Interview Series Index

When you run a blog for several years--and spend too many years abusing your head as a young man--a terrible thing starts to occur: you start losing touch with the things you wrote about. It comes way too often these days but long into gaming-related conversation in a strike of blindingly internal light I will suddenly find myself thinking “waitttt, didn't I write a whole mother-flippin' series of blog posts about that three years back?”

To stave off that “all that is solid melts into air” feeling, I've finally started on my long-procrastinated annotated blog index. As I do each chunk—and they are pretty much going to follow in the order of what I consider the best or most useful of the posts here—I will post about them and add them to a larger index page. Likely next is the long index of pointcrawl and wilderness posts. 

First up is one of my favorite (and neglected) groups of posts: the on-again/off-again interview series. A series which under pretext of presenting ideas, recollections, and analysis to a broader audience, selfishly allowed me to dig into the brains of people I have found interesting or critical to our hobby.

The Interview Series (in Chronological Order)

Jeff Berry

The first interviews on the HC where with Jeff Berry aka Chirine Ba Kal, a longtime player in M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel campaign and for a time a mover and shaker in its business end. I had originally reached out to him with the intention of doing a one-shot little piece on what the early Tekumel games were actually like. The ongoing conversation was so incredibly rich with insight and Jeff's memory so exact in the amounts of detail that it spilled over into several encores, all of which I still enjoy reading today.

Tales from Tékumel's First Campaign:An Interview with Jeff Berry

Exploring the Jakallan Underworld,Playing with Arneson, and More: Jeff Berry Interview Part II

Tékumel in Miniature: Jeff BerryInterview Part III

Why the Barker-Tékumel Collection isWorth Paying Attention To

David Dunham

If you pressed me for all my all-time favorite computer game it would have to be King of Dragon Pass. Not only was it a near-perfect blend of handpainted art, strategy, roleplaying and big ticket mythic themes it was set against the worldbuilding of Glorantha that I love (mostly from afar) so well. A huge treat to interview David Dunham, creator of the game, and pick his brain about the connections to KoDP to tabletop roleplaying.

Interview with the Man Behind the King(of Dragon Pass)

Magira

Digging into the altnerative paths that roleplaying could have taken in the 1960s and 1970s led me to places I had never known about notably such great “world games” as that of Magira in Germany. An interview with one of its participants.

Follow-Up Interview on the German Worldgame Magira

Jeff Dee

Looking back at this interview three years ago which focuses on Jeff Dee's then beginning drive to get his Tekumel rpg published, it makes to happy to see that it is not only sitting on my shelf right now but is helping re-raise the flag of Tekumel after Barker's passing.

In the Pocket With Jeff Dee

Kyrinn Eis

Kyrinn Eis talks about her fascinating worldbuilding and quirky attendant game.

Urutsk Rising: An Interview with KyrinnEis

Urutsk Rising Part II

Robert Kuntz

One of the more controversial outings of the blog but one I am still proud of running. The interview sprawls over great length but there are fascinating bits spread through out. While one may like or dislike the man, his recollections are important to our understanding of the early days of the hobby.

No Borders: A Conversation With RobKuntz

Dan Boggs

A look at Champion of Zed and its creator before it became another casualty of the rpg crowd-funding bubble. 

The Champion of Zed

Trey Causey

One of my favorite interviews with one of my favorite people from our side of the hobby. Trey on his post-Weird Adventures victory lap. You better believe I will be banging on his door again when his 70s space opera book Strange Stars sees the light of published day.

Beyond the Weird: an Interview withTrey Causey

GuadaComaCon Coming at You Free This Saturday

Our third annual minicon down here in South Texas, GuadaComaCon, is running this Saturday 10 am -10 pm, August 17 at the New Braunfels Convention Center. Admission is still totally free (though we welcome contributions), so come one, come all.

SCHEDULED GAMES (times subject to change)

• Prime Directive (GURPS Star Trek; 6 players): 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
• Axles & Alloys (vehicle combat based on Full Thrust rules; 6 players; minis provided): 10 a.m.-2 p.m. 
• Jeff Dee, Tekumel, 10 am – 2 p.m.
• Warhammer 40,000 mega battle (unlimited players; bring a 1500-point list army and a 2000-point list army; painted models suggested): 10 a.m. meet; play from 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
• 5150: Star Navy (Two Hour Wargames spaceship combat; 6 players; all miniatures supplied or bring your own): 2 p.m.-6 p.m.
•  HOTT-Hammer tournament (Hordes of the Things fantasy rules; unlimited players; loaner armies available):  3 p.m.-7 p.m.
•  Battle of Hoth (using FUBAR rules; 4 players): 6 p.m.-10 p.m.
•  Song of Blades and Heroes (generic fantasy skirmish; 6 players): 6 p.m.-10 a.m.
• Cavemaster RPG with Talzhemir Mrr 
• Swords & Wizardry with Dennis Sustarre

From the Sunken Lands to the Feral Shore

A couple of weeks ago I had the great fortune of scoring an affordable copy of a Holy Grail product I have been patiently searching for a good long while now: Midkemia Press's Heart of the Sunken Lands.

Though like many so-called Petalheads (thanks, Scott) I get my rage on for the Tekumel lifting by Raymond Feist, the setting's popularizer, I have a great love of the actual gaming products they put out with all their interesting sandbox subsystems (the encounters and down-time business in Cities in particular) and eye for nestling those systems in colorful setting specific ways.

