Something of a riff off the Runequest thread.

Now, I love Tékumel to bits. And I feel it's easy to understand why a lot of people aren't into it. Involved and intricate alien cultures aren't everyone's cup of tea, and I attach no value judgement to anyone's like or dislike of it.

Notice how EPT encourages PCs to start as "barbarian" foreigners unfamiliar with Five Empires society and with zero social standing; this made the exotic civilization as much an object of exploration as the tsuru'um, Tékumel's vast underworld (possibly a direct conceptual ancestor of the Underdark?), and the wealth gained in the underworld could be used to buy citizenship, clan adoption, and eventually even military and religious rank (not entirely unlike the classic D&D endgame of followers, strongholds and domains: go into the dungeon, get rich, accrue a reputation, people high and low start taking notice).

I feel this is easy on the players, whose ignorance of the intricacies of the setting mirrors the characters' and leaves them free to take things and explore them at their own pace.

This is all or mostly gone by the time the Swords & Glory books roll out, with rules for native Tsolyáni characters, which somewhere along the way seem to have become the norm in Tékumel fandom. Again, no value judgement, but this does feel like a more difficult approach, or at least one that demands higher player buy-in.

What happened? When and why did the focus shift?

Nice thead, Butch.

Like Melan said at the Runequest thread: Glorantha evolved from culture-infused adventuring to anthropological simulation. Tekumel took the same route, I think.

Dont know the reason for that, though. Maybe its a trend with big those settings created outside the sphere of gaming ?

Quote from: silva;593463Nice thead, Butch.

Like Melan said at the Runequest thread: Glorantha evolved from culture-infused adventuring to anthropological simulation. Tekumel took the same route, I think.

Dont know the reason for that, though. Maybe its a trend with big those settings created outside the sphere of gaming ?

I'm not sure I buy it.

Please explain the difference between 'culture-infused' and 'anthropological'. Is the implication here that Glorantha somehow came to be a place where one doesn't 'adventure'? 'Cause that's the part I don't buy.

Pretty much any setting is introduced to the market in small as something that seems manageable. Then, as more and more people get into it, they form communities to discuss the setting in greater depth and then write more about it. Then people who have never been exposed to the setting discover these communities and say to themselves 'Holy fuck! There's so much to know. I'm not going to bother'. But I've never seen a setting that required that someone know everything ever written about it in order to start playing in it.

I have my doubts that it was Glorantha that evolved. The only thing that changed was people became aware there was more going on behind the scenes. It's still just as easy today (probably moreso thanks to the internet) to grab a copy of Griffin Mountain or Borderlands and Beyond and start playing a full campaign in Glorantha. It's no harder than playing The Enemy Within or Dragonlance. The setting will be revealed to the players through play.

Thalaba, I think it has to do on how the products are presented.

In the old RQ2 days you had those pre-packaged campaigns full useful, gameable stuff. But then came Hero Wars and now you have a history book on the life of a iron age community first, and gameble stuff second.

Dont get me wrong, I actually find those an awesome reading (and I think the last ones from moondesign managed to mesh cultural and gameable stuff better), but Id rather have much less cultural info and more gameable stuff for actual gaming purposes.

Quote from: Thalaba;593466The setting will be revealed to the players through play.

I think that expectation is what shifted during the period we're talking about. Early on, it was absolutely expected to explore a setting and learn it in play. But after a while, the game or setting is slowly left to be played by huge fans. I love distinct settings. Talislanta, Jorune, Spelljammer-no matter how odd. But I find these days the folks that want to play in those worlds are steeped in the lore, and often a little impatient with newcomers.

I want to play the games, not just run an endlessly self-referential virtual retirement community for hidebound adventurers. Thus, as much as I love odd settings, I tend to start out pretty vanilla and see what happens.

It could be that in the original release of the game, it was assumed that the players knew nothing at all about the setting, whereas the later one assumed some amount of knowledge.

I think a lot of it had to do with the seduction of the setting itself and the desire to experience parts of it that couldn't practically be attained in an off-the-boat campaign.

RPG settings conventionally have multiple points of entry. The general assumption may be tilted toward a particular type of PC, but the idea of "Okay, this campaign we're all going to be working for the Royal Spymaster" or "This is going to be an arcane campaign" or some such is par for the course. People expect to be able to enter a world from multiple points for multiple types of play.

