Quote from: Moracai;838068We played Warhammer back when we were kids somewhat in the long run, but had to switch characters because they always became too powerful.

I played a whole family. It started out with one female elf noble, who then later had kids with another male elf PC, and I played those brother and younger sister too for quite a while.

Nowadays we play usually one story at a time, and then switch GMs to another setting and system. Hell, on a private RPG guild forum, a friend from another town commented that if they manage to go six sessions with same characters that is a minor miracle!

But enough about my experiences.

Chirine, have you read any of the new Tekumel products and  if so, what do you think about them?

Thanks for your experiences - I thought it sounded fun!

I have all the new Tekumel products in my archives; I routinely pick up everything and anything, as I serve as a sort of 'archive of last resort', especially when people's servers fail and stuff gets lost.

Jeff Dee's "Bethorm" is a very good approximation of the rules that Phil used in the mid 1980s - Phil used EPT's combat system and S&G's magic system, when be bothered to use any formal rules at all. If you want to get a feel for the way Phil was playing at that point in time, I'd suggest "Bethorm'. However, I'd also make the caveat that the rules are best suited for an experienced RPG player / GM; they are not an 'entry level' set of rules. For that, I still suggest EPT.

Jeff is also starting to come out with some scenarios and additional materials, too. The 'cardboard heroes' are also wonderful - I use them myself!

James Maliszewski's 'zine, "The Excellent Travelling Volume", is also very good; I like it, as it's very solid and well-researched.

Please feel to ask more questions, too!

Quote from: econobus;838089How rarely we get these opportunities!

1. Back when you were quitting the site you mentioned the "mythology" that's sprung up around Blackmoor. How would you characterize the way people now imagine Arneson games worked? I'm not looking for any evaluation of that imaginary approach, just your sense of what they're thinking.

2. The mundane historical accounts for the early history of the Kingdoms of the West and East are a little more complete than what we have on the Middle. Any reminiscences you might have on how things in what is now Northshield developed would be welcome.

1. There's a lot of nonsense about the way Dave played and organized Blackmoor floating about; a lot of people are assuming that he was working to A Great Master Plan when he wasn't. He loved to simply play, and he whipped up the game mechanics and 'history' / 'timeline' to suit the game in progress. I guess that the best way to 'play like Dave' is to not over-think the thing - don't worry about how it all has to make sense somehow. Think Fred Funk, as King of the Orcs, with the escalator that plays "Rule Britannia"...

Add in The Great Feud, with the very nasty and very rude people on both sides of the debate, and you get kind of a toxic situation. From my point of view, this feud has really come to obscure what Dave and Gary did in their games. There's a perception that Dave played the rules all the time; he didn't, in my experience, and was a master of 'faking it' on the game table. Yes, Dave was good at game mechanics - we all were, at that time - but he never let them get in the way of a good game.

With Dave, and any of the Twin Cities crowd at that time, you had to think really fast and really know your stuff in any game you played - they were just as fast and just as good in ACW games as they were in RPGs, and very, very smart. This kind of player really thrives in the 'Free Kriegspiel' sort of game that led to Braunstein, and thence to Blackmoor. Speaking as a guy who had to GM / referee these guys, all you could do was gird your loins and hang on for dear life as they took off with the game and ran with it.

Have you looked at the video clips I mentioned in both my blog and the other thread in the 'help' forum? That might help explain what I'm trying to say.

2. So you like opening cans of worms, then?

I'd like to suggest that the sordid history of Northshield's beginnings be done in PMs; I know where all the skeletons are buried - I keep everything, in my files - and I doubt any of the current people in the local SCA would be amused at having all those old bones come dancing out...

Oh, dear God, no...

Let the dead bury the dead.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838049Thank you! And I want to say that I'm not meaning to denigrate anyone's play style, either. About all I;m saying is that the past is a different place; we did things differently there...

Which is one of the reasons I love Gary Con.

Really... playing "Don't Give Up The Ship" with Mike Carr, Bill Hoyt, and Dave Wesley?  In the words of Master Yoda, "Better than that, it does not get."

And I hope next year the schedule will work out so that you can participate in the "Fourth Annual Battle on the Ice from Alexander Nevsky."

I would like to add my voice to those asking Chirine to stick around.