With Rudy Kraft--co-designer of the gold standard for wilderness sandboxes, Griffin Mountain—listed as the author of Sunken Lands I figured it had to be a solid piece of work.

I wasn't disappointed.

The book lays out (with a nifty four-panel blank players' map) a first-class wilderness sandbox set in a large, mountain-ringed, jungle-choked depression. The product has a lot of depth with many pages being devoted to navigation/exploration of the unique range of terrains; inventive, non-standard creatures, plants, gems, extractable resources, and humanoids; an expeditions table (lifted from my favorite section of their Jonril books) that hardwires in an interesting range of incentives for player exploration; and a couple mysterious sites.

With my eponymous campaign now shifting for the moment to the exploration, clearing and possible colonization of a wilderness region called the Feral Shore (more about that later) what I found most intriguing were the subsystems for wilderness exploration (apparently planned for a never-published Midkemia wilderness supplement). I found them highly inspirational and instantly set down to custom fit them to the new mini-campaign.

What the Feral Shore looked like 500 years ago
before being wiped out of existence by the Turko-Fey

The outline of that system (redacted to not tip off the players over much) I share below.

Feral Shore Exploration and Movement

What's different from the typical D&D systems:

1. Movement is calculated by the hour instead of by the day.
2. Encounter checks are done by the hex rather than by time.
3. Encounters cover a wider range of events than the typical wandering monster-like check. Interesting plants, mineral deposits, geographical features, run-in's with sentient beings, strange sites etc are included on tables specific to the terrain of the hex.
4. Checks are also made on a Mishap table per hex (includes such things as getting lost, having a horse go lame, equipment break, inclement weather, etc.)
5. Speed matters. A party moving at a slower speed will have an increased chance of hitting an encounter but a decreased chance of having a mishap.

Movement Speeds

Exploration 6 average hours/day

Cautious, Encumbered or Party over 50 8 average hours/day.

Normal 10 average hours/day.

Traveling Light or Forced March 12 average hours/day.

Assumption for Normal travel

Foot: STR 8-14 character can hump 25-40 lbs of gear in pack and pouches, armor of chain/half-plate or less, two weapons, shield. Weaker character -10 lbs, Stronger character +10 lbs

Mounted: Horse can hump 150-250 lbs normally (total includes rider and related gear). Mule 200-300 lbs.

Foot: Average Miles per Hour (includes breaks)

Terrain	Road/Trail	Overland
Grasslands, Fields	2.5	2
Light Woods, Scrub	2	1.5
Grassy Hills or Moor	2	1.5
Scrub or Rocky Hills	1.5	1
Deep Forest	1.5	1
Forested or Steep Hills	1	.5
Coastal Wetlands	1	.5
Swamp or Heath	1	.5
Badlands	1	.5
Mountain	.75	.25

Horse/Mule:

Terrain	Road/Trail	Overland
Grasslands, Fields	5	4
Light Woods, Scrub	4	3
Grassy Hills or Moor	4	3
Scrub or Rocky Hills	3	2
Deep Forest	2.5	.5
Forested or Steep Hills	1.5	.25
Coastal Wetlands	1.5	.25
Swamp or Heath	1.5	.25
Badlands	1.5	.25
Mountain	1.5	0

Encounter Chart example

Light Woods: Encounter on roll of 1 on a d10. +2 if moving at Exploration, +1 at Cautious, -1 at Fast.

Roll d10

1-3	Roll on standard D&D Wilderness Encounter
4	Human or Sentient Neutral
5-6	Normal Animal
7	Plant
8	Mineral
9	Site
10	Weird

GuadaComaCon Schedule August 18

Our South Texas minicon, now stylishly renamed GuadaComaCon, is this Saturday, August 18 at the Convention Center in New Braunfels. The event is still free and most games have at least one seat open, so come on down (drop me an email at kutalik at the gmail dot com).

Below is the schedule (and expect there to be some rpg and boardgame takers on those open gaming slots):

MORNING: 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Mines of Moria: fantasy miniatures scenario

Clay-O-Rama: sculpt your own figure

Paranoia: dystopian sci-fi roleplaying

Open gaming

AFTERNOON: 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Cavemaster: prehistoric roleplaying game

5150: Star Army: sci-fi land combat

By This Axe I Rule: fantasy miniatures

Open gaming

EVENING: 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Bethorm: new Tekumel roleplaying game from Jeff Dee

5150: Star Navy: spaceship miniatures

Open gaming

Reminder: South Texas Mini-Con August 18

GuadaComaCon (formerly the South Texas Mini-Con) will take place Saturday, August 18 in New Braunfels.  Some of the featured games include:

• 5150: Star Navy (sci-fi space combat minis) run by Desert Scribe
• By This Axe I Rule (homebrew fantasy minis) by me. (Possibly also some old school D&D)
• Paranoia (humorous dystopian sci-fi role-playing) run by Brad Ncube of Skull Crushing for Great Justice
• Clay-O-Rama (what it sounds like) run by artist-in-residence Jason Braun
• 5150: Star Army (sci-fi ground combat minis) run by Ed the THW Guy
• Cavemaster RPG by Talzheimer
• Tekumel Bethorm by Jeff Dee

Admission is still free (donations accepted).  Drop me a line at kutalik at gmail dot com for more information.

Post reposted and revised from here.  

South Texas Minicon Update

A few updates on what happening with the South Texas Minicon we are organizing August 18.

Getting Registered. First of all, registration is still the “right price” free, but if you are coming please boogie over to our special new minicon website to register and get oriented (updates will be posted there over the next few weeks). (Big thanks to Brad for getting this up and running.)

