Quote from: chirine ba kal;795416This is a great post, and very accurate. I also find it very sad to read, as I proposed just this approach to the Foundation about three years ago - almost word for word, actually - and was shot down in flames by them during their first 'strategic planning meeting'. I was told, in as many words, that this approach "is not what the OSR wants".

>shrug<

yours, chirine

You may want to direct them to Kevin's post and note that he is one of the most respected and most successful OSR author/publishers, and has run successful Kickstarters without a bloodbath so he might have an insight into the wants and needs of the OSR.

Quote from: Old Geezer;795409I must say I'm really looking forward to Chirine's book.

He has a near photographic memory and reams of notes.  Me, I will be talking a bit about Tekumel, but only briefly since I'm talking more about "this is what it felt like to go to sleep a miniatures gamer and wake up an RPGer."

And I loved Tekumel best when it was "Swashbuckling Sword and Planet Adventure."  Phil was frighteningly educated and incredibly erudite, but he also loved the old "Thief of Baghdad" movie from... what the 30s?... anyway, he could have that joyful pleasure in tall tales and mighty magics as well as any.

Thank you for that! We did have a lot of fun, didn't we? Remember the night Phil rolled an encounter, and you had to deal with the six bandits? The joke, gentle readers, was on Phil; he'd forgotten that the Glorious General had his legion of some 6,000 troopers with him, and they made short work of the hapless bandits. I think I got experience points for reading the report...

Phil like both the 1927 silent with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and the 1940 Techicolor swashbuckler. "Sword and Planet" really sum up his actual play style, too!

yours, chirine

Quote from: The_Shadow;795422So the "seal of approval" itself didn't quite have the Prof's approval...




You're doing god's work Chirine. Well, Thúmis' work at least.

No, he took some time to get used to it. Phil was very worried about looking like a professional - I think it was because he'd been a F/SF fan from the 1940s onwards, and was worried about being thought of as a 'gee' or 'nerd', long before those terms had been invented.

And thank you for your kind words, too! I keep typing away, and the stories just keep coming. I hope you'll enjoy them!

yours, chirine

Quote from: CRKrueger;795425You may want to direct them to Kevin's post and note that he is one of the most respected and most successful OSR author/publishers, and has run successful Kickstarters without a bloodbath so he might have an insight into the wants and needs of the OSR.

I'd like to be able to, but I'm not in contact with any of them anymore. Sorry!

 yours, chirine

Quote from: The_Shadow;795422So the "seal of approval" itself didn't quite have the Prof's approval...

Well, this was in the 70s and early 80s mostly.  Phil was a department head at a major university, and as Chirine says he didn't want his outside interests to have a negative impact on his career work.  Now years later, I more fully realize what a fucking basket of angry Hlyss academic politics are; I don't blame Phil at all.  By many accounts, showing any deviation from the norm can have enormous repercussions.

Quote from: estar;795343It best for making the setting more accessible to a larger audience as demonstrated by the track record of D&D itself.

For you. But in general? No. Just no. And the success I've seen with new players and the BRP-type systems makes it clear to me that those systems are far more intuitive for players than is a D&D class and level system.

EPT used a D&D mechanic. That was not greeted with wide success. Other systems have been used for Tekumel. None of them have been resulted in anything other than minor niche success. Tekumel is a highly detailed,  setting without common, easy analogs and without broad exposure. It will always be a niche setting and the system used to implement it will not change that.

QuoteWhat I take issue to is the idea that a RPG grounded in classic D&D mechanic can't possibly simulate Tekumel even abstractly.

You responded to Ravenswing, who didn't say that. You responded to me. I never said that. If you want to have a discussion with me, please stay on topic. I'm not interested in debating a strawman you invented.

The primary reason D&D is successful... well, ok, the primary reason it is successful is because it's successful.

But after that, one of the big things D&D has going for it is that it's very very very easy to understand. It's basically vaguely Renfaire with Tolkieny stuff dribbled in.

It's a mushy space of fantasy that pretty much everyone gets.


Most other games have a harder time because they are more specific, unless they are tied to a property people have great familiarity with.

For example, if I put out a SciFi game, I'd get very few bites unless I was great at advertising, gave away a lot of free stuff for people to try, or was a big name author.
Now, if this was Star Trek or Star Wars, I'd do far better... but it's still a somewhat small audience.

