Orlanthi Adventurer
Many moons ago my gamer buddies and I grew restless to see what lay beyond the roleplaying horizon. Being products of the midwest ourselves, we had made the pilgrimage to GenCon and were aware that in other parts of the land gamers had other games. Out west, in an area around a bay, gamers had discovered a land called Glorantha and its roleplaying game Runequest. We decided to try this west-coast Runequest and found it to our liking. Although we never completely abandoned our midwestern roots and continued to play at white box and newer editions of the Lake Geneva game as well. For a time we were content. But being the white box devotee among our group I eventually attempted to take Glorantha and make it work with my beloved white box. This is the tale of how I did it.
There is a bit of gamer history in the Runequest rulebook that talks about early attempts to make an existing roleplaying game work for Glorantha and how campaigns using those rules had been run using Glorantha as the setting before the Runequest rules were developed. Perhaps that gave me the idea to attempt a reverse engineering of sorts. The first problem I faced was interpreting Glorantha through the lens of its game Runequest. Obviously Runequest would heavily influence anything I attempted with Glorantha, because it was my window into Glorantha. I made certain assumptions about Glorantha based on Runequest, so what I have here is somewhat of a mash-up.
Glorantha/Runequest doesn't fit well with the three class system of White Box. I created the class Orlanthi Adventurer based on the predominant Gloranthan culture I wanted to explore. So having decided all PCs would be Orlanthi Adventurers I set about designing the class. I use the standard white box attributes except Wisdom becomes Spirit and it is used to power spells and interact on a spirit level with other beings. Orlanthi Adventurers are trained in the use of arms so they are Fighting Men with regard to hit-points, weapons and armor usage.
Glorantha is a magic rich world where peasant farmers and royalty generally know a few minor spells to help them in their daily lives. Warriors are also users of magic, so our Orlanthi Adventurer starts roleplay knowing a few spells, the inspiration for which comes from the Runequest spell list. An Adventurer may learn one spell at each level of experience (taught by a priest or priestess) and may have memorized a number of spells not to exceed the Intelligence Attribute score. Many spells have a fixed Spirit cost to cast, others can have variable strengths depending on PC level.
Variable spells, such as Bladesharp and Heal can be cast at level for the cost of 1 Spirit point per level (up to a maximum). In other words a 1st level Orlanthi Adventurer who knows Bladesharp may cast it on his/her weapon at 1st level for 1 point of Spirit giving the weapon +1 to hit for six rounds. Heal cast at 1st level would cure 1 point of damage at the cost of 1 point of Spirit. Bladesharp has a maximum of +3 and Heal a maximum of 6.
Chaos plays a big part in myth-based Glorantha, so alignment is similar to that in standard white box. Some spells are aligned as in standard play. Religion is what drives most human activity on Glorantha, and our Orlanthi Adventurer reflects this. Orlanth is the storm god of the Heortling people and is the principle deity in the pantheon worshiped by the tribes from which PCs come from. Followers of Orlanth would share common beliefs about the world and a common culture, including magic and fighting skills.
Glorantha is a bronze age world so most tools, armor and weapons are made of bronze rather than iron or steel. The fashions of the culture more resemble the ancient Celtic and Greek than medieval Europe. That's all just looks and doesn't need to have any real impact on rules. Glorantha has it's own unique races and monsters and fortunately white box makes monster creation fairly easy. The Runes that give Runequest its name really play a minor part in the game mechanics and are easily incorporated into the religion and culture side of the game.
Religion, myth and culture are what really drives Glorantha as a unique setting and is all really independent of the rules system used. Adapting the rules of choice, in this case white box, to the Glorantha setting is really about understanding the setting and being familiar enough with the rules to feel comfortable adapting them. The Orlanthi Adventurer seems to fit my understanding of one type of potential player character in Glorantha. I would devise a different class for a Praxian Nomad or Lunar Legionnaire.