You can find registration here and information on logistics and the game schedule (full schedule TBA shortly) here. Forums are active here and we will start using that as the clearinghouse for discussion of games and other chit chat.

Supporting the Minicon and Win Judges Guild Swag. Infamous NTRPG Con Bad Mike (who will be attending and selling/giving away goodies from his giant roleplaying stash) is generously running a fundraising auction to support the convention expenses. Please go here and help us keep the minicon free as a liberated avian.

Game Schedule. Three slots of three game for each (possibly up to six for each slot if we reserve another room) from 10 am-10 pm.

The games to-date:

Jeff Dee, Bethorm, a Tekumel adventure supplement

Talzheimer Mrr, Cavemaster RPG

Norm Harman, Mutant Future

Ed Teixeira , 5150 Star Army

Mack, old school starship mini battles

Brad Ncube, DCC RPG (tentatively)

Yours Truly, By This Axe fantasy mini battles and (possibly) old school D&D

Drop me a line at kutalik at gmail dot com for more information.

FLAILSNAILS, Special Guests and the South Texas Minicon

Longtime readers know how much I dislike excuses about posting. Moving to the new manse, family rollercoaster, the blazing white-hot intensity of the Texas sun blah, blah, blah.

The latest, greatest project (beyond finishing the Roustabout's Guide to the Hill Cantons this week) is organizing the South Texas Minicon on August 18th. The (still free) event is building quickly to the point that we have contemplated adding another room. If you are interested in attending or running a game drop me a line at kutalik at gmail dot com.

Excitingly we will have a number of “special guests” on hand at the Con:

Jeff Dee will be running a Tekumel game with Bethorm, the Pocket Universe hack of that setting.

Talzheimer Mrr--who I have mentioned before for her wonderful and free paper Tekumel miniatures--will be running Cavemaster, the Stone Age rpg

A. Miles Davis, author of the darkly comic rpg Homicidal Transients, will be on hand.

Coming in from Georgia, Mike Davison, of Sword+1 blog (and Ruins and Ronin) fame is likely also gracing with his presence. (By the way I am pleased as punch that Mike is doing the layout for the Guide.)

As far as what I may be running, I am still very much in love with the rollicking chaos of the “open world” FLAILSNAILS experiment. Expect to see some tie-ins to that. I will be attempting to use some new desk-mounted web-cams to make use of virtual players (and observers) in each related event.

Some of the ideas I had (an feel free, mighty peanut gallery, to suggest others):

1. Hill Cantons face-to-face session with players potentially from both the home group and the Google plus group—and any other G+ player who makes it down (and expect at least one surprise virtual guest). I am accumulating and scratch-building some dungeon terrain for the soiree, so expect to see something with some visual flash to it.

2. A miniature battle royale using By This Axe I Rule that will play out a pivotal battle in the borderwar. Though the play-by-post side was more than a bit stalled, expect to see FLAILSNAILS player characters taking a role as sub-commanders in that conflict.  

Undercity Design Contest

Back from the Redneck Riveria (apparently this phrase is used Tanelorn-like throughout the Gulf beach areas) and am rearing and ready to return to the imagined sights and sounds of fantasy gaming. (Guess all that whoopin' and wavin' a giant confederate battle-flag as I drove my ATV shirtless through the dunes didn't done tucker me out as much as I thought.)

Here in the Hill Cantons returns from summer interludes are always heralded with some kind of asinine and/or pointless contest for readers. Who am I to buck the weighty hand of Tradition?

I've been trying to wrap my head around how to present undercities more robustly this past month, so what a gloriously appropriate design contest. Catch up here and here if you missed the original posts.

What do I have to do? Design a single layer of an undercity. Make it big, bad, bold and weird.

There are two steps for an entry:

1. Tell us about it in a short paragraph (2-4 sentences). Who lived there? How did it get buried? How many long years have passed since it slipped below the surface? What fell beasts live there now? What strange mysteries lurk down there?

AND either (or both if you are feeling ambitious) of the following:

2. A simple pointcrawl map (see here) with notations for use in play. Feel constrained by strange schematics? Invent your own, slacker.

Or

3. A clever mechanic for stocking structures or room complexes. It could be something like Mark Pettigrew's system for generating undercities in Tekumel or something all brilliant and original.

All submissions must be in by this Wednesday noon CST. You can email me submissions at kutalik at the gmail dot com or leave them here in the comments.

First and Second place will receive a choice of one of the following prizes (first loser picks after the winner naturally):

1. $10 gift certificate to Amazon or Powell's.

2. a copy of MAR Barker's Man of Gold (that has some fantastic undercity scenes).

But wait there's more. Your entry won't just moulder on a shelf but will be used in the actual mega-undercity that I am busy designing for the Hill Cantons campaign. Get cracking.

Designing Undercities

Giant subterranean cities piled out far under the sun-baked city streets. Byzantine, twisty layers of rubble-choked tunnels (nee roads), cavernous temple fanes, forgotten palaces piling on top of each other aeon upon aeon.

One of the elements I deeply love about Tekumel is that hot and forgotten world's vast undercities. In the core play area empire of Tsolyanu, a long-standing tradition called ditlana in which cities—at least in theory—are razed every 500 years and built over. Part sprawling megadungeon, part still-active underbelly of city life, they have had a fascinating pull on my imagination. Not surprsingly they have been long something I wanted to incorporate into my classic D&D campaign, yet I have never been quite able to pull it over the conceptual hump.

