Do we have any Tekumel experts, on this forum?

I'm not an expert. But I took a deep dive into the setting a while back, and then again in the wake of certain unsettling revelations. MAR Barker was a Nazi, and if you look at the game through that lens, it's pretty clearly a Nazi game. It presents the extermination of native species to make way for living space for the colonists as a good thing. It follows that "cycles of history" pseudo-theory stuff that used to be popular in Nazi circles. If you stand back and look at the setting in broad terms, it's about a once powerful civilization that created a colony, before the civilization fell into decay, causing a rise of barbarism. The survivors created a new empire, and set about exterminating their foes, with whom peace was impossible because of their difference in natures.

The playable non-humans are weird. One is a mushroom people that live in filth. Another is a sort of turtle-bird that produces huge numbers of offspring from their bodies, but ignore and neglect them until they are to degree grown, regarding infant mortality as of little importance. I'm not sure if these are supposed to be nasty parodies or some or another group, but at least in retrospect, they seem kind of gross.

His chosen name, Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker, is rather similar to Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, who commanded the Islamic forces at the Battle of Tours. The Battle of Tour is widely considered an important turning point in the Christianization of Europe. Albert Speers recounts Hitler's lament about that battle. It's not hard to see Barker as one of those "intellectual Nazis" who considered Hitler's anti-Semitism to be an amusing obsession, but not a deal-breaker.

He published his pro-Nazi SS fiction under a synonym, so I guess he wasn't trying to beat everyone over the head with his politics. Just sly little references to his eugenics and historical classicism hobby horses.

I wonder how many gaming tables actually used Tekumel, back in the days of Original D&D?  I'm sure Greyhawk and Blackmoor were more popular, simply because of their association with the creators of D&D.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 01, 2024, 11:13:32 PM
I'm not an expert.

Duly noted.

Cycles of history is a common sword & sorcery trope (particularly in REH's stuff) and your analysis of the alien races isn't particularly convincing. MAR Barker may well have been a Fascist to a greater or lesser degree, but I have never felt Tekumel was especially so. All of it's concepts may also be found in history or the sci-fi and fantasy literature of the 20th century.

Quote from: WERDNA on February 02, 2024, 12:52:49 AM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 01, 2024, 11:13:32 PM
I'm not an expert.

Duly noted.

Cycles of history is a common sword & sorcery trope (particularly in REH's stuff) and your analysis of the alien races isn't particularly convincing. MAR Barker may well have been a Fascist to a greater or lesser degree, but I have never felt Tekumel was especially so. All of it's concepts may also be found in history or the sci-fi and fantasy literature of the 20th century.

You're arguing with a Troll whose only "contribution" that I have seen is to derail topics with political bullshit.

Best to ignore him.

Ok, I see that later on; the author of Tekumel wrote some very unsavory stuff.

Was his earlier work Tekumel, of a usable nature; or is it held in question too, because of his later writings?  Was he always the person he was later revealed to be; or is it possible that he fell into that later in his writing career?  Some people become converted, to certain mindsets.

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 02, 2024, 01:19:13 AM
Ok, I see that later on; the author of Tekumel wrote some very unsavory stuff.

Was his earlier work Tekumel, of a usable nature; or is it held in question too, because of his later writings?  Was he always the person he was later revealed to be; or is it possible that he fell into that later in his writing career?  Some people become converted, to certain mindsets.

Does it make a difference? The guy is dead, neither him nor his family benefit from you playing in the setting, and AFAIK the setting has ZERO of his politics injected into it.

HP Lovecraft WAS a racist, does that mean we shouldn't read his books or play CoC? Is every publisher that uses his mythoss a bad person by proxy too?

I am not what anyone would call a Tekumel "expert" but I've read a fair bit of the material, both novels and games, and if the criterion for placement on The List is the degree of explicit political advocacy in a product, I would call everything Tekumel-related that I've seen definitely Green. However despicable M.A.R. Barker's real-life politics, there is no indication whatsoever that any Tekumel product ever made any serious attempt to proselytize them.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 01, 2024, 11:13:32 PMMAR Barker was a Nazi, and if you look at the game through that lens...

You're a living, breathing meme.

I have the Adventures in Tekumel set, all but 1 book I think.

Theres nothing "Nazi" in them and theres nothing Nazi in the novels. The Nazi sci-fi book he wrote isnt even all that Nazi. We went over this whole damn thing before. Why dredge it up again? This isnt Reddit where you can farm Karma.

Nobody who discussed Tekumel before Barker's views became known considered it nazi-adjacent. Too weird to use, yes. Unsavoury due to sexual and violent elements, sometimes. Nazi, they totally did nazi that. (Sorry.) You don't have those "Aha! Told you so in 2007!!!" blog posts either because nobody made them. If anything, Tekumel was cited as a positive example of a non-western setting. If nobody noticed, is it really there in a meaningful sense?

This seems to be a case where the art can be separated quite well from the artist.

