Quote from: RPGPundit;795565But 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.

You absolutely could! D&D is a sturdy bastard of a modular engine.

I just feel Runequest 6e could fo it with less effort.

Of couse it would have been possible for Jeff Dee to have adapted the Tekumel setting to an OSR game, just as much as he could have done it for Traveler, OpenQuest, or a half-dozen other open-sourced game engines.

Doesn't anyone remember the d20 boom, where long-running settings were paired with the d20 rules set because the publishers felt they had to? How many of those games were actually good?

Quote from: Bren;795534*snipped*

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. *snipped*

I'm not trying to argue; this is an honest question, as I do agree with you on your points. Yes, EPT was D&D based; this was 1974, with the provision that the game was going t be published by TSR; why doesn't that style of game mecanhics work for Tekumel? Phil never had much - if any! - exposure to any other game systems, and his later publications reflect that.

On the other had, EPT sold very, very well. According to the letter from Kevin Blume in Phil's letter files, the initial print run of 1,000 copies sold out in less then three months when it first came out (and this in 1975 for a very expensive boxed set) and then the next two print runs of 5,000 each sold out in the next year. Gary and Dave are both on public record as saying that they liked the game as well as the setting.

What would define success, do you think?

- chirine

Quote from: Old Geezer;795562Right.  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.

By your command, Glorious General!

We really had fun with that little campaign, didn't we? I'm looking around to see if I still have my hat - the havelock-style campaign hat I bought for all of us for the march across the desert; the look on Phil's face when you gave the order to the legion to mach and we all put our caps on was truly priceless! He wasn't expecting it, nor did he expect that I'd get khaki for us military types, and ones in the proper temple colors for the rest of the group - Princess Vrisa, of course, getting an orange one for Saa Alliqui.

I am saddened to have to report that our favorite RPG supply house, Harris Warehouse and Canvas, has been closed for several years; the owners just shut the doors and turned off the lights one day, and the building is still stuffed full of all that gear we used to use out at Phil's. Luckily, Axe-man Surplus is still in business and still as quirky as ever - and still providing gear for the more quirky RPG players...

(We'd never be able to get away with all of that tomfoolery, malarky and high spirits today, I fear! As you've mentioned, gaming is now A Very Serious Business. We were all so young and innocent, back then!)

- chirine

Quote from: Old Geezer;795564Also, 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.

What! WHAT? No, no, that can't be true - all of the Big Names In The OSR have told me that the OSR IS The Hobby, and they can't be wrong, can they? Oh, my hopes and dreams are shattered! My fragile ego is crushed - simply crushed, I tell you!!!

The numbers I've seen say you are right, by the way. Tekumel's problem is is the perception that people have that it's "too difficult" and "unapproachable". Our problem, you and I, is that in our day we adapted the rules to fit the world-setting; my perception is that the norm today is to bend and modify the world-setting to fit the rules.

In my experience, and I think in yours, Tekumel is flexible and enough of a 'big tent' to handle that; what's killed the thing is the adoption of the 'canon' / 'closed architecture' / 'U R DOIN It RONG' attitude, replacing the 'open architecture' model of participation that you and I did during our time in the barrel / on the hot seat. When I did shows for The Mouse, they always harped on the mantra "perception is more important then the reality"; with Tekumel, from my standpoint, the perception has indeed replaced the reality.

It's too bad; people are, if I may say, missing out on something really special...

- chirine

Quote from: RPGPundit;795565But 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.

I think it does, too. I don't think AoI would require much modification, though; it's very concise and I thought it was much more alike in spirit to what we used to do back In Ye Olden Dayes then quite a few games I've looked at. Yes, you'd have to modify the basic assumptions about 'magic' - on Tekumel, 'magic' is simply advanced technology - but once you tweak that, Bob's your uncle.

- chirine

I said a long time ago that there are several clashing versions of Tekumel.

