Quote from: GameDaddy;921466you can use anything you want for this campaign setting, so that was a brilliant example of flawlessly perfect campaign setting, one hundred percent fluff, but highly detailed fluff that could be used any way the GM sees fit..

Its not fluff if its actually relevant setting details.

This is not fluff.

QuoteThe swamp-dwelling Ahoggyá look almost like a furry barrel that has sprouted four arms and legs. They live in the wet, low-lying coastal plains across a narrow part of the southern ocean and in their extremely distant enclave, Ónmu Tlé Hléktis, beyond the most distant province of Salarvyá. These squat beings have four knobby arms and legs equally spaced around their barrel-like bodies.

Quote from: GameDaddy;921466When I first started playing in 1977 didn't even know about EPT.

I didn't have the money to buy it.  No one I knew did.

Quote from: Omega;921548Its not fluff if its actually relevant setting details.

In a gaming context, fluff generally refers to background material (regardless of importance) as opposed to crunch which refers to rules material.  It's a term carried over from wargaming.

Tekumel has to be the epitome of fluff over crunch in fantasy roleplaying. No one ever seems to give a shit which rules people use to play that game - there are several different varieties some of which are roughly compatible and some not. Heck, I would not be at all surprised if someone out there isn't using Traveller to play in that setting. So, yeah...where Tekumel is concerned it's almost all fluff all the time.

Another thing...why are there only a couple adventures available for that setting? You'd think after 40+ years someone/anyone would have written a decent introductory adventure. All I've found are two - the Tomb Complex of Nereshenbo, a fairly ho-hum dungeon crawl and another pretty rare one from Judges Guild. Either, the average Tekumel campaign involves a whole lot of dicking about, folks are writing their own adventures (and never publishing them), or they're doing the same thing everyone else does - taking the Keep on the Borderlands, changing a few names and monsters and going from there.

It may be that not only are people worried that they "Didn't get it right" but the "Canon Police" may have swooped down on those that published without permission.
It also could be that the created adventures are very specific to the group that they were created for.

There are some HERE that are nice seeds.
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The 'Canon Police' didn't get started until the Internet was invented, which allowed them to patrol gaming and clamp down on any unmutual thinking.

Prior to that, Phil (and Dave and Gary, for that matter) simply could not get their heads around the notion that people would not be able to come up with their own adventures - they had, after all, and weren't all those people out there in what was the gaming world at that time just as smart and clever as they were? Gronan has mentioned this before, citing a remark to this effect by Gary. And in our time publishing Phil, we got exactly one 'module' and two 'adventures' that we published in our 'zines. Phil wasn't interested in doing anything like that, and kept telling people to make up their own stuff using his world setting. All three of them were very much into what's now called 'open sandbox play', and not into what they called 'scripted adventures'.

While I also play that way, as his publisher I kept asking him for something like an introductory adventure, and he never did anything. I'm hoping that my account of our adventures will go some way to providing ideas for people; I've been told that I should can the thing and do it as a series of modules / adventures, but I have no experience or skill at that kind of thing - I'd prefer to leave it to people who have.  There are some adventures out there, these days, but there was nothing in those far-off pre-Internet days.

Phil would have answered you, like he did with me, with "So, write one." And "Make Tekumel your own."

I think there are several factors at work.
There is exceptionally high expectations. A scanned quickly hand drawn map, a couple of pages of suggested loot and opponents just doesn't cut it any more. Back in the day it was so unique to find people that knew what this RPG thing was, that a rough sketch was all that was needed to get the creative juices flowing. Now people expect presentation quality full color illustrations, 100 page detailed descriptions and an ongoing product line.

RPG players stretch across multiple generations with different fundamental sources as core foundations for their expectations. Classic literature, old black and white movies, color blockbuster movies, TV, Anime all provide different foundations for "Basic Fantasy". When there is a wide range of each of those medias, trying to have common expectations even in the same generation is hard.  

In today's fast paced world people expect to have all the needed parts ready for them to assemble into a game. A series of modules / adventures needs to be for a setting that has been advertised enough that the players know basically what to expect. They expect to be required to put in very little effort to play, except for things they want to do.
It is not that people are lazy, it is that everything else has been simplified. So why should gaming that is supposed to be entertainment, require more effort than watching a movie or reading a book?

Another issue is "political correctness". If you add details in your game, even for the Bad Guys, that offend modern sensibilities, it doesn't matter how "historically accurate" they are for the culture of the game world. Slavery for example. Pre-mechanized societies used massive amounts of labor and even the free people lived in horrid conditions. If a setting it is not presented in a "Disneyfied" version, it will be rejected.
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There's a pretty decent EPT underworld-crawl in FIGHT ON! #2.

Quote from: Greentongue;921678If a setting it is not presented in a "Disneyfied" version, it will be rejected.
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But if it is presented in a "Disneyfied" version, 1) your presentation sucks and 2) it's white-washing.

