Quote from: chirine ba kal;939175Ah, sigh; those were the days, back when ...

I am constantly surprised by my players.
While I think at least one has, and is playing in multiple games, the things they do bring to question if they have ever played before.
Maybe they have just never played in a sandbox style game where what they do causes impact in the world.
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Quote from: Greentongue;939188I am constantly surprised by my players.
While I think at least one has, and is playing in multiple games, the things they do bring to question if they have ever played before.
Maybe they have just never played in a sandbox style game where what they do causes impact in the world.
=

Um, yes, I'd agree with this. I saw it in my own campaigns over the years, where players would bring a 'D&D mentality' to the table - they would have trouble understanding that this was a long-term meta-campaign, and that their particular game group's session were one among several 'adventures' all happening at once. 'Other games' just didn't seem to have any reality for them, at least not until they and one of the other groups happened to be in the same point in space-time and we'd hold a large joint game session. Quite a few had the same outlook for the NPCs as well, to be fair.

In Phil's Tekumel, at least in the time when Gronan and I had with him, actions on our part had a very direct and immediate effect on the world that we moved around in and interacted with. Phil was very much an 'open sandbox' GM - and he made it very clear, on multiple occasions, that we were part of his 'meta-campaign' and thus kind of small fish in a very large pond. We were successful as players and as PCs because we understood how the world worked, and played accordingly.

I still run things the same way, myself; the meta-campaign continues, waiting for the next party of players to arrive...

I've seen the same attitude. It crashes badly with my Refereeingredients style, so I warn the players about this;).
If the warningremains unheeded, I'm more than ready to watch the character sheets piling up in my feet:D!

Quote from: AsenRG;939284I've seen the same attitude. It crashes badly with my Refereeingredients style, so I warn the players about this;).
If the warningremains unheeded, I'm more than ready to watch the character sheets piling up in my feet:D!

Agreed. I've been doing a lot of 'market research' at the FLGS - observing what's being played of a Saturday afternoon - and what seems to be the big seller (besides CCGs, of course) are what look to me like 'pre-programmed' adventures; what we used to call 'modules', from my point of view. Within those adventuers, there's not a lot of interaction with the world-setting; lots of targets on the firing range to shoot up for the XP, but not what I'm used to for what I'd call 'depth' in the NPCs. Lots of people having a good time, from the looks of it, just not a gaming style that I like to work within.

Try not to be unhappy, my General, but Star Wars miniature spaceships are now going for 75% off at the FLGS. The game is now pretty much out of the store, as I gather that it had a first pulse of sales and then very low turnover. Still on the shelves at FFG, as you might expect.

X-wings we'd have given our left arm for, going for $3.75. I was very sorely tempted, just for old times' sake. Bought the new TRE quinquereme instead. The Forge of Ice 'Sleazy Merchant And Sleepy Guards' set is in, and shipping. It's going to be a good month, I think...

Quote from: chirine ba kal;939336Try not to be unhappy, my General, but Star Wars miniature spaceships are now going for 75% off at the FLGS. The game is now pretty much out of the store, as I gather that it had a first pulse of sales and then very low turnover. Still on the shelves at FFG, as you might expect.

X-wings we'd have given our left arm for, going for $3.75. I was very sorely tempted, just for old times' sake. Bought the new TRE quinquereme instead. The Forge of Ice 'Sleazy Merchant And Sleepy Guards' set is in, and shipping. It's going to be a good month, I think...

Hmmmm.  The basic game minus the later stuff is still excellent.

....am I still daft enough to start amassing huge amounts of beadboard packing shapes?....

Quote from: chirine ba kal;895284I keep hanging in there. The layout will arise, some day. I have to do something with all that stuff...

Agreed about Phil's troubles with his publishers. He was voted "Most Difficult Author in the Game Industry" by GAMA; Mike Stackpole ran the 'awards' ceremony, and I got to get up and give the acceptance speech. I still have the 'Ralphie' in the basement; they'd managed to get a heap of the Ralph Cramden figures from the TSR "Honeymooners" board game, and Stackpole used those as the 'trophy'.

