Quote from: Old Geezer;838548Actually, my solution is to never play that game again.  There are plenty of rules sets around.

I agree it's shit rules design, but the game is inexplicably popular in some quarters.

It all goes back to WRG, by the same author, and the British fondness for tournament play. The series of WRG/DBA/DBX rules get more and more abstract as they go along, and become more like board games then they do what you and I would consider 'miniatures' games. 'Free Kriegspiel' is a very dirty term amongst the fans of the series, from what I've seen.

They - the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society, especially - used to tout the series as being the most historically accurate sets of rules in the universe. I felt differently, especially after the Origins in Baltimore that we went to in the very early 1980s where the HMGS was running The National Tournament for historical miniatures. In the WRG/etc series, the battlefield terrain is chosen by the players, usually three features each, and placed on the opposing player's side of the table. In the final battle of the tournament, each player picked three 'swamp' terrain pieces, and gleefully place them on their opponent's side of the table.

Me, I started laughing my fool head off, much to the annoyance of the 'serious wargamers'; the game instantly stalemated, as one player had a Chinese Warring States Chariot army, and his esteemed opponent had a late medieval army of French Gen d'armes super-heavy cavalry...

You'd have laughed your head off, too...

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;838549So, I've run Tekumel off and on for a couple of decades now. I started with the TSR version and then moved on to Swords and Glory, Tri-stat and now I've picked up Bethorm and I'm getting the itch to run again.

One of the few things that has bugged me about Tekumel is how piece-meal all of the GM information is. We get a new system every few years, but we never get much in the way of the 'workings' of the setting. Looking for anything usually requires chasing down out of print books or scouting strange bywaters of the internet.

An excellent example in this thread alone: I never knew until now that the Nluss and Nom were artificially bred species. I assumed they were simply genetic variations which bred true over time as their populations were relatively isolated. This casts a whole new light on both of those people.

I think what I'm getting at is that it's very frustrating to see glimpses of the world-building but to never get any of it simply stated.

So what I'm wondering is if there's any plan to make any of that available. Will some of it be talked about in your book perhaps. Full disclosure: I already plan to purchase it, but this would make it so much more fun to read. I wouldn't want every big question answered, just some. Just enough that I can feel as if I know a little more than what my players know when I hand them the old S&G cultures sourcebook.

Anyway, I really hope I don't sound like I'm whining, I've enjoyed reading this thread immensely and I look forward to reading more of what you have to say.

Thank you for your wonderful comments!!!

I agree with you entirely - this same issue has been driving me crazy for decades.

Phil never really understood or grasped the notion that GMs needed to be given more information with which to run games - he simply did it off the cuff, like Arneson did, and then went back and took notes for later. I kept after him for the better part of a decade to write some introductory stuff, but never would - he just wasn't interested.

And I think I am part of the problem, too. I read at about 2,000 words a minute, with a measured 95% comprehension and retention, so when I run Tekumel I simply draw on all of the material that I've read and collected over the years. When I started with Phil, I soon became his informal archivist; anything generated in the game sessions, Phil would keep the original and I'd get a photocopy - this is where my huge archive come from, as well as what's in my head. I have what's been called an 'eidetic memory', they tell me, and I can remember the slightest details on things - I think this comes from my model-building, maybe.

Speaking from my perspective as one o Phil's many, many publishers over the years, it does bother me that there has never been a really comprehensive look at Tekumel ever done. Sadly, Phil would get bored pretty easliy with the writing/publishing process, and as a result a lot of the extant literature is made up of half-finished works.

Sore, I'd love to see all of Phil's work edited/organized/collated and published, but that's not something that is going to happen under the terms of the Tekumel Foundation's "exclusive license for the commercial exploitation of the Tekumel IP" any time soon. I worked for them for a couple of years as the formal archivist for Tekumel, and wound up quitting over this very issue; I am, and have always been, a 'populist' who feels that all of Phil's work should be published; I am not an 'elitist', who believes that Tekumel is the preserve of the perceived OSR elite and publication needs are to be driven by the needs of 'prestige' and 'position'. As far as I know, from my dealings with them, the Foundation has no really solid plans to publish much more then the back list of the books and such.