In making the class design decisions I struggled with how much of what I have come to associate with Glorantha was Runquest and how much is world setting. For many years Runequest and Glorantha were synonymous for me. The publication of non-Runequest Gloranthan materials and non-Glorantha Runequest has helped me separate the two, at least to some extent. I now feel like I have a handle on my version of Glorantha and the Orlanthi Adventurer seems consistent with that vision. YMMV I offer this custom character class as an example of how the white box class system can be adapted to a unique world such as Glorantha.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
The Humble d6
Rolling d6s for damage and hit-points
By design or blunder the white box delivers a fun game. The alternative combat system using a d20 to hit and a d6 for damage combined with hit points that generally increase with each level gained seems genius design to me and is a big part of why the white box is my favorite edition. Basing both the hit die and weapon damage on a d6 allows for a degree of predictability as well as randomness. I think both are necessary for maximum fun.
Gamers like to roll dice. The chance of rolling well is part of the thrill of our hobby. Risk, however, must accompany any game mechanic involving chance and there is the ever present risk of rolling a "poor" result every time we grasp the die. The unusual shaped d20 is a random number generator with twenty possible outcomes. Basically it works like percentages with a 5% increment between each possible result. The alternative combat mechanic (which would become standard in later editions) calls for the PC or monster to roll a certain number or higher on the d20. The target number is found on a chart and is determined by the class and level of the PC or hit dice of the monster and the Armor Class (AC) of the target.
If a hit is achieved (and celebration ensues) damage is then determined by rolling a d6 and deducting that many hit points from the target's total. PCs and monsters start with 1-6 hit points (plus or minus) so a single successful hit has the potential to take-out a low level PC or monster. Seems "realistic". It isn't hard for me to imagine that a single wound from a sword, mace, spear or whatever could drop me and therefore seems believable as a game mechanic.
Now we come to the genius part. Higher level PCs and monsters have higher numbers of hit dice and therefore higher hit point totals. They may also become better able to hit an opponent as the target number on the d20 To-Hit roll goes down as PC levels and monster hit dice increase. The chance to successfully hit one's target increases 5% with each number on the d20. Thus a target number of 16 or higher (25% chance of success) represents a 5% better chance of hitting than a target number of 17 or higher (20% chance of success). This seems a stroke of genius to me because players can judge about how many hits they can take and roughly what the chances of success they have against a monster or many monsters, but it takes some thinking and it involves some degree of chance. With 1-6 points of damage per successful hit, the player who knows his/her PC has 10 remaining hit points can survive one hit, but might go down if they take two hits. Some games have made this even more predictable by assigning each weapon a damage value that never changes. If the player also knows they have a 25% chance of being damaged each time the baddies make an attack, they can make some reasonable choices regarding tactics (fight or flight?) and use of resources (whether to cast that high-level spell) to influence the outcome in their favor.
As editions add more variables to the numbers, variable hit-point and weapon damage dice (d4, d6, d8, etc), more adds to damage, feats and combinations thereof, etc. it has become harder for this player/referee to judge how many more hits a PC can take or exactly who's winning or losing the fight. Unpredictability/randomness can be fun, but when it comes to PC life and death, as a player and as a referee, I have found a simple satisfaction in being better able to grasp the numbers in my head and make decisions based on likelihood of surviving another x-number of rounds. And I like the idea that any weapon can possibly take out any 1st level with one lucky hit.
By design or blunder the white box delivers a fun game. The alternative combat system using a d20 to hit and a d6 for damage combined with hit points that generally increase with each level gained seems genius design to me and is a big part of why the white box is my favorite edition. Basing both the hit die and weapon damage on a d6 allows for a degree of predictability as well as randomness. I think both are necessary for maximum fun.
Gamers like to roll dice. The chance of rolling well is part of the thrill of our hobby. Risk, however, must accompany any game mechanic involving chance and there is the ever present risk of rolling a "poor" result every time we grasp the die. The unusual shaped d20 is a random number generator with twenty possible outcomes. Basically it works like percentages with a 5% increment between each possible result. The alternative combat mechanic (which would become standard in later editions) calls for the PC or monster to roll a certain number or higher on the d20. The target number is found on a chart and is determined by the class and level of the PC or hit dice of the monster and the Armor Class (AC) of the target.
