Jonathan Sells Tekumel

We're still working on the Beta Playtest Packet for 2E, as well as arranging art and helping set up the 13th Age Second Edition Kickstarter. . . details to arrive soon!

But in the meantime, Jonathan Tweet has a simpler fund-raising effort in progress, and it involves Tekumel. And Planned Parenthood. So I'm giving his effort a space to live in blog world. He's including notes on the Tekumel campaign he ran a few years ago, about 6 years before we began working on 13th Age.

If you are interested in this treasure trove, contact Jonathan through his Facebook author-page: https://www.facebook.com/JonathanMTweet

LATE MARCH: IT SOLD!

Jonathan says . . .

Here’s my third game collection that I’m selling off to raise money for Planned Parenthood ($150 raised so far).

TSR’s Empire of the Petal Throne by M A R Barker was the first culture-based, world-centric RPG. In 1977, when my dad took me to the college where he taught so I could see the students playing RPGs, they were playing Empire of the Petal Throne. Over the decades, this setting has reappeared repeatedly with different treatments and rules sets. It’s like nothing else: an ancient, stratified culture with malevolent gods whose worship includes orgies & human sacrifice; an oppressive empire with traditional clans of various status; haunted ruins of the world’s ancient past; and a planet where most of the sentient beings, animals, and monsters are decidedly alien. Humans on Tekumel are descended from space-faring earthlings, but science collapsed long ago after a cosmic catastrophe separated the planet from the rest of the universe. There are no stars in the Tekumel’s sky because its star system is alone. Now humans are stuck here with the alien inhabitants of this world, plus numerous bizarre sentient being that likewise descend from space-faring species. Some ancient tech remains, but it’s treated like magic. Many sorts of beings, including humans, cast spells through psychic power.

As a teen, I played a little Empire of the Petal Throne, then I collected Tekumel works over the years, and finally around 2005 I ran several sessions using my own custom rule set. My rules used the d20 system for combat but an all-new system for character generation and powers. These rules were the first time I had spellcasters casting spells so powerful that they took 2 rounds to cast. The super-simple rules were inspired by the virtually unknown RPG Conrad’s Fantasy, by “Red” Rahm. (Conrad’s Fantasy and Rahm’s other inimitable RPGs are another collection slated for a later charity sale.) My rules, campaign notes, and character sheets are part of this package. You can also see more at https://www.jonathantweet.com/ept_topics.html.

Raymond Feist’s Riftwar books are based on his alt-D&D campaign, which featured an invasion (through interdimensional rifts) from Tekumel. Feist changed the invading planet’s name, but his “Kelewan” is clearly Tekumel with the serial numbers filed off.

This set ranges from a reprint of the original game rules to the most recent game sets that I know of. The Tekumel hardback in this set sells for over $100 these days, and the Mitlanyal volumes go for $200 to $300 each. This collection includes a bunch of great resources that I would have loved to have had back in the day when my teen game group played in this intricate and highly alien setting. The art, for one thing, is far better than it was in the ’70s! Included in this collection are dozens of official Tekumel miniatures, as Tekumel is a setting for minis battles as well as roleplaying. This collection is for someone who loves Tekumel or for someone who loves Planned Parenthood, and I’m asking for a $500 donation plus shipping. If you know any Tekumel fans, please let them know. You might also want to acquire this material on behalf of a good game library.

2nd Book First: The Two Towers

the original tome, battered but intact

As a kid, I read what I could find. Thanks to the vagaries of bookstores and the limitations of libraries, there were at least four great fantasy series that I entered via the second floor, book number two, sometimes without even knowing I'd missed the actual entrance.

Yes, this is a story about olden days. 

The Lord of the Rings was my first missed doorway. My mother had the full unlicensed Ace trilogy. She wouldn't let me read it when I was in second grade, living in Heidelberg Germany, but that probably wouldn't have stopped me for long, except that our teen babysitter smoked cigarettes in our apartment and borrowed The Fellowship of the Ring. Cigarettes? Forgiven.  The Fellowship? Gone with a moving van when the girl's family got shipped off-base a couple months later.

Mom refused to buy a new copy of the book. I suspect that her arguments--the former babysitter's ongoing obligation to return the copy, and money--were screens for the fact that she just didn't want me reading Tolkien as a second or third grader. But it's also possible that we couldn't find a copy. We were in Germany, the Ace books were being outed as unapproved, and we certainly never shopped anywhere that had them for sale. About a year later Mom tried to get me to read The Hobbit, but that wasn't gonna happen, that book was for kids. Said me. 

So in fourth grade, still in Germany, I read The Two Towers. For me, the Lord of the Rings didn't start with Bilbo's 100th birthday party, hooded riders in the Shire, and hapless hobbits having to be rescued from trees and barrow wights. It started with three kickass warriors--an elf, a dwarf, and a ranger--chasing orcs across an endless plain. The orcs' hobbit victims felt less hapless, given that they (spoiler alert) eventually figured out how to cut themselves loose and run away. Riders of Rohan? Keeping score at Helm's Deep! Onward! There are people who dislike The Two Towers because it's a sequence of military encounters and landscapes, punctuated by ents. For me, growing up on Army bases, trying to figure out ways to play with my Airfix Roman and barbarian armies, a book of fantasy military encounters was exactly what I was looking for. I reread The Two Towers as soon as I finished the first pass, since the Frodo stuff at the start of Return of the King made me aware I didn't actually understand what was going on. 

We returned to the USA before I entered fifth grade. Our first week back, Mom went shopping at a big American bookstore and returned with a present: Ballantine's The Fellowship of the Ring. She cared that it was an authorized edition. The picture of the author on the back revealed that Tolkien smoked a pipe like my dad. We were home.