Weird... I still can't really imagine someone going to someone elses house and abusing them.  As I said a few pages ago I (while a few beers down and 20ish) once phoned him out of the blue with a more confident friend.  I believe we gushed at him for half an hour while he remained gracious and charming throughout, laughing off my attempts to go 'so... the pariah gods.  Really.  What's up with them'

(As an aside those have been my personal 'what the hell are they' EPT bugbear for years ^^  I loved the name and the idea that some religions were so dangerous that even a culture willing to embrace the darker gods of change had blasted them from the records. I never ran Tekumel as I could never get the players interested but came close with a... 'borrowing' where I cherry picked huge chunks of it including the dieties. I seem to recall my version of the Pariahs were they were true gods on a vast scale who all sought to end the universe.  The Goddess was pure nihilism and wanted it to burn.  The One who Is became a god/dess of entropy and slow endings while the One Other was far more buddhist and wished to end the illusion of reality and free mortals from its cage.  Probably all wrong but worked for me

And all fair about the artwork.  I think there has been some very evocative stuff done (and in case I sound like I'm ragging on Jeff Dee - he was one of my original art heroes way back in the day.  I think he's done a fine job updating the old concepts exactly as presented).  My own views of EPT tends to be a bit further out there as I never really had much art to draw on bar a few old pics per character.

In the case of, say, the aforementioned Ssu I read 'skin like a mummy, big black eyes and 6 limbs'.  Also I've read somewhere they have access to bronze, they're magicians and have a weird flickering blue light/cinnamon/soft tinkling chimes feel associated with them.  All that sounds more arcane/eldritch so doing a doodle over lunch I ended up with something like this: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s89/sh/3ca6f21f-c60c-4938-82b0-00ef796d7ec7/5adcc4eb301f8a58f573de7548d270df  Again - probably far from what was imagined but I find that bit of artwork fun - creating an image based on the words someone's written instead of off older artwork.

If you have any non copyright images I'd be curious to see them though - good stuff is hard to find even with google

Oh and hey - chemistry be damned.  It was and remains a cool idea!

Quote from: Awsyme;800862All that sounds more arcane/eldritch so doing a doodle over lunch I ended up with something like this: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s89/sh/3ca6f21f-c60c-4938-82b0-00ef796d7ec7/5adcc4eb301f8a58f573de7548d270df  Again - probably far from what was imagined but I find that bit of artwork fun - creating an image based on the words someone's written instead of off older artwork.

That drawing is fancy!... and much scarier than the 'pudding man' version.

Umm, that's a doodle you did over lunch?

I work as a writer/artist for a computer games company.  I spend most of my days painting textures for models and sculpting characters.  

But yeah - Ssu - this is very off topic but I could almost imagine their heads going in a different direction than that pic if you wanted to push the magical aspect of them.  Maybe something closer to the elongated skull of the Indiana Jones crystal skull hinting at magical powers with the skin texture of one of the peruvian or mayan mummies.  The kind of thing that looks like it should crack and break apart as it moves.  Again - I never played in a game or spoke to anyone who did first hand but the writing indicates they're quiet and hypnotic. In my head I'd probably want them to feel more.... spider-like.  All flurries of motion and sudden utter stops into prolonged periods of stillness.  Also with blue lanterns.  I don't think a single picture of them ever had them with their characteristic blue lanterns! (he waits to be proven badly wrong).

Quote from: Awsyme;800638Really?  Jesus... I can't imagine anyone rude enough to do that to someones face.  At best say 'x isn't for us but best of luck'.

After about 5 years of working in the game industry and going to conventions and working the sales floor, I dropped out of gaming completely for 15 years.

It's hard to describe what a horrorshow it got to be sometimes.  There's a reason you'd find most manufacturers' reps in the bar as soon as the dealers' room closed.  Since Chirine is extremely abstemious in his consumption of alcohol, I have no idea how he coped.

We never literally reached the point where Butch Leeper of FASA and I were sitting there with pitchers of beer and bendy straws, but we came dang close.

And some of the reps from larger companies were pounding down Scotch like it was an insurance salesmen's convention.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;800402Might have been; I thought it was the Gen Con where we all took that walk out on the jetty that night...

- chirine

Ooooh, I had forgotten that one.