If a hit is achieved (and celebration ensues) damage is then determined by rolling a d6 and deducting that many hit points from the target's total. PCs and monsters start with 1-6 hit points (plus or minus) so a single successful hit has the potential to take-out a low level PC or monster. Seems "realistic". It isn't hard for me to imagine that a single wound from a sword, mace, spear or whatever could drop me and therefore seems believable as a game mechanic.
Now we come to the genius part. Higher level PCs and monsters have higher numbers of hit dice and therefore higher hit point totals. They may also become better able to hit an opponent as the target number on the d20 To-Hit roll goes down as PC levels and monster hit dice increase. The chance to successfully hit one's target increases 5% with each number on the d20. Thus a target number of 16 or higher (25% chance of success) represents a 5% better chance of hitting than a target number of 17 or higher (20% chance of success). This seems a stroke of genius to me because players can judge about how many hits they can take and roughly what the chances of success they have against a monster or many monsters, but it takes some thinking and it involves some degree of chance. With 1-6 points of damage per successful hit, the player who knows his/her PC has 10 remaining hit points can survive one hit, but might go down if they take two hits. Some games have made this even more predictable by assigning each weapon a damage value that never changes. If the player also knows they have a 25% chance of being damaged each time the baddies make an attack, they can make some reasonable choices regarding tactics (fight or flight?) and use of resources (whether to cast that high-level spell) to influence the outcome in their favor.
As editions add more variables to the numbers, variable hit-point and weapon damage dice (d4, d6, d8, etc), more adds to damage, feats and combinations thereof, etc. it has become harder for this player/referee to judge how many more hits a PC can take or exactly who's winning or losing the fight. Unpredictability/randomness can be fun, but when it comes to PC life and death, as a player and as a referee, I have found a simple satisfaction in being better able to grasp the numbers in my head and make decisions based on likelihood of surviving another x-number of rounds. And I like the idea that any weapon can possibly take out any 1st level with one lucky hit.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Before White Box
Let's talk legendary, back in the days before the White Box, even before the white box with wood grain sides, before the three little brown books were more than a gleam in Mr. Gygax eye. As gamer legend goes, there was a time when all the hobby world had was Chainmail and its Fantasy Supplement and some imaginaries who were developing a new way to "wargame". A group of those folks, maybe the first group, gamed around the Minnesota Twin Cities. Mr. Arneson was one of those first, but he didn't game alone. Apparently there were others around the Twin Cities that started to play various versions of the new roleplaying game they started calling the Dungeon Game or simply Dungeon.
The image above is a reconstruction of an early version of the game Dungeon as written out by Craig VanGrasstek and can be found on Jon Peterson's blog Playing At The World. I am grateful to both Mr. VanGrasstek and Mr. Peterson for making this piece of our hobby history available. In his Forward to the rules, Mr. VanGrasstek describes an expanding series of mazes or dungeons run by diiferent referees who had played the game maybe once before and by the time of his writing down his rules the new game is being played in many different mazes or dungeons in the area with somewhat different rules in use for each maze.
I like to think of those heady days when the idea - dungeon delving - was so new that players couldn't wait to give it a try and were willing to create their own rules to make it all happen. The idea was the novelty, a group including fighters, spell casters and clerics (they are all three here in Dungeon) go down a dungeon and have adventures, exploring, fighting and finding treasures. How you rolled dice and determined the outcome might vary considerably, but the fun of kicking in a door, fighting some baddies and grabbing their loot was definitely here from the start. I am tempted to find a few willing friends and give Mr. VanGrasstek's rules a try...with a few tweeks of my own of course. I'll bet the game will feel very familiar.
About the same time as Mr. Arneson was running his Blackmoor campaign and various other area gamers were delving in their own homegrown pen and paper dungeons, local gamer David Megarry developed the idea into a boardgame he called Dungeon! which he later published through TSR. As I recall, there is much in common between the Dungeon! boardgame experience and those early dungeon crawl adventures.
