Quote from: Omega;794744People will gravitate to Tekumel for the same reasons people gravitate to any weird setting. Because its not another cookie cutter fantasy setting. That was one of the selling points of Skyrealms of Jorune too which is another oddball setting.

If only Tekumel would enjoy the success and support Jorune has had. Not that I'm knocking either but for an audience that has fits over ducks, its never going to be popular.

Jorune has had success? Where? I havent seen it on the shelves since it came out. And the last I've heard of any Jorune product was the PC game. Im pretty sure a few modules came out. Or at least were advertised. But never saw them at any game store. I havent even seen it at convention vendors.

If theres been a renewal of interest or better yet a reprint then great.

How can you call Chaosium's handling of Runequest a disaster? Kick off with what is arguably the best core book published for a mainstream fantasy roleplaying game (it is complete, playable and fresh 36 years after it was first published). Follow with 5 boxed sets and/or mega modules that remain some of the best setting materials ever published. Sprinkle with a couple of what amount to books of magic, monsters and items. It was and is a terrific product line. I would have preferred they kept chugging along, but that's was their choice to sell the property to AH. Who hardly trashed it; they went on to publish something like a dozen really great boxed sets or large supplements, with terrific quality and pretty seamless continuity with the original. If you think this is what a mismanaged game looks like, you have your head up your ass.

Quote from: Larsdangly;794787How can you call Chaosium's handling of Runequest a disaster? Kick off with what is arguably the best core book published for a mainstream fantasy roleplaying game (it is complete, playable and fresh 36 years after it was first published). Follow with 5 boxed sets and/or mega modules that remain some of the best setting materials ever published. Sprinkle with a couple of what amount to books of magic, monsters and items. It was and is a terrific product line. I would have preferred they kept chugging along, but that's was their choice to sell the property to AH. Who hardly trashed it; they went on to publish something like a dozen really great boxed sets or large supplements, with terrific quality and pretty seamless continuity with the original. If you think this is what a mismanaged game looks like, you have your head up your ass.

ermm...yeah....I am not referring to the early success of RQ with Chaosium...as I mentioned before...so of course Cults of Prax, Griffin Mountain, Trollpak, Pavis, Big Rubble, Borderlands etc. this was the golden age of RQ2 at Chaosium. Avalon Hill and RQ3 is where it went wrong and stayed wrong for quite a while.

In the UK RuneQuest was pretty popular and enthusiastically supported by Games Workshop and White Dwarf this coincided with golden age RQ, when it passed to Avalon Hill and the cost of the RQ set rose from £8.95 to ... £40, as you might imagine it wasn't quite as popular as before. This was the mid 1980s. GW didn't (at least at first) have the licence to print RQ in the UK so copies of RQ3 were imported and so the price went insane for all the AH RQ products. The cost was high and quality was horrible, in the box sets the book covers were thin paper, not great for wear and tear. Actually great for tearing, teared quite easily. Games Workshop transitioned away from board games and RPGs into making little dolls for wargames which killed the support for RQ, they also published their own little RPG called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, supported it with supplements and campaigns, sold it pretty cheap...hmmm....sounds familiar...all of which meant in the UK at least RQ stopped being so visible.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a dozen really great box sets" produced by Avalon Hill? Possibly you mean "Vikings"?, or the Bob Charrette Bushido adaption? The other box sets it published were borderline insane, at least a couple were box sets of .... character sheets. Sometime in the 90s Ken Rolston was in charge of RQ at AH and then it did produce a few great RQ supplements. However, this was at least 6 or 7 years after it had gone to AH from Chaosium? A fair time to leave your system pretty much dead in the water from which it did not really recover. Which means from the "golden age" (ending in 1984) to now is about 30 years where RQ publications and support was either shaky, terrible or non-existent. Only recently the Mongoose licensing of RQ ("please take this toxic licence off our hands") has in a roundabout way led to a renaissance for RQ courtesy of Design Mechanism.

I'm not blaming Chaosium for mis-handling it but I wouldn't hold it up as a great example either. Anyway, this is really common knowledge isn't it? Maybe you're young or new to RQ.

Quote from: Old Geezer;794713Yes, times a fucking zillion.  Publish what you get.

"The Tekumel Foundation" is a bunch of Phil's old group trying to decide what to do with all this shit, not the Nobel Prize committee.

What the man said. The Tekumel Foundation is really pretty much one of Phil's old players from the 1990s who's a big name in the OSR movement - he was one of the TARGA people. The other directors of the corporation are also some of Phil's old players and his lovely widow, but they are much less active participants in the running of the thing. The Foundation has an exclusive license from the Barker Estate for the "commercial exploitation of the Tekumel IP" (From their license), and are sub-licensing projects on that basis.

