Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Looking back on it, I've never been a casual killer. I've always been a considered and rational one; Tekumel has been full, over the years, of people who really did need killing for very practical reasons. Phil always stopped and stared when I killed somebody; it was pretty rare when I did so. On the whole, he felt, I did perform a useful and valuable service to Tekumel by exterminating those that needed extermination. (Nobody ever came back after I got to them; there was never enough left to revivify.)

I'm fine with that type of PCs, as you know. The advice was for "let's kill children because NPCs are there for that" types...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

From AsenRG:
I'd like to think so, too! I've just gotten tired of the 'politically correst' denouncing all of my old favorites as 'something-ist'.

Well, I just stop listening to them. Now I wonder whether they're going to achieve the same with most people.

The folks in the OSR keep telling me this.

And I still tell you that's a funny claim to make. I'm probably younger than most of those folks, too, and I'm the eldest in my group. All of those players seem to react well to a similar style...indeed, I've been asked to add more miniatures, but couldn't for storage reasons.
Some of the most successful games out there are miniatures-based, too.
Almost all modern gamers react well to exploration-based games. Most assume without even thinking that the GM is supposed to be impartial, like in a computer game - getting used to the opposite takes years of conditioning...

So yeah, it's a funny claim.

Yeah. I was talking to him the other day, and he mentioned that my series of posts on my blog and in a forum are the most that has ever been written on how to do Braunsteins as games. I do wish he'd write more!

It might be a good idea, if he can be persuaded...
If not, we'd have to try and keep the spirit, and improvise on our own.

I don't know yet; we'll have to see...

Good luck with that!

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Thank you Uncle. I just found another reason to spend my hard earned money. I have seen Catherwoods drawings before, now I just looked up some of the books. Beautiful...

H;0)

You and me both.

BTW, I think this book might be useful for some GMs, and there's a couple interesting ceremonies that can be re-purposed for Tekumel...
https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/...h/35915-h.html
No, it's not Catherwoods', but then no need to restrict ourselves, right?

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Excellent resource!!! Thank you!!!

H:0)

You're welcome, mighty Hrugga!

The other day I had the opportunity to visit a game store. I was looking around, and as is often the case, I struck up a conversation with another patron, and I believe the owner of the shop. We started talking about what we were playing and I told them that I was running a Tekumel campaign. What I found funny was, after the usual that 'it was too difficult to pronounce the names correctly' etc., they felt that what was needed in order for them, and presumably others, to "play Tekumel" was a proper rule-set, and it was this lack of rules that really limited the popularity of the game. My response was that you can use any rules that you like and modify them to suit yourself and the milieu. This, surprisingly to me, received a luke warm response. I also went on and told them that all they really needed to adventure on Tekumel were the Sourcebooks, one of the novels (probably MoG or FS were the best ones to initially pick up),some type of monster listing, maybe a listing of Tekumel spells, and some type of mechanism to resolve combat and other important situations in an impartial way. All of these things are readily available on line in some form or another.
If they absolutely wanted 'new rules', in order to play then Bethorm was in print, and from my initial impression of the game, and from what those who have played it say, it seems like a solid set of rules. I also recommended the original EPT or Arrows of Indra if the wanted a simpler set of rules, and that they check out some of the Tekumel related websites. I don't know if I convinced them, but it got me thinking.
What would you recommend if someone wanted to start adventuring on Tekumel?

Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

If they absolutely wanted 'new rules', in order to play then Bethorm was in print, and from my initial impression of the game, and from what those who have played it say, it seems like a solid set of rules.

Shemek

Well, as far as I'm concerned, I have neither the time nor the interest in adapting a system to Tékumel. I'd rather play! So, here are my suggestions:

I can say that Béthorm works remarkably well. The character creation is a bit involved with some back and forth to add and subtract bonuses and what not, but it covers all of the important bits, including coming up with "contacts", so that characters are not isolated sets of numbers, but people with a past, some friends, maybe a family and a social standing. Once that's done, using the rules is super easy. And, more importantly, they stay out of the way of the game and whatever happens. In other words, the action flows ... and only with 2D10, max. Very happy with and pleasantly surprised by them.
I'd recommend checking out the Béthorm website too, as Jeff Dee is responsive with good solutions to problems or questions players might have.

