Isn't "Tekumel/Empire of the Petal Throne" kinda sorta a take on South American Indian civilizations?

I know the setting is science fiction-afied and has other influences, but the art always struck me as very Inca/Aztec/Olmec/etc influenced.

P.S. I am not well versed in the Tekumel setting so perhaps I'm wrong on this.

As a local experet, Chirine should weigh in on this.

Tekumel always struck me as having a somewhat Mesoamerican look as well. Maybe it was the feathered helmets. Though maybe part of that was the knowledge that there (mostly) weren't any riding animals on Tekumel which is like the pre-contact Americas. But there's also a lot of SE Asian influence in Tekumel.

Quote from: Barbatruc;1021550I, for one, would be all over that.

Although ideally what I'd want is a Mysterious Cities of Gold setting: Incas, conquistadors, El Dorado times seven, troglodytic "Olmecs", the lost civilizations of Mu and Atlantis, hints of an ancient nuclear war between them, and magitech. Admittedly I grew up with this on Saturday morning cartoons.

Ummm. okay. Here you go!
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0961077069/waynesworldof-20

reference:
http://www.waynesbooks.com/atlantis.html

The Inca always seemed to be kinda a boring culture, to be honest. The most exciting thing they ever did was their irrigation of mountains using terraces. Which is great if you are into farming, I guess, but....

Quote from: JeremyR;1021883The Inca always seemed to be kinda a boring culture, to be honest. The most exciting thing they ever did was their irrigation of mountains using terraces. Which is great if you are into farming, I guess, but....

The interesting part for me about the Inca is the giant empire-building - how Pachacuti and his son Huayna went from a little city-state to one of the largest nations in just two generations. We're lacking most of the details about how that happened, but it seems like a big deal and a cool dynamic setting.

I know that some sources give the impression of native cultures that they were peaceful and static doing nothing new until Europeans came along, but that's often a result of flawed history.

The knots interest me. Well that and the organization of their empire.

I never read GURPS Aztecs, but I bet it would be good, given the record of most of the rest of their historical sourcebooks.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1022216I never read GURPS Aztecs, but I bet it would be good, given the record of most of the rest of their historical sourcebooks.

The fragmentary nature of data there is on the Aztecs (even moreso for other precolumbian peoples) makes it somewhat tricky to turn it into something that's actually playable. GURPS Aztecs achieves this admirably.

I think it would be far more difficult to pull this off when dealing with the Inca.

Let alone covering a broad subject such as Maya civilisation, which would cover multiple culturally related and co-existing but differing societies during multiple periods of history. The subject matter would also be different: the Maya are a group of culturally and linguistically related peoples, whereas the Aztecs were a multi-ethnic society and a clear political entity (the so-called Aztec Triple Alliance), of which there were many more in the Mesoamerican culture area. Some of these were in fact Maya. GURPS Aztecs touches on this, by the way.

Quote from: Bren;1021860As a local experet, Chirine should weigh in on this.

Tekumel always struck me as having a somewhat Mesoamerican look as well. Maybe it was the feathered helmets. Though maybe part of that was the knowledge that there (mostly) weren't any riding animals on Tekumel which is like the pre-contact Americas. But there's also a lot of SE Asian influence in Tekumel.

It is; Phil was originally going to be a specialist in Meso-American anthropology - he helped decipher the Maya glyphs, for example, and knew quite a few of the leading people in the field - and it has had a very, very strong influence on his world; his ceremonial combats are the same as the Flower Wars, for example. (Although s did fight a few of the Venus Wars, too.) He spoke the languages quite well, and his library on the subject was just as comprehensive and complete as his Ancient Egyptian collection.

Tekumel is a blender; Meso-America, Mughal India, Byzantine Rome, Imperial China, and the Sword-and-Planet-Romance of the pulps.. It's what I like about it; I have no problems with the multiple cultures.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1021870Ummm. okay. Here you go!
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0961077069/waynesworldof-20

reference:
http://www.waynesbooks.com/atlantis.html

Thanks! I'm aware of some of this stuff, but I'm too lazy to kitbash anything out of it, and if I wasn't I'd be more inclined to start from the conquistador end for reasons I don't think I could begin to explain.

GURPS Aztecs is good. I bought it as a gift for a GM friend just because it was interesting.

Also there are nice fantasy versions of such cultures done for Illwinter's Dominions series and Conquest of Elysium fantasy computer-games, which give detailed character templates, magic, summons and history and some gods and stuff. There are several versions, different for each game and for the various epochs in the Dominions series, including things like the sunken underwater ghost nation (iirc, I haven't played that nation recently but I think it combined Atlantis and Oceania with Mictlan).

Quote from: 3rik;1022280The fragmentary nature of data there is on the Aztecs (even moreso for other precolumbian peoples) makes it somewhat tricky to turn it into something that's actually playable. GURPS Aztecs achieves this admirably.

I think it would be far more difficult to pull this off when dealing with the Inca.

It depends on how one approaches the material. The fragmentary nature of the data in one sense means that there is a lot of room for interpolation to create something playable. That is, I can create a version of the Incas that is most favorable to the sorts of adventures I want. However, some people have problems with invented material like this. They only want to play with verified historical elements, in which case, yes, it is more difficult.

I don't have my copy of GURPS Aztecs handy, but I recall it having a nice background on the setting - but it wasn't as solid on the style and types of adventures to have. However, that's based on reading a while ago. I'll post more when I can get to my copy.

Quote from: 3rik;1022280The fragmentary nature of data there is on the Aztecs (even moreso for other precolumbian peoples) makes it somewhat tricky to turn it into something that's actually playable. GURPS Aztecs achieves this admirably.

I think it would be far more difficult to pull this off when dealing with the Inca.

Let alone covering a broad subject such as Maya civilisation, which would cover multiple culturally related and co-existing but differing societies during multiple periods of history. The subject matter would also be different: the Maya are a group of culturally and linguistically related peoples, whereas the Aztecs were a multi-ethnic society and a clear political entity (the so-called Aztec Triple Alliance), of which there were many more in the Mesoamerican culture area. Some of these were in fact Maya. GURPS Aztecs touches on this, by the way.

The Aztecs were the most playable ones anyways.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1022970The Aztecs were the most playable ones anyways.

I've also always been intrigued by a rival state of the Aztec Triple Alliance that many people are unfamiliar with, the Tarascans (Purépecha), which was based in present-day Michoacán. They are also addressed in GURPS Aztecs. It's simply the quintessential resource if you want to run historical fantasy in a Post-classic Period Mesoamerican setting.

I more or less prepared to run this as a side-setting to a long-running fantasy earth campaign I ran using GURPS, but the party didn't really go for it so I can't tell you how good of an idea it was. But I was satisfied that you could stitch together something pretty good combining GURPS Aztecs, Stone Age and elements of Wild West.