Which, given their situation, is not very surprising. They have no people, no resources, and no money to work with; all of the various projects I've been involved with with them have taken four to five years or more to accomplish, of they've been done by 'outside people' who are willing to invest their own money and man-hours on Tekumel.

My book, for example, will be all about how we gamed with Phil and what we learned along the way in some fifteen years of gaming with him. It will not be an 'official Tekumel' work, as I will be publishing the thing as a free down-load - fan fiction, if you like. Have a look at the published publications policies on the Foundation's website, and you'll see why.

Sadly, I have been asked publish the book by somebody with real money, with full-color covers and lost of artwork. I've told then that they need to talk to the Foundation in order to be able to do this, and that's been the last I've heard of anything. I plan on finishing the book; I'm up to 108,000 words, and expecting to go to 300,000 in six volumes. I'll keep plugging away, bit for now all you'll be able to get from me are threads like this and my little blog.

If you want to see more Tekumel being published, talk to the Foundation - they have the rights to the IP, and they guard them very carefully. I am, as they have told me, "just another fan".

Ask more questions; I'll tell you what I can.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838555Oh, go on - you know you want to. I don't want to step on your lines, Glorious General.

Honestly, all I remember is running like hell with these giant omnivorous machines chasing us.  Didn't they use the materials they cleaned up for power?

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838554Agreed. When I was playing a bit with Gary (after the stockholder meetings, which is when I got to know him) he wasn't using miniatures in his RPG games.

What I'm on about are the people - the on-line High Priests of the Great God Gygax - to take an off-hand comment by Gary in a Dragon article that MINIATURES ARE NOT TO BE USED. I'm continually bemused by the 'rabbinical scholars' who pour over every obscure letter or article by either Dave or Gary to try and determine The Right Way To Game - hence my comments about the 'mythology of gaming'. I wish I had a dollar for all the times I've been told just how Phil MUST have gamed Tekumel from people who hadn''t been born when you and I started playing in the old coot's games.

(Satire Warning: Wait!!! Phil Barker is the Egg of Coot!!! See - Chirine used the Sacred Word in his comment, so it must be so!!! Etc., etc., etc.)

And before anyone gets bent about my comment about 'rabbinical scholars', I get this metaphor from my cousin, who is one. He's bemused by the 'hair-splitting' he sees in RPG forums - it's much more intricate then what he and his colleagues do in their studies, he says...

I agree completely.  I often use the phrase "we made up some shit we thought would be fun."  I've gotten some heat for it, but the simple fact of the matter is, there mostly wasn't any deeper thought to it.  "Sounds like it could be fun" was about it.  Why did Dave Arneson let Dave Fant play Sir Fang after Baron Fant was killed by a vampire?  "Sounds like fun.  We'll figure out the exact rules later."  Why did Gary change undead from temporarily draining to permanently?  "Sounds like fun."  And we all thought so too.  Yeah, it makes undead more nasty, but that makes the game more challenging.

We just didn't endlessly hash over this stuff, even in 72-73 when Gary was typing up Dave's notes and whipping up his own variations.

I suspect PART of this is because it wasn't all we were doing; we were also playing board games ranging from chess to Risk to Afrka Korps, and playing miniatures in every period imaginable.  "Greyhawk" was just one of the games we played, just like Dave's "Corner of the Table Top" newsletter shows that other games continued running simultaneously with "Blackmoor."

And I'm amused by your 'rabbinical scholar' comment because I've used the phrase "like a bunch of neophyte scholars doing midrash" myself on numerous occasions.

Great minds, etc.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838564He, hee! The triumph of optimism over reality. Yes, the sticky grenade does work - six known kills in North Africa for the 250,000 made is better then nothing.

I am reminded of the time Gary Rudolph was facing some Undead out at Phil's; he wanted to use the tried-and-true method for dealing with mummies with the flask of oil and the torch routine. Phil was very, very dubious, so he got some glass flasks - candle molds, he told me - and filled them with water and threw that a one of the trees in his back yard. He then too a stick, painted one end red - to represent the burning end - and repeated the series of throws. From this, he came up with a table detailing how likely one was to his the target with the flask of oil, the chance of the flask breaking, and then the chance of the torch hitting the patch of oil.

He also came up with a table for the flask breaking in the player's pouch, so Gary came up with an elaborate backpack for a bearer-slave to carry that had racks for the flasks and sawdust for packing. All very elaborate, and as might be expected it all went horribly wrong the first time out...