Why? Undercities on a Tekumelyani scales are seriously spatially-challenging beasts. I've had small-sized versions for many years, neighborhoods of cities conveniently bracketed off with cave-in's or very compact and sealed off little settlements (let me count the number of domed cities sitting in lakes I stole from the Holmes side-view example). But the truly sprawling undercity that matches and supersedes the larger environs of the city it sleeps under? Intimidating.

Just to give you an exact sense let's take a passage that Victor Raymond wrote in his ever-useful introduction thread to playing EPT “out of the box” about Barker's underworld under the port metropolis Jakalla:

“...The first level of the Jakállan Underworld is drawn on a 17” x 22” sheet of graph paper, 10 squares to the inch–and each square is ten feet in measure(!). Thus it is assumed to cover an area roughly 1700 feet by 2200 feet – almost 1/3rd by 1/2 a mile in size, centered largely under the ruined Temple of Hyáshra in the City of the Dead. If you consider the map of Jakálla, each hex has been said by Prof. Barker to be 50-100 yards across. To be fair, Prof. Barker has also said that the map is “semi-representational,” i.e. more important buildings appear larger on the map than they really are. Even so, the top layer of the Jakállan Underworld would require several 17x22 sheets to cover the entire city. This suggests that it would be difficult to actually map the entire Underworld...”

It's just not the horizontal hugeness of such a beast, you also have any number of other complications to conventional mapping to deal with: miles and miles of “empty space” (old roads, side-tunnels, etc.); the vertical dimension of historical layers that increase the total size many times; large numbers of entry points from the surface; and of course the potential active use of the upper levels by humans and other surface dwellers (thus also giving it the more complicated social dance of urban adventuring).

One could find a massive piece of architect's graph paper and laboriously fill each exacting section of your undercity in piece by piece, all the while trying to allow for the mental trick of knowing that your map still doesn't reach. I'm not going to do that.

What follows is less tutorial—as you can tell I am no expert—and more of me grasping for a method in designing undercities on a grander, more thoroughly thought-out scale.

Part I: Mapping the Layers

As much as I hate timelines and all the attendant setting-bloat whoha when tackling a undercity it undeniably makes for a practical starting point. I work better answering a series of leading questions while futzing with some kind of schematic.

How old is the city?

How many civilizations flourished here and for how long?

I am going to start with a young city by Tekumel standards, 5000 years, as my world is not quite as ancient. I am going to say perhaps five different civilizations each spanning a convenient millennium.

Who first founded it?

How did they order their city? What did they think was important?

Were they displaced or did they just evolve historically?

What lead to the city being buried? Was it a fiery cataclysm, a more gentle abandonment, or intentional process? Did anything survive on the surface?

How large of a surface area was it when it was abandoned? What structures survived being buried?

Who replaced these city-dwellers?

[Repeat question set above again and again until you have finished with each succeeding phase of the city.]

I take a standard piece of graph paper and start to draw out length wise the layers as I answer them. My squares I am going to say are roughly 250 feet a pop to give me room to work with. I would ratchet these upwards and downwards in scale depending how vast of a city I want, but the exact ground scale is really not so important to me as I am mostly just trying to grasp the overall vertical, horizontal, and historical relationships with this process.

The founding layer is naturally the bottom and I place it there. I color code it for use later (blue in this instance) to help distinguish it from the top layers. I am going to go with my perennial “lost civilization” favorites from the Hill Cantons, the Hyperboreans. They constructed a fairly compact city with cycolpean walls. The city was submerged by a vicious sorcerous deluge a 1,000 years into its life leaving the large stone structures encased in a preserving 30-foot thick layer of mud.

The original citadel, high on a bluff, survives and was incorporated into the next phase of the city (I mark it on the right and make sure it is visible in my next layer) by the Latter States who built a broader, yet less grand city on the site. I draw that layer on my side-view with an orange color and no space between the layers due to the relative shallowness of the layer.

Exactly 1000 years later, a Space Elf host burns and ravages the city near completely with only some of the larger, more durable. This city is larger and far grander than the other layers with giant plazas, massive pyramids, aqueducts, etc. Foul serpent women (from the future) encase this city again a 1,000 years into its life in a giant bubble of amber and collapse a mountain over it for good measure. I draw in a thick layer to represent the deep burying.

For mysterious reasons known only to their serpentine minds, the serpent women hollow out a space in the mountain rubble and construct a massive underground ceremonial space (colored in maroon) only to abandon it nearly intact after a millennium. The current human city of Dobre Rajetz rises on this spot.

And this is what I am left with (click to enlarge) a simple but functional cross section--and more importantly a conceptual idea of what structures, flavor, and size each layer of the undercity has (and roughly where they fit in relationship to each other). 

In Part II, I take up exploring how to use my pointcrawl ideas to capture both the sweeping horizontal and vertical dimensions of the space.  

The Arneson Hoard and the Public Domain

Am I alone in finding the “gold rush” news of the auction of Dave Arneson's mother lode collection profoundly sad?

For a little over a year, I have heard a number of Midwestern friends talking in hushed tones about a great horde of Arneson's papers, manuscripts and gaming who-ha lifted out of a sealed storage shed in Minnesota.

Now in the hands of an rpg auction house, an undoubtedly white-hot bidding war is about to commence--and thus my case of the sads. A golden opportunity to regain missing pieces of the early history of our hobby once again slips out of the public domain and eye and into the hands of private collectors.