Heck, some of our real life adventures were more exotic than some games!

Chirine, you're a treasure to have on this site.  What you're accounting here is amazing material on what Barker's Tekumel was really like. It sounds like one I'd have very much liked to play.

Quote from: RPGPundit;801493Chirine, you're a treasure to have on this site.  What you're accounting here is amazing material on what Barker's Tekumel was really like. It sounds like one I'd have very much liked to play.

Yep.  And his near-eidetic memory (not exaggerating!) and copious notes means he remembers a lot more of this stuff than I do... witness the number of "Oh, yeah!  THAT!" posts I have in this thread.

Quote from: Old Geezer;800369The same thing also happened to TSR quite early on.  Fan groups got vocal with not "these are our variants," but "these are better rules and you should use THEM instead."

Big difference between "This is why your setting is wrong" and "This is why your rules are crap."  The first is a big fat WTF?  The second?  Well, there's a reason the vast majority of gamers don't still play OD&D.

I have to admit, though -- being a guest in someone's home and telling him off?  Where were those assholes raised, in a barn?

Quote from: Old Geezer;801118After about 5 years of working in the game industry and going to conventions and working the sales floor, I dropped out of gaming completely for 15 years.

It's hard to describe what a horrorshow it got to be sometimes.  There's a reason you'd find most manufacturers' reps in the bar as soon as the dealers' room closed.  Since Chirine is extremely abstemious in his consumption of alcohol, I have no idea how he coped.

We never literally reached the point where Butch Leeper of FASA and I were sitting there with pitchers of beer and bendy straws, but we came dang close.

And some of the reps from larger companies were pounding down Scotch like it was an insurance salesmen's convention.

Yep. And I don't know how I dealt with it, either. I think it was my love and enjoyment of Tekumel that kept me going, more then anything else.

By the way, you sole me on Gary Con with your accounts of the great games you played in; after an exchange of e-mails with Luke, I've bought a membership and plan on being there.

This time, though, all I have to do it talk about Phil and his world and enjoy myself...

- chirine

Quote from: RPGPundit;801493Chirine, you're a treasure to have on this site.  What you're accounting here is amazing material on what Barker's Tekumel was really like. It sounds like one I'd have very much liked to play.

Thank you for your very kind words! What I'm finding quite saddening is that the Tekumel I knew and gamed in seems to be so different from what people nowadays seem to think is Tekumel and how it works. I'm hoping that I can answer people's questions and tell them what those far-off days were like, and dispel some of the mythology that seems to be out there...

Yes, I think you would have liked playing in Phil's campaign...

- chirine

Quote from: Ravenswing;801562Big difference between "This is why your setting is wrong" and "This is why your rules are crap."  The first is a big fat WTF?  The second?  Well, there's a reason the vast majority of gamers don't still play OD&D.

I have to admit, though -- being a guest in someone's home and telling him off?  Where were those assholes raised, in a barn?

Agreed. It was not about the rules being wrong, it was about Phil getting Tekumel wrong. These folks had very strong opinions and ideas about how Tekumel 'should' and 'must' work, and they spent a lot of Phil's face time telling him just how badly he'd gotten it all wrong.

'WTF', indeed.

- chirine

Just goes to show that pretentiousness knows no bounds.

Quote from: RPGPundit;794191...as to why someone would make a new rule-set for Tekumel, in this present time, that was NOT an OSR product?  Would there be any meaningful advantage to using something that would NOT be compatible with D&D and with every other OSR game??

Seriously, what were they thinking?

I forgot to mention this a few weeks ago, but now that the "I miss Grognardia" thread is on the front page, I'll risk a necro.

There's a new 'zine of material written for the original EPT by James Maliszewski, and it's shipping NOW.   As far as I can tell, it's the only update at Grognardia in two years.

The Excellent Travelling Volume:
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Quote from: TAFMSV;806479I forgot to mention this a few weeks ago, but now that the "I miss Grognardia" thread is on the front page, I'll risk a necro.

There's a new 'zine of material written for the original EPT by James Maliszewski, and it's shipping NOW.   As far as I can tell, it's the only update at Grognardia in two years.

The Excellent Travelling Volume:
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Did it go out? I ordered a copy on December 11th and got a reply from James saying it was going out that weekend. Here it is on the 28th and no sign.