Quote from: Spinachcat;918488I would love to see the 1975 original translated into Savage Worlds.

I would play that.

For what it is worth, I started a "conversion" a long time ago but as you can imagine, EPT isn't in huge demand so I petered out. Now the site is many providers ago and I can't update it.
=

Is the mixture of "Science!" and "Magic" a killer for the setting?
I know that there are many people that get upset with the introduction of gunpowder in their D&D games.
Do you think that this mix is toxic to many people?

Is Sword & Planet a forgotten or too difficult genre?
Difficult as in, there too few mass media examples that everyone knows as a shared foundation.
=

Quote from: Greentongue;918615Is the mixture of "Science!" and "Magic" a killer for the setting?
I know that there are many people that get upset with the introduction of gunpowder in their D&D games.
Do you think that this mix is toxic to many people?

Is Sword & Planet a forgotten or too difficult genre?
Difficult as in, there too few mass media examples that everyone knows as a shared foundation.
=

Like Metamorphosis Alpha (Another cult science-fantasy RPG from the very early days of the hobby) it's just a weird game that has never really been "Mainstream" or a hit in any of it's many incarnations, and changing it to make it more standard (If that's even possible) would kill everything that makes it special.

That said, it's not as intimidating or dense or unplayable as many believe. At it's 1975 core is just a dungeon-crawl fantasy game, albeit a very deadly one with a very strange and complex setting.

Quote from: The Butcher;918493Mentioned? Hell, someone's spinned it into a game of its own.

For your information, Daniel H. Boggs, the man behind the "Hidden in Shadows" blog, has given Drune's Humanspace Empires a big coat of polish and made his work available here, for free, as the "Southerwood Revision". There's a new character sheet and about 50 (!) more pages of material (rules and GM advice/notes). Excellent, excellent stuff.

One could easily use these rules and have Humanspace adventurers travel forward in time to the Second Imperium of Tsolyanu and lead adventuresome lives there.

Quote from: The Butcher;918493Béthorm (gaze upon this fucking character sheet and despair).

Yes, Bethorm's character sheet is ugly and very unwelcoming. Moreover, the character creation process itself is a bit convoluted. For instance, you have to go back and forth a little to deal with the impact of advantages and disadvantages on your character's attributes and skills, etc. (in this regard, I recommend getting your hands on the Excel sheet Jeff Dee has made available on RPGNow: not only does the sheet help you track all those little modifier points, but it also contains re-generated characters, which help a lot).
But, the system offers several advantages, big and small, with one being that it gives your characters something like the premise of a backstory right off the bat: why does s/he have this "magical" pendant that gives him/her more strength/intelligence, etc,? You have a slave or pet: where did your character get it/him/her? Who is that slave anyway, a slave-born or someone who was sold into it? etc. Very useful at sparking one's imagination.

More importantly, once the characters are created, once you start running your game, well, the system sort of disappears and your game becomes semi-narrativist, with some light-on-its-feet yet reliable simulation here and there to keep things grounded without ever stopping or slowing the game's flow down. As a result, mood and pace keep going.
My players, who are very experienced, were impressed and positively surprised by the system's speed and flexibility. Everything is smooth and quick: the combats are very fast and the general attribute and skill throws are super fast as well ... and all of this with only one or two 1D10 dice (including rolls for weapon damages).
(Note: the initiative rules need a bit of adjusting when two large groups fight each other, but there's a good workaround available on the Bethorm site).

In other words, I would totally recommend it.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;918480The 1975 original game was way, way, waaaaaay fucking ahead of it's time and is a weirdo masterpiece of trippy outsider-art hash-head sword & planet psychedelic fantasy.

I'm told in Germany they call Barker "The Forgotten Tolkien". I disagree. He's better.

We do?

Never heard of that. But the novel was published in 1988. I remember that it didn't catch my fancy when I saw it in book stores back then. Bought other stuff instead (McKillip, Vance, Le Guin, Wolfe...).



And while EPT was the inspiration for the first German RPG, Magira/Midgard, the first thing the author/translator did was strip the Tekumel references from the rules and convert the system to a more down-to-earth, almost Hârn-like, game.

But some of the exoticism remained in the game. Among the first setting books that were published for both Midgard (and much later the spin-off game Abenteuer in Magira), was fantasy India (called Rawindra and Ranabar, respectively). Which made Midgard a hard sell - fans craved for trad regions like Clanthon, Erainn, Alba that were referenced in the rules all the time.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;918777We do?