I laughed so hard I cried, when this whole sad tale was related to me...

I remember this.  That's about the time that I decided to carry lanterns for 10 Khaitars instead of a torch for one and a pot of oil for one; a lantern gives you fire and oil together in one easy-to-throw package, and it even has a handle for your safety and convenience.  "Burning end towards enemy."

Quote from: Old Geezer;838573Honestly, all I remember is running like hell with these giant omnivorous machines chasing us.  Didn't they use the materials they cleaned up for power?

Well, all right, then. Here we go...

So the players are wandering around some long-buried installation of the Ancients, when this huge machine starts following them around. They've been playing with Phil long enough to figure out that Everything Is Out To Get Them, so they assume that this is some sort of robot sentinel. They avoid the thing doe as long as they can, but it finally catches up to them. Melee occurs, and they find that their puny swords and such have no effect on the machine - spells are equally ineffective, and things are looking pretty grim when a giant mechanical arm comes out of the top of the machine, grapples a player around the middle - Craig Smith, I think - hoists him up over the top of the machine and begins to shake him vigorously while he's upside down. All of his stuff gets shaken loose, and it falls into a big hopper on the back of the machine. After the stuff stops falling off of him, the machine sets him back down and rolls away from the party.

They follow it, hoping to get Craig's stuff back. The machine rolls to a collection station, the hopper tilts back into the chute, and all of Graig's stuff gets dumped into the new machine. It goes into the chute, a transparent shield closes, there's a hum of machinery, the stuff vanishes, and the lights come on.

The players, all SF fans, realize that they've been 'collected' by the trash collection machine, and the 'trash' has been dumped into the matter-converter to be recycled as energy for the complex.

Ask my players about their encounters with the Ru'umbas, the little machines that clean the floors in the ancient Space Marine bases...

Quote from: Old Geezer;838576I agree completely.  I often use the phrase "we made up some shit we thought would be fun."  I've gotten some heat for it, but the simple fact of the matter is, there mostly wasn't any deeper thought to it.  "Sounds like it could be fun" was about it.  Why did Dave Arneson let Dave Fant play Sir Fang after Baron Fant was killed by a vampire?  "Sounds like fun.  We'll figure out the exact rules later."  Why did Gary change undead from temporarily draining to permanently?  "Sounds like fun."  And we all thought so too.  Yeah, it makes undead more nasty, but that makes the game more challenging.

We just didn't endlessly hash over this stuff, even in 72-73 when Gary was typing up Dave's notes and whipping up his own variations.

I suspect PART of this is because it wasn't all we were doing; we were also playing board games ranging from chess to Risk to Afrka Korps, and playing miniatures in every period imaginable.  "Greyhawk" was just one of the games we played, just like Dave's "Corner of the Table Top" newsletter shows that other games continued running simultaneously with "Blackmoor."

And I'm amused by your 'rabbinical scholar' comment because I've used the phrase "like a bunch of neophyte scholars doing midrash" myself on numerous occasions.

Great minds, etc.

Agreed - there's a lot of 'over-thinking' when the Big Three are being discussed, I think.

Quote from: Old Geezer;838577I remember this.  That's about the time that I decided to carry lanterns for 10 Khaitars instead of a torch for one and a pot of oil for one; a lantern gives you fire and oil together in one easy-to-throw package, and it even has a handle for your safety and convenience.  "Burning end towards enemy."

I still have your lantern, Glorious General, from your Adventure Of The Quest For The Sarcophagus Of The Ancient Pot Roast; it's been joined by a lot of other lamps in my adventurers' kit, over the years - IKEA, your best source for Tekumel gaming supplies!

Tell our audience about your adventure in my house - they might find it illuminating!!!

(Sorry. Just couldn't pass that one up...)

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838572Phil never really understood or grasped the notion that GMs needed to be given more information with which to run games - he simply did it off the cuff, like Arneson did, and then went back and took notes for later. I kept after him for the better part of a decade to write some introductory stuff, but never would - he just wasn't interested.

