Sad news. Rest in peace, professor.

First Moebius, and then the Professor.

The world is a more mundane place...

Goodbye Phil. I am sad I never got the chance to join the Thursday Night Regulars for a game.

Thank you for the ultimate non-Western fantasy.

Godspeed.
The Book of Ebon Bindings was the only gaming book that ever seemed like it was going to get me in trouble in high school. I brought it to the dean after some good-natured Christian's complaint, and she flipped through it, starting to get interested. But I told it was one of those D&D-type books, and her disappointrment was palpable. She handed me the book, shaking her head sadly, and indicated the door with her eyes. I left without her saying a word.

That was abject disgust, not disappointment; there was a reason she didn't say a word...

Very sorry to hear the news. Was at a convention this weekend so I'm just finding out. Oddly enough I purchased a mint copy of Swords and Glory, including the full color laminated map of the 5 empires. The map is the real prize, of course, and I had one back in '84. Now I have one again and it seems a good time to revisit Tekumel again.

Seriously, there's no questioning the fact that the guy was absolutely brilliant.  And I bet his own campaigns would have been spectacular.  Its just unfortunate that his world wasn't set up to be more accessible to those who didn't want to engage in the massive "deep cultural buy-in" that Tekumel requires.

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The world has a bit less colour this day.  Rest in Peace, Professor.

Quote from: RPGPundit;522500Seriously, there's no questioning the fact that the guy was absolutely brilliant.  And I bet his own campaigns would have been spectacular.  Its just unfortunate that his world wasn't set up to be more accessible to those who didn't want to engage in the massive "deep cultural buy-in" that Tekumel requires.

I agree that, given the abundance of detail, and the openly alien trappings that these details present to the first-time reader (compared to the relatively accessible nature of settings which draw inspiration from Western history, like WFRP's Old World, or settings built on common and accessible fictional tropes, like Forgotten Realms), there's a perception that Tékumel is a difficult setting.

I still think the original TSR Empire of the Petal Throne RPG got it right: start everyone as clanless barbarian scum fresh off the boat, and have the PCs' ignorance of the setting mirror that of the players'. If they want to buy into citizenship and "engage" the alien society ahead of them, all's good. If they don't, you get to keep the funny headdresses, and pompous titles, and passing references to obscure laws and alien gods as a neat backdrop for your sword-and-sorcery game. That's how I'll run Tékumel when I have the chance.

No, because at the end of the day, even with the "barbarians off the boat" scenario, you're still eventually going to have to learn everything about Tekumel to play in it  successfully; and the GM has to get it ALL up front.

The largest single barrier, the one that makes it so difficult,isn't that its "non-western", its the issue of Language.  If you had a setting based on a western culture, but every player and GM would need to learn a lexicon of hundreds of Welsh words, it would be just as hard.

Like I said, Barker was a brilliant guy, but his failing was that he was far too enamoured (or obsessed) with his linguistics.  Had the exact same setting been used but most of the terms replaced with english equivalents, that would have made a HUGE difference in terms of Tekumel's accessibility.

Its a fucking stupid argument that certain people make, to say "People don't like/get Tekumel because they're subtly racist and don't get the foreign cultures"; its not that. People don't like/get Tekumel because you have to learn fucking welsh just to play.

Fuck, if Tolkien had created the middle earth in such a way that instead of just using Sindarin and his other made-up languages, the reader had been REQUIRED to know what a few hundred sindarin words meant, then that setting, the most "western" of all western fantasy, would have been equally fucked.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;522634Fuck, if Tolkien had created the middle earth in such a way that instead of just using Sindarin and his other made-up languages, the reader had been REQUIRED to know what a few hundred sindarin words meant, then that setting, the most "western" of all western fantasy, would have been equally fucked.

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Well in theory, you could present Middle-earth in such an opaque, arcane way. So I guess the question from there is: would it be possible to present Tékumel in a way similar to Tolkien's Middle-earth, that would use the languages and such as backdrop fodder instead of being front and center in the setting's presentation? Sounds feasible, to me.