Well, Der Spiegel does.

Quote from: Neshm hiKumala;918774For your information, Daniel H. Boggs, the man behind the "Hidden in Shaddows" blog, has given Drune's Humanspace Empires a big coat of polish and made his work available here, for free, as the "Southerwood Revision".

Thanks very much for sharing this!

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;918668Like Metamorphosis Alpha (Another cult science-fantasy RPG from the very early days of the hobby) it's just a weird game that has never really been "Mainstream" or a hit in any of it's many incarnations, and changing it to make it more standard (If that's even possible) would kill everything that makes it special.

That said, it's not as intimidating or dense or unplayable as many believe. At it's 1975 core is just a dungeon-crawl fantasy game, albeit a very deadly one with a very strange and complex setting.

Not so much "changing it to make it more standard" as not emphasizing ALL the non-stand initially.
People that have experience with D&D should be familiar with levels and class/caste. So making those matter shouldn't be too strange.
A lot of the names of things are flowery so you con't need to use the foreign language aspect to make them feel "alien".
Blue swede instead of rime-stone shoes.

What is wrong with a setting that feels more "standard" but you don't have everything in it memorized? (Down to which page it's on.)
=

It sounds like a familiar challenge for settings that have strong pushback. When society and its politics can and will banhammer a fool from upsetting the status quo, you get into the challenge of how much lore can a player absorb so they don't flail suicidally as wholly out-of-character. This is the same challenge you see in White Wolf Vampire politics or L5R Rokugani politics, etc.; players wanna go forth and be awesome, but in their impatience to play they forget to modulate their behavior to make setting sense.

To me, that's more a GM handling expectations problem. One of the easiest work arounds are archetypal "outsiders" to the status quo, like barbarians, military leaders, soldiers of fortune, fringe black market traders (tomb raiding goes here), and so on. And the reason for this is because those 'borderland' society members are a little out there from the everyday and excused certain off color moments.

But eventually you are going to have that "immersive break" GM-to-Player conversation, where you pause & explain that a PC's IC knowledge would know that N action would be unseemly. And it's perfectly OK. Because you are not telling the player how to play, you are giving a warning moment to clarify the known consequences. The player can always choose to persist... but first you gotta make sure they are choosing in full conscience.

This is like the safety net for complex setting pushback. Without it, you end up feeling a need to frontload so much setting so as players don't crater a chunk of the table as they crash & burn. To avoid the frontload, and likely forgotten, setting knowledge, safety net it as necessary. That way it avoids any pretense to "gotcha!" GMing. You want your players to make an informed choice regardless if their own knowledges and skills are not up to PC par.

With that shift in GM tactics that should open much more of the setting to immediate play.

Quote from: Opaopajr;918871To me, that's more a GM handling expectations problem. One of the easiest work arounds are archetypal "outsiders" to the status quo, like barbarians, military leaders, soldiers of fortune, fringe black market traders (tomb raiding goes here), and so on. And the reason for this is because those 'borderland' society members are a little out there from the everyday and excused certain off color moments.

It sounds to me like you are saying that, if people that have played or people that have run these kind of adventures, made them public, it would help ease people into playing in EPT?

Are there published work like these you could recommend?

How about non-EPT adventures that would work fine if re-skinned?
=

Quote from: Neshm hiKumala;918778Well, Der Spiegel does.

There was a book, "Drachenväter", by the authors of that article, that gave Barker some extended attention, IIRC; sort of a very light version of "Playing at the World", though not entirely without merit. Like, it had some cool photos, for example. - No irony, here. Just more of a coffee table book, really, than a well-researched history of RPGs.

Quote from: Greentongue;918893It sounds to me like you are saying that, if people that have played or people that have run these kind of adventures, made them public, it would help ease people into playing in EPT?

Are there published work like these you could recommend?

How about non-EPT adventures that would work fine if re-skinned?
=

No. Not that at all.

Outsider roles are a common work around to complex settings, but the point is not in the example of such play. The point is in the setting forgiveness of the player character's faux pas due to the nature of the player character's societal role. It's a setting cushion from severe setting consequences.

There is a reason Kellri, TheRPGPundit, Grognan, and many others prefer a "you're a foreigner, shut up and play already, you'll get the hang of it." They believe the content is likely overly baroque and learning by experience would be a better teacher. In that, no example of play would really help -- only jumping in and playing can help.

