TheRPGSite

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.

Quote from: Opaopajr;593676Well, 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.

There are two gaming stores in my town (Fort Collins CO) both of them have literally hundreds of board games and a large prominent space devoted to CCGs and such, rpgs are wedged in to a corner, out of sight of the door and limited to D&D, PF and Savage Worlds at both stores. They have a better selection at B&N- and that's all shit too.

Quote from: Opaopajr;593676And 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.

There's always room in my gaming library (and a budget) for a good game, supplement, or mini. It has to be an interesting selection for me to make the immediate buy though.

There's also the bucket list of games and accessories that I want, that I buy, as I can afford to acquire them (1/72 minis, Scourge of the Demon Wolf, and Arrows of Indra, Also, FFGs Star Wars Game (Not for the game, for the ship minis) I'm looking at you!).

The rest of the market is not over-saturation, it's just nothing I happen to want.

Quote from: SineNomine;593487Tekumel 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.

That's a very good reason for not achieving great sales. Its much easier to play Fantasy Canada.

I don't think Tekumel or RQ/Glorantha are alone in this. Running a fairly realistic Japan game like Bushido or, to a lesser extent, something like Skyrealms of Jorune have the same problem.

Quote from: Gib;593681There are two gaming stores in my town (Fort Collins CO) both of them...

CSU Cam the Ram, Go! Yup a college town. There also used to be a Game Shop up in Boulder (Also a college town, CU Buffs, Go!) at the top of the hill, now it's called Leviathan Games. They had a suck selection which didn't include any OSR back in 1989, Wonder if they have improved?

Leviathan Games
1212 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO 80302
(720) 565-1141

Also, there's a new game shop, I never knew about. Been There? Any Good?

Karliquin's Game Knight
2085 30th Street
Boulder, CO 80301
(303) 545-1745

Quote from: GameDaddy;593686CSU Cam the Ram, Go! Yup a college town. There also used to be a Game Shop up in Boulder (Also a college town, CU Buffs, Go!) at the top of the hill, now it's called Leviathan Games. They had a suck selection which didn't include any OSR back in 1989, Wonder if they have improved?

Leviathan Games
1212 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO 80302
(720) 565-1141

Also, there's a new game shop, I never knew about. Been There? Any Good?

Karliquin's Game Knight
2085 30th Street
Boulder, CO 80301
(303) 545-1745

I actually got my undergrad at CU Boulder, but I've never been to either of those stores, even though I've walked Pearl Street a million time. Weird. Boulder is a pain in the ass to get to from FC, because there is no direct freeway- it's country roads or drive way out of the way. Thanks for the tip, though.

Also, I just remembered this, Brett Slocum's rules for Running Tekumel, using GURPS.

http://www.weirdrealm.com/tekumel/gurps/ (http://www.weirdrealm.com/tekumel/gurps/)

And you can start as a Legion Member, or Citizen of Tekumel.

Quote from: The Butcher;593439Something 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?

The problem is the "barbarians off the boat" thing never made any sense to begin with.   I mean, what boat?! Where do these barbarians come from? Do they act like european adventurers? If not, you just have a compounded problem of having to play equally alien "barbarians" who are also pariahs in a state that is totally alien to both player AND character.

In a bigger sense the problem is just what Sine Nomine said: WAY too much player buy-in.  This was a lesson I tried very hard to keep in mind when doing Arrows of Indra: I wanted it first and foremost to feel comfortable to players and to let them feel like they could play an Indian character without having to read 300 pages of obscure setting material.

Incidentally, I suspect that tekumel's underworld is based on the Patala Underworld of Indian myth, which I am also using in my Arrows of Indra game.

RPGPundit

Quote from: SineNomine;593487I 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.

I think you've pretty much nailed it, but the mystery (to me) remains: why is it that the more difficult, high-buy-in mode of play (native Tsolyáni PCs) displaced the easier (foreigner PCs) mode as the implied standard in later Tékumel books, up to and including GoO Tékumel? Is this the result of catering to an increasingly smaller and more hardcore audience, dissatisifed with the classic EPT approach, that demanded the more complex and/or deeper immersive native game?