In music and in art it is common to find a movement of artists that inspire and encourage each other in taking their craft in new and creative directions. They borrow ideas from each other and experiment with changes, bouncing ideas off each other and sharing their thoughts and criticisms. It's how the creative process seems to work and when it's on, there's something "magic" about it. Twin Cities, Minnesota (and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin) had that magic in their gaming communities in the early 70's. What a thing it must have been to witness and be a part of!
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Salt To Taste
Medieval Flavoring
With the subtitle, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns... Mr. Gygax nominally claims the white box as a medieval style setting because it seemed to him that much of the sword & sorcery literature which inspired the game has a somewhat medieval flavor or feel to it. I also think the origins of the game in a variant on the medieval campaign run by the authors influenced the use of the title word "medieval". To be sure, reading the works of R.E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and others I find they are full of kings and swords and warriors on horseback. The default white box technology level (leaving aside magic) seems more medieval compared to an historic timeline. Perhaps this is as Mr. Gygax had in mind.
The white box rules certainly do not deal with social caste, fealty, the medieval church or any of the social and cultural aspects of medieval society. It seems rather more a blend of heroic myth and the modern western cultural ideals of working hard, getting rich and building one's own little "kingdom" in a world of fantastic creatures and magic.
The referee can add additional mechanics to model medieval society and make the chosen milieu feel more chivalric and courtly as a part of their individual customization of the game. Many published settings and a few subsequent rules have taken this approach over the decades since the white box made its appearance. Early games such as Chivalry and Sorcery and King Arthur Pendragon have tried to take the medieval world setting more seriously by adding extensive rules for social background and chivalric behavior thus encouraging play that more closely reflects a medieval mindset. Harn is a setting that draws heavily from medieval history for it's gritty, realistic feel and Harnmaster, the rules written specifically for gaming in Harn carry the theme forward. In such rules, glory, honor or reputation, romance, family and other achievements often take the place of acquiring wealth and hit-points as a measure of successful play.
My Personal experience with such games is that it is difficult to find players who are willing to put forth the effort needed to alter their thinking to a consistent medieval mindset. In other words, I have found that a little salt goes a long way when flavoring a medieval setting. (I like the analogy of salt because the middle ages was a barter economy and salt was valuable and often substituted for coin.)
Referring to kings, dukes and milady, calling oneself a knight, and building a castle all seem to be quite appealing, but that's often about as medieval as many folks want to go.
With the subtitle, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns... Mr. Gygax nominally claims the white box as a medieval style setting because it seemed to him that much of the sword & sorcery literature which inspired the game has a somewhat medieval flavor or feel to it. I also think the origins of the game in a variant on the medieval campaign run by the authors influenced the use of the title word "medieval". To be sure, reading the works of R.E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and others I find they are full of kings and swords and warriors on horseback. The default white box technology level (leaving aside magic) seems more medieval compared to an historic timeline. Perhaps this is as Mr. Gygax had in mind.
The white box rules certainly do not deal with social caste, fealty, the medieval church or any of the social and cultural aspects of medieval society. It seems rather more a blend of heroic myth and the modern western cultural ideals of working hard, getting rich and building one's own little "kingdom" in a world of fantastic creatures and magic.
The referee can add additional mechanics to model medieval society and make the chosen milieu feel more chivalric and courtly as a part of their individual customization of the game. Many published settings and a few subsequent rules have taken this approach over the decades since the white box made its appearance. Early games such as Chivalry and Sorcery and King Arthur Pendragon have tried to take the medieval world setting more seriously by adding extensive rules for social background and chivalric behavior thus encouraging play that more closely reflects a medieval mindset. Harn is a setting that draws heavily from medieval history for it's gritty, realistic feel and Harnmaster, the rules written specifically for gaming in Harn carry the theme forward. In such rules, glory, honor or reputation, romance, family and other achievements often take the place of acquiring wealth and hit-points as a measure of successful play.
