Gary Alan Fine and I have co-authored “Soft Communities and Deviance in Dungeons & Dragons” which will be included in the upcoming anthology from MIT Press, entitled Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons. This volume, edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter and José P. Zagal, “explores and celebrates the game’s legacy and its tremendous impact on… Continue reading 50 Years of D&D, from MIT Press
It is worth keeping in mind that Empire of the Petal Throne (EPT) was one of the first roleplaying games published after Original D&D. The fact that it is well-written and laid-out in a clean and attractive fashion for the time can mask this fact. But that also means that there are things not necessarily… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: EPT Rules Updates Part One
Tékumel is very well suited to the long-form tabletop roleplaying campaign. It has cultural, social, and historical depth, it covers a vast area, and has tremendous detail to it. It is also incomplete, which invites further participation by game masters wanting to contribute their own ideas to the game. So it should not be surprising… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: Starting My Campaign
This is the first Dispatch to the Petal Throne, and is highly appropriate, since it involves an adventure undertaken by one of Bill Hoyt’s characters, a priest of Keténgku… “ . . .Know ye, O Perfumer of the Nostrils of the Gods, that an intelligence has come from your city of Urmish of most curious… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: The Haunted Sákbe-Road
Just got back from Gary Con XVI, so this is about how to run Tékumel convention events and how to attract players for a Tékumel campaign. At Gary Con XVI I ran three different adventures, all based out of the northern Tsolyáni city of Khirgár. Here is the description for the second one: Deep in… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: Gary Con XVI
Starting in The Strategic Review, Vol. II, No. 2, published in April 1976, reports of what was happening in Prof. Barker’s campaign began to appear. These were written in the form of dispatches sent through the Imperial bureaucracy, possibly requiring some sort of action – thus giving readers a window into the World of Tekumel. … Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: What About All Those Dispatches?
Probably the biggest issue that people have with running Tékumel is that the setting is an unknown and foreign land, and nobody is actually from there. Original Dungeons & Dragons seemed to assume that the adventurers were on the edge of civilization, and beating back the forces of darkness. Tékumel, by contrast, seems like you… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: Fresh Off the Boat
In my Tékumel Thursday post last week, I talked about making a decisive change to my Tékumel, essentially creating my own branch on the Tree of Time. I did this by eliminating one character and their later actions from the campaign. Put another way, I decided that the starting “canon” for the campaign would come… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: What About All Those Player-Characters?
In my earlier post about my Tékumel campaign, I mentioned that in my timeline, the High Princeps of the Temple of Thúmis, Gámalu hiBeshyéne, had died in a shipwreck late in 2355 AS. After some behind the scenes political maneuvering, he had been replaced by Lady Nátluna hiVaisúra, the High Administrative Priestess of Thúmis in… Continue reading Tékumel Thursday: A Disaster at Sea
http://www.capricon.org I am very happy to announce that I will be the Fan Guest of Honor at Capricon 44. My fellow guests are fantastic, and I am very lucky to be in their company! With that in mind, what are some provocative – yet important! – topics relevant to science fiction fandom and conventions? Serious… Continue reading I’m a Capricon Guest of Honor!
