Q&A with Jeff Berry

[aldarron]

Hi Jeff

What are aethervoxes and is there a website for the Non profit?

[chirine ba kal]

Hi Jeff

What are aethervoxes and is there a website for the Non profit?

Oops; sorry, I should have explained...

The Aethervox Gamers date back to 2003, when one of the original founders of the old Thursday Night Group that gamed at Prof. Barker's in the late 1970s and the 1980s was diagnosed with severe cancer. I was asked by several of his friends, who had all been part of that group, to run some Tekumel adventures for him to take him mind off the chemotherapy sessions he was undergoing.

After he passed away in 2003, he bequeathed his extensive collecion of Tekumel materials to the group, with the stipulation that we keep running Tekumel adventures. The members of the group started digging into their attics, closets, basements, garages, dungeons, ruined temples, underworlds and the other usual household storage places for their own collections; this has all been combined into one enormous collection that occupies some 450 square feet; you can see a lot of it in the pictures on my blog, but that's just the tip of the collection iceberg. We've been running both RPGs and miniatures games since 2003, and we have two RPG groups that meet on alternate Saturdays.

We made the decision to become a formal organization in order to protect the future of the collection; the group owns the collection in common, and we regard it as a trust that we hold for anyone interested in Tekumel. We had a visitor in a while back, who advised us in the strongest possible terms to get insurance for the collection, proper storage materials, and in general get ourselves organized as a proper archival resource as well as a gaming group; the formal incorporation is the result of this.

(I mean, really; how many game groups do you know of that own ten full-sized mannequins for storage and display of their costume collection? Honestly, I have no idea how this all happened; we even have a collection of Tekumel-style artifacts and furniture for doing LARPs if anyone is so inclined.)

There is no formal website, yet, but we're working on it. The best way to see what we might be up to at the moment is to check my blog:

http://chirinesworkbench.blogspot.com/

I try to keep up with things as best I can!

yours, Chirine

[Havard]

Hi Chirine,
How are you doing in the new year? I tried to contact the Tekumel Foundation as you suggested, but never got any response from them. Have you talked to Giovanna Ferengi lately? I would love to hear more of her Dwarf character in Blackmoor

-Havard

[chirine ba kal]

Hi Chirine,
How are you doing in the new year? I tried to contact the Tekumel Foundation as you suggested, but never got any response from them. Have you talked to Giovanna Ferengi lately? I would love to hear more of her Dwarf character in Blackmoor

-Havard

We're doing better, thank you; life is quieting down, and we're doing a lot more fun stuff. we had a big game weekend over the New Year's holiday, which seems to have started the year off right.

I'll see if I can't get somebody to e-mail you; Gio's in the UK at the moment, working on her doctorate, so she may not know you e-mailed. I'll see what I can do.

yours, chirine

[Havard]

Chirine,
do you know if Deborah Nafziger could have ended up marrying David Ritchie? I am asking since the module DA4 Duchy of Ten, by David Ritchie, credits a Deborah Ritchie as the source of much information on the Afridhi. Having already established that Nafziger played the Afridhi Queen, Toska Rusa, it seems unlikely that more than one Deborah contributed to this culture?

-Havard

[chirine ba kal]

Chirine,
do you know if Deborah Nafziger could have ended up marrying David Ritchie? I am asking since the module DA4 Duchy of Ten, by David Ritchie, credits a Deborah Ritchie as the source of much information on the Afridhi. Having already established that Nafziger played the Afridhi Queen, Toska Rusa, it seems unlikely that more than one Deborah contributed to this culture?

-Havard

No, she didn't. There are indeed two Deborahs, and they are separated by about a decade in time.

yours, chirine

[aldarron]

Hey Jeff,

I think all of us have been interested in Dave's early gaming and the "old" players from the First Fantasy Campaign days, but we tend to hear a lot less about Dave's games, his life, and gamers he played with after the mid '70's.

I'm wondering if you know who he was playing with and what characters they might have played in the late '70's and the 80's. Some of those I guess are in TSR's DA series modules.

Was Dave's ex wife ever a gamer?

Thanks again for sharing what you know.

[chirine ba kal]

Hey Jeff,

I think all of us have been interested in Dave's early gaming and the "old" players from the First Fantasy Campaign days, but we tend to hear a lot less about Dave's games, his life, and gamers he played with after the mid '70's.

I'm wondering if you know who he was playing with and what characters they might have played in the late '70's and the 80's. Some of those I guess are in TSR's DA series modules.

Was Dave's ex wife ever a gamer?

Thanks again for sharing what you know.

I don't have any information on his non-Tekumel gaming after 1980; I was pretty focused on working with Dave and Phil on their Tekumel publishing efforts, and didn't do much of anything else in gaming, so I'm not the best source for the period. I would suspect that the DA modules that Dave wrote have some of the information you're looking for, but I don't have copies for reference.

Dave's ex, Frankie, was not as far as I know a gamer in any way; she always used to regard us with a fair deal of alarm, both us Tekumel boat people and the AGI historicals crowd. We all tended to stay away from her as we didn't want to offend her and thus cause Dave any problems in his home life.

