenience in bookkeeping.

Agreed. Remember the night dear old Jajal bore Phil to tears while he worked out his taxes to the nearest hlash?

We did the 'breakfast in the bastion scene' instead, and had a great night.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;962630They were all done in the same time frame, 1948 to 1950, when Phil was most active in fandom. The specifically Tekumel ones are all signed by one 'Firu ba Yeker', of the Clan of the Uttermost Secret, a retired Priest of Sarku and a fellow Chakan. From what I can tell, from internal evidence and his letters, these follow the art in his college notebooks (which I made sure to make copies of, as the original pages were in sad shape) and from before he went to South Asia as a Fulbright Scholar.

Yes, I do think this was from a short period of time in his life. There is this drawing, the Yilrana one, the Mi'itlanesh one, the sacrifice one, and two more unpublished ones of Elara hi Vriddi getting arrested by the OAL and one illustrating the legend of The Two Brothers. I would think that they were time-intensive to draw, given the style, and so his output was pretty limited. Later on, in our games, he'd do much simpler drawings for us to show us something, and he'd whip off these pencil sketches while he was talking.

As a side note, the priest in the sacrifice drawing looks a lot like Phil's father, Loris, and the unfortunate lady is one of his college friends. We found the slide he took of her posing, and it's obvious that the two of them are laughing their heads off at the 'inside' joke. The leering masks also look a lot like some of the artwork on the cover of the menus from a tiki bar in Berekley, from that same time when Phil was there. One wonders...

Does this help?

Thanks Chirine, and may I say I find this a very interesting question as well.

So,  you reference the OP drawing,  Yilrana and Bazhan on the cover of EPT, Mi'itlenish at Purdimal, and the Durritlamish sacrifice.

and you mention two of Elara hiVriddi, and one of the Two Brothers, which none of us will have seen, so that's that.

But it seems to me there' at least four more "big drawings":  Nayari and her hapless husband, the Legion of Serqu mounting their final assault on a Yan Koryani fortress, the functionaries waiting in the outer halls at Avanthar, and (from the Sourcebook), Nyelmu perving on Princess Ma'in.

My impressions based on style are that the Nayari drawing dates from the same time period, and maybe Nyelmu/Ma'in as well. They both look ca. 1950 (or even 1940s) to me. But I could be convinced that "functionaries at Avanthar" is a later drawing. Serqu, I can't even make a guess, could be early, could be later. Or are those both Sutherland drawings? My EPT isn't handy right now.

What do you think, are they all 1950s?

Quote from: chirine ba kal;962639see also the old UKP 'fiver', which was very hard to break into change during the time it was in circulation.

yeah the old five pound notes were not only hard to break, they were the size of broadsheet newspapers. Big-ass legal documents. You'd need a dining room table to unfold one. I'm exaggerating. A little. But spending one was a big deal

Quote from: Zirunel;962645Thanks Chirine, and may I say I find this a very interesting question as well.

So,  you reference the OP drawing,  Yilrana and Bazhan on the cover of EPT, Mi'itlenish at Purdimal, and the Durritlamish sacrifice.

and you mention two of Elara hiVriddi, and one of the Two Brothers, which none of us will have seen, so that's that.

But it seems to me there' at least four more "big drawings":  Nayari and her hapless husband, the Legion of Serqu mounting their final assault on a Yan Koryani fortress, the functionaries waiting in the outer halls at Avanthar, and (from the Sourcebook), Nyelmu perving on Princess Ma'in.

My impressions based on style are that the Nayari drawing dates from the same time period, and maybe Nyelmu/Ma'in as well. They both look ca. 1950 (or even 1940s) to me. But I could be convinced that "functionaries at Avanthar" is a later drawing. Serqu, I can't even make a guess, could be early, could be later.

What do you think, are they all 1950s?

Yes, you are right! That'll teach me to not check a copy before I type! There are the four more, published in EPT and S&G, and they are also from this same time period - they have the same notes / signatures on the backs of the originals. So, that's ten I know of and have seen the originals of. There's only the one of Elara getting nicked by the OAL in Fasiltum; I've gone back and corrected my previous post on this.

I always really liked these drawings of his; he was always very insecure about them and their supposed lack of quality. Phil was, if you asked me, a good artist, and getting his original vision of his world was something to behold back in the day.

Sorry about the confusion; I've lived with all this stuff for so long I tend to not really think about the published stuff, unless asked about it.

Quote from: Zirunel;962649yeah the old five pound notes were not only hard to break, they were the size of broadsheet newspapers. Big-ass legal documents. You'd need a dining room table to unfold one. I'm exaggerating. A little. But spending one was a big deal

Yes, very much so; they tended to accumulate the signatures of the people who held them for a while, if I recall.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;962630Does this help?

Very much so! Fascinating. Hope that the unpublished pictures you mention surface some time. It's too bad that Phil was insecure about his art; it was unpolished but there is something really vital about it in the same way that there was with someone like Erol Otus.

Quote from: The_Shadow;962658Very much so! Fascinating. Hope that the unpublished pictures you mention surface some time.