Because while I'd never expect Tékumel to reach Forgotten Realms level of popularity, under any circumstances, I find it hard to believe that the eschewing the "foreigners fresh off the boat" PC perspective did the game any favors.

QuoteThe problem is the "barbarians off the boat" thing never made any sense to begin with.

Regardless of making sense or not (for me it does), the point is that its a coherent and simple enough premise to introduce players to the setting (instead of requiring you to read a essay on anthropology).

 

QuoteWhere do these barbarians come from? Do they act like european adventurers? If not, you just have a compounded problem of having to play equally alien "barbarians" who are also pariahs in a state that is totally alien to both player AND character.

And thats actually a good thing, because it allows the players to begin playing instantly, without the need to pre-absorb any knowledge (nor read the above mentioned anthopological essay), and get to know the setting through play.

QuoteIn a bigger sense the problem is just what Sine Nomine said: WAY too much player buy-in.

This I agree with. And thats why I think such settings should give a huge importance to intro scenarios (like the "foreign barbarians" of EPT, or the "farmer barbarians" of RQ´s Apple Lane), and effective gaming tools.

Quote from: RPGPundit;593759The problem is the "barbarians off the boat" thing never made any sense to begin with.   I mean, what boat?! Where do these barbarians come from? Do they act like european adventurers? If not, you just have a compounded problem of having to play equally alien "barbarians" who are also pariahs in a state that is totally alien to both player AND character.

I suppose this was easier to pull of in Ye Olde Days when you were just rolling 3d6 in order and hoping you'd survive to level 3 when you could actually name your character -- i.e. developing your character in actual play as opposed to front-loaded backgrounds and personalities. Something like "dude, you're a country yokel in the big city of zigzag swords and freaky gods with masked priests, just act like one and we'll be fine."

Quote from: RPGPundit;593759Incidentally, I suspect that tekumel's underworld is based on the Patala Underworld of Indian myth, which I am also using in my Arrows of Indra game.

In game it's said to be a vast, possibly trans-continental hyper-tech subway built by the Ancients, the starfaring alliance (which included future Earth) which terraformed and colonized Tékumel. It also may or may not be an ancestor of the Underdark as the "ubiquitous megadungeon" that extends under everything in the campaign setting.

I've been giving it some thought and I recalled James Malizewski's chronology of D&D (http://grognardia.blogspot.com.br/2009/01/ages-of-d.html). Now the man is not an unanimity but I find his stratification of D&D to be useful shorthand.

Foreigners-off-the-boat is Golden Age through and through: just roll up a character and we're all off to explore the weird world of acid-trip monsters in abandoned subways under a bizarre let's-lump-a-bunch-of-non-Western-cultures-together civilization.

Natives is patently Silver Age: it's not enough to explore the exotic elements of the new setting, you have to immerse into the strange new culture to better appreciate the Professor's exquisite world-building in all its coherent and comprehensive glory.

The publication dates seem to line up with James' as well; so, I put forward the hypothesis that the shift in Tékumel fandom just about matches up with a similar transformation in D&D culture, in which exploring the strange new world takes a back-seat to emulating it and immersing into it. The same sort of reasoning that would give us, in due time, Dragonlance and the 1e oWoD.

Quote from: The Butcher;593788I think you've pretty much nailed it, but the mystery (to me) remains: why is it that the more difficult, high-buy-in mode of play (native Tsolyáni PCs) displaced the easier (foreigner PCs) mode as the implied standard in later Tékumel books, up to and including GoO Tékumel? Is this the result of catering to an increasingly smaller and more hardcore audience, dissatisifed with the classic EPT approach, that demanded the more complex and/or deeper immersive native game?

My wild guess is that it rapidly split the audience into those who were only willing to put in off-the-boat levels of attention and those enthusiasts who wanted to learn Tsolyani declensions. The former wandered off to games that let you do a lot more with minimal theme prep and the latter demanded elaboration of the weirdness that made them love Tekumel in the first place. Since the latter were buying books and cheering the concepts, the latter got the product focus. There just weren't enough of them to carry a line.