My Personal experience with such games is that it is difficult to find players who are willing to put forth the effort needed to alter their thinking to a consistent medieval mindset. In other words, I have found that a little salt goes a long way when flavoring a medieval setting. (I like the analogy of salt because the middle ages was a barter economy and salt was valuable and often substituted for coin.)
Referring to kings, dukes and milady, calling oneself a knight, and building a castle all seem to be quite appealing, but that's often about as medieval as many folks want to go.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Published Settings
Regardless of the rules used, it isn't hard to find a published setting for almost any kind of fantasy game imaginable. I like some better than others, but much of that has to do with personal preferences. Some are closely tied to settings created for novels or movies and I generally find them less appealing for gaming than material created specifically for roleplaying. Like a lot of things in this hobby, I am partial to some of its oldest products.
Glorantha has become over time one of my favorite game settings. I can recall the early days of playing at Runequest 2nd ed. and being frustrated with the peculiarities of it's default setting, Glorantha (Ducks?), aspects of which seemed contrary to the heroic literature I liked to draw from when gaming. It took several years, but I eventually started to understand how to take best advantage of the strengths Glorantha offered as a published setting. Glorantha taught me to roleplay in Glorantha rather than try to use Glorantha to game my way. Glorantha is its own unique thing, with its own stories to tell. Some game world's demand respect, while others are easily molded into what the referee wants. It's been quite a while since I refereed a game set in Glorantha, but I have come to favor a "voyage of discovery" form of gaming where the uniqueness of the setting unfolds as the PCs travel about interacting with everything new.
Harn is another favorite fantasy world with some of the most beautiful maps and detailed descriptions ever published for the hobby. Harn itself is a large island which has given it's name to a world setting as well as several editions of rules written to take advantage of it's unique qualities, Harnmaster. Published material for Harn is packed with what I would call adventure hooks, one or two line descriptions, often of historic note, that could be developed by the referee if the players show interest. The NPCs are well developed and Harn is one of those "heavy immersion" settings where it is possible to play for hours interacting with NPCs, developing connections and relationships and pursuing "business" interests. Of course nothing about Harn prevents the PCs from dungeon exploring and killing orcs (foulspawn) if that's their pleasure. It's just that Harn has so much more to offer, including a real feel for the experience of spending the night in a hay barn.
Both Harn and Glorantha I tend to use "straight out of the box". The settings are incredibly detailed and half the fun of refereeing them is doing the background reading. Harn is a low magic world with a very historic feel to it. It has been described as "realistic" and I think applying it to Harn is as accurate as the term can be when describing a fantasy world. The publishers of Harn material (there are currently two) use a "start date" so that referees can rest assured that official canon won't overtake their campaign. Published material all uses the same in-game date and anything that happens from there forward is all your own campaign. That's the way I like my published campaign and Glorantha, Tekumel and others can be run that way as well.
Judges Guild's City State/Wilderlands setting will forever hold a special place for me among published settings. Judges Guild was one of the first publishers of any kind of referee aid and really taught me a lot about how the white box game could be run. Judges Guild published the works of several authors and therefore there was considerable variation in their line, which helped a young referee see there was more than one "correct" way to play this new game. For my money, the City State/Wilderlands products stand up well in comparison with more modern publications and continue to offer the referee one of the better published sandbox-type settings.
I have become a recent fan of Tekumel, at least from the standpoint of a setting to read about and study. It is one of the oldest game settings, but can be difficult to approach due to it's alieness. Some world settings I just read about and never referee, Tekumel may be one of those. Some world settings I borrow ideas from and although I may never referee specifically in those settings, parts of them become integrated into another setting such as my own Dreadmoor (a combination of original and borrowed material heavily influenced by my favorite fantasy novels).
Greyhawk is the background setting for many of the classic TSR adventure mods and as such the background for many games I have refereed using those published modules. Often appearing as nothing more than a few names or a small area map during the play session, Greyhawk always had an overall theme or feel to it that influenced white box and later edition publications. The standard game races, classes and monsters were Greyhawk, especially after the publication of Supplement I.