Looking through the pictures over at the GeekDad exclusive, it's hard not to notice how great of a loss we are talking about. Just take a gander of the pictures of a spread of the Domesday Book, the near-lost newsletters of the medieval wargaming Castle and Crusade Society that D&D sprung Athena-like out of the head of. Pre-D&D details of Blackmoor are among some of things covered in the issues. And that leaves out all the unpublished manuscripts found in there.

This is not a rant against private collectors per se. I have known several collectors who have a profound love of the game and its history. Some like Harami who drop by to provide real insights into the grand experiments of that day. I sincerely hope that one such collector has an eye to sharing highlights and missing links with the rest of us “fever pitch” fans.

It's hard not to be with GeekDad in openly pining for a public archive to swoop in like this and help preserve it for the long haul. 

Compare to what happened with the legacy of one of other hobby giants, M.A.R. Barker (who serendipitously is being mourned and celebrated as I type by our friends up in Minnesota). Again you had a giant collection of gaming history, but instead of auctioning it off, it was donated to the Tekumel Foundation (assisted by the Aethervox Gamers). 

That collection is being carefully archived and restored with the ultimate eye of being accessible to lovers of that great world-building effort. It's not a theoretical push, we've already seen the re-release of the pre-TSR 1974 manuscript of Empire of the Petal Throne. Several more historical documents including the early-awaited Jakallan underworld are coming down the pipe.

MAR Barker Memorial Service May 5

From the Tekumel Foundation:

Mrs. Ambereen Barker and the Tékumel Foundation invite you to a memorial celebration of the life and work of Professor M.A.R. Barker

Saturday, May 5th, 2012

5 pm - 9 pm

Sheraton Midtown Minneapolis Hotel

2901 Chicago Avenue South

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407

An audiovisual presentation will begin at 6:30pm, with stories and memories to be shared afterwards. Special announcements to follow. We hope that Prof. Barker's devoted fans, friends, colleagues and former students will be able to attend and share in this celebration.

Please RSVP to the Tékumel Foundation so we may keep you informed of any changes. E-mail: info@tekumelfoundation.org

A room rate of $99/night for Friday and Saturday evenings has been arranged; ask for "Barker Memorial" when contacting the hotel.

The Sheraton Midtown Minneapolis Hotel:

(612) 821-7600

M.A.R. Barker has Passed to the Isles

Very sad news for us Tekumel lovers. I just received the following press release from the Tekumel Foundation about the passing of Phil Barker and my heart skipped a beat. More later on this beloved and creative man.

Excerpt from the release:

“Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 16, 2012: Professor Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman (MAR) Barker, known to his friends as “Phil,” died peacefully in home hospice on March 16, 2012 with his wife Ambereen Barker at his side.

A Fulbright Scholar (1951) of vast accomplishment, Professor Barker is probably best known for his creation of the world of Tékumel which he developed for over 70 years and which has been compared to Tolkein’s ‘Middle Earth’ in its scope, sophistication, and complexity. Barker was a Professor of Urdu and South Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota during the period when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were developing Tactical Studies Rules’ (TSR) first role-playing games in the Twin Cities and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

In 1975 Barker’s game “Empire of the Petal Throne” was the first role playing game published by TSR, Inc following the release of “Dungeons and Dragons.” Role playing games set in Tékumel, have been published every decade since the 1970’s, including the 1983 ‘Swords and Glory,’ 1994’s ‘Gardásiyal,’ and 2005’s ‘Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne.’ Beginning with “Man of Gold” in 1985 Barker published five novels, several game supplements, and a number of short stories set in Tékumel. In 2008 Barker established the Tékumel Foundation as his literary executor to protect and promote his intellectual property...”

Professor Barker is survived by his wife of 53 years, Ambereen. Details on memorial services will follow. In lieu of flowers, memorials to the Tékumel Foundation are preferred, visit the Foundation website here. (Donations to the Foundation can be made via Paypal on the front page of their website.)

The Old and Dear

Given my preoccupation with bemoaning blog content that flits away into the ether, here's a blogging “movement” worth supporting: Old Stuff Day. Basically it's a chance for bloggers to show off the old blog posts that they feel have become neglected with time or are particularly fond to the blogger.

Here's my own run down starting backwards chronologically in the misty past of 2009:

The Discreet Charm of City Ruins

This was my first post to break the blog out of its role as merely a campaign hub for players. It was the first time I combined broader tones and personal story into a post and it just felt right at the time. Rereading it today makes me want to keep fleshing out that melancholy, besieged city lurking just off the southern map of the Hill Cantons.

Empire of the Petal Throne, the“Gamist” Early Years

This post kicked off the HC's long love-affair exploration of M.A.R. Barker's world. It also served as a manifesto of a casual sort, guiding my own approach to gaming in Tekumel. Best of all it put me into accidental contact with Jeff Berry, the old Petal Throne salt that I only half-jokingly refer to as the HC's resident Tekumel expert. The four-part interview with him (very much worth checking out in its own right  kicked off my interview series and really deepened my insights into that world.

Tony Bath's Hyboria

This post kicked off a multi-post exploration of the truly marvelous “worldgame” that miniature wargaming titan Tony Bath ran in the UK in the 1950s-70s. The series rooted around in the kind of big-stage roleplaying gaming that predated D&D and what people now refer narrowly as RPGs. It also opened up a number of domain-play themes that I started to explore later.

Follow the “Tony Bath” label if you want to read the whole thing.

