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Tekumel BRP


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1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Have you had the pleasure of playing it (any version)?

I solo played the starter scenario in the new[ish] Bethorm rules. I'm not sure I really like them much.

A couple decades ago, we had a GURPS Tekumel game that tried to start, but it petered out before we played one session as the murder hobos I was gaming with at the time didn't like the setting.

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I vaguely remember D&D Tekeumel being a thing and for some reason I seem to recall there was a dalliance twixt the wunderkinds of St. Albert, Alberta... Messrs. Simbalist and Backhaus of C&S fame and M.A.R Barker. Dont recall if they ever put out a Tekumel project. Never did get to try it though.

... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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6 hours ago, Questbird said:

Ha ha

even old threads can rise!

How did your Tekumel BRP gaming go?

The PCs managed to rent a large run down multi storey place in the Foreigners Quarter for a medium rent on the understanding that they had to evict the current inhabitants who were not paying their rent. These proved to be a Salarvyani street gang who put up a spirited resistance. Once they had moved in they discovered that the place next door was occupied by Ayhogga who were prone to having large dance parties all night, and also had no compunction about doing their "business" anywhere it suited them, which caused horrible smells to waft around the place. The PCs decided not to upset the Ayhogga, who were on the whole a lively, friendly-ish bunch.

The PCs moved in the rest of their clan, and the matriarchs immediately set about berating them for not getting a suitable place, not sorting out the Ayhogga, being lazy, not trying to better themselves, etc,etc in the best manner of matriarchs. Also the previous occupants' grandfather shaman had been overlooked (he lived underneath the place with a connection to the tsuru'um) so they spent some time exploring trying to find him as he would occasionally send occupants of the tsuru'um up to plague them.

The Yeleth lover turned out to be a great boon as she was very strong and could hypnotise people, but because of her paper white skin they had to be very careful about going anywhere outside, hence the usefulness of the underworld connections. She was intensely loyal to the PC who had donated 3 POW to reawaken her, and the other PCs had to be a bit careful about upsetting her "friend". They did find a useful scroll in the underworld which they took to the temple of Sarku. The temple offered them money if they found any more and brought it to them. It was only after the evaluation that they realised the person they had seen in the temple wasn't actually breathing, although they had seemed very nice and understanding.

 

We also ran a cross over game using Jeff Dee's Bethorm rules (which are also pretty good) with native Tsolyani rather than outsiders. One PC put everything into being wealthy, with higher status. He was carried everywhere in his palanquin with his teenage paramour and copious amounts of drugs. Because he was higher status he was often the person others wanted to/would only speak to, so there was a lot of grumbling (in a typical Tsolyani way) from the other PCs (not the players, they were all for it) when he "arranged" for them to do things for other people and got the rewards which he would magnanimously hand out afterwards. The same player also had a Livyanu PC who was quite secretive (as normal for Livyanu) and was suspected to be a member of a Shadow Gods temple unit, but no definite proof was ever found...

Edited by d(sqrt(-1))
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3 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I vaguely remember D&D Tekeumel being a thing and for some reason I seem to recall there was a dalliance twixt the wunderkinds of St. Albert, Alberta... Messrs. Simbalist and Backhaus of C&S fame and M.A.R Barker. Dont recall if they ever put out a Tekumel project. Never did get to try it though.

Apparently Kevin Crawford does have a Tekumel version but he can't get permission from the Tekumel Foundation to publish it, so it has languished for a while. I'd really like to see it though, especially if he could do one of his extremely good Kickstarters for it with good artwork. There is a draft at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4qCWY8UnLrcUG9WX1ZfcTJweTA/view

There's also The Petal Hack (OSR) by Brett Slocum https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/187939/The-Petal-Hack which is free.

Don't know about the C&S connection - you could ask Chirene at https://chirinebakal.proboards.com/ as he played with Prof Barker for many years and has a LOT of knowledge.

Edited by d(sqrt(-1))

Always start what you finish.

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There's also Dave Morris' Tirikélu rules ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B63rIuFhh29eVHpZVFlGYUNLSXc/view )which are vaguely Runequesty and has some quite interesting ideas, especially for combat. I have the Patrick Brady Tékumel game from Guardians of Order as well as good old Empire of the Petal Throne (which actually holds up rather well). They all have lots of good info. My problem is that my players aren't super interested in playing there.

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2 hours ago, AndreasDavour said:

I sometimes get the impression that there are more Tekumel conversions than there are people playing it!

 

Possibly true! I believe that Prof Barker basically just had opposing sides roll d100, highest roll prevailed, and went with that.

The basics of Tekumel are not much different from what any set of RPG rules could handle, the magic is specifically structured though. But the cultural differences are what makes it what it is, and those are usually generated by the interactions between the players/NPCs rather than rules per se.

Edited by d(sqrt(-1))

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6 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

So, btw what is this d() function?
I left uni so long ago! 😢 

XdY = roll X dice of Y sides each. 3d6 = 3 x 6 sided dice.

Square root of -1 is an imaginary number.

The perfect dice for RPGs therefore have a number of sides equal to the square root of -1. Voila.

 

 

Edited by d(sqrt(-1))
typo
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On 5/25/2021 at 11:00 PM, d(sqrt(-1)) said:

 

Possibly true! I believe that Prof Barker basically just had opposing sides roll d100, highest roll prevailed, and went with that.

The basics of Tekumel are not much different from what any set of RPG rules could handle, the magic is specifically structured though. But the cultural differences are what makes it what it is, and those are usually generated by the interactions between the players/NPCs rather than rules per se.

Yeah, and I think people make too much out of the magic. Sure it has those fancy names and they are sorted by temple and all that, but ignore that and just play to explore the world. I really don't understand why we need to many rules sets. I've played with S&W and Fate and both worked just fine, and they are very, very different.

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