[Tekumel] Tekumel Foundation's plans for 2016

[Rafael]

FTR, this is also why *I* am staying away from it. Writing is great, and writing in a group can be even greater; but not in the toxic environment this horde of angry grandpas has single-handedly managed to create.

[chirine ba kal]

FTR, this is also why *I* am staying away from it. Writing is great, and writing in a group can be even greater; but not in the toxic environment this horde of angry grandpas has single-handedly managed to create.

I would not describe it as 'angry grandpas'; it's much more the people who came in as second and third generation - 'groupies', almost - with the exception of some of he old ex-TSR guys who were not offered jobs with WotC. There's a lot of 'pining for past glories', and a lot of 'I want to be Somebody!' in there. I was interviewed by one of the teams doing documentaries about the early days of RPGs - they were genuinely shocked that very, very few people know about me and my archives, and wanted to know why I had not been actively promoting myself as An Expert or something. Quote: "Why are you so secretive? Don't you want to be famous?"

No, I don't. I want to paint my miniatures, build my projects, and run fun games for my friends.

I was told that I was weird.

Well, all right, I guess. Not for me, though...

Now, having said all that, I do believe in prudent IP management and protection; I do not believe in the 'hoarding' of IP while one is waiting for the money to roll in, as that's a really good way to destroy the relevance of the IP to the market and destroy any value it might have. We are already to the point where the average gamer - as I've found in my trips to the local game shops - have no idea who "Dave" and "Gary" and "The Professor" might be. They've been largely forgotton by the gaming public at large, and there seems to be very little interest in telling their stories. Instead, it's all about "maintaining the brand identity"...

[Havard]

No, I don't. I want to paint my miniatures, build my projects, and run fun games for my friends.

This is why we like you chirine!

Well, also because of all the great lore that you have shared with us here at The Comeback Inn. I have learned alot from the things you have shared and your perspective on the early days of gaming have been extremely valuable. I have to say I am hoping for alot more of that



-Havard

[chirine ba kal]

No, I don't. I want to paint my miniatures, build my projects, and run fun games for my friends.

This is why we like you chirine!

Well, also because of all the great lore that you have shared with us here at The Comeback Inn. I have learned alot from the things you have shared and your perspective on the early days of gaming have been extremely valuable. I have to say I am hoping for alot more of that

-Havard

Well, it really is all I wanted to do, right from the beginning. I'm happy to answer questions, of course, and provide what insights that I can. Let me know what I can do for you, and I'll see what I can manage...

[Yaztromo]

My impression is that this situation is/was/will be fairly common (let's not dig too much into the reasons why...) but for Tekumel the effects are worse than for other RPG games, as Tekumel is well known for the massive amount of detail and preparation that it takes to be ready to run or play a game, so the idea that, while you're studying the setting and getting ready, something bery unexpected may happen to/from the owner of the game, undermining a fair part of your efforts.
This instability may put off more people interested on Tekumel than other games.
Hopefully the people in charge will realize this and send more messages about stability and ability to present longer term plans and stick with them.

[chirine ba kal]

My impression is that this situation is/was/will be fairly common (let's not dig too much into the reasons why...) but for Tekumel the effects are worse than for other RPG games, as Tekumel is well known for the massive amount of detail and preparation that it takes to be ready to run or play a game, so the idea that, while you're studying the setting and getting ready, something bery unexpected may happen to/from the owner of the game, undermining a fair part of your efforts.
This instability may put off more people interested on Tekumel than other games.
Hopefully the people in charge will realize this and send more messages about stability and ability to present longer term plans and stick with them.

I'm still a little surprised at the insistence that one has to know 'all the details' in order to play Tekumel. For that matter, so was Phil; he felt that you could use as much or as little of what he'd offered as one wanted. The emphasis on detail, which got started with these same people in the 1990s, is what killed all the work and momentum we'd built up in the 1980s for Tekumel. And still killing any interest, for that matter.

Sigh.

[finarvyn]

I can only speak for myself, but I can say a little about why I find Tekumel so intimidating.