Tekumel works against that. To the extent that a GM emphasizes its de-individualistic social structures, rigid caste divisions, and extreme social separation of groups, you end up with an intensely interlaced social context that requires a high degree of setting mastery before you can meaningfully interact with it in any role beyond that of an off-the-boat campaign. Whether you're playing tomb guards in a necropolis or cadets in the Omnipotent Azure Legion, you need to know a lot about the world before you can begin to have the kind of play you're trying to have.

It's just a matter of bringing a set of templates for RPG adventure to a setting and then being unable to plug any of them in without heavy reading. People are going to give up on it unless they really, really love that setting.

Has ther ebeen an edition of the game that even contains most of the information thus far presented , though? I know a few huge Tekumel fans, but they all own a host of sourcebooks spanning 3 decades, many of which have never been reprinted to my knowledge. and the idea of jumping into a big huge setting like that but having to fight off other RPG treasure hunters just to get that info...well, that's whats kept me away from the game.

And yes, I know, I can just make up the stuff myself, but if thats the case, I will always feel like my stuff isn't "canon", and I honestly would rather spend my time creating stuff for my own worlds.

One thing about Tekumel is that there really isn't a huge volume of cultural material out there.

All of this arcane lore basically boils down to about 300 pages of text in 3-4 slim sourcebooks. Of course due to the publishing history this isn't quite so simple for the newcomer to see clearly.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;593493One thing about Tekumel is that there really isn't a huge volume of cultural material out there.

All of this arcane lore basically boils down to about 300 pages of text in 3-4 slim sourcebooks. Of course due to the publishing history this isn't quite so simple for the newcomer to see clearly.

The issue for a lot of people, in my experience, is how much of that 300 pages they have to understand before they can do anything in the setting. Moreover, it's heavy setting. You can pull out a Forgotten Realms phonebook setting-guide and 90% of the content is going to be "King X rules Country Y, and it's like fantasy istan." Even the most esoteric material consists largely of different configurations of  standard fantasy tropes. With Tekumel, the density of Unfamiliar Ideas in any given 10 pages is about an order of magnitude higher than in most other possible settings.

This reminds me of what comes up in rules-system threads. The complaint is that something like GURPS is too complex - too many rules to cover too many situations to keep track of. A response is that many of these rules are optional but for whatever reason some players think that if any rule is in the book one must use it.

I think a setting like Tekumel or Glorantha is similar. I wouldn't expect to have to know all the "rules" of the setting, just the ones relevant to our play. If we're all low caste guys trying to clean up a rough neighbourhood then I don't need rules for upper caste courtesy. If we're those insectoid guys then perhaps the intricacies of human religion aren't required. Just because there are 300 pages worth of setting doesn't mean we need to use them all, just like I wouldn't use everything from BRP or GURPS.

As a GMing rule, I say at the beginning of each campaign "expect that I've modified anything and everything from the books. You may have memorized the monster manual, but the critters in this world are different and you only know what your character would know." I'd do the same with the canon lawyers if I ran Tekumel: expect difference.

Quote from: languagegeek;593509This reminds me of what comes up in rules-system threads. The complaint is that something like GURPS is too complex - too many rules to cover too many situations to keep track of.

What's so hard about throwing three six-sided dice and coming in *under* your skill/attribute +mods for the contest in question? Each player needs to keep track of his/her advantages/disadvantages? And they can't (for some reason) do that?

Quote from: GameDaddy;593523What's so hard about throwing three six-sided dice and coming in *under* your skill/attribute +mods for the contest in question? Each player needs to keep track of his/her advantages/disadvantages? And they can't (for some reason) do that?

Yeah, GURPS always seemed incredibly straightforward to me.

Well, there's also the "only enough slots at the top" argument. RPGs are not a big income source to most FLGS, let alone hobby stores, especially since the advent of CCGs. Given that miniatures, paint, dice, and cards predominate regular income there's little incentive to have multiple RPGs in your store.

And as with all commerce, you'll eventually suffer from lack of exposure: no one knows, no one cares. Looking at the secondhand market quite a bit of Tekumel goes at a premium. So there's devoted interest, and online sales presence, but I haven't seen commercial representation in the stores.

And then it gets back to the "how many popular slots" argument. How many products can the pop consumer bother with before they are over-saturated? Exposure (and consequential reputation) matters, just like accessibility.

Yeah, the only Tekumel product I've ever come across in an actual store was the GoO edition from a few years ago. I was tempted, but I think Cadwallon got my money that time.