Well, at it's simplest you have the Blues against the Greens and the Reds.
The Blacks and the Browns are mostly neutral.
There are very nasty non-humans with valid reasons to hate humans and some that tolerate humans.
There are Super SCIENCE! devices that the GM can hand out that have charges. Allowing strong but controllable power level for the players.
Huge multi-level dungeons where everyone can kill people that they have to be polite to above ground.
Powerful Imperial government with Stormtroopers.
A wide selection of "Gods" that give "magic" powers and artifacts.
What's not to love?
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Quote from: Spinachcat;920952Please talk more about this.

Well, the vast majority of "pseudo Hollywood medieval fantasy RPGs" I've played sort of kind of try to portray something like the scattered castles of some of the Rhine area or the mountainous part of Languedoc; that is, there are little "islands" in essentially a hostile wilderness.  The whole "points of light" thing.  Tekumel isn't like that -- you're playing in huge, well organized bureaucratic empires.  These empires have a lot of wealth, a lot of power, and a lot of soldiers.  The whole "rugged individualist" thing just won't fly.

What it does wonderfully well is the "end game" aspect of D&D I've alluded to, except instead of settling down into your castle with your land and your castle and your money and your army, you settle into the Empire.  The End Game after I became a General of a Legion was truly fascinating because, as I said, it was unlike anything I'd done before.  The usual fantasy RPG motivations of personal wealth or personal power were just "not applicable."  We totally stopped tracking both gold and XP; what "level" my character was, was far less important than that I was 1) a general of an Imperial legion and 2) a member of an upper status Clan.  And except for a bit of "walking around" money, money was irrelevant; I would get food, clothing, and shelter at any clan house, or failing that any of my Legion's bivoacs, or failing that at the local Palace of Ever Glorious War.  Besides a warm dry place to sleep, I was provided everything by my clan.  One did not go shopping; one chatted amiably with a "clan uncle" that one's armor was sadly in need of upgrading, and he would either say "That is reasonable" or "You have no need of that."

This, to start.  If it inspires any more questions, have at.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;921975If it inspires any more questions, have at.

Clan vs. Class vs. Lineage.  Explain.

It seems like Clan is a large extended set of families related somewhat by blood, like the Rothchilds, where Lineage is a specific bloodline, like the Paris Rothchilds, and within each Clan you'll have members potentially from the Highest to the Lowest class?  Is there an equivalent of caste involved?

Also all of this is Tsolyani, but isn't that just one of many powerful empires?  Are the others completely different culturally and are any of them very detailed?

Well, Clan is the superior division, and is closely related if not identical to class.  Your status is the status of your Clan. Much like it says in "Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England," what matters is where you belong and who will protect you.  That is your clan.  I was a member of Golden Sunburst, a high clan.  Less noble things that needed doing would be hired out or done by the young or those in need of discipline.

Lineage exists, and yes, it's a smaller extended family within the greater extended family of the Clan.  But lineage rarely came into it except for names. I never experienced any internecine struggle in a Clan between lineages, but I'm sure that in a place with such a large population it happened.

I think the other of the Five Empires were nearly as detailed as Tsolyanu, though Tsolyanu was clearly Phil's favorite.  But my memories of the difference grow dim.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;921975This, to start.  If it inspires any more questions, have at.

What would you do in a session as a General?  High ranking military officers seem to spend most of their time sitting in briefings and dealing with paperwork.  In a highly bureaucratic state, I would think he would have to spend even more time messing with paperwork and dealing with bureaucratic processes.  I assume your play time was not spent with your character sitting in briefings and ordering subordinates to do paperwork which he would then review (or was supposed to review anyway) and sign.

Quote from: yosemitemike;922064What would you do in a session as a General?  High ranking military officers seem to spend most of their time sitting in briefings and dealing with paperwork.  In a highly bureaucratic state, I would think he would have to spend even more time messing with paperwork and dealing with bureaucratic processes.  I assume your play time was not spent with your character sitting in briefings and ordering subordinates to do paperwork which he would then review (or was supposed to review anyway) and sign.

Normally, I did the paperwork, and he killed people. Sometimes, he'd let his soldiers kill people. On very rare occasions, he'd even let me kill people.

Seriously, he didn't have to do the paperwork; that was my job. He'd confer with his fellow senior officers in relatively short meetings, and then he'd go out and lead his troops into battle - which we would usually game as an RPG, but on great occasions we do with figures on the table. He was always a very 'hands on' commander, and led from the front while I covered his back. (Vrisa covered mine.)

Accurate, my General?

Yep. I was a general in an army using the Phalangite Greek model; I commanded my legion from the battlefield.

Also, we were actively at war with our nearest neighbor.  There was PLENTY to do for a young lad with a fair head for tactics and a willingness to follow orders.  At a guess I probably resembled a modern US Army general less than a WW2 battalion commander during an active phase of the war.  I was close enough to the front to get dead.