Phil's basic problem with 'external' publishers was that they ran their businesses as businesses, and were in business to make money. Phil had lived and worked in academia for almost all his working life, and tended to think of 'publishers' as being like the in-house press shop that most universities had. Phil had a very 'academic' approach to publishing, which - I suspect - is why most of his Tekumel publications have such a 'textbook feel' to them. He kind of got away from that with his novels, as he wrote with a very 1940s - 1950s voice in them; they do read like a lot of the texts that are from that same period in F/SF history. Phil had kind of the same issues with us 'internal' publishers; he had his ideas, and we tended to treat the thing as being a business that had to pay for itself. It never did, of course; it took about thirty years to sell off all 250 copies of "Deeds of the Ever Glorious".

Personally, I think Phil would have been delighted to have the modern version of the Internet to work with; he could have done anything he'd wanted to, put it up on his own website, and sold the PDFs or files with little or no overhead. Back in our day, the economic and production hurdles to get anything published - let alone marketed! - were why there never were any really economically viable Tekumel products. Aside from EPT itself, of course, but that was - by Brian Blume's own statement - the right product in the right place at the right time. The only other product that sold well (for the game industry, of course) was "Ebon Bindings", with about 1,000 of the four editions being sold over the decades.

Miniatures were a very different story, but that was because of the very intense marketing effort and the very low barriers to having product. Back in the day, Phil had a very hard time getting his head around the notion that the lead was what was supporting his books, not the other way around.

These days, it's a very different story; I've watched all too many Kickstarters founder over the high costs of miniatures production. It's a very different market, and a very different hobby these days.

I realized I have thoughts on this but am too pooped right now, but don't want to forget.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;896805Ah, keeping the Legion fed.  What a joy.  On the Sakbe roads have your marching orders ready and sign for everything in the Legion's name.  And that's a good reason to start the day's march early, first legion to the campsite gets the dry places to sleep and the best grub.

Milumanaya?  Gods.  A nightmare.

More later...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;939378Hmmmm.  The basic game minus the later stuff is still excellent.

....am I still daft enough to start amassing huge amounts of beadboard packing shapes?....

Interesting thought, there, and in line with the question we were asked at Gary Con two years ago about running The Great Mos Eisley Spaceport Raid once again. Certainly, we could amass the stuff to do it with, and book the space at a game convention; it would not be all that hard to run.

However, I think it would be a flop. First, RPG players who subscribe to the 'I hate miniatures!' school would flee from the sight; very few RPG players would understand the Braunstein nature of the beast and not get into the spirit of the thing; and I suspect that what's left of the miniatures hobby would freak out over the setting. So, I think we'd get very few players, which does cripple the game pretty badly. (Look how hard it is for Maj. Wesely to get players.)

If you did want to do this, I'd suggest doing it at FFG in their Event Center as a Big Special Event, tied in with their game. That way, you'd get the players needed to make the game a success, and who are used to the idea of little (plastic, in this case) people on the table. You'd largely avoid the fanatic OSR types and the edition warriors, too; different segment of the market.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;939379I realized I have thoughts on this but am too pooped right now, but don't want to forget.

Understood. I'll look forward to your thoughts on this; personally, looking back on our time in the hot seat, I think we were doomed from the beginning. I've come to the opinion that Phil came along about twenty years too soon; he would have done much better in this modern world of desktop publishing and PDFs.

On the other hand, looking over the contents of the basement, we did manage to have a little fun along the way...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;939380More later...

"No cucumbers, Chirine? Not even for ready money?"

"No, my General, not even for ready money." (with apologies to Oscar Wilde)

It's been entertaining of late, my General, doing the research on to to feed a legion. (Or any other large body of troops, for that matter.) While I'll be briefly touching on this as I do more of our military adventures in Three, and Five, the real exposition will happen in Six as it gets to be a plot point.