Middle Earth and other settings from fantasy literature influenced the white box itself (as described in Appendix N from the DM's Guide) and many publications since. I absolutely love many of those settings, but I have always found it easier and more satisfying to borrow elements from them rather than to try and referee a game using one of them as a specific setting. I didn't have to read far into Appendix N before I could easily see the genesis of some of the elements of the game right there in the pages of the novels and short stories listed.
So it's about time I get to the image at the top of this post, Titan. As it says on the can Titan is the world setting of the Fighting Fantasy adventure books and the Advanced Fighting Fantasy tabletop roleplaying game (Dungeoneer/Blacksand/Allansia). Titan is a rather minimalist fantasy setting in that only the basics are covered in broad strokes that leave lots of room for individualization. Most of the classic fantasy troupes are covered, such as Arabian Nights style adventure, barbarians of the north, knights in shining armour (its a British thing, of course), pirates, etc. Titan is essentially a playground for the imagination (as reflected in the many Fighting Fantasy volumes as well as the tabletop RPG) and is supported throughout the line by some very nice art. As playgrounds go, I think it's a good one.
Legend is the setting of another early British tabletop RPG, Dragon Warriors (Dragon Warriors/The Way of Wizardry/The Elven Crystals/Out of the Shadows/The Power of Darkness/The Lands of Legend). Legend and the Dragon Warriors RPG have a very "medieval" feel where fealty to one's lord, forgotten haunts, and lots of mystery, a rather low magic, superstitious baseline and several engagingly good adventures all leaves me with a fondness for both the game and it's setting. Both Titan and Legend have provided me imaginary space for many hours of fun adventuring and are sentimental favorites.
I have just brushed the surface of the topic, and many other published settings are out there waiting to be discovered, explored, mined and remembered. The human imagination seems an endless source of fantastic settings, some better described than others and some more useful for roleplaying than others. If this hobby has given me nothing else, I am grateful for the faraway places I have glimpsed through the lens of published settings. The enjoyment that alone has brought me is well worth the effort.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Exploring Tekumel
And now for something completely different...
I have been immersing myself in the world of M.A.R.
Barker's Tekumel for the last few days. It's been around as a
sci-fantasy setting since the early days of white box D&D (Empire of the
Petal Throne) and crossed over into miniature gaming early on. Ral
Partha used to have a range of wargaming figures specifically for Tekumel and
there have been various army books and battle rules over the years. I
have seen large 25mm games at various conventions over the years, usually
involving a Sakbe Road (similar to the Great Wall of China).
If you have not heard of Tekumel until now it's one of the classic settings used for gaming. It ranks with Glorantha as one of the oldest and most widely developed, being the setting of several games, several novels and a multitude of fan produced material, mostly available on the web. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Eberron are of course other game settings that have very large followings and much available material. Tekumel is probably the most alien of the big settings, way more alien than any of the TSR/WotC settings which are all pretty much based on medieval Europe.
Tekumel is a pocket universe consisting of a sun and five planets. Once part of our universe Tekumel was discovered and teraformed by space faring humans way in our future. Then it became a pocket universe of its own...no stars, nothing but the sun, five planets and their moons. On Tekumel, that's ancient history. The inhabitants of Tekumel, human and other, live a medieval type existence having lost both the knowledge and use of higher technology. They do have magic, as the laws of their pocket universe/dimension differ from our own. They have also discovered higher beings who can act much like the gods of our ancient human mythology.
If this is starting to sound like a fairly typical RPG setting, the similarity pretty much ends here. There are no elves, dwarfs, etc. The non-human intelligent species are mostly six-limbed, as are many of the fauna. The flora is a mixture of plants brought to Tekumel during the teraforming and indigenous plants which are mostly poisonous.