Very true.  And Phil was a smart, smart cookie and very thoroughly educated.  His head was just plain full of stuff that a typical college age gamer... or later, a high school age gamer... just doesn't have in his or her head.  I once razzed him about something... I think perhaps discovering that "Sacbe" is a Mayan word for a raised roadway.  In a rare moment of candor (usually if you pulled Phil's leg he'd pull yours back) he said "after this many years I don't even remember where I heard things any more."  Now that I've hit 60 myself, I know what he means in a way my 20 year old self didn't.

And Phil was an academic through and through, from the top of his shiny little bald head to his fuzzy little toes.  He was interested in what's NEW about Tekumel (or anything else), not rehashing what he thought was a sufficient introduction when he wrote the original EPT back in late 74.  I think that may be why he had so many half-finished pieces of Tekumel.  He used to quote frequently the old academic aphorism of "publish or perish," and I think part of what Tekumel recreation for him was that when he got tired of a project he could set it aside.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838572And I think I am part of the problem, too. I read at about 2,000 words a minute, with a measured 95% comprehension and retention, so when I run Tekumel I simply draw on all of the material that I've read and collected over the years. When I started with Phil, I soon became his informal archivist; anything generated in the game sessions, Phil would keep the original and I'd get a photocopy - this is where my huge archive come from, as well as what's in my head. I have what's been called an 'eidetic memory', they tell me, and I can remember the slightest details on things - I think this comes from my model-building, maybe.

He ain't kidding, folks.  Chirine's recall really is astonishing, and yeah, in our younger days many of us (yes, including Phil) would check what he said, and by Avanthe's perfect breasts, yeah, he was right.  I mean, nobody's got near-perfect recall, right?

Guess again.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838580I still have your lantern, Glorious General, from your Adventure Of The Quest For The Sarcophagus Of The Ancient Pot Roast; it's been joined by a lot of other lamps in my adventurers' kit, over the years - IKEA, your best source for Tekumel gaming supplies!

Tell our audience about your adventure in my house - they might find it illuminating!!!

(Sorry. Just couldn't pass that one up...)

Heh.  That's actually a chapter in my book.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838578Well, all right, then. Here we go...

So the players are wandering around some long-buried installation of the Ancients, when this huge machine starts following them around. They've been playing with Phil long enough to figure out that Everything Is Out To Get Them, so they assume that this is some sort of robot sentinel. They avoid the thing doe as long as they can, but it finally catches up to them. Melee occurs, and they find that their puny swords and such have no effect on the machine - spells are equally ineffective, and things are looking pretty grim when a giant mechanical arm comes out of the top of the machine, grapples a player around the middle - Craig Smith, I think - hoists him up over the top of the machine and begins to shake him vigorously while he's upside down. All of his stuff gets shaken loose, and it falls into a big hopper on the back of the machine. After the stuff stops falling off of him, the machine sets him back down and rolls away from the party.

They follow it, hoping to get Craig's stuff back. The machine rolls to a collection station, the hopper tilts back into the chute, and all of Graig's stuff gets dumped into the new machine. It goes into the chute, a transparent shield closes, there's a hum of machinery, the stuff vanishes, and the lights come on.

The players, all SF fans, realize that they've been 'collected' by the trash collection machine, and the 'trash' has been dumped into the matter-converter to be recycled as energy for the complex.

Ask my players about their encounters with the Ru'umbas, the little machines that clean the floors in the ancient Space Marine bases...

Thank you!  Now I recall.

I will give Craig Smith credit... he was never afraid to laugh at himself.  And once we figured out what was up, we all laughed uproariously.  That's vintage Tekumel, that is, and it's also vintage "Sword and Planet" post WW2.  Sword and sorcery, SF, and sword and planet all got a bit more sense of humor in those years.  Fafhrd could wind up dead drunk, shaved bald, and tied to a bed as an acolyte of Issek of the Jug, but those things would never happen to Conan or John Carter.

When he was in the mood Phil could enjoy an old fashioned pratfall as well as the next man.

And then he'd combine this with his uncanny ability with language.... like the time we found a sentry robot that didn't speak any of our languages, but gradually through about half an hour formed a rudimentary understanding of Tsolyani.  Phil didn't TELL us this, he demonstrated it by the robot gradually speaking more and more complicated phrases and having a conversation with us.

We named it "George."