In my own experience with them, over some three years, I found that they had no clear idea what they wanted to do or wanted to be as an organization. Each of the directors that I talked to had a very different conception and vision, and none of them seemed to mesh with each other. As a result, I did not renew my contract as the Professor's archivist when it came up for renewal in November of 2012; I could not get a handle on what they were trying to do, and I felt I was wasting my time and energy.

I also had problems getting them to agree on a submissions process for projects; everything seems to be being done on a personal basis, rather then on a professional one. As a result of this, I will be releasing my book about my time gaming with the Professor over the better part of fifteen years (I am a founder of the original Thursday Night group of Phil's), "To Serve The Petal Throne", as a 'free to download' work of 'fan fiction'. It is based on the notes and audio recording of our game sessions with Phil, and is up to about 102,000 words at the moment. I expect to go to some 300,000 words - I have a lot of stories to tell.

I should also mention that the book will have no game- or rule- related tables or dice rolls; it will be entirely 'rules agnostic', so you can use your own preferred rules to run your own adventures. My goal is to tell you about our adventures and the life and dreams of a very remarkable man.

As Old Geezer says, there ain't any money in the game hobby; I'm doing this for the fun of it, just as I have for the past thirty-five years.

And, I do wish the Tekumel Foundation all the luck in the world, too.

yours, chirine

Well said as always, Chirine.

I too wish them well; it's just that Tekumel has ALWAYS been a fringe part of a fringe hobby.  There ain't no money in gaming, and there ain't no money in a tiny part of gaming called Tekumel, and if somebody with the reputation of Jeff Dee has the enthusiasm to write and illustrate a Tekumel game with his own system, let him and may Avanthe bless his little heart.

And making an OSR version of Tekumel would sell a couple hundred more, whoopee.  Tekumel is NEVER going to be a big thing.  It never was, is not, and never will be.

Like Currie Bell said about the original Chicago and North Western Railway turntable in Bayfield, Wisconsin:  "It does not work, never has worked, and cannot be made to work."

Like a lot of things, enthusiasm counts for a lot.

Making a slightly wrong system with great enthusiasm will beat making a perfect system with little enthusiasm, and you can't just tell someone 'be happier with this thing you don't want to do!'

Quote from: Larsdangly;794787I would have preferred they kept chugging along, but that's was their choice to sell the property to AH. Who hardly trashed it; they went on to publish something like a dozen really great boxed sets or large supplements, with terrific quality and pretty seamless continuity with the original. If you think this is what a mismanaged game looks like, you have your head up your ass.

While some of the AH supplements were quite good, to say that all the AH supplements were of terrific quality, you must have somehow missed or mercifully forgotten the so-bad-you-want-to-gouge-your-own-eyes-out- with-a-spoon-after-seeing-it artwork in Elder Secrets. Truly Elder Secrets has far and away the worst artwork I have ever seen in any RPG.

Quote from: Will;794686While some folks might throw shoes, I think you could do Tekumel in Fate!

Well, lookie here...

Incidentally, my non-Fate-playing ass played in a short trial session of this and it was pretty fun!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;794851In my own experience with them, over some three years, I found that they had no clear idea what they wanted to do or wanted to be as an organization. Each of the directors that I talked to had a very different conception and vision, and none of them seemed to mesh with each other. As a result, I did not renew my contract as the Professor's archivist when it came up for renewal in November of 2012; I could not get a handle on what they were trying to do, and I felt I was wasting my time and energy.

I will be releasing my book about my time gaming with the Professor over the better part of fifteen years (I am a founder of the original Thursday Night group of Phil's), "To Serve The Petal Throne", as a 'free to download' work of 'fan fiction'. It is based on the notes and audio recording of our game sessions with Phil, and is up to about 102,000 words at the moment. I expect to go to some 300,000 words - I have a lot of stories to tell.


yours, chirine

Looking forward to that book, Chirine.

As far as the exalted status of the Tekumel Nobel Committee, it reminds me of my first exposure to Tekumel when I was about 13, the DW print of EPT. I was impressed by the gravitas of the  "MAR Barker seal of approval"

As if it wasn't apparent enough that RPG producers are a bunch of oddballs putting out stuff that they like.

Still, shame that the Foundation isn't a bit more coordinated and that they lost their archivist.

Tekumel would never have been big, but better publishing decisions could have been made over the years.

Strikes me that in cases like EGG and MAR Barker, poor judgment in some areas is part and parcel with brilliance in others.

Quote from: The_Shadow;795011Strikes me that in cases like EGG and MAR Barker, poor judgment in some areas is part and parcel with brilliance in others.