Yes, the game industry has changed, and our style of play is no longer in vogue.  However, think of it like the model railroad hobby; there is not the emphasis on scratchbuilding that there was 60 or 70 years ago, but on the other hand there are still people doing it, and doing it quite well.  But the profit margin is better on a $250 locomotive then on five bucks worth of brass sheet, a motor, and some drivers.

(Alf Modine builds beautiful O scale CNW steamers from scratch.  Breathtaking, but I'm glad I can buy ready to run models.)

Just like there are still places where scratchbuilders still gather and talk, there is a place for those interested in older style gaming.  Interestingly I made a convert to OD&D out of a young friend who cut his teeth on edition 3.5; he said "I like the way I can say I want to sneak up behind him and bash him over the head and knock him out and you roll dice and it either happens or it doesn't and we get on with the damn game."

Why is it, you suppose, that the "Free Kriegspiel" philosophy has gone out of favor?  I personally think the demographic shift in the early 80s to a much younger target audience was a big part of it.  Take a bunch of 13 year old boys, give one of them some vestigial authority, remove adult supervision, and voila, Lord of the Flies.  Hence the drive for "more concrete rules to protect players from the arbitrary whims of referees."

Plus, a lot of people seem to love to hang on to old resentments.  I've seen forum posts complaining about things that happened in games back in the 90s.  So the Lord of the Flies aspect is never forgiven or forgotten.

Quote from: Old Geezer;838125Oh, dear God, no...

Let the dead bury the dead.

Agreed. Very strongly agreed!

Ya know, it's like when I was talking to Luke at Gary Con about his dad and Dave; he said "They're both gone. Let's let it go."

Couldn't agree more...

Quote from: Old Geezer;838127Which is one of the reasons I love Gary Con.

Really... playing "Don't Give Up The Ship" with Mike Carr, Bill Hoyt, and Dave Wesley?  In the words of Master Yoda, "Better than that, it does not get."

And I hope next year the schedule will work out so that you can participate in the "Fourth Annual Battle on the Ice from Alexander Nevsky."

Thank you; I'd love to. At the moment, everything is on hold while Luke, Paul, and Victor discuss the matter. Luke suggested that Tekumel get a room for us to hold forth in, and we'll see if that comes to pass.

Quote from: Old Geezer;838130I would like to add my voice to those asking Chirine to stick around.

Yes, the game industry has changed, and our style of play is no longer in vogue.  However, think of it like the model railroad hobby; there is not the emphasis on scratchbuilding that there was 60 or 70 years ago, but on the other hand there are still people doing it, and doing it quite well.  But the profit margin is better on a $250 locomotive then on five bucks worth of brass sheet, a motor, and some drivers.

(Alf Modine builds beautiful O scale CNW steamers from scratch.  Breathtaking, but I'm glad I can buy ready to run models.)

Just like there are still places where scratchbuilders still gather and talk, there is a place for those interested in older style gaming.  Interestingly I made a convert to OD&D out of a young friend who cut his teeth on edition 3.5; he said "I like the way I can say I want to sneak up behind him and bash him over the head and knock him out and you roll dice and it either happens or it doesn't and we get on with the damn game."

Why is it, you suppose, that the "Free Kriegspiel" philosophy has gone out of favor?  I personally think the demographic shift in the early 80s to a much younger target audience was a big part of it.  Take a bunch of 13 year old boys, give one of them some vestigial authority, remove adult supervision, and voila, Lord of the Flies.  Hence the drive for "more concrete rules to protect players from the arbitrary whims of referees."

Plus, a lot of people seem to love to hang on to old resentments.  I've seen forum posts complaining about things that happened in games back in the 90s.  So the Lord of the Flies aspect is never forgiven or forgotten.

I'd agree with all this. I also think the revolution in video gaming has something to do with it, as now the rewards structure is much more immediate and direct then what we had in yours and my adventures in Phil's games.

I dunno. I just dunno. I keep building stuff and having it in the game room, but the will to play seems to be dropping off pretty dramatically amongst potential players. My work schedule and the logistics involved in doing games at conventions and the local shops is a huge barrier to getting players, too.

I'll keep modeling, and maintaining the archives, and hope that the wheel turns yet again some time in the future...

Quote from: K Peterson;838087Not to bust your balls here... but, you've got 2400+ posts on this site in nearly a year, which seems like quite a lot of active online posting to me. So, that doesn't seem like that strong a measuring stick to determine who likes short/long campaigns.