Agreed; it'd be nice. I suggested doing an art book with all of Phil's original artwork from first to last - 1948 to 2008, roughly - but nothing ever came of it.

Which, if I may be allowed a personal opinion, is a real pity; I think people would have a very different view of the Tekumel world-setting if they had the chance to look at the whole body of Phil's work as well as the world he moved in, as Gronan and I were fortunate enough to do. The Phil we gamed with, and the world he took us to, was something very special.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;962639Oh! Good question! We never really discussed it, and I think Gronan in his reply to you has a good point. I look at it this way: three million of the little gold coins, each with 3 grams of gold in it, will buy all of the equipment needed to raise four full legions of Imperial infantry - 32,000 troopers - in full steel heavy infantry armor, and pay and feed them for five years.

If we look at the pay rates in EPT, I think it's possible to say that a kaitar might be equivalent to USD$5 or so, and that's a very rough approximation.

I think Gronan does have it though; since very few transactions are paid for in coin, and normally in writs, it's more likely to be a handy unit of accounting. Phil very, very rarely used the 'small change', unless we were out in rural areas where a silver coin was a village's net worth. We had to specifically carry coppers around to be able to pay for things; see also the old UKP 'fiver', which was very hard to break into change during the time it was in circulation.

Does any of this help?

Thank you (both) for the clarification. It helps a great deal as my campaign is currently on a more mundane track, as the party has been tasked with getting an old Vriddi hunting lodge ready, for Lady Elara no less (circa 2340 AS), and now that they have defeated the baddy they have to continue with the less glamorous aspects of readying: making sure the roof is fixed, replacing the floor in the NE corner of one room, making sure the little things are done right. Given the fact that they are in the Chaigarri backwoods about two days travel on foot and a boat ride from Hekellu, and that the locals want to deal with hard currency, not promissory notes, it's nice to know just how much they can buy with their cash on hand.  Not glamorous, but it's the kind of things that have fleshed out the characters, and have brought the game to life and elevated it above a series of endless dungeon crawls and disjointed adventures -both of which are fine in their own right but do not appeal to me or my group for any sustained period.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;962656I always really liked these drawings of his; he was always very insecure about them and their supposed lack of quality. Phil was, if you asked me, a good artist, and getting his original vision of his world was something to behold back in the day.

yes I agree with you, and with The_Shadow on that. When it comes to visualizing his own creation, he was the best. Who could do it better?

Okay, maybe Kathy Marshall. She "got" Tekumel, and depicted it better than almost anyone else, but even so, the Professor's drawings are among the most evocative you could hope for. It's a shame to hear he was insecure about them. He should never have felt that.

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;962660Thank you (both) for the clarification. It helps a great deal as my campaign is currently on a more mundane track, as the party has been tasked with getting an old Vriddi hunting lodge ready, for Lady Elara no less (circa 2340 AS), and now that they have defeated the baddy they have to continue with the less glamorous aspects of readying: making sure the roof is fixed, replacing the floor in the NE corner of one room, making sure the little things are done right. Given the fact that they are in the Chaigarri backwoods about two days travel on foot and a boat ride from Hekellu, and that the locals want to deal with hard currency, not promissory notes, it's nice to know just how much they can buy with their cash on hand.  Not glamorous, but it's the kind of things that have fleshed out the characters, and have brought the game to life and elevated it above a series of endless dungeon crawls and disjointed adventures -both of which are fine in their own right but do not appeal to me or my group for any sustained period.

Oh, this is going to be just screamingly funny!!! some of our very best nights with Phil were 'dealing with the locals', as Phil could do the authentic Mummerset accents required as well as the South Asian ones. It was always a joy to watch people try to escape their D&D roots and get into the social swing.

Gods, I wish I could see this!!!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;962663Oh, this is going to be just screamingly funny!!! some of our very best nights with Phil were 'dealing with the locals', as Phil could do the authentic Mummerset accents required as well as the South Asian ones. It was always a joy to watch people try to escape their D&D roots and get into the social swing.

Gods, I wish I could see this!!!

What's even funnier is that they are Vriddi, all from "better" lineages (rolled up before the game started), the expedition is being "led" by Churisan hiVriddi (of the Vriddi) a lush, an idiot, a fop and a womaniser too high up to dispose of but too "dangerous" to be given any really power (I see him as a Fredo Corleone type of character), with Horu hiFa'asu hiVriddi -former Molkar of the 10th Legion, and blood uncle to two of the characters, "commanding" the expedition who everyone, including Churisan, is terrified of. "Uncle is looking for you." has become a sentence that instantly incites worry in my game!
To compound the above mentioned, the characters have somehow gotten a reputation of being "fuck-ups" within clan circles and Uncle Horu has told them to personally see to the lodge and that they "better not mess this up..." To paraphrase you Chirine: much mayhem will ensue.
I also do a tonne of accents from Eastern European, to South Asian, to southern US, to whatever... These are usually good for a laugh or two especially after I've had a few drinks in me
I will certainly keep you posted.

Chirine,

When you get a sec, can you check your notifications. I PM'd you something.

Shemek.