Because 'scifi' covers a HUGE range of options.

D&D, on the other hand? Sits nice and firm within the vaguely Medievalish zone of 90% of fantasy.


Basically, once you manage to get someone willing to go for Tekumel's UTTERLY different fantasy setting... the system is pretty much irrelevant. The 'win' that gets people to play D&D just ... doesn't apply.

I've always felt the real underlying reason for D&D's success is that the creators were both inventive and productive in putting flesh on the bones of the game. Most of the page count of D&D in its first few years consists of monsters, spells, magic items and punchy, fun adventures. Lots of all of them. I don't know many people who give a shit about the detailed rules in D&D, but everyone who plays it knows and cares about lurkers above and decks of many things and the tomb or horrors. These are the things that made D&D basically irreplaceable. You can re-state that shit all you want (and hundreds upon hundreds of games have done just that), but it will never have the creative spark of the original.

Quote from: Bren;795534For you. But in general? No. Just no. And the success I've seen with new players and the BRP-type systems makes it clear to me that those systems are far more intuitive for players than is a D&D class and level system.

And I have no difficulties in having people grasp GURPS. However you and I only have the benefit of what we can personally see. The numbers of D&D gamers over the years tell a different story.

It not enough to be first to endure, the product has to good as well. D&D is an example of where the first product to define a new category largely got it right from the get go. There are plenty of counter example in other industries and other types of products, D&D and tabletop roleplaying happens to be in the category where the first product got it all right.

Quote from: Bren;795534EPT used a D&D mechanic. That was not greeted with wide success. Other systems have been used for Tekumel. None of them have been resulted in anything other than minor niche success. Tekumel is a highly detailed,  setting without common, easy analogs and without broad exposure. It will always be a niche setting and the system used to implement it will not change that.

Nobody saying that making a D&D compatible ruleset will catapult Tekumel to the popularity of Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, etc. In my opinion, what it will do is make more accessible, more likely to endure changes as the market and hobby changes.

Your antipathy towards classic D&D or similar game is a common one and it is not warranted. You come across as disdaining D&D or at the very least capable of only handling campaign where players kill things and take stuff. That D&D possibly couldn't handle anything the complexity of Tekumel with any faithful degree. I disagree and in addition have given examples where classic D&D was used to implement detailed setting.

Quote from: estar;795544Your antipathy towards classic D&D or similar game is a common one and it is not warranted.

Your inability to read what I wrote and to respond to what I wrote rather than to the voices of the strawmen in your head is a very common one. But its commonality makes it no more interesting nor appealing.

Right.  There's only one way to deal with this.

Chirine, my compliments to the Kasi of Cohort 11, and request the troops to prepare the impaling stakes, if you please.

Also, the OSR is just a slightly larger fringe hunk of this hobby than Tekumel.  The notion that a difference in mechanics would increase Tekumel's popularity is nugatory.

Quote from: The Butcher;794232I'm not 100% convinced "straight" D&D does a good job of emulating some of the details of Tékumel.

Take magic, for instance. Magic is not "divine" in that it does not emanate from the gods directly, but it is clerical in that it's hoarded, and access to it controlled, by the temples. If you want to be a sorcerer, you have to join one. But as far as the actual workings, it functions a lot like "arcane" magic.

I'd run it with Runequest 6e.

I'm not saying you can't do it with a TSR/OSR D&D framework but it'd take some hacking, that might potentially render it not quite compatible with the rest.

But I think Arrows of Indra proves you could seriously modify the basic OSR ruleset (specifically incorporating the magic system) in a way that would fit Tekumel and still be an OSR game.

Quote from: Bren;795534And the success I've seen with new players and the BRP-type systems makes it clear to me that those systems are far more intuitive for players than is a D&D class and level system.

Thanks, man. MERP was the first game I played, but the first system that actually made fucking sense right off the bat was Stormbringer. How good am I at riding? 62% chance of succeeding if I am in a perilous situation? Check.
AD&D just seemed cryptic to me, when I first played it. It is only after reading about its history, that I actually grew to like and appreciate Classic D&D.

After playing D&D early on, BRP was the game I played most in high school and college (in the form of Call of Cthulhu).

While there were a few things I disliked at the time (difficulty values, etc), I REALLY enjoyed how simple the basic form is and how clever 'advancement' is.

I'd agree that BRP is one of the easiest games to learn, beyond really simple games like Risus.