As for non-EPT adventures to re-skin, there's likely plenty that deal with cultural outsiders and their dealings. From dungeon crawls to mercenary quests, the content to choose from is huge. But I don't think that's gonna save people from the main problem.

I think it's a great introduction, maybe even a great way to bring players up to speed, but I don't think it address the core issue: communicating IC PC cautionary knowledge OOC to the player.

Some tables don't want to do this at all. For them, drop 'n go outsiders (a.k.a. those with partial immunity) is the way to go. But I feel eventually you'll have to address this IC/OOC divide because it cannot be a solid firewall. I feel quality PC decision making means being informed of what my PC knows as a native, and recognizing it is often greater than what I as a player would normally understand (or remember).

Quote from: Opaopajr;918901No. Not that at all.

Outsider roles are a common work around to complex settings, but the point is not in the example of such play. The point is in the setting forgiveness of the player character's faux pas due to the nature of the player character's societal role. It's a setting cushion from severe setting consequences.

There is a reason Kellri, TheRPGPundit, Grognan, and many others prefer a "you're a foreigner, shut up and play already, you'll get the hang of it." They believe the content is likely overly baroque and learning by experience would be a better teacher. In that, no example of play would really help -- only jumping in and playing can help.

As for non-EPT adventures to re-skin, there's likely plenty that deal with cultural outsiders and their dealings. From dungeon crawls to mercenary quests, the content to choose from is huge. But I don't think that's gonna save people from the main problem.

I think it's a great introduction, maybe even a great way to bring players up to speed, but I don't think it address the core issue: communicating IC PC cautionary knowledge OOC to the player.

Some tables don't want to do this at all. For them, drop 'n go outsiders (a.k.a. those with partial immunity) is the way to go. But I feel eventually you'll have to address this IC/OOC divide because it cannot be a solid firewall. I feel quality PC decision making means being informed of what my PC knows as a native, and recognizing it is often greater than what I as a player would normally understand (or remember).

I agree with your assertion wholeheartedly. Your points about the IC/OOC interaction are bang on. I am not an advocate of the foreigner in Tsolyanu concept. Although I prefer to set my games outside of the Imperium I still have players play locals. I tried the foreigner off the boat 30 years ago and it just didn't work out as well as native born characters. There is absolutely no reason why someone new to the Tekumel milieu cannot successfully play a Tsolyani, or Yan Koryani, or whatever "yani". As I just said over in the "Chirine thread"  I had a player new to Tekumel join my group last week and he was easily able to "figure out" how it worked.

Shemek

Also, once you address this issue to your own, GM, and table players' satisfaction, you open up a lot more setting for potential play.

Just like D&D had splats to "Play as the Monsters!" or "Demi-humans are Teh Shit! Here's their Kingdoms," one could do the same with the more alien of Tekumel races. Albeit, these beings are considerably more alien than your standard "short homely human," "short gruff human," and "lithe pretentious human." But you'd think there's some novelty to that given how many people scramble in other games for the bleeding edge of races, a la 1/2 genie, 1/2 demon, 1/2 fae, 1/2 whatever the fuck.

Sure, it's going to have players lean heavily on what those alien races do. But doesn't that mean there's still plenty of creative space for GMs to make Tekumel theirs? It's an opportunity...

Quote from: Opaopajr;918901But I don't think that's gonna save people from the main problem.

I must be dense because I don't see the "problem" that you are talking about.
From the EPT rules there is no complex detailed social construct.

QuoteThe government of the Empire can be characterized as a form of authoritarian bureaucracy, always under the vigilant eyes of the Omnipotent Azure Legion.

QuoteThe society is divided into three types of clans: plebeian, skilled, and noble. Clan rules govern all social life: marriage, birth, death, trade, manners, etc.,etc. Each city's clan chiefs gather to select representations to their councils in the Palace of the Realm, where all domestic imperial business is conducted.

QuoteThese ,roads contain stepped pathways: the highest is for Imperial officials, nobles, and messengers; the next highest is for troops; the third and lowest is for caravans of goods, traders, and ordinary folk. Here again is an example of the Tsolyani love of formal distinctions between classes.

Quoteleaders generally fight "prestige duels" before an actual battle, and often the losing side simply retreats, rather than fight on . with lowered morale.

You could easily use "The Water Margin Outlaws of the Marsh" is a guide to play without much problem.

Now I agree that since the initial release, the complex social construct has been detailed but, I don't think that invalidates playing the original EPT as written with a completely different spin.
=