Quote from: TAFMSV;367052- The gonzo, archaeological, acid-head monster bash of the 1970s, which seems to get the most nods from general gamers.

- The alpha game of world-shaking politics, imperial succession, ancient starships, planet-busting extraplanar beings, etc.  This has always appealed to me, but it's never really been brought to market in any detail, outside the novels.  Until a box set containing the Professor's brain in a jar is released, it's likely to remain at his table, which is anchored to the bottom, way down at the deep end of the pool.  IMO, Swords and Glory 1 (the big world book) is great stuff, but it doesn't connect easily to the other two categories, here.

-  The high falutin' 'living in Tsolyanu' game, where the emphasis on cultural minutiae acts as a wet blanket over any potential adventure.  "You made eye contact with a basket weaver? Cha! Those sluts at the temple will be whispering about it even as we speak! I'll have uncle send a flower to the ambassador's secretary."  After all these years, it turns out that the Five Empires are so conservative and authoritarian that any enterprising adventurers are more likely to get the pine enema than be celebrated.

I think there could be a place for all of these things in a published game.  I have faith that there is good Tekumel gaming to be had outside the Professor's basement, even if I've never experienced it.  

...which is why I'm also looking forward to Chirine's book.  We've always had the lists of spells, creatures, and magic items, and we can look up stuff about Milumanayani funerals, or Livyani cuisine, etc., but there's always been something missing.  The best adventures are all anecdotal.  A Thursday Night memoir might be the best substitute we ever get for the Great Pendragon Campaign or Masks of Nyarlathotep that Tekumel always deserved but never got, and serve as a bridge.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;795105I would like to note that I am still doing what I started some thirty-five years ago, and am still being Phil's archivist - although on a personal basis, these days. One of the things I was able to do, before the Professor passed away, was make a complete 'back-up' copy of all of his archives - some 20,000 pages' worth of material, going back to the late 1940s with his college drawings of Tekumel stuff. I am currently integrating this data with my own collection of materials, which includes a lot of material and artifacts not in Phil's collection. My eventual goal is to establish an on-line 'virtual museum' of what we did back in Ye Olden Dayes, and share with people the fun we had with Phil and his world.

I've always wondered what the nature of the unpublished material was.  More fiction, or lists of kings and generals, or binders full of stuff about the Hokun, or maps of unexplored continents?  Are the Big Secrets documented in there, or was the professor always freewheeling on game nights when shit got weird?  How much of it has potential to turn into RPG sourcebooks?

With all the talk about D&D/OSR Tekumel, why bother?  EPT is still available.  But then I was thinking about what a D&D5e Tekumel could be like.  You could load all of those clans in there as backgrounds, do temples like schools of wizardry, do temple circles as feats...  Bah, it'll never happen.

Quote from: TAFMSV;795698I said a long time ago that there are several clashing versions of Tekumel.

...which is why I'm also looking forward to Chirine's book.  We've always had the lists of spells, creatures, and magic items, and we can look up stuff about Milumanayani funerals, or Livyani cuisine, etc., but there's always been something missing.  The best adventures are all anecdotal.  A Thursday Night memoir might be the best substitute we ever get for the Great Pendragon Campaign or Masks of Nyarlathotep that Tekumel always deserved but never got, and serve as a bridge.

I've always wondered what the nature of the unpublished material was.  More fiction, or lists of kings and generals, or binders full of stuff about the Hokun, or maps of unexplored continents?  Are the Big Secrets documented in there, or was the professor always freewheeling on game nights when shit got weird?  How much of it has potential to turn into RPG sourcebooks?

With all the talk about D&D/OSR Tekumel, why bother?  EPT is still available.  But then I was thinking about what a D&D5e Tekumel could be like.  You could load all of those clans in there as backgrounds, do temples like schools of wizardry, do temple circles as feats...  Bah, it'll never happen.