I haven't had a CoC or RQ campaign last for more than a year for the past 30 years (too much insanity; murdering by crazed cultists; or general dismemberment), and I can barely get off my ass - or have the time - to post on a forum once a day.

Yes I post a lot. That's unrelated to my point since I was referring to the number of posters, not the number of posts made by the posters.

As you pointed out I post a lot and in consequence I read a lot of posts. And in my experience from reading lots of posts by lots of posters on multiple forums it seems like most posters run or play in shorter campaigns and run or play in more systems than I do and, possibly more to the point, than do any of the people I game with, none of whom post on or read forums. Often people who post on forums do so because they are unsatisfied with one or two systems, unsatisfied with a single setting, and unsatisfied with one or two characters - all reasons why they may choose to switch systems and campaigns more frequently than someone like me or Chirine ba Kal.

On the other hand, maybe my impression is wrong and there is either no correlation or even a positive correlation between likelihood to post and likelihood to play long games. Got any evidence for that?

Quote from: Bren;838166On the other hand, maybe my impression is wrong and there is either no correlation or even a positive correlation between likelihood to post and likelihood to play long games. Got any evidence for that?

Not I. I just thought it seemed a rather tenuous and anecdotal statement.

In any case, I won't further veer this thread off course from what is definitely an interesting topic.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838115Please feel to ask more questions, too!

Sure!  One review  about a newer version of Tekumel wrote about that the magic in the setting/system was difficult to grasp, or perhaps it was an editing fault.

What was your impression about spells and rituals in Tekumel, specifically the division between divine magic and arcane magic?

Oh, not a question, but an observation. It must be because of a system and marketing thing that the gameplay has diverged from long term having fun to "must-collect-all-the-levels". My first introduction to RPGs was through the ever-popular Red-Box. By reading it here in Finland, where we didn't have any DMs then, the impression I got was vastly different from your and OGs experiences.

This must have been the same world-over. Consequently when people started creating their own games, their style differed very much from the intended.



You mentioned that you 'leveled' only through roleplaying your character's advancement.

How did those 'levels' affected your characters mechanically, if in any way?

Quote from: Moracai;838183Sure!  One review  about a newer version of Tekumel wrote about that the magic in the setting/system was difficult to grasp, or perhaps it was an editing fault.

What was your impression about spells and rituals in Tekumel, specifically the division between divine magic and arcane magic?

Let's hear from my leaden alter ego, eh?

"Well, let's see; I should mention at the start that I am a Tenth Circle Military Sorcerer of the Temple of Vimuhla, Lord of Flame and War. I was rolled up in early 1976, using EPT as the rules. In EPT, I am off the charts as these only go to Ninth Circle - I got the impression that the Professor didn't expect any of us to live long enough to go any higher."

"I hate to be the one to have to say this, but there is none of what you'd call 'magic' on Tekumel. There is no divine or arcane magic; it's all technology of the Ancients. When I 'cast a spell', I reach through the Skin of Reality to tap the energies of the Planes Beyond; what I do with my vocables and gestures, glyphs and incense, etc., or with my concentrations is to replicate the 'circuit boards' of the Ancient technology that is used in devices like the Eyes or the tubeway cars."

"Likewise, 'summoning a demon' is nothing like what the mages of your world try to do; in my world, I reach through the Planes of Reality to contact other beings, and bring them to my bubble universe to get something done. I myself, for example, regularly got 'summoned as a demon' to the odd world of Blackmoor by the Elven mages I knew in order to get things done for them. (I wish they'd called first; I was in the bathtub.)"

"When I use my skills, I serve as the 'software' / 'hardware' / 'wetware' for using the energies I draw upon. Eyes do the very same thing, but in a much more handy form for non-priests."

Right, then. I'll let you in on one of The Big Secrets Of The Game Industry: Tekumel, at least as practiced by one Firu ba Yeker / M. A. R. Barker, is not a 'fantasy role-playing game'. It's a game setting in a 'Sword and Planet Romance' universe, and the technology is what is doing all the work. No divine (the 'gods' are simply more advanced beings then we are), no arcane, no Vancian magic - it's all Sir Arthur's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The Lords of Humanspace were absolute masters of energy and matter, and could control anything.

