Quote from: Baron;964630My players are not enjoying their run-ins with the hluss. I have odd extruded constructs all over, many of which are organic traps of some kind. They also cultivate food of the ssu, and use shell-throwing nenyelu in pools as watchdogs. The party has also learned to hate pygmy folk, those hairy little back-stabbing con-artists.

Wonderful! Sounds like your typical game, really. I like it!

Quote from: Baron;964630My players are not enjoying their run-ins with the hluss. I have odd extruded constructs all over, many of which are organic traps of some kind. They also cultivate food of the ssu, and use shell-throwing nenyelu in pools as watchdogs. The party has also learned to hate pygmy folk, those hairy little back-stabbing con-artists.

Sounds like you and your group are having a blast.
BTW, are your players "new" to Tekumel? If so, are they having any difficulties "getting" Tekumel? Inquiring minds want to know:)

Quote from: chirine ba kal;964581Room's set!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]989[/ATTACH]

Sweet layout Chirine. That would be an experience and a half gaming on that table! I'm envious, sigh.

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;964648Sweet layout Chirine. That would be an experience and a half gaming on that table! I'm envious, sigh.

Thank you! I've kinda proud of what we've been able to build; luckily, I am pretty good with tools and lumber. The rolling snacks table, now in the lounge, lives under the game table, and those are the new shelves I made under the table top for more (!) game stuff. All of the stuff on the is off the shelves, and I didn't have to get anything out of the shed. This is a fast, quick game set, designed to get the players into Tekumel as quickly as possible.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;964581Room's set!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]989[/ATTACH]

Looks great, Uncle:)!

Quote from: Baron;964630My players are not enjoying their run-ins with the hluss. I have odd extruded constructs all over, many of which are organic traps of some kind. They also cultivate food of the ssu, and use shell-throwing nenyelu in pools as watchdogs. The party has also learned to hate pygmy folk, those hairy little back-stabbing con-artists.

And it looks like you're doing a great job Refereeing!
The best campaigns are those where the players learn to hate their enemies, I've noticed;).

Speaking of which we weren't... in this case the battle of 3rd Mar...

Yeah, Phil tried to set us up.  But, to be fair to him, once the dust settled my Legion was awarded a battle honor and the Glorious General received his third Gold of Glory.  We may not have followed the script, but Phil acknowledged himself fairly beaten, for which he deserves credit.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;964694Speaking of which we weren't... in this case the battle of 3rd Mar...

Yeah, Phil tried to set us up.  But, to be fair to him, once the dust settled my Legion was awarded a battle honor and the Glorious General received his third Gold of Glory.  We may not have followed the script, but Phil acknowledged himself fairly beaten, for which he deserves credit.

Oddly enough, we were talking about this kind of thing today during the game session. I had made a spectacularly bad set of dice rolls, and went with the result. People were a little surprised by this, as in my role as GM I could have 'fudged' the numbers, but I explianed that this was just not the way we'd played, or the way we still play in our circles. Phil wasn't very happy at having his plans thwarted, but he rolled with it and 'played it as it lies'.

The party advances into the Underworld, after discovering the stairway leading down...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]994[/ATTACH]

And starts to straggle right away...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]995[/ATTACH]

There was trouble in the corridors...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]996[/ATTACH]

But nothing they thought they couldn't handle...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]997[/ATTACH]

Game continues next Saturday, June 3rd, at one p.m.; lots of laughs and fun expected, if this game session was anything to go by...

Quote from: chirine ba kal;964727Oddly enough, we were talking about this kind of thing today during the game session. I had made a spectacularly bad set of dice rolls, and went with the result. People were a little surprised by this, as in my role as GM I could have 'fudged' the numbers, but I explianed that this was just not the way we'd played, or the way we still play in our circles. Phil wasn't very happy at having his plans thwarted, but he rolled with it and 'played it as it lies'.

This is one of the things that still ghasts my flabber.  The dice are the dice, and Dame Fortune is a fickle bitch.  If a certain thing needs to happen I'll simply adjudicate it rather than roll.  Don't roll the dice if you aren't willing to accept the results.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;964756Don't roll the dice if you aren't willing to accept the results.