Taking Domain Play Out to the Edges

The stirrings of the Domain Game and more importantly the attempt to not just recycle and extend “beancounter” domain-play but take it back to old-new areas in D&D that were dropped as the game developed.

How Jack Vance Almost Kicked GloranthaOff Its Runequest Pedestal

First time I really remembered to use a few tricks I learned from my old day job journalism work to write a good, compelling story.

Do RPGs Have to Be Cooperative?

More exploration of how some of the interesting holdovers from wargame play got dropped out too early in the development of RPGs in the 1980s. Should be read with this one, if you are interested in that theme.

Fantasy Fucking Vietnam

Far and away my most solid writing on the blog has been the personal entries. This one details my relationship through my combat vet father to the Vietnam War and how it colored D&D play back in the day. Read this one if you read anything today.

Three Years of Madness and Mayhem

I almost missed it. Yesterday compiling all my old campaign notebooks I chanced on the notes from the first session of the Hill Cantons campaign. Turns out today is the three year anniversary for the campaign proper (it predates the blog).

Now, I'm not one for the self-congratulatory post about this or that silly blog achievement, but I am so proud of reaching that milestone that I believe—as we say here in Tejas--the sun came up this morning just to hear me crow.

Because, see, in the first page of that dog-eared spiral notebook is a list of goals and point one is: “Go for the long game. Keep focused, don't dump it at the first distraction and let it evolve from the bottom-up bit by bit.” Having successfully (if narrowly) avoided death by distraction—I did manage to run a host of other side campaigns from Tekumel to Hyboria to both phases of the Domain Game—I feel a certain amount of victory and vindication.

The campaign also managed to survive through a number of big real life changes and its own evolutionary jumps. It went from its first year in Austin as an unholy marriage between 15th-17^th century Central Europe and a radical plotless West Marches-like experiment (running Castles and Crusades) in Austin to the stranger beast (running LL and a large heap of its own homebrewed variants) it is today. Currently the campaign balances inter-connectedly between a tight (if infrequently-meeting) San Antonio home group and a wild and wooly weekly Google-plus crew, the so-called Nefarious Nine.

Here's the snapshot “Harper's Index” of campaign factoids:
Number of sessions: 58

Number of adventure site maps designed: 141

Large-scale “dungeons” explored (6-8 levels): 2

Medium-scale “dungeons” explored (2-5 levels): 11
Mini-dungeons and lairs explored: 25
"Squares" in the pointcrawl map explored: 128

Furthest distance from the center of the map traveled: 62 miles

Number of other dimensions visited: 3

Total number of people who have played in the HC: 35

Countries of players (thanks G+): 5

Number of children that have played: 8

First-time players that have played: 9

Most players at a single session: 12

Number of PC deaths: 5

Times that PCs have rolled on the Death and Dismemberment table: 13

Hireling deaths: 27

Longest living NPC follower: Demetrios the Silent

Longest surviving PC: Mandamus

Most successful first-time player: Uma the Thief

Highest level achieved: 6^th

Most potent enemy bested: Qvix, Demon of the Anti-Ziggurat

Biggest haul from a single session: gold bars worth 6,000 suns (gp)

Most potent magical item obtained: the Terminaxe (+3 vs. giant insects) and/or four pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts

Least exp per player awarded in a full session: 10

Least amount of swag per player lifted in a session: 1 sun

Most popular PC class: Thief

Least popular PC class: Paladin

Most popular HC-unique class: Mountebank

Least popular HC-unique class: Lankhmarian White Wizard

Worst-acting participant: me

I raise a glass of slivovice—it's five o'clock somewhere—to all the players. Without you it would all be a Billy Idol song.

Petal Throne Manuscript Released Into the Wild

The pre-publication Empire of the Petal Throne is now officially available to the public for the first time. Only 50 copies of this mimeoed playtest version were produced. 

If you are interested in buying this and are familiar with TSR's EPT, you should be warned that according to Victor Raymond in “many ways is substantively similar to the later TSR publication, and is being produced more as a historical document than as a different product.”

In a conversation last week with Raymond last week he noted that the mechanical differences are pretty sparse, but there are some interesting differences with closer “textual analysis.” There are some interesting differences such as the lack of a Charisma/Comeliness attribute and the existence of playtest notes at the end of the document that show the evolution of EPT as an organic game. 

The final version is 230 pages, with the original mimeo version on the lefthand side and a clean OCR copy on the right. You can find it on RPGnow and on DriveThru as a PDF for $15. A print-on-demand version is coming next. 

My complete interview with Raymond that discusses the deep mysteries of Tekumel, the manuscript and other upcoming projects that will be released such as the much awaited Jakallan Underworld will be coming here this week.  

Pre-TSR Petal Throne Releasing Shortly

Big breaking news for Tekumel lovers: the eminent publication of the original Empire of the Petal Throne (the playtest version before the TSR-mandated publication changes) ain't just a sexy rumor. It's being released by the Tekumel Foundation in PDF on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG shortly.

According to Victor Raymond of the Foundation "there are some subtle and some not-so-subtle differences between it and the published version from TSR." The price is not yet set, but should be "under $20."

Above is "Mimeo EPT" pictured with one of M.A.R. Barker's original campaign maps. Click to enlarge and check out the Tsolyani map inscriptions. The Foundation is discussing how best to release the maps to the public.

Color me excited and expect more news shortly.

Planescape's Missing Megadungeon

It struck me the other day that Planescape is another of those tabletop settings that bitter-sweetly is both well loved and little played. Well...that is except for it's popular computer alter ego, Planescape Torment. Not only was that game played widely in the years around its 1999 release, it's considered a cult hit to this day.

