Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Half a dozen pictures will give your players an idea of what they think Tekumel looks like.  After that, an adventure is an adventure.

"It's called a Shen.  This is what it looks like."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952762Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Half a dozen pictures will give your players an idea of what they think Tekumel looks like.  After that, an adventure is an adventure.

"It's called a Shen.  This is what it looks like."

This exactly.  
This is why I always keep my tablet handy so I can show my group what their characters have seen. It has worked like a charm over the years.

Shemek.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952732Werl, I think "pay attention and think about it" has a lot to do with it.

And "What makes this setting unique?"  In the case of Tekumel, it's the fairly rigid societal structures (as opposed to feudal Europe.)

That, plus if you read enough books and see enough movies, you get a really good "gut feel" of what makes "an adventure."  Basically, who wants something, and who else doesn't want them to have it?  There's your adventure.

And how does one describe "play off the cuff?"  I could run a whole D&D adventure off the cuff, or for that matter, I could run a Star Wars adventure off the cuff.  Every time I've watched any of the eight Star Wars movies counts as "preparation for the game," and every book I've read on either medieval history or pseudomedieval fantasy counts as preparation for a D&D adventure.

And once you know the names of the Five Empires and have generated half a dozen Tekumelyani names, and once you get some feel for the difference between modern "individual first" thinking and pre-Enlightenment "your role in society is more important than you as an individual are," go watch some old Ray Harryhausen movies and run an adventure.  Because people are people, on some level.  After all, Greek myths and legends are still fun reading.

The Glorious General has my total support in this matter, that's exactly how I've always been doing my "totally improvised" sessions!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952732And "What makes this setting unique?"  In the case of Tekumel, it's the fairly rigid societal structures (as opposed to feudal Europe.)

fairly rigid societal structures is what I was talking about there not being the detail you would expect, if it was The Aspect of note.
It is also one of the things that turns off a bunch of Americans.
I believe a close analogy is the military.
Notice how many military based RPGs there are that are popular and how many games hold to a strict Chain of Command?
While such things work well enough for wargames, the desire to play as a character in the structure is lacking, from my experience.
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Greentongue, Unfortunately when you are told from birth that you can achieve greatness and you just have to apply yourself (unless you are black, gay or otherwise not white male) then playing something that is the very antithesis of US white male society is not going to go down well. Similarly for other games that came out of the California of the 70's like Runequest. It too has a bigger following in Europe (per head of population) than it does in the US just like EPT (and it's variants).

When you are using your RPG to examine alternative social experiences you can't hope to have everyone fit right in. There are any number of social experiments that fail because the participants don't have an amenable mindset.

This is why D&D with it's murderhobo game style appeals to a US culture that seems (to some) to be fixated on guns and violence. Look how the US treats any expression of differing sexual mores. Repression of the creative side of humanity by some of the appalling attempts to turn the US back to a medieval culture with lack of decent healthcare (how may RPG authors are having to use FundMe campaigns to raise funds for life saving health care). Take a look at how female reproductive health is being undermined by removing funding from clinics catering to that aspect . Look how funding for arts and culture (already much lower than many countries) is being removed to support a xenophobic wall. You might wonder why people who enjoy RPG's are turned off by some games - it's drilled in to them from an early age that being white and male is your ticket to nirvana. Then take a look at how many deaths there are from nut jobs going on the rampage compared to muslim terror attacks. With one real exception (9/11) there are more Americans killed by other Americans than foreigners of any religion.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;952600these are color-coded by religion, the same as were Phil's index cards

Quote from: chirine ba kal;952604not gods, but on speaking terms with them.

It seems evident that religion and temples are nigh-omnipresent parts of daily life in Tekumel, but what about the actual gods?  Are they distant entities, known only by the magic they provide and perhaps an occasional revelation to a high priest?  Do they take on human form purely for the sake of hanging out on street corners and chatting with whoever might wander past?  I assume it's somewhere in between, but where, on that broad spectrum, does it tend to land?

Quote from: Hermes Serpent;952824Greentongue, Unfortunately when you are told from birth that you can achieve greatness and you just have to apply yourself (unless you are black, gay or otherwise not white male) then playing something that is the very antithesis of US white male society is not going to go down well.

While I don't disagree, I don't want to start a conversation of that in this thread. Politics gets "messy" fast these days.
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The society and its aspects are what makes Tekumel, Tekumel.  Not everyone will like it.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Quote from: nDervish;952827It seems evident that religion and temples are nigh-omnipresent parts of daily life in Tekumel, but what about the actual gods?  Are they distant entities, known only by the magic they provide and perhaps an occasional revelation to a high priest?  Do they take on human form purely for the sake of hanging out on street corners and chatting with whoever might wander past?  I assume it's somewhere in between, but where, on that broad spectrum, does it tend to land?

In my experience, over on the high priest side. They don't really provide any magic; as I've mentioned, they are not what we would consider 'divine beings' but are greatly more advanced beings then we are. I never saw any of them take on human form and chat with the passerby; they seemed to have no interest in such things.

Quote from: Greentongue;952745There is a noticeable shortage of Tekumel movies and the few books are hard to get copies of so, forgive me if I don't have an abundance of "authentic" details.
This leads back to the "in depth study of the setting" before any gaming can happen.
While the payoff may be great, the same effort in pseudomedieval fantasy goes a long way and the ease of finding players make it seem a better investment.

chirine's book will be an oasis in the desert of details.  (I expect)  May make things easier.
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May I respectfully differ about useful movies? I've touched on this a while back, with films that Phil enjoyed and suggested as a pathway into his creation:

"Thief of Baghdad", "Sign of the Cross", "Thief of Baghdad", any number of sword and sandal epics, "Ben Hur", amongst others. The recent "John Carter" is also good.  I think that what Gronan was suggesting were 'adventure' movies, and not literal ones.

Barsoom has the same investment and payoff ratios as well, in my opinion, as would the Lord Meren series.

As for my book, I don't know; ask the folks on this thread who haver asked to look at it, and managed to read through it. I'm just too close to it, I'm afraid. Sorry.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952897The society and its aspects are what makes Tekumel, Tekumel.  Not everyone will like it.

This is a feature, not a bug.

My perception is that the issue currently in play is that Phil assumed that players and GMs would be able to do social interactions between themselves and NPCs without having to legislate them via the rules. What you and I did, back in the day, and what I was doing in the TFT campaign Saturday, seems to now require formal rules for doing so, in order to enable people to simulate / replicate our gaming experiences. I don't know if that's even possible, or how I can communicate that kind of game-play to people.

Quote from: Greentongue;952886While I don't disagree, I don't want to start a conversation of that in this thread. Politics gets "messy" fast these days.
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Thanks Greentongue, I second this.
Too many threads have become derailed on this forum by going off topic and turning into an abortion. Leave the real world issues in the real world, AFAIC.  

Shemek

Quote from: Greentongue;952886While I don't disagree, I don't want to start a conversation of that in this thread. Politics gets "messy" fast these days.
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That's what Tékumel is all about... sorting out those political messes, lol.

Quote from: GameDaddy;952986That's what Tékumel is all about... sorting out those political messes, lol.

From what I can tell, above ground, the "messes" are sorted out with tact and civility.
Below ground, and in our "Real World" far less civility is used.

I guess that is part of the "problem" we need to do social interactions via rules in Tekumel as maybe we have mostly forgotten/discarded now in "Real Life".
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Play half a dozen games of Diplomacy.