The 'magic' description in EPT came from Gary, who felt that the gamers of the time (1975) would not be able to deal with a 'pure' SF RPG; he felt that calling it 'magic' would make it more accessible to the gamer audience. In effect, EPT paved the way for Metamorphosis Alpha at TSR. (Likewise, Gary asked that the Stability/Change thing be changed to Good/Evil, as he thought that the former was going to be too subtle for gamers to handle.)

When technic civilization on Tekumel collapsed, the various sages figured out ways to continue to tap other-planar energy through rituals and such; simpler 'spells' are those called 'psychic', and can be done by simply thinking about them; more elaborate ones are 'ritual', because you need to have 'ingredients' to make them work.

As a military sorcerer, I was unique amongst Phil's players - I have a very limited spell corpora. I do not have many of the usual spells that most players have. On the other hand, I do have what would have been the 'M series' spells in S&G if Phil had included them - the very powerful battlefield spells that mean that I am a pretty potent weapon in a one person package. It also means that I am a very high-value target for foes, and I tend to attract a lot of incoming attention. Hence the steel armor, which is a weapon in it's own right.

As a player-character, I am actually pretty useless in most adventuring parties. In effect, I am what I think is called a 'tank' in the RPG setting, and I am pretty good at melee combat. Give me a little fighting room, and some energy to manipulate, and I can do some pretty Big Things...

Does this help, or have I made things worse?

Quote from: Moracai;838183Oh, not a question, but an observation. It must be because of a system and marketing thing that the gameplay has diverged from long term having fun to "must-collect-all-the-levels". My first introduction to RPGs was through the ever-popular Red-Box. By reading it here in Finland, where we didn't have any DMs then, the impression I got was vastly different from your and OGs experiences.

This must have been the same world-over. Consequently when people started creating their own games, their style differed very much from the intended.

I would agree with this. It's like the way GW marketed their "Warhammer" game series. Businesses are in business to stay in business; in the industry, you do this by selling rules and accessories to people. See also Gary's famous comment: "We have to keep the players from finding out that they don't need the rules..."

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838118A lot of people are assuming that he was working to A Great Master Plan when he . . . was  a master of 'faking it' on the game table.

Love it. The assumption matches what I've seen and the sense of his style matches what I've been able to reconstruct over the years. If there had been a grand ur-setting in a filing cabinet somewhere, it would have been published. As for style, a jazz metaphor comes to mind in which the only part of the number that can be easily replicated is actually very vestigial, but the improvised solo -- the performance, the "jamming" -- is a unique interaction among all parties.

A little different from playing in a cover band.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;8381182. So you like opening cans of worms, then?

Happy to take it to PM or even something more civilized. I came out of the wilds of Atenveldt so have no dog in any fights. It's just interesting to me why a "Middle Rite" never evolved up there, speaking of searches for rules-based legitimacy, etc. Thank you already.

Quote from: Moracai;838183You mentioned that you 'leveled' only through roleplaying your character's advancement.

How did those 'levels' affected your characters mechanically, if in any way?

I should note that I'm breaking these answers up into separate posts to make them a little easier to answer...

After about the first year of play, once we'd gotten away from the Jakalla Underworld 'dungeon crawls', Phil stopped handing out XP; he didn't like doing the book-keeping in a really big way, as he felt that it got in the way of the plot lines. We'd have to keep track of the numbers ourselves, and Phil expected us to be fair about it.

When we'd do something noble and heroic, getting a job done for the Imperium or somebody with pull, we'd get a promotion and some rewards. We could then spend the money on a tutor or something similar, with the idea that we could then 'go up a level'; Phil would have us deduct the costs of the 'classroom work' from our piles of loot, and then we'd have to go back into the rules and do the number-crunching to get the game mechanics taken care of.

(In the game group, this was a handy way to allow for people to drop in and out over time; if you had to take a leave of absence, you were assumed to be off at the Temple academy learning some new spells, or in the army doing a tour of duty with the troops. When you got back, Phil would tell you you'd gone up a level and do the math.)

So, basically we'd work on our skills when we could, and add them up after a couple of months in the game. As an example of this, I taught classes in specialized melee combat to some of the PCs while we were on our various sea journeys - there wasn't much else to do except watch the ocean go by - and so several PCs picked up levels in 'mace' and 'dagger' along the way.

Once we'd done the number-crunching, we'd get on with the adventure. It seemed to have worked fine for us.

Again, am I helping or confusing?