There is also an element of chronology here. Was Barker a nazi from his youth, or did he become one later in life, once he had already developed and published his world? We don't know, because we don't know much about Barker in general. His life was a lot more private and obscure than Gygax's. He was active in a specialist academic field few people care about, and wrote niche material for a very small circle of dedicated fans. I don't recall any in-depth interviews with him which would have given us a deeper insight into his life and ideas (even if he tried to conceal some of them). What we have is a mystery that may never be properly solved, and wild speculation that may not reach far beyond the surface.

I have the original Tekumel, the GOO one, Gardasiyal, Tirikelu (which is free and probably the best actual game), and Swords and Glory. Two of these had no direct involvement from MAR Barker that I can find, and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. They're dense as fuck and have a very consistent theme of a pseudo-ancient society that relies on near-magic technology (and some actual magic) given in the context of an Indian (dot, not feather) caste-based society if it was like 20 thousands years in the future. To me it's basically Dune but some backwater world that got sucked into a pocket universe and developed independently of anything else.

It's been said Barker was the only one who could run a Tekumel game, and I believe it. There are just too many moving pieces to give the setting justice. You CAN just run adventures in the underworld and do tech raids or whatever, typical D&D fare, but that's almost like playing Forgotten Realms and totally ignoring the gods, the time of troubles, the harpers, etc. Kind of defeats the entire purpose of using the game world.

RE: Nazi crap, I saw that mentioned on this messageboard a while back and literally DGAF. Barker was so involved and invested in Hindu culture I wouldn't doubt he had a couple old school swastikas and some retard took it the wrong way. Dredging up this sort of garbage is a waste of everyone's time.

I run FR without Time of Troubles, and usually without Harpers either. And generally distant non meddling gods. Seems to work.

Barker wrote for an actual neo-Nazi journal. This isn't a misunderstanding. OTOH no one ever saw anything Nazi in Tekumel before they were aware of this.

I'm changing my mind about cancel culture. If the left wants to have blacklists so bad, let's add communists.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 01, 2024, 11:13:32 PM
I'm not an expert. But I took a deep dive into the setting a while back, and then again in the wake of certain unsettling revelations. MAR Barker was a Nazi, and if you look at the game through that lens, it's pretty clearly a Nazi game. It presents the extermination of native species to make way for living space for the colonists as a good thing. It follows that "cycles of history" pseudo-theory stuff that used to be popular in Nazi circles. If you stand back and look at the setting in broad terms, it's about a once powerful civilization that created a colony, before the civilization fell into decay, causing a rise of barbarism. The survivors created a new empire, and set about exterminating their foes, with whom peace was impossible because of their difference in natures.

The playable non-humans are weird. One is a mushroom people that live in filth. Another is a sort of turtle-bird that produces huge numbers of offspring from their bodies, but ignore and neglect them until they are to degree grown, regarding infant mortality as of little importance. I'm not sure if these are supposed to be nasty parodies or some or another group, but at least in retrospect, they seem kind of gross.

Well, at least we agree on the first part.  I've never even heard of this setting/game/universe let alone been invested in it as a reader or player but it's obvious that your own very strong bias is not just coloring but completely obscuring your world view of fiction with fascists hiding under every rock, leaf, and napkin that you feel obligated to call out.   

As for my opinion, I'm mostly basing it on what I've read here so feel free to correct me on any FACTUAL inaccuracies the article contains:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9kumel

From reading that, it's obvious that he's trying to base his FICTIONAL universe on how things turned out in the real world both with regard to science as well as history.   He's not necessarily presenting the colonization and subjugation of native FICTIONAL aliens as a moral good but rather as something that was beneficial to the conquering society based on that article (again, feel free to post FACTUAL proof with quotes and not just feelings if the article is incorrect).  That's how colonization/conquering actually works and most societies wouldn't go to war with others if they didn't think there was a tangible long term benefit to them.  Obviously it's horrendously bad to the losers of that conflict though which he also shows as well as showing them rebelling successfully apparently in the future when the power dynamic shifts.

As for the depictions of the aliens, you're again letting your bias cloud what you're actually reading that seems to be a genuine attempt to base FICTIONAL alien species in some semblance of real world science.   Mushrooms DO grow in filth and sea turtles DO famously lay clutches of dozens of eggs which they then abandon.  It's obvious to someone with more than just an obsession with identity politics that the author is attempting in part to base his aliens in something science based and not as an analog to human societies but your own biases blind you to that.  It's difficult for me to take your comments about the above colonization seriously when you obviously almost to the point of parody post your opinions on the alien species and your assumed motivations behind their characterizations.

Again, I have ZERO interest in this author's work after being introduced to it and never even heard of it so I don't have a... I don't even know which analogy to use here because they're all likely triggering for you.  Damsel in distress?  Patriarchial!   Dog in the fight?  Animal cruelty!  I'll just go with "care in the world"...   I just figured I'd point out the obvious parts that you are missing.