While many of his words and language may be unique or obscure, Tolkien strikes a "everyman" vibe with me whereby if you mention elves and dwarves and hobbits I pretty much know what the are supposed to represent. Anyone who has read any of a long list of fantasy stories can jump into traditional D&D and almost right away have a feeling of knowing what is going on and what monsters are being encountered.

Barker's stuff is creative and imaginitive and just plain weird. I played in a campaign of EPT back in in the 1970's but never felt capable of running one even though the rules were very D&D-like. I read a lot of the old Tekumel articles in Strategic Review and Dragon and felt overwhelmed by the names and spellings of the places and characters. I own Man of Gold and Flamesong and could never get more than a chapter or so into either. The names, races, and so on, just never felt intuitive to me. I played in a couple of "play by post" Tekumel games but my feeling of comfort never quite built the way I had hoped. I still own my old TSR boxed set for EPT and dig it out occasionally when I want to get inspired for something unusual and non-traditional.

I am in awe of Tekumel but still not comfortable with it.

I guess that knowing that the Tekumel detail is out there makes me think that I ought to be familiar with it in the same way that knowing that Middle-earth is so complex makes me think that I ought to have a decent understanding of it if I want to run a game of that. But Tekumel is less intuitive so I never feel like I "get there" in my learning process.

Does that make any sense?

[chirine ba kal]

I can only speak for myself, but I can say a little about why I find Tekumel so intimidating.

[snipped; great post!!!]

I am in awe of Tekumel but still not comfortable with it.

I guess that knowing that the Tekumel detail is out there makes me think that I ought to be familiar with it in the same way that knowing that Middle-earth is so complex makes me think that I ought to have a decent understanding of it if I want to run a game of that. But Tekumel is less intuitive so I never feel like I "get there" in my learning process.

Does that make any sense?

Yes, it does, actually, and I am very glad you were kind enough to take the time to reply! You are the very first person to reply to this kind of question from me in over thirty years - most of the time, I get what amounts to a 'knee-jerk' reaction that has no thought behind it...

I agree with your views, too. Tekumel is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a world-setting that is at all intuitive for us; it's (as Phil once mentioned) Mughal India with aliens, where Middle-earth is our shared cultural and folkloric heritage. It draws on tropes that we all have a pretty good feel for; Tekumel, on the other hand, starts out with a culture that very few people know much about, and then adds in a lot of tropes and concepts from the 'scientifiction' of the First Age of F/SF literature. Just about all of those authors have been forgotten, over time, and the two most 'popular' influences on Phil - Lovecraft and Howard - have had their work 'diluted' by adaptations and pastiches. (The 'Conan of the movies' is very different then the 'Conan of the original stories', for example.) Another of Phil's inspirations, Barsoom, is just as forgotten, and the recent motion picture didn't seem to help much.

I think that another major problem is that we've been publishing Tekumel since 1975, and we now have a huge pile of details that didn't exist back then; Phil developed a lot of what's called 'canon' as a result of game play over the better part of two decades. Sure, I've enjoyed being Phil's archivist, but it's a really large and obscure library that been built up. I don't know how to address all this, either.

As a side note, I find Blackmoor very intimidating, these days, and I would not even consider running any Blackmoor games for the very same reason that you mentioned. I played for a while with Dave, and the Blackmoor I played in was a very different place with a lot of details then the Blackmoor that you folks discuss here and on other fora. The Blackmoor I played in was closest to what was in FFG; the d20 book had, to my eye, so little 'Dave' and so much 'd20' that I simply put it back on the shelf; it's not the Blackmoor I knew and loved.

So, thank you again - you've been very, very helpful!

[Yaztromo]

Another of Phil's inspirations, Barsoom, is just as forgotten, and the recent motion picture didn't seem to help much.

Just a quick note, as you mentioned it: I recently made an adaptation of the world of Barsoom for Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd edition: http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fi...arsoom.pdf

[chirine ba kal]

Another of Phil's inspirations, Barsoom, is just as forgotten, and the recent motion picture didn't seem to help much.

Just a quick note, as you mentioned it: I recently made an adaptation of the world of Barsoom for Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd edition: http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fi...arsoom.pdf

I'll have a look at this - thank you!