Why the disconnect? Why didn't the tabletop version rocket into cult status too?

Undoubtedly there are many reasons: the rising primacy of computer games over face-to-face, the runaway popularity of the Bioware games of that era, Planescape's appearance at the end of the 2e setting smorgasbord, etc. But it occurred to me that part of it is that Torment managed to hit some deep D&D elements that the tabletop material glossed over in its drive to play toward being a rival with that White Wolf hooha of the time (thanks Robert and other readers for that particular insight).

Namely it made good on the megadungeon lurking under the streets of the setting's literal hub city, Sigil. Enamored by its original bits, most gameplay in the setting revolved around adventure around the planes and less successfully around political intrigue amongst the factions.

Hints at a undercity play arena were only vaguely hinted at. The original Sigil booklet has the haziest of mentions and it's only later with In the Cage: a Guide to Sigil supplement do you even get a peak at what a massively missed opportunity there was:

"The homes of the dabus [the weirdo, rebus-speaking floating worker drones of the city] are deep underground; some Cagers [Sigil citizen] say that the entire torus is a warren of dabus, and that the part of Sigil on the surface is only the face the city shows to the Ring, to travelers. The actual city is a maze of deep tunnels, storehouses, dungeons and corridors...”

That's a hell of a tease. The booklet goes on to continue to tease about the possibility throughout the book, detailing places like the Twelve Factols, an underground tavern where drunken obnoxious diners will on occasion force the serving staff to let them traipse into the deep passages that lead into the Catacombs behind warded doors. You hear a lot about the tavern in that passage but nothing about what lies beyond.

According to the Planewalker wiki this massive underground is only called “UnderSigil” by the Clueless (outworld newbies according to that annoying PS in-game cant), it is mostly known as "down below," "the Catacombs," "the Realm Below," or "the Labyrinths" according to the locals. The mention of it immediately makes me think of the romance of the giant undercities of Tekumel, where the ritual half-millennial clearing and rubbling over of the cities create layer over layer of rich adventure.

Whatever the name it is called (and I am partial to all of them as evocative titles) Torment was the only large-scale exploration of that play area in the setting. Play down underneath in the game simply rocks. Each sub-map of down below just drips with unique flavor and seem ready made for the sub-level punctuation of the sheer mass of a megadungeon.

You have a Buried Village under the heaps of the Trash Warrens. You have an entire underworld realm of sentient skeletons, zombies, and ghouls with a unique civilization, the Dead Nations. Another subrealm, the Warren of Thought, dominated by a collective rodent brain with its cranium rat and wererat minions. An animate skull library, the Bones of the Night, lorded over by a kooky wizard. Weird tombs and catacombs a plenty with talking carved heads and unique critters.

Great stuff in other words.

Play in D&D doesn't have revolve around the eponymous dungeon, but it's often at it's best as a game when the agoraphobia is kept under wraps by the comfort of a tight mortared ceiling. It's a shame that UnderSigil wasn't explored further, but I suppose that's what makes Gygax's famous parting words from OD&D ring so true yet again: “why have us do any more imaging for you?”

Indeed. Go forth and build your own undercity.

Better Fewer, But Better?

I have been noticing traffic flowing to the HC from Big Purple for several days now. The RPGnet thread that is spawning the page views is—for a refreshing change—near and dear to this blog's heart, posing the question: when did domain-level play drop out of D&D as a major play area?

The various responses are uneven, but interesting. The most interesting dropping (perhaps not surprisingly) from Michael Mornard aka the Old Geezer, one of the most OG of the hobby's pioneering souls having having hit the trifecta as a player in the original Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Barker's Tekumel campaigns.

I could spend several posts parsing his comments in that thread and linking back to thoughts about Borderlands and domain-level play in general. But one somewhat tangential one stuck out for me. He answers some of the out-loud wondering about what was particular about play groups back then that more readily supported his concept by saying:

“Remember that 'the group is one, solid, and indissoluble' was not a concept. We were all roving adventurers who would band together at times, but the highest form of play was to play solo. So once strongholds were built, one player might be a wizard staying in his tower and sending minions out to gather components for spell research, one might be building a mighty army, one interacting in the political intrigue, etc.”

The FLAILSNAILS experience developing on Google+--an ongoing series of mostly old school D&D dungeoneering linking by my guess a 100 or so players to more than a dozen different campaign worlds--seems to model more and more the open world feel of the big tent original campaigns. Players float in and out in mostly ad hoc combinations between the various campaigns, maps and magical items are bartered between sessions.

While I have been running the hell out of my Hyborian Age, Petal Throne, and Domain Game II campaigns in that pocket universe, until this week I have been merely a player and not a GM of these games. Last week I finally threw my hat in the ring and ran two open world sessions in my home face-to-face campaign in the eponymous Hill Cantons (session report from the foray into the Golden Domed Battle Barge coming later).

All tremendous fun, but I keep thinking about the second part of that middle sentence “the highest form of play was to play solo.” Big tent type of play, lots of players moving between worlds, was part of my own experience of the game even as late as 1981, but more frequently were the near-daily games we ran for several years with small groups.

As our early characters ramped up the power arc more and more there would be these sessions with one player. Back then it would have taken no effort to pull in at least another smallish group, but it was something of a prestige thing. Indeed it was a badge of “making it” as a player to be tough enough to tromp around the Suss Forest, either alone or with a private army of few NPC henchmen and men-at-arms.

