Quote from: Benoist;523557Yeah, he's right. For some gamers, that'll matter a great deal towards immersion, much like super-detailed critical hits rules and the like. That's a good point.

Well, I grok it fom a very intimate level.

I've been working on and playing in the same setting for over 25 years.  And the Crunch, as KRKrueger mentions, is built to support the fluff...

Blah, Blah, Blah...but I recognize it because it is true, and I am living it.  there is a higher 'barrier to entry', but once in, the conversations leading to minutiae are there.

So while folks CAN be dropped in and play (happens all the time), there is a huge advantage to knowing what is going on.  And that takes some reading.

Quote from: danbuter;523324Some settings are just difficult to to grasp by your average gamer. Tekumel and Glorantha are probably near the top of the list. Both have exotic worlds, with lots of really strange, non-Western, aspects to them. It's very likely why neither is a huge commercial success. People get offended if you say this, though.

For whatever reason, certain settings attract obsessive fans who really love to dig into the small details. Sometimes, I think they lose track of the big picture, forgetting that the setting is a game and not a real world.

Tekumel I enjoy, It's awesome science fantasy! Glorantha... not so much, I like Runequest as well. It's simply elegant as well. Ridiculously simply to run. Can keep the character sheets to one page with both Tekumel and Runequest, except for when the players accumulate estates, equipment, and followers.

Tekumel wasn't difficult to grasp either. On the contrary, it was much easier to run (and play in) than what became Mystara. There were only three major Tekumel cultures, four if you count all the races and cultures brought in by homebrew games (Dang Barbarians!).

I liked the fact that with Tekumel you didn't have Vikings and the North Africans fighting. No stupid cultural conflicts created by GM's that put together their favorite mish-mash of ancient and feudal states, without regard to the available natural resources, and often with conflicting technology levels that would really see one conflicting nation-state take over the lesser state in a few scant years of game time. I liked that the Tsoliyani empire was one vast empire, with a common set of social rules so every subculture could arrive at some common ground.

The people that said it was difficult to grasp, quite often could never be bothered to read past page one (It was... all in nine point font after all, with only a scarce few illustrations).

I liked the fact that people were put off because of the alien races in the World of the Petal Throne and that the players would be slightly uncomfortable with the in-game social traditions. As M.A.R. Barker said:

"This very unfamiliarity may initially frustrate those (players) who have never had a chance to see over the walls imposed by their cultures."

I for one, wanted a peek at what was over that wall.

Quote from: Soylent Green;523456In the end the setting is just a backdrop, a functional thing. It's the player characters and the situations they get into that need to be interesting, not the setting.

What's more interesting than visiting a new country, getting to know the people, and learning about the situations that they live in?

Oh yeah, ...right. Killing and looting the natives. Taking their stuff, intimidating them, and making them your own. I always thought that was the argument of Manifest Destiny and Imperial Colonialism.

In the Empire of the Petal Throne, such things are not so easily done.

Quote from: CRKrueger;523372The OCD guys are also in GURPS, in 3.5, in anything that is meaty enough to support an Obsessive personality.

Also anytime you have a group that has a barrier to entry, that gives a feeling of fulfillment and exclusivity to the people in that group that have passed the barrier.  The problem is when the OCD people actively add to that barrier to prop themselves up and increase that feeling.

The most obsessive or "ocd" geek/nerd types I've met over the years, were hardcore into stuff like:

- the Star Wars Expanded Universe
- the (non-canon) Star Trek universe from the novels
- Forgotten Realms canon from the novels
- etc ...

More recently, I know one individual who was hardcore into Pathfinder Golarion canon (ie. from the supplements, novels, etc ...).


In general, the more books that are written in a particular system/setting (whether novels and/or splatbooks), the more it seems to attract the hardcore OCD types (typically with a rules/canon lawyer mentality).

Wow, nice links in the other thread!

And for those of you that have put off trying EPT, here's the one page How to Play Tekumel article posted up on the official Tekumel web home page:

How to play Tekumel

It's one page!!? Now who couldn't try this?

Quote from: GameDaddy;523596Wow, nice links in the other thread!

And for those of you that have put off trying EPT, here's the one page How to Play Tekumel article posted up on the official Tekumel web home page:

How to play Tekumel

It's one page!!? Now who couldn't try this?

I would love to try it, just wish I knew a Tekumel GM that lived anywhere near me. I've always thought it looked dang interesting.

Despite my deep and lasting love of BRP in all it's forms, I've never been much of a Glorantha fan. I am a huge Harn fan, but I have never thought it was the best setting to actually game in. At least not the fantasy RPGing that most of us like and are used to. Despite attempts to the contrary, adventurers have never made much sense in Harn. I think it's a great setting for Ars Magica though. I've always prefered Birthright as a usable setting that has a similar feel for me as Harn. I even used some Harn stuff when I've run Birthright, especially the city/town/village maps.

I think, though, that the evolution of the Traveler setting became more convoluted and potentially unwieldy than any fantasy setting, although I still love it

Honestly, I have never seen anyone able to resist a good RQ game set in the Dragon Pass. As someone already said: start local, don't frontload the player's with info that wouldn't be needed right away, start them as Orlanthi children living in Sartar under the rule of the Lunar, and the adventures almost write themselves from there.

Quote from: danbuter;523324However, it's not just strange settings that get this treatment. Look at Harn. Just from glancing at it, it's a very Western setting. However, if you go onto the Harn forum or the various mailing lists, there are long flamewars about whether potatoes are natural to the world.