For RPGs, it also provides an endless source of adventures for players, trying to get the convoy through or trying to save it from the opposition. Heck, even cities needed regular supply runs to stay alive. (Although, once again, we get to that blurry grey area between 'real RPGs' and skirmish miniatures - back where that Arneson fellow lived.)

Heroism abounds; anybody remember Camerone?

Turner Classic Movies ran "Wind and the Lion" yesterday, much to my delight, and (so I am told) will be running the massive Harrison-Taylor-Burton "Cleopatra" on Friday. Pack a lunch; it's an epic of the Cecil B. DeMille school of film-making.

Picked up the new 1/900th quinquereme yesterday, in honor of Actium; it reminded me of Anthony's big honker of a flagship. Now, all I need is a golden barge; I have the decorative young ladies-in-waiting to fling flowers at the astonished citizens. Got some turning circles, too; "Out oars!"

Quote from: chirine ba kal;939456Look how hard it is for Maj. Wesely to get players.

It's hard for Maj. Wesely to get players?

QuoteIf you did want to do this, I'd suggest doing it at FFG in their Event Center as a Big Special Event, tied in with their game. That way, you'd get the players needed to make the game a success, and who are used to the idea of little (plastic, in this case) people on the table. You'd largely avoid the fanatic OSR types and the edition warriors, too; different segment of the market.

This, Uncle, is spot-on, that's all I can say:).

Quote from: chirine ba kal;939458Understood. I'll look forward to your thoughts on this; personally, looking back on our time in the hot seat, I think we were doomed from the beginning. I've come to the opinion that Phil came along about twenty years too soon; he would have done much better in this modern world of desktop publishing and PDFs.

There's some truth to it, but then, his contribution might have had a harder time being noticed, given the amount of competition;).

Quote from: AsenRG;939504It's hard for Maj. Wesely to get players?

This, Uncle, is spot-on, that's all I can say:).

There's some truth to it, but then, his contribution might have had a harder time being noticed, given the amount of competition;).

From what I've been seeing, yes; he doesn't do a lot of blatant self-promotion, being the kind of modest person he is, so it does take some effort to drum up enough players for a game. Which is too bad, if you ask me; more RPG types could use the experience with it.

Yep; it's that I've been seeing.

Agreed! I do think he'd be kind of lost in the rush, but he - as well as all of us in the hot seat over the years - would have been a lot happier and I daresay a lot more productive. A lot of gamers these days have a hard time grappling with the difficulty back in the day of making any products available due to the  then-existing barriers to production and marketing. Which is what killed AGI, to a great extent. Thin product line with too high an overhead, and very minimal marketing efforts. Looking back on it, and looking at the sales numbers, we 'boat people' were a lot more cost-effective and productive with our little efforts. Sigh. Too bad, really; there were some really good products, there, and some of them found homes after the collapse and are still with us today.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;939512From what I've been seeing, yes; he doesn't do a lot of blatant self-promotion, being the kind of modest person he is, so it does take some effort to drum up enough players for a game. Which is too bad, if you ask me; more RPG types could use the experience with it.

I understand modesty might be an issue:). No, honestly, I do...
But the idea that any Referee, not to mention one who has been running games for Gygax and Arneson, would have trouble finding players still almost boggles the mind. How many players are looking for anyone willing to run a game;)?

QuoteAgreed! I do think he'd be kind of lost in the rush, but he - as well as all of us in the hot seat over the years - would have been a lot happier and I daresay a lot more productive. A lot of gamers these days have a hard time grappling with the difficulty back in the day of making any products available due to the  then-existing barriers to production and marketing. Which is what killed AGI, to a great extent. Thin product line with too high an overhead, and very minimal marketing efforts. Looking back on it, and looking at the sales numbers, we 'boat people' were a lot more cost-effective and productive with our little efforts. Sigh. Too bad, really; there were some really good products, there, and some of them found homes after the collapse and are still with us today.

Oh yes, productivity would be a huge advantage. With the kind of effort you boat people have been putting in, had you focused all of those into editing things Phil had written and layout, you could have had the second biggest shop at Drivethru/RPGNow after WotC:D!