Exactly,  The simplest thing ever to grasp.

Yes, this. We had a nice discussion about the way to adjudicate things in games, and I pointed out that it was based on experience and research. This, of course, led to the trotting out of some of the arsenal of sharp and blunt objects in the collection, for some visual aids.

Very, very interesting time, as I learned a lot about modern gaming, and they learned about ancient mayhem...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;964756This is one of the things that still ghasts my flabber.  The dice are the dice, and Dame Fortune is a fickle bitch.  If a certain thing needs to happen I'll simply adjudicate it rather than roll.  Don't roll the dice if you aren't willing to accept the results.

Yes, and yet any debate about it always devolves into "my sacred GMing rights include using dice to help me Refereeing, not as a Mandate of Heaven", somehow;).

Quote from: chirine ba kal;964763Yes, this. We had a nice discussion about the way to adjudicate things in games, and I pointed out that it was based on experience and research. This, of course, led to the trotting out of some of the arsenal of sharp and blunt objects in the collection, for some visual aids.

Very, very interesting time, as I learned a lot about modern gaming, and they learned about ancient mayhem...

I'd say they won in the exchange, though I'd like to note that no, not all modern gamers accept fudging as a principle - case in point, me.
Whatever your opinion of modern gaming now, though, they won, because you didn't get to see any new props:D!

Quote from: AsenRG;964805Yes, and yet any debate about it always devolves into "my sacred GMing rights include using dice to help me Refereeing, not as a Mandate of Heaven", somehow;).

I'd say they won in the exchange, though I'd like to note that no, not all modern gamers accept fudging as a principle - case in point, me.
Whatever your opinion of modern gaming now, though, they won, because you didn't get to see any new props:D!

Good points! I think that a really big and wonderful part of being a referee / GM is dealing with the challenges that the players throw at me. Yes, I've set my guards and laid my ambushes, but if they are smart enough and clever enough to get around and past everything I can throw at them, then I'm having a great time. It seems to work both ways; I got a lot of very positive comments on how cleverly I'd set up the game board, with lots of nooks and crannies to hide things in, and how I'd thought up a good solid back story to supply them with all sorts of Clues and Red Herrings.

It has been a constant in my gaming over the last three or four years that there's a big element of learning going on on the part of the gamers who visit. People come, game, and take away lessions that they use in their gaming. I had this last weekend as well, when my co-commander in an armored battle picked up very, very quickly some basic lessons about tank tactics. It was also pretty delightful to see our opponents learn the same lessons at my hands, and then apply them instantly in the game; they changed their entire approach in mid-game, and became much more canny and formidable opponents. We all had fun, and we've had a run of really good games over the past couple of weeks.

I did get to see a lot of old props again, though...

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;964646Sounds like you and your group are having a blast.
BTW, are your players "new" to Tekumel? If so, are they having any difficulties "getting" Tekumel? Inquiring minds want to know:)

Thanks for the kind words, all. I actually run two separate games, one in-person and one on Roll20. I try to invest my time doing prep that I can use in both games, but it's amusing to see how different groups of players react to the same situations. In any case, both groups are now on Kashi (the second group having only just arrived at the close of the latest session). In today's game, the first group almost wiped themselves out -- only one player fatality though, thankfully. We'll see how the second group handles the same situation.

To answer your question, Shemek, all players were new to Tekumel coming in. This was about three years ago. I almost fell out of my chair when I made a reference to the Goddess of the Pale Bone a couple of weeks ago, and a player immediately replied, "Hey, we've heard of her!" and whipped out his notes. In today's game, a player actually said, "Hey, this place is related to Ksarul, right?" without any reminders or prompting from me. Since each group only plays once a month, and we've been running for years, it's quite a feat to retain this kind of information, so I am gratified at their interest. Further, no one has ever said, "Hey, enough of this Tekumel crap, can't we fight some ogres or something?" No, instead, when I took an informal poll of one group, each piped up with a different type of Tekumel gaming that was their particular favorite, and eventually everything I'd mentioned got at least one vote. In the other group, I was specifically told that the players wanted "more Tekumel!"

Can't go wrong with that.