For the former players, it was a question of choosing between games where the entire table experience was usually predicated on little or no cultural prep-study, like AD&D, and choosing Tekumel, where you were tacitly expected to get past the fresh-off-the-boat stage fairly rapidly and start learning how things worked. Telling these people "You can learn all that complicated stuff in play." is not going to appeal to them like "You don't have to learn all that complicated stuff."

And in many ways, I think the migration away from fresh-off-the-boat play was a lot slower and more nuanced than it might seem. In my Tekumel collection I've got the 1994 Gardasiyal edition. While the actual character creation was... not pretty, it channeled you into "Choose Your Own Adventure"-type prelude books that allowed you to play your fresh PC through several initial adventures before joining the game. These adventures were keyed to showing off Tsolyani culture and educating the player in how things worked, and they were quite interesting on that count.

Quote from: !The Butcher"I've been giving it some thought and I recalled James Malizewski's chronology of D&D (http://grognardia.blogspot.com.br/2009/01/ages-of-d.html). Now the man is not an unanimity but I find his stratification of D&D to be useful shorthand.

Very interesting, I didnt know it. I think it makes sense, and can be extrapolated to industry in general.

Quote from: silva;593792Regardless of making sense or not (for me it does), the point is that its a coherent and simple enough premise to introduce players to the setting (instead of requiring you to read a essay on anthropology).

And where do these western european adventurers come from? Where is "the boat" from, and why not just be there instead of in the Land Of Too Many Accentuation Marks?

Again, its a stupid premise that solves nothing because you get neither the experience of playing a game in a recognizable world, NOR the experience of at least playing a person who is a PART of the unrecognizable world of the setting.
The Player can't even ask the GM "Well, what would my player know about the customs for entering and leaving the Veiled Garden of Tasawn'awa`nthalna``argasel?", because the answer will be "nothing". Both Player AND PC will be stuck with an impenetrable barrier of ignorance of an alien world that will make no sense to them.

QuoteAnd thats actually a good thing, because it allows the players to begin playing instantly, without the need to pre-absorb any knowledge (nor read the above mentioned anthopological essay), and get to know the setting through play.

Except that tekumel is supposed to be all about the Culturewank, about being able to follow the thousands of different little customs and behaviours and not violate taboos, and caste, and all that, and you have to shatter that premise with the "barbarians off the boat" concept, because suddenly everyone of your NPCs will have to be far more patient with total violation of said taboos than the setting justifies; either that, or if you play it straight the PCs will all get to have very exciting lives as slaves or human sacrifice victims within 5 minutes of mispronouncing their first Honorific to The Grand High Poob'ah of Tsalalthanalt'than'thha'arglebargle.

QuoteThis I agree with. And thats why I think such settings should give a huge importance to intro scenarios (like the "foreign barbarians" of EPT, or the "farmer barbarians" of RQ´s Apple Lane), and effective gaming tools.

Or you can just agree that the game is bullshit: Too Weird to Live for anyone but the tiny group of ultra-obsessive fans that get wood from having to immerse their lives into the material at a level that can only compare to doctoral students (who at least have the excuse that the thing they obsessively dedicate their intellectual lives to is usually something real); and and having reached that agreement you can choose to play something else instead, if what you just want is a game with a strong exotic flavour but at least recognizable and comprehensible cultural context.

Like, for example, the upcoming Arrows of Indra!

RPGPundit

Quote from: The Butcher;593794In game it's said to be a vast, possibly trans-continental hyper-tech subway built by the Ancients, the starfaring alliance (which included future Earth) which terraformed and colonized Tékumel. It also may or may not be an ancestor of the Underdark as the "ubiquitous megadungeon" that extends under everything in the campaign setting.

Yeah, I know, and what I'm saying is that Barker, who was after all a scholar of India, would no doubt have taken his inspiration for that from the Patala Underworld: a vast trans-continental multi-level system of caverns that extends under everything in the campaign setting, that holds entire empires in its depths (not human ones, of course..).

Arrows of Indra describes all the levels of the Patala Underworld and provides a set of rules to randomly generate sections of the underworld cavern complexes.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Lynn;593684That's a very good reason for not achieving great sales. Its much easier to play Fantasy Canada.

I don't think Tekumel or RQ/Glorantha are alone in this. Running a fairly realistic Japan game like Bushido or, to a lesser extent, something like Skyrealms of Jorune have the same problem.