Let me try to answer your points in order, if I may:

The different Tekumels:
I strongly agree with you about the "differing Tekumels". We played - or lived, if you want to look at it that way, in a fourth Tekumel that was a combination of your three accurate strains of the thing; we dabbled in all of what you described, in the course of our adventures, and it's that very different Tekumel that I'm trying to bring to you in my book. Phil's publications never really give the same feel as his games did, which I think is sad; his Tekumel was not the rigid place many perceive it to be.

We lived 'inside the system'; the biggest difference between Tekumel and many other world-settings is the strong connections the player-characters have with their culture. We were not 'loose cannons' or 'free-lance murderhobos'; we were people trying to further our careers and lives in the culture, who just happened to be 'adventurers' doing wild and exciting things.

I think that may of the publications, along with the need to 'get it right', foster the exact opposite. I think Phil got lost in there someplace, when it became 'serious business'.

"Action! Adventure! Romance!" was what Phil did, did it well for the better part of two decades with us. And that's what I'm hoping to give you with "To Serve The Petal Throne"; Phil's Tekumel, as Phil played it.

The unpublished materials:
I've looked through the files a number of times - I'm going through the 2.2 gigabytes' worth of computer files at the moment - and what's there is a of drafts of his novels and a lot of short essays on Tekumel subjects that were never published; these are on all sorts of topics, usually in response to a letter or call from somebody. There's a lot of artwork, dating from Phil's college days in the late 1940s on, as well as more modern art sent to him as gifts by fans. There's a book by Phil about the religions of Tekumel that was never published, and is fascinating.

I am integrating this material with my own collection; starting in 1976, I made a copy of everything Phil had at that time. It was my 'fee' for being what amounted to his 'private secretary', as I was doing all of this filing and organization in his home office for him - he was a terrible 'housekeeper', and things soon tuned into "Ask Chirine - he knows everything!" I have lots of material that we produced over the years that compliments Phil's collection - audio tapes on interviews we did with him about Tekumel, artifacts from the games, the fanzines we did for him, and the costumes we made and wore at conventions to promote Tekumel.

We've been joking in my game group that "are we a game group that supports a museum, or a museum that supports a game group?"; I'm hoping to be both, and bring you Phil's world as Phil saw it.

- chirine

Quote from: chirine ba kal;795690What! WHAT? No, no, that can't be true - all of the Big Names In The OSR have told me that the OSR IS The Hobby, and they can't be wrong, can they? Oh, my hopes and dreams are shattered! My fragile ego is crushed - simply crushed, I tell you!!!

To be fair, I don't recall myself any other the OSR publisher I personally making such a claim. At best the combined numbers I know of suggest that publishers of classic D&D material and similar games are about the size of a typical game company outside of Wizards, and Paizo. But that only if you combine everybody, individual publishers are quite small.

Quote from: estar;795737To be fair, I don't recall myself any other the OSR publisher I personally making such a claim. At best the combined numbers I know of suggest that publishers of classic D&D material and similar games are about the size of a typical game company outside of Wizards, and Paizo. But that only if you combine everybody, individual publishers are quite small.

Agreed - you haven't. In my experience over the past five years, however, a lot of the people who identify themselves as 'The OSR' have done so. You are quite right about the numbers; I did a lot of research over the years through my sources in the industry, and you're spot on. The people making the claims are not the game producers; all of the folks I've talked to have a good grasp of the potential markets that they produce for. They've given me some very good advice about what to do with my book, and I'm grateful they took the time to do so!

- chirine

Quote from: chirine ba kal;795685What would define success, do you think?

I can't say on a numbers basis. I know that I don't know what the sales numbers are for the various RPGs.

So from my perspective successful would include the following.

(1) Acceptance,  availability, adoptioni, and actual play in Tekumal outside of the original core group of players and their associates.

(2) A degree of popularity equivalent to a game like Pendragon - which though a niche product is and was fairly well known or heard of by people who play multiple games.

Quote from: Bren;795772(2) A degree of popularity equivalent to a game like Pendragon - which though a niche product is and was fairly well known or heard of by people who play multiple games.