M.A.R. Barker was a professor of languages much like J.R.R. Tolkien, except where Tolkien studied Old Anglo Saxon, I believe Barker studied Indian and south east Asian languages. The worlds they created show this influence and Prof. Barker, like Prof. Tolkien invented languages specifically for their made-up peoples. The human culture of Tekumel more closely resembles ancient southeast Asian and Mesoamerican cultures than traditional western models as a result.
One doesn't have to read far into the history of our hobby before stumbling on the name "Tekumel". My one-and-only experience with Tekumel, however, was about 35 years ago playing EPT. I remember some of the uniqueness that I am now rediscovering, but obviously one game was a very brief involvement with the setting. EPT has a unique mechanism for introducing the new player to Tekumel (which was used in my introduction), and one I think I will use if I ever referee a game set on Tekumel. The players all start as "barbarians" from an undefined culture, just arrived at a major trading port, and new to the Empire and its ways. The outlander is quickly told they are only allowed in the "visitor" district of town. Clan membership and citizen status are everything in the Empire and the PCs have neither. They do have a future in the Empire however, because the clans and temples hire "outsiders" to do much of their more exciting work, such as dungeon exploring and treasure seeking. Who knows, working for such employers might even lead to adoption into a clan and eventual citizenship?
If you have not heard of Tekumel until now it's one of the classic settings used for gaming. It ranks with Glorantha as one of the oldest and most widely developed, being the setting of several games, several novels and a multitude of fan produced material, mostly available on the web. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Eberron are of course other game settings that have very large followings and much available material. Tekumel is probably the most alien of the big settings, way more alien than any of the TSR/WotC settings which are all pretty much based on medieval Europe.
Tekumel is a pocket universe consisting of a sun and five planets. Once part of our universe Tekumel was discovered and teraformed by space faring humans way in our future. Then it became a pocket universe of its own...no stars, nothing but the sun, five planets and their moons. On Tekumel, that's ancient history. The inhabitants of Tekumel, human and other, live a medieval type existence having lost both the knowledge and use of higher technology. They do have magic, as the laws of their pocket universe/dimension differ from our own. They have also discovered higher beings who can act much like the gods of our ancient human mythology.
If this is starting to sound like a fairly typical RPG setting, the similarity pretty much ends here. There are no elves, dwarfs, etc. The non-human intelligent species are mostly six-limbed, as are many of the fauna. The flora is a mixture of plants brought to Tekumel during the teraforming and indigenous plants which are mostly poisonous.
M.A.R. Barker was a professor of languages much like J.R.R. Tolkien, except where Tolkien studied Old Anglo Saxon, I believe Barker studied Indian and south east Asian languages. The worlds they created show this influence and Prof. Barker, like Prof. Tolkien invented languages specifically for their made-up peoples. The human culture of Tekumel more closely resembles ancient southeast Asian and Mesoamerican cultures than traditional western models as a result.
One doesn't have to read far into the history of our hobby before stumbling on the name "Tekumel". My one-and-only experience with Tekumel, however, was about 35 years ago playing EPT. I remember some of the uniqueness that I am now rediscovering, but obviously one game was a very brief involvement with the setting. EPT has a unique mechanism for introducing the new player to Tekumel (which was used in my introduction), and one I think I will use if I ever referee a game set on Tekumel. The players all start as "barbarians" from an undefined culture, just arrived at a major trading port, and new to the Empire and its ways. The outlander is quickly told they are only allowed in the "visitor" district of town. Clan membership and citizen status are everything in the Empire and the PCs have neither. They do have a future in the Empire however, because the clans and temples hire "outsiders" to do much of their more exciting work, such as dungeon exploring and treasure seeking. Who knows, working for such employers might even lead to adoption into a clan and eventual citizenship?
Friday, October 23, 2015
Dungeon as Milieu
"Just beyond the border lies an old castle, once a stronghold of the evil empire. The dark lord was defeated long ago and the castle abandoned in ruins, but legends say there were dungeons beneath the evil castle. Everyone knows wealth poured into that castle for decades before it was destroyed. Who knows what may still lie at the bottom of those dungeons, just waiting to be found. Now an expedition of stout warriors, and maybe a caster or two, might venture in and come away rich. Or end up dead!"