And as a DM there was a certain quality of play that I enjoyed about those solo forays. You didn't have the rollicking camaraderie of a group, but you did get this laser-beam focus, a certain deeper intensity of play. And yes, as name-level crept in there was the stronghold building, the wilderness clearing, the army raising, and all the elements—come to think of it they were always in those intense me with the player sessions. Building plans would be drawn, great menaces to the freehold dealt with, mass battles run with small hordes of Heritage and Ral Parthas.

I find myself yearning for that “quality time” again as much as I do the big tent. Two of my current campaigns really lend themselves to it in fact.

Some of my best experiences playing and running Conan/ZeFRS have come with only two players, the system with its focus on high action, swashbuckling like the genre it emulates really lends itself to a smaller cast. And given what raised the question, the Domain Game II is also crying out for at least a session or two of such play (of course, most will still be the bigger "y'all come" sessions.)

Is any feeling this too? Or running or playing in solo games out of choice or necessity that you enjoy? Why so? What do you get out of them (or hope to) then you don't get in the troupe sessions?

The Request Line is Open

Repeat failure has taught me one thing about New Year resolutions: pick out things I am already down the dark road on and say “I am going to do more of that.”

Of course I am a terrible hypocrite, I have already filled up a page with new project ideas (more on that later), but here's one from the heed-my-own-wisdom category. One blog goal for 2011 was to engage readers more directly and honestly, slough off the prejudices of two decades of journalistic business as usual. The success of the various contests, challenges, direct queries, and deliberate provocations has been uneven, but on the whole I am satisfied.

Here is a very direct leap inspired by Zak S's recent query in the G+ ether, a request line. What would you like to see more of here in the Hill Cantons in 2012?

More interviews? If so with who? More (or less) focus on certain game systems? More game tinkering or setting who-ha? More analysis/exploration of the early days of the hobby? More Tekumel? Half-assed literary criticism? Or what?

Leading questions all, feel free to answer, ignore, and definitely, definitely pose anything that strikes your fancy. I welcome the engagement even if, nay especially if it demands I stretch a little. Challenge me, friends.  

2011: The Rear View Mirror

I have been watching—from my woe-is-me sick bed—my blog roll steadily filling up with my blogging comrades' retrospectives for the year. Having ended the year much less of a contrarian than I started, I'm jumping on that horse.

2011 was the year of riding the smilidon here at the Hill Cantons. I could regal you with page view bar charts or some other tedious piece of bragging rights, but I would hazard a guess that you care even less about that than I do (which is little, really).

Like the games we love it's more about the road--the exploration and the camarderie along the way--than what lies at the end of it, the silly fleeting gratification of accumulating readers quantatively. In that way it's been a highly successful year. For me it's mostly been about driving down on the these arcing themes and game ideas, the little ideas that nag. And playing of course, lots of that.

Looking back here the theme arcs that I felt best about in the year:

The Personal Connection 

This was the year that I loosened up on my long-standing revulsion against that kind of preening self-indulgent stule of the age—you know the one that has cranked up memoirs and tell-alls to a major section of the dead tree industry in the last decade. Writing more about my own deeper connections to the game helped me develop a stronger writer's voice—and let me talk about a surprising range of broader themes and how they relate back to the game.

I wrote about my father, and how the Vietnam War just might have something to do with the phrase “fantasy fucking Vietnam”. About my grandfather's storytelling and the oral art ofgame-mastering. About the otherworldly ruined pile of a house I lived in for a time when I started playing as a lad. About the ranch we would hole up in during college days in Conan Country.

About how  our religious worldviews can be a distant mirror to those we have in our fantasy world. And about the deep sense of place that I (and apparently the rest of you) associate with our campaign worlds.

The Domain Game 

In 2011 the blog remained a place that didn't just endlessly editorialize about games—and please sweet Crom, I pray for a general reduction in Opinion Only content of my fellows—but hothoused play right out of it. The one with the greatest legs was (is) the threads around domain-level play in D&D.

It was deeply satisfying to not only write the Borderlands sourcebook (which should be out by the end of the next month) about an area that I always wanted to see explored in that way—but to do it from the ground up by chucking out all the rules expectations and

That exploration started here and continued over a long arc (in the link on the subheader)--and then game back to life on Google Plus with Domain Game II.

The Interview Series 

One of my goals for this year when it was still a pup was to crank up my interview series, I was very happy with the ones cranked out. It makes me very happy to step back out of the bully pulpit and listen to the voices of some truly interesting folks out there.

We had the mammoth feather-ruffling one with Rob Kuntz and the interesting one with King of Dragon Pass creator David Dunham that revealed the connection of that classic computer game to a tabletop Pendragon variant campaign. I swung back to talking to Jeff Berry, the HC “resident Tekumel expert” about the exciting passing of M.A.R. Barker's collection into the public sphere. 

We talked with former TSR artist and hard-working game designer Jeff Dee. I explored the long, strange trip of the German world game Magira and some other new worlds with our DIY brethern.

Maps

Readers, especially those anonymous hordes from Google searches seem to eat up the series I wrote on what makes for a great map. That series started here and was explored more here.

There were several other major themes (Tekumel, Matters Vancian, Early RPG Experiments, Non-Traditional Sandbox Mechanics , Game Tinkering and of course Actual Play) I may save them for another day—or likely just move on into the flush of the new year.

But that, my friends, was the way it was. I hope that next year, tomorrow, I find you reading, discussing, debating, and playing alongside me again, there is an even greater year to come.