That's for the latest, official rules. Then you have the free, unofficial ones.
The latest (as there are others, more or less complex, like Dave Morris' excellent, battle-tested Tirikelu, available on the Tékumel website) is from Brett Slocum. It's called The Petal Hack, is based on The Black Hack sets of rules, and is available for free on the RPGnow website.

I must say, for a quick a dirty system to quickly create characters and get going, it's fantastic. Slocum's system does all the things Black Hack does but in the Tékumel context. So, characters are created in minutes, and the system (read in minutes) gives you monster stats, spells, as well as, of course, rules for fast combat and quick skill resolutions. It's not a deep system, and there's little context, but by the gods, it will get you started in no time. Run a quick dungeon crawl with some tasty Tékumel critters and treasure, and naive but curious players will be interested in continuing.

Besides that, I would, with more time, read the first two novels (Flamesong before Man of Gold perhaps, as it's the better of the two), but only after spending a lot of time on the Tékumel website, which is very well done and contains a lot of information, including very good one-shot scenarios. Plenty to get started.

Jeff Dee, him again, also did a short but very good Q&A on gaming on Tékumel at the 2015 Celesticon Game Convention. It's very good because he manages to show that playing on Tékumel is not that much more complex or difficult than playing on any other world with an interesting world and lore. I wish some of it was written down somewhere, as a sort of GM tips and advice thing.

http://www.celesticon.com/Podcasts/P...umel_C2015.mp3

Originally Posted by d(sqrt(-1))

Great stuff. The location is going to be fairly deep in a forest rumoured to be nasty (Soru'a, along the Chaigava river near Katalal) of which Jeff Dee's Gazetteer says:

"The trees of this forest grow high above the Sákbe road, meeting overhead to form a somber tunnel of greenery. This place teems with wild animals, and the guards stationed at the two closest Sákbe road towers are kept very busy protecting travelers from predation."

Do you have any info about Ssu buildings? I guess they build them from local stuff, or would they ship something in via tubeway? The Hyluss use bodily secretions but the Ssu don't AFAIK.

I always run scenarios as situations rather than pre-determined events, so if the PCs do something odd/interesting/clever, then the NPCs will respond according to their desires and motivations, e.g. If they don't antagonise the Dzor, then they could use them as allies or at least as distractions.

(The High and Dry sessions went well BTW. They did find copper swords, and one PC took his to the big temple of Sarku to sell it and got a very good price, plus wine and biscuits. They have asked him to bring more along if he finds them, so I'll give him a haggling bonus with them from now on. He's only slightly worried that they were so keen to keep in touch, and he's fairly sure that one of the higher up expert evaluators wasn't breathing, but that can't be right can it?)

Well, the Ssu cities are underground, with equilateral triangular little pyramids over the entrance shafts. I think that if they were going to start a base in the area, they'd bring in a prefab 'shed' to shelter in while they started digging. They'd also prefer to use any existing holes in the ground, like caves or something, and if they found something that looked to be an entrance into a forgotten underworld or lost temple, they'd use that.

The shed would, based on an encounter we had early on out at Phil's, most likely be a geodesic dome, made of prefab panels. The panels might be wood or metal, or something else; we found a funny little dome out in the woods near Tu'umnra, which wasn't the usual Pe Choi extruded chitin (The Hlyss do the same thing) but was a geodesic dome made of the ceramic-metal alloy usually used by the ancients. It reeked of cinnamon, had the usual Ssu bits of parchment-like shed skin inside, and which convinced us to run away as fast as we could - with the notion of coming back later with a cohort or two of soldiers so we could grab the thing and live to tell about it. What was it? My guess, based on Phil's sense of humor, was that it was a military shelter kit of the Ancients that the Su had found someplace and were using.

He always played them as if they were as smart as we were; if we'd do something like this, then they certainly would.

Great game session, from the sound of it!

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Uncle,

A quick question, could you do a short list of creatures in order of intellegence and ability to communicate with PCs? I may be just a bit lazy(and dumb), but I can not seem to remember seeing intelligence scores for the creatures in EPT.
Thank you...

H:0)

I can, based on what we encountered, but it'll take a bit of time while I look everything up. For the short term, I'd look in EPT; no, there are no INT stats for the creatures, but the descriptions do say things like 'semi-intelligent'. In general, creatures like the Thunru'u, Serudla, Feshenga - the ones with arms and opposable thumbs - would be more or less on a par with humans; no thumbs, but able to understand spoken languages, a little less then humans; no thumbs and no languages way below humans.

I'll try to get this done as fast as I can.