The settings that are thought of as "difficult" are the ones that really focus on creating a unique life which isn't just 20th century Western society with a thin historical/magical/sci-fi veneer painted over the top of it.

That attention to detail -- along with the sense of really entering another world -- is what attracts people to these worlds. (It's also part of what attracts people to Lord of the Rings, Dune, Harry Potter, and Star Wars.) But it's definitely why these settings don't meet with greater success: Because those types of small details and that alien way of life can only reach the table if everyone at the table -- GMs and players alike -- are enthusiastic enough about the setting to master the setting.

By contrast, a setting like the Forgotten Realms is ridonculously detailed. But most of that detail only needs to be mastered by the GM: For the players, a vague understanding of LOTR-derived fantasy tropes is all that's required to step into the world.

This maxim applies to systems as well: I've always been very interested in Burning Empires, but I've never been able to find players who are interested in actually reading and mastering 300+ pages of rules in order to play the game. These same players have no problem with D&D because most of the rules only need to be mastered by the GM.

Depends on the group.

I had a wonderful group of awesome players who would not learn any setting that I could not summarize on one double sided page. Not surprising, all of them had been part of canon-nazi groups in the past.

Quote from: GameDaddy;523596How to play Tekumel

It's one page!!? Now who couldn't try this?

It sounds like Aztec Paranoia...which could be cool.

Quote from: GameDaddy;523582What's more interesting than visiting a new country, getting to know the people, and learning about the situations that they live in?

Oh yeah, ...right. Killing and looting the natives. Taking their stuff, intimidating them, and making them your own. I always thought that was the argument of Manifest Destiny and Imperial Colonialism.

In the Empire of the Petal Throne, such things are not so easily done.

Those are some big assumptions you are making there. If you drop some player character into a familiar setting, say, modern day Manhattan the game is probably going to be neither about exploration nor about killing and looting the natives.

Meh, I get the complaint. Modern day Manhattan isn't very alien to most of us here. Our Western Civ assumptions slip right in quite easily. Same w/ Justin's observation of medieval fantasy often being a veneer of Western 20th century life: often cosmopolitan, inclusive, generally all speak 'common', social mores roughly similar, etc.

And when you introduce players into something alien that requires being at least a conscientious tourist, I've noticed a sad trend for some players to check out and start engaging in rapine. I thought being a tourist in another life with alien experiences was one of the main attractions of rpgs. Context mattered to me otherwise all the loot in the world is just a dull abstraction. If pcs and their situations are what matters, well what those situations mean, and their consequences for various pcs, is wholly dependent upon setting.

Hey, I'm running two AD&D fantasy rpgs where medieval fantasy has feudalism that matters. Wandering adventurers are in general rare, unless the land is war torn. So most of my pcs do not start as freemen, but in return they get room and board and a guaranteed place in society -- along with a starter (re)quest and a regular stream of side hooks. I'm intrigued how even veteran players are flinching, but still curious to play along, at how often they must ask permission of others in feudal society. Suddenly fantasy 20th century it isn't.

Quote from: GameDaddy;523596Wow, nice links in the other thread!

And for those of you that have put off trying EPT, here's the one page How to Play Tekumel article posted up on the official Tekumel web home page:

How to play Tekumel

It's one page!!? Now who couldn't try this?

It's similar to teaching the salesperson an elevator pitch, the one page into is critical.  One should write one for any such setting.

Quote from: GameDaddy;523596And for those of you that have put off trying EPT, here's the one page How to Play Tekumel article posted up on the official Tekumel web home page:

How to play Tekumel

It's one page!!? Now who couldn't try this?

Of course, the one page intro says you'll need "the novels" and any of several gamebooks, and that you'll start by reading whatever printed material you have, which will total over 1000 pages.

The summary sounds pretty good, but it doesn't exactly solve the problem.

Quote from: One Horse Town;523558I think the important thing to get across with 'alien' settings is that you don't need to absorb all the info in one lump. If you seperate them into parcels, you can employ the 'drip feed' effect, and IME, that's one of the best ways of getting a setting across.

OHT speaks the truth, I think.

And this is why, when I run Tékumel, I'll be running the old EPT standby of "foreigners fresh off the boat" PCs. Characters' ignorance of the setting mirroring the players' own = immersion win.

Quote from: TAFMSV;523640...you'll start by reading whatever printed material you have, which will total over 1000 pages.

The summary sounds pretty good, but it doesn't exactly solve the problem.

My World of the Petal Throne book is 136 pages. With the teeny tiny font in it, it counts double at best, so 272. If I look at any of the latest iterations of D&D the page count truly is at well over 1,000. Original D&D White bookset with supplements had about the same page count as World of the Petal Throne.

The recommendation was to read through one or more of these books and make some notes for your homebrew game. Still not too hard. Also, consciously or unconsciously most GM's have read that much, or been exposed to that much supplementary info for the traditional western medieval game.

GM's don't operate in a vacuum either and actively cherry pick ideas from fantasy or sci-fi books for their game. You don't see them whining about reading that...

EPT was originally published at TSR. It was only in the latter half of the 70's, after Gary (and TSR) began having the legal issues that it was dropped after the first print run sold out. Even at the time, it was not hard to play and many gaming groups were interested in trying it out but could not get a copy. Later on Lou Zocchi reprinted it under his Gamescience imprint. GAMA ran Tekumel games at Origins, but alas, it was the same Origins that TSR in it's infinite wisdom boycotted for many years. GAMA picked up alot of indy RPG publishers after TSR changed course and focused exclusively on AD&D. Is that resistance movement continuing, even now, in the 21st Century?