Quote from: Old Geezer;838581Very true.  And Phil was a smart, smart cookie and very thoroughly educated.  His head was just plain full of stuff that a typical college age gamer... or later, a high school age gamer... just doesn't have in his or her head.  I once razzed him about something... I think perhaps discovering that "Sacbe" is a Mayan word for a raised roadway.  In a rare moment of candor (usually if you pulled Phil's leg he'd pull yours back) he said "after this many years I don't even remember where I heard things any more."  Now that I've hit 60 myself, I know what he means in a way my 20 year old self didn't.

And Phil was an academic through and through, from the top of his shiny little bald head to his fuzzy little toes.  He was interested in what's NEW about Tekumel (or anything else), not rehashing what he thought was a sufficient introduction when he wrote the original EPT back in late 74.  I think that may be why he had so many half-finished pieces of Tekumel.  He used to quote frequently the old academic aphorism of "publish or perish," and I think part of what Tekumel recreation for him was that when he got tired of a project he could set it aside.



He ain't kidding, folks.  Chirine's recall really is astonishing, and yeah, in our younger days many of us (yes, including Phil) would check what he said, and by Avanthe's perfect breasts, yeah, he was right.  I mean, nobody's got near-perfect recall, right?

Guess again.

I think you have Phil down pat, here. I think, like you, that he simply didn't feel like following things through.

Phil was astonishingly well-educated, and not just in a formal sense. He'd lived in rural South Asia for two years, out in the villages, on the same things that the locals did. He once commented that he's been so far out in the countryside what he'd been the very first 'Westerner' that the locals had ever seen...

And thank you for the kind words, too!

Quote from: Old Geezer;838582Heh.  That's actually a chapter in my book.

Wonderful!!! Put down on the list for a copy, please!

I have to say, it was both exciting and traumatic, even as the guy running the thing... :0

Quote from: Old Geezer;838584Thank you!  Now I recall.

I will give Craig Smith credit... he was never afraid to laugh at himself.  And once we figured out what was up, we all laughed uproariously.  That's vintage Tekumel, that is, and it's also vintage "Sword and Planet" post WW2.  Sword and sorcery, SF, and sword and planet all got a bit more sense of humor in those years.  Fafhrd could wind up dead drunk, shaved bald, and tied to a bed as an acolyte of Issek of the Jug, but those things would never happen to Conan or John Carter.

When he was in the mood Phil could enjoy an old fashioned pratfall as well as the next man.

And then he'd combine this with his uncanny ability with language.... like the time we found a sentry robot that didn't speak any of our languages, but gradually through about half an hour formed a rudimentary understanding of Tsolyani.  Phil didn't TELL us this, he demonstrated it by the robot gradually speaking more and more complicated phrases and having a conversation with us.

We named it "George."

Happy to help - it's what I'm here for.

Agreed on the humor - when did this thing get so serious, anyway?

Interestingly, I have been criticized by A Big Name Tekumel fan for my book about our life with Phil being "too lightearted" and for "making Tekumel sound like fun" his opinion was that I should have more 'grimdark' and 'nastiness' in my account of our adventures.

I am not doing this; we certainly had a lot of quite scary and nasty stuff happen in the campaign over the years, but we also had a lot of fun during our times with Phil. I try to show this, in the book, and I'm told by other readers of the drafts that I'm doing a pretty good job of it.

Like the time where both Phil and Dave played the language thing to the hilt; Phil had sent us to Blackmoor, and Dave's tender clutches. One of the players managed to offend the locals - which, considering that this is Blackmoor, is amazing in and of itself - and in a wonderful parley between Phil and Dave in no mutually comprehensible language, they negotiated a settlement. Dave was speaking in Norwegian, and trying gestures; Phil was speaking in Urdu, and also using gestures.

It was hilarious to watch, let me tell you, and very well done; it was also successful, and the player found himself married to the sheep. The wedding was lovely (Princess Vrisa did a lot of happy crying, and caught the bouquet) and we all got nicely plastered. It was great fun, and the only person annoyed was the groom...

Sadly, Phil fell into villainous company who thought RPGs were "ART!" and that "ART!" meant grim and dark and nihilistic, and who knew how to manipulate Phil.  Tekumel has been the worse for it in my opinion.

I always agreed with Pete Panchyshin; "I can be a dirtbag in this world."