Quote from: Benoist;522639Well in theory, you could present Middle-earth in such an opaque, arcane way. So I guess the question from there is: would it be possible to present Tékumel in a way similar to Tolkien's Middle-earth, that would use the languages and such as backdrop fodder instead of being front and center in the setting's presentation? Sounds feasible, to me.

A lot of the vocabulary would be easy to work around, or to at least introduce slowly by using equivalents like "(six-legged) sheep-thing".  Unfortunately, a lot of the really tongue spraining stuff is personal and place names, which can contain a lot of syllables and use non-western phonemes.

The thing with Tolkien is that he was writing from a fictitious western tradition, so the archaic words and made up names still feel right and can even register meanings in the subconscious mind of a native English speaker.

Balrog versus Jneksha'a.

Quote from: RPGPundit;522634No, because at the end of the day, even with the "barbarians off the boat" scenario, you're still eventually going to have to learn everything about Tekumel to play in it  successfully; and the GM has to get it ALL up front.

The largest single barrier, the one that makes it so difficult,isn't that its "non-western", its the issue of Language.  If you had a setting based on a western culture, but every player and GM would need to learn a lexicon of hundreds of Welsh words, it would be just as hard.

To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I cannot begin to apprehend the sort of confusion that leads you to belive that it is necessary to learn Tsolyáni (or any other language) to play or run a Tékumel game. That's as retarded as implying that you have to learn Klingon to run a Star Trek game, or Quenya and Sindarin to run a MERP game.

Quote from: RPGPundit;522634Its a fucking stupid argument that certain people make, to say "People don't like/get Tekumel because they're subtly racist and don't get the foreign cultures"; its not that. People don't like/get Tekumel because you have to learn fucking welsh just to play.

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You've mentioned this before and it genuinely puzzles me. I've been gaming since '74 and I've been running games or playing in games set in Tekumel since it was first published and I have never heard the accusation of racism leveled at a person who didn't want to play the game. Even if someone accused you of it, why don't you just tell them to fuck off? If I encountered criticism of that kind I would simply disregard it as trolling or general fuckery. Every time you post this it sounds a bit like the guy who says "I hate Vampire because that Goth chick was mean to me." I think its been amply established that there are assholes who play every RPG out there. It's not really a valid reason to dislike a game just because you met someone who was a jerk to you. Damn, if that was the case I wouldn't have played D&D for very long.

As far as the whole issue of cultural buy-in goes, yeah I get that. I'm drawn to exotic settings. I always have been. It's probably because my first exposure to fantasy was the Tales of the Arabian Nights and I'm probably trying to get back to the sense of wonder I felt when I read those stories.

There are successful genres of fantasy which also require a fairly steep cultural buy-in such as Japanese or Chinese epics. These are easier to get into now because of the prevalence of anime and Asian action films in mainstream culture, but even a decade ago they were considered pretty out there. Even now I imagine they command less of a presence in the market than more traditional settings. Personally, I would love to see an RPG setting based on the myths of the Veddic religions. That would totally kick ass and feel like gonzo sci-fi meets fantasy (flying cars and dudes with eight arms and three faces, sign me up).

I think it all just comes down to tastes. What you want to play, what you find enjoyable. I would never want to play a game of Recon. I can't imagine how role-playing the Vietnam war could be fun in any sense of the word, but people play it, love it and more power to them.

Edit: Speak of the devil, someone just started a thread about Revised Recon

Quote from: Benoist;522639Well in theory, you could present Middle-earth in such an opaque, arcane way. So I guess the question from there is: would it be possible to present Tékumel in a way similar to Tolkien's Middle-earth, that would use the languages and such as backdrop fodder instead of being front and center in the setting's presentation? Sounds feasible, to me.

I think that it could be feasible, yes. What you'd have to do is redesign the setting so that the languages become part of the backdrop, and not a dominant feature.

Its why you can say Barker was brilliant, but not a Tolkien-level genius; both were men obsessed with linguistics, but one had the good sense not to turn it into a massive barrier to entry into his imagined world.

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