Sorry to be so narrowly specialized, and I'll try to find out more for you!

yours, Chirine

[aldarron]

Hey Jeff,

I think all of us have been interested in Dave's early gaming and the "old" players from the First Fantasy Campaign days, but we tend to hear a lot less about Dave's games, his life, and gamers he played with after the mid '70's.

I'm wondering if you know who he was playing with and what characters they might have played in the late '70's and the 80's. Some of those I guess are in TSR's DA series modules.

Was Dave's ex wife ever a gamer?

Thanks again for sharing what you know.

I don't have any information on his non-Tekumel gaming after 1980; I was pretty focused on working with Dave and Phil on their Tekumel publishing efforts, and didn't do much of anything else in gaming, so I'm not the best source for the period. I would suspect that the DA modules that Dave wrote have some of the information you're looking for, but I don't have copies for reference.

Dave's ex, Frankie, was not as far as I know a gamer in any way; she always used to regard us with a fair deal of alarm, both us Tekumel boat people and the AGI historicals crowd. We all tended to stay away from her as we didn't want to offend her and thus cause Dave any problems in his home life.

Sorry to be so narrowly specialized, and I'll try to find out more for you!

yours, Chirine

Thanks Chirine! In the meanwhile I'll ask about something you will know. What were Dave and Phils "Tekumel publishing efforts" that you were working on?

[chirine ba kal]

Thanks Chirine! In the meanwhile I'll ask about something you will know. What were Dave and Phils "Tekumel publishing efforts" that you were working on?

Well, to start at the beginning, Phil had staked Dave to some money to get Dave's lawsuit against TSR over the AD&D royalty situation; Phil sent Dave to his lawyers, the firm of Moss and Barnet, here in Minneapolis and they took on Dave's case. Dave won, after some extended litigation, and with the initial settlement for back royalties founded Adventure Games. He called in most of his friends as staff, and started publishing their games.

To repay Phil, Dave took over the books and map set formerly published by Gary Rudolph and Craig Smith as Imperium Publishing: "Book of Ebon Bindings", "The Tsolyani Langauage, Books One and Two", "Armies of Tekumel, Volume One: Tsolyanu" the "Northwest Frontier Map Set", and the left-over copies of Imperium's fanzine "The Imperial Courier" and Gary's miniatures game "Missum". I was the guy who did all the pick and carry work; I also got sent down to Lake Geneva to collect the remaining copies of "Empire of the Petal Throne" and Dave Sutherland's miniatures rules "Legions of the Petal Throne. I also personally bought all 1,500 of the remaining "Declaration of War" posters that TSR had in stock. There were about a dozen copies of "War of Wizards" left, and I bought those as well.

Once AGI got rolling, I put "Deeds of the Ever-Glorious" together from work that Brian Murphy had done; I also did new editions of all of the previous items as the very short Imperium print runs were exhausted in short order. I also did "Armies of Tekumel, Volume Two: Yan Kor" and got the remaining three in the series (Mu'uglavya, Salarvya, and Livyanu) started. We also started the two fanzines / newsletters as 'lunchtime projects', the "Imperial Military Journal" to report on events in Phil's campaigns and the "Journal of Tekumel Affairs" for more in-depth material. There was also a lot of marketing and promotional stuff we did, like the handouts we gave to people at conventions while showing them the huge model of the Temple of Vimuhla that Phil had done; there were photos of that in "Dragon" #4, if I recall.

Somewhere along in there I wound up buying the line of Tekumel miniatures that Bill Murray and Old Guard had begun producing under a license from TSR, and which was later sold to Ral Partha just as TSR discontinued their production of EPT. Ral Partha discontinued the miniatures shortly after that, due to a lack of sales, and I got them when I called Ral Partha to see if they's run the figures for me. They made me an offer ($2,500 for the lot, masters, molds, inventory) and I bought the line. Dave bought the casting equipment as a personal venture, but I did most of the casting out in the garage at Adventure Games' 1278 Selby Avenue address - the building was known as the 'Great Stucco Fortress', due to it's forbidding look, and it still stands. (Must get some photos; the infamous garage is gone, but the rest is still there.) I did my own version of a set of miniatures rules for Tekumel, "Qadardalikoi", when the stocks of "Missum" and "Legions" started to run out, but it wound up being published by myself after AGI closed.

Effectively, I'd brought all the scattered Tekumel product lines in under one roof; at the last, we were doing the second volume of "Swords and Glory" for Lou Zocchi / Gamescience. We Tekumel folks lived in the very wet basement; Ken Fletcher, being part of the 'regular staff' and not one of the 'boat people', got to have a desk upstairs on the ground level with the other AGI staffers. When Dave closed AGI down, everything Tekumel came to me and everything else went to Flying Buffalo as Dave was a part-owner of that company. We on went from there as a separate business entity, and once we'd incorporated Dave got shares of stock in the new company to pay for all of the back inventory of publications we'd gotten from him.

Does that help?

yours, Chirine