Quote from: Melan;337497a few older things which fans don't seem to like that much (i.e. The Tomb-Complex of Nereshánbo).

Quote from: Melan;337943That may as well be the 1980s/90s rejection of dungeoneering as a legitimate form of enjoying yourself in RPGs. Which is mighty weird, because Tékumel not only provides great opportunities for it, but places it in context of a whole lot of local culture. "See, those writings on the wall are from the time of Nayári of the Silken Thighs, her name be praised... and look! A death-glyph of Hűss! Now there is a rare find, I think I will just..."

Quote from: chirine ba kal;337245On your first point, I agree with you completely. I've *never*, in the thirty years I've been doing Tekumel, asked anyone to learn any of Phil's conlangs. They're good for 'local color', but they're not needed for a fun game. I'd agree with your description of anyone who insisted on it, too.

On your second point, I think you're quite right about the mindset that has grown up around Tekumel-as-game since 1990 - 1992. There was a really severe shift in the Tekumel-as-game mindset about then, moving from the open-architecture game and setting that we'd been playing in from 1975 to about 1990 to a very closed-architecture attitude that any potential player had to have all known publications, books, games, etc. in order to play a 'good' Tekumel game. "Early" Tekumel was very much a cooperative creation between Prof. Barker and his gamers, but "Late" Tekumel was not; there was a very strong emphasis on "Official Tekumel", and I think that this attiude on the part of a number of the hardcore fans scared a lot of potential new people away from both the game and the setting.

All I can say is that we certainly didn't have that kind of mindset when we played, either in my two groups or the Professor's; things were pretty open and flexible. I played D & D for a bit in both Dave Arneson's and Gary Gygax's games, and I saw the same dichotomy there; Dave was a very flexible, open-ended gamer, while Gary was very much rules-oriented and pretty inflexible abut how he used those rules in play. Both were very upfront to me about why each took their position: Dave was primarily out to have fun, and Gary was primarily out to sell product.

I'm very much in the Dave Arneson mold as a GM, and I approach Tekumel the same way as he did.  Sure, I have a lot of shelf space filled up with musty tomes and endless details, but I don't get them out all the time and bore my players to tears with them. *If* and only *if* somebody asks a question that needs reference to the archives will I pull something out; it has to be a bit of information that is relevant to what the players are doing. I do let people know about information that their characters would know about, but again, only when it's relevant to game play.

I think that, just like in historical miniatures gaming, there are people who get really obsessive about the fine details; that may be fun for them, but it's not for for me and I just don't play with them. As you say, this is a *game*; pointless detail gets in the way of game play, almost all of the time, and I simply don't bother with it.

I've asked my players why they play in my games, and they tell me that they do it because it's fun. They say that they do learn about Tekumel, but that it's not crammed down their throats; they like getting it gradually over time, and they enjoy it much more because the games are like little voyages of discovery. I don't know about it, myself; I'm too close to the subject to be able to clearly formulate why it all works for them and for me. I do think we've always been a sort of pocket of what I think is called 'old-school' RPG gaming, and we're certainly not in what I'd call the mainsteam of Tekumel RPG gaming or even the mainstream of Tekumel fandom. Heck, Phil even remarked on this when he was talking to Gary Fine, and which Gary quoted in his book on RPGs and RPG gamers.

Very interesting discussion!:cool:

Quote from: James Gillen;524315I find it amusing that the German for "role-playing game" is "Rollenspiel."

JG