The words above could be spoken by most any referee beginning a dungeon based adventure. It could also have been from a never written follow-up novel to the Lord of the Rings. The white box has been described as a game written for dungeon adventure. While I think it is much more than simply that, the white box was certainly written with that in mind and works quite well for dungeon adventure type games.
World creation can seem a huge undertaking for a referee, therefore starting out a campaign with a single dungeon may seem like a good alternative. Draw some tunnels and rooms, fill with a selection of monsters and traps, add some treasure all taken from the white box rules and you are ready to run. Simple and manageable and for years that's the way my friends and I played the game, hand-waving any "in-town" activities such as equipment purchases, healing, etc. That was treated as book-keeping and rarely part of "roleplaying".
Unless the referee and players specifically address the cleric and deities this dungeon approach to play can leave the cleric in religion limbo. Which, by-the-way is exactly how we played white box back then. No deities, except bad ones worshiped in the dungeon. How you played your cleric was up to each player with respect to deity (or not) and any religious practices (if any). Adding a near-by town with a chapel, a friendly priest (who can resurrect?), an inn for rest and recuperation, picking up rumors and recruiting, and a store that sells most everything on the equipment list is the beginning of world-building.
Realistically, that's about all a referee needs for a fairly good campaign. Gaming in this manner makes the dungeon the centerpiece of play and it is the dungeon that defines the milieu.To support an interesting game the dungeon has to be more than a collection of rooms, monsters and treasure. It should be a memorable "place". Something should set it apart from other dungeons so that the players recognize it and recall they have been someplace worth visiting. Give it a name, some character. Make use of special places within the dungeon, architecture, history, inhabitants and treasure which all have a uniqueness to them.
"Thousands of years ago there was an ancient civilization here. They buried their mummified kings with gold and gems so that they would be wealthy in the afterlife. To protect these royal tombs they designed elaborate structures with hidden entrances and other defenses to detour would-be robbers."
The words above could be spoken by most any referee beginning a dungeon based adventure. It could also have been from a never written follow-up novel to the Lord of the Rings. The white box has been described as a game written for dungeon adventure. While I think it is much more than simply that, the white box was certainly written with that in mind and works quite well for dungeon adventure type games.
World creation can seem a huge undertaking for a referee, therefore starting out a campaign with a single dungeon may seem like a good alternative. Draw some tunnels and rooms, fill with a selection of monsters and traps, add some treasure all taken from the white box rules and you are ready to run. Simple and manageable and for years that's the way my friends and I played the game, hand-waving any "in-town" activities such as equipment purchases, healing, etc. That was treated as book-keeping and rarely part of "roleplaying".
Unless the referee and players specifically address the cleric and deities this dungeon approach to play can leave the cleric in religion limbo. Which, by-the-way is exactly how we played white box back then. No deities, except bad ones worshiped in the dungeon. How you played your cleric was up to each player with respect to deity (or not) and any religious practices (if any). Adding a near-by town with a chapel, a friendly priest (who can resurrect?), an inn for rest and recuperation, picking up rumors and recruiting, and a store that sells most everything on the equipment list is the beginning of world-building.
Realistically, that's about all a referee needs for a fairly good campaign. Gaming in this manner makes the dungeon the centerpiece of play and it is the dungeon that defines the milieu.To support an interesting game the dungeon has to be more than a collection of rooms, monsters and treasure. It should be a memorable "place". Something should set it apart from other dungeons so that the players recognize it and recall they have been someplace worth visiting. Give it a name, some character. Make use of special places within the dungeon, architecture, history, inhabitants and treasure which all have a uniqueness to them.
"Thousands of years ago there was an ancient civilization here. They buried their mummified kings with gold and gems so that they would be wealthy in the afterlife. To protect these royal tombs they designed elaborate structures with hidden entrances and other defenses to detour would-be robbers."
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