The thing about Pendragon, though, is you can say "It's the perfect game about the Knights of the Round Table" and people have some idea of what the fuck you're talking about.

Tekumel suffers from a lack of an easy handle.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;795688By your command, Glorious General!

We really had fun with that little campaign, didn't we? I'm looking around to see if I still have my hat - the havelock-style campaign hat I bought for all of us for the march across the desert; the look on Phil's face when you gave the order to the legion to mach and we all put our caps on was truly priceless! He wasn't expecting it, nor did he expect that I'd get khaki for us military types, and ones in the proper temple colors for the rest of the group - Princess Vrisa, of course, getting an orange one for Saa Alliqui.

Such memories mean more to me than the storied wealth of the Petal Throne itself.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;795688I am saddened to have to report that our favorite RPG supply house, Harris Warehouse and Canvas, has been closed for several years; the owners just shut the doors and turned off the lights one day, and the building is still stuffed full of all that gear we used to use out at Phil's. Luckily, Axe-man Surplus is still in business and still as quirky as ever - and still providing gear for the more quirky RPG players...

Ai, I mourn.  Harris was the last vestige I've seen of the old style "Army Navy Surplus," where eager young Boy Scouts could get all kinds of camping gear ridiculously cheap.

Last time I was at Axeman I got a DPDT toggle switch for my DCC programming track.. but that's another gonzo hobby...

Quote from: chirine ba kal;795688(We'd never be able to get away with all of that tomfoolery, malarky and high spirits today, I fear! As you've mentioned, gaming is now A Very Serious Business. We were all so young and innocent, back then!)

- chirine

Strewth.  Although it occurs to me that though Phil used to grumble and chew his cigar at our hijinks, he could have put a stop to them had he really desired... now being nearly 60 myself, I have come to realize that curmudgeonliness is its own form of appreciating a fine jape.

"These Salarvyani wines simply do not travel well."

Quote from: Jason D;795683Of couse it would have been possible for Jeff Dee to have adapted the Tekumel setting to an OSR game, just as much as he could have done it for Traveler, OpenQuest, or a half-dozen other open-sourced game engines.

Doesn't anyone remember the d20 boom, where long-running settings were paired with the d20 rules set because the publishers felt they had to? How many of those games were actually good?

Since the 70s I have said repeatedly that system is the last thing that matters.  But I think the D&D style engine wasn't really a bad fit for the way Phil wanted to originally present Tekumel.  He read all the same early S&S that Gary did, and loved Vance every bit as much as Gary.  His vision of game Tekumel was influenced by his experiences in caste based Terran societies, and classes give people an easy way to grasp that.  If you're in a military clan, you're a fighter.  If you don't have much talent with sharp implements but have a strong Pedhetl, you will be fostered to a cousin clan of equal status that specializes in training magical priests.  If, on the other hand, you can intone "The Opening of the Mouth" every day for a year and still sound like you mean it, it's the ritual priesthood for you.

I think classes help get the idea across of structure and hierarchy.

Quote from: Old Geezer;795799Since the 70s I have said repeatedly that system is the last thing that matters.  But I think the D&D style engine wasn't really a bad fit for the way Phil wanted to originally present Tekumel.  He read all the same early S&S that Gary did, and loved Vance every bit as much as Gary.  His vision of game Tekumel was influenced by his experiences in caste based Terran societies, and classes give people an easy way to grasp that.  If you're in a military clan, you're a fighter.  If you don't have much talent with sharp implements but have a strong Pedhetl, you will be fostered to a cousin clan of equal status that specializes in training magical priests.  If, on the other hand, you can intone "The Opening of the Mouth" every day for a year and still sound like you mean it, it's the ritual priesthood for you.

I think classes help get the idea across of structure and hierarchy.

My comment wasn't about how well or unwell d20/OSR works with the setting.

It was about the results of marrying an existing setting to a popular system out of obligation, rather than enthusiasm.