Just like everybody else in the world, then.

"Inventing an interesting game" and "running a small business and promoting it well" are skill sets with virtually no intersection at all... why is it rational to expect the same person to be able to do them both?

For that matter, go browse the Harvard Business School Case Study Library online.  Small businesses fail in legions, and "becomes too big for one guy to personally have a hand in it all any more" is one of the crisis points.

Quote from: Will;794686While some folks might throw shoes, I think you could do Tekumel in Fate!

Of course you could. You can do anything in FATE. IMHO it becomes a bit samey after 4-5 sessions, since it's all the same system wrapped in narrative.

I like FATE but I like a bit more game system after a while, I need a bit of game to support my roleplaying after a while.

Quote from: Bren;794910While some of the AH supplements were quite good, to say that all the AH supplements were of terrific quality, you must have somehow missed or mercifully forgotten the so-bad-you-want-to-gouge-your-own-eyes-out- with-a-spoon-after-seeing-it artwork in Elder Secrets. Truly Elder Secrets has far and away the worst artwork I have ever seen in any RPG.

Bad artwork, good words.

Eldharad however.. and Daughters of Darkeness, urgh..

Quote from: Old Geezer;794905Well said as always, Chirine.

I too wish them well; it's just that Tekumel has ALWAYS been a fringe part of a fringe hobby.  There ain't no money in gaming, and there ain't no money in a tiny part of gaming called Tekumel, and if somebody with the reputation of Jeff Dee has the enthusiasm to write and illustrate a Tekumel game with his own system, let him and may Avanthe bless his little heart.

And making an OSR version of Tekumel would sell a couple hundred more, whoopee.  Tekumel is NEVER going to be a big thing.  It never was, is not, and never will be.

Like Currie Bell said about the original Chicago and North Western Railway turntable in Bayfield, Wisconsin:  "It does not work, never has worked, and cannot be made to work."

Thank you, Glorious General! I do agree with you on all your points. I think Jeff Dee should get the Gold of Glory for doing the thing - at least he's doing something! And the handy 'cardboard heroes' for Tekumel they're doing are wonderful; I use them myself.

Nope, the 'business model' is one of loving the thing and not expecting that there's a pot of gold at the end of the Tekumel rainbow. Thinking that one is "going to win the lottery" by simply having meetings where we all tell ourselves "Real soon now!" is nice, but won't get anything done...

yours, chirine

Quote from: The_Shadow;795011Looking forward to that book, Chirine.

As far as the exalted status of the Tekumel Nobel Committee, it reminds me of my first exposure to Tekumel when I was about 13, the DW print of EPT. I was impressed by the gravitas of the  "MAR Barker seal of approval"

As if it wasn't apparent enough that RPG producers are a bunch of oddballs putting out stuff that they like.

Still, shame that the Foundation isn't a bit more coordinated and that they lost their archivist.

Tekumel would never have been big, but better publishing decisions could have been made over the years.

Strikes me that in cases like EGG and MAR Barker, poor judgment in some areas is part and parcel with brilliance in others.

Thank you for your kind words! If you like, here's some little excerpts from various sections of the book; Capt Harchar is none other then Dave Arneson, playing in the Professor's campaign"

http://blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=7964

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/tekumel/conversations/topics/30687

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/tekumel/conversations/messages/30643

I also have a little blog, where I talk about the sorts of things we used to do in our games and still do:

http://chirinesworkbench.blogspot.com/

(How would I add this URL as a 'signature', if that's possible? Thanks!)

I am delighted that you liked the "Seal of Approval"! Ken Fletcher drew it up for me, when we were working together at Adventure Games, and we used it for our publications. Phil, however, was not amused - he wanted something "more dignified".

I agree with you about the Foundation; I did what I could. I would like to note that I am still doing what I started some thirty-five years ago, and am still being Phil's archivist - although on a personal basis, these days. One of the things I was able to do, before the Professor passed away, was make a complete 'back-up' copy of all of his archives - some 20,000 pages' worth of material, going back to the late 1940s with his college drawings of Tekumel stuff. I am currently integrating this data with my own collection of materials, which includes a lot of material and artifacts not in Phil's collection. My eventual goal is to establish an on-line 'virtual museum' of what we did back in Ye Olden Dayes, and share with people the fun we had with Phil and his world.

I still game there, every second and fourth Saturday (exceptions made during the University of Minnesota football season; I have to work during a lot of the home games.) You can see what I do on my Photobucket page and my You Tube channel - there are links to them on my blog; scroll down the left-hand column.

Thanks again!

 yours, chirine