Agreed. The nature of RPGs is such that the GM needs to be able to paint in broad strokes. If we're playing old-school D&D with an implied pulp fantasy Eurocentric setting, and I as GM say "after three days riding, you spy a small village in the distance", then I can have a reasonable level of expectation that everyone around the table has compatible mental pictures of what I've just described. Two players might differ on how large it is, or how hilly the surrounding land is, but everyone's got a workable picture we can probably refine from with not much problem.

If you're gaming with something more exotic, then this will not work to the same degree. If we're playing AD&D, I don't need to describe to you what Orcs are. You'll know roughly what they look like, and what to expect of their behaviour. If we're playing Star Trek, the same is true of Klingons. But if we're playing Skyrealms of Jorune, I would need to explain to you as a player in more detail what a Ramian is, even though this might be something as obvious in-character as a Klingon in Star Trek.

This slows things down, and I expect there's probably even people who would just see it as a straight up deal breaker that they don't want to have to play from that position of weak setting knowledge.

Quote from: Grymbok;593980But if we're playing Skyrealms of Jorune, I would need to explain to you as a player in more detail what a Ramian is, even though this might be something as obvious in-character as a Klingon in Star Trek.

This slows things down, and I expect there's probably even people who would just see it as a straight up deal breaker that they don't want to have to play from that position of weak setting knowledge.

"I know orcs, I don't know Ramian. Because my mind congealed at the age of 23, there's no space left."

Fuck that kind of person. They have mentally checked out.

Quote from: RPGPundit;593759The problem is the "barbarians off the boat" thing never made any sense to begin with.   I mean, what boat?! Where do these barbarians come from? Do they act like european adventurers? If not, you just have a compounded problem of having to play equally alien "barbarians" who are also pariahs in a state that is totally alien to both player AND character.

That's a tough question. I don't know enough about Tekumel to answer. But in Skyrealms of Jorune, I recall some suggestion that players begin as country bumpkins that come from some mountain village to the big city in order to get citizenship.

My reference for Bushido comes straight out of James Clavell's Shogun (which is a fictionalized verison of historical events), where you have a European shipwrecked, then finding a way to fit in somehow without getting his head lopped off in the process (seeing a few NPCs get heads chopped off or burned alive in front of them is one way).

It does suggest a related question though - how do you prepare your players for a somewhat alien setting in which their characters should be familiar? As a GM, do you cut them a lot of slack at first as they learn what's appropriate or inappropriate?

How would you introduce players to Arrows of Indra, if they haven't a remotest clue about Indian culture or history?

Quote from: Lynn;594104How would you introduce players to Arrows of Indra, if they haven't a remotest clue about Indian culture or history?

That's the thing, people do have the remotest clue; its something that at least as stereotype is identifiable. Its not completely alien.

My playtesters for arrows of indra are all uruguayans (a country with a very very low East Indian population, and, to my chagrin, not one Indian restaurant!) and yet they all figured out who their characters were and what they were doing almost instantly.

RPGPundit

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 ?

One of the reasons why, I feel, is because Glorantha was for many years abandoned by Stafford while he dealt with other areas of his life.  This dealt with the arm chair anthropologists in Glorantha fandom somewhat taking over the setting,and pushback from factions within the fandom (like the Seattle Farmer's Collective) who were all about the gaming - while I hear that the Seattle Farmers got all anthropological, they demanded that it be gameable - if you want to be woad covered barbarians, that's cool, but raid for some cattle or solve local problems, dammit.  Just play!

That's why I feel that Pavis, the big megadungeon setting for Glorantha, is the best place to get introduced to the setting.  HeroQuest Glorantha, while cool, is not meant for beginners.

Quote from: RPGPundit;594117That's the thing, people do have the remotest clue; its something that at least as stereotype is identifiable. Its not completely alien.

That's good to know. I confess that I became much more interested in India after watching The Story of India (http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/), so Ill be checking out Arrows of Indra.

Quote from: Lynn;594428That's good to know. I confess that I became much more interested in India after watching The Story of India (http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/), so Ill be checking out Arrows of Indra.

Awesome!

RPGPundit