I normally don't
bother such things on this blog, but recently, on a site that I have
been known to frequent, the often voiced opinion that Tékumel is not a popular,
or well known setting, because it is too complex to run successfully, unless
you are MAR Barker, was repeated again
Tékumel as a setting is as playable as any other commercial
setting. The failure lay in the foolish notion that somehow arose, and was
perpetuated by many gamers, that the only/one way to run a game using this
campaign setting was to follow Phil's "Tékumel Prime game" in order
for it to work. All of the later affectations regarding pronunciation, immersion,
etc stem from this desire to emulate the original campaign game, even though
from the get go MAR Barker asserted that this was not possible, and people
should make Tékumel their own. I have never understood this attitude. The
complexity of the setting is not a prerequisite to playing a Tékumel campaign,
but something that needs to be gradually developed over many sessions, if
that is what the DM and players want. This is the crux of the
matter. Do you want an Anthropological exercise, or do you want to play
make-belief, "make some shit up," and push some lead figures around?
From my experience, and probably the experience of the vast majority of regular
Tékumel players, including "Chirine
baKal", "Gronan of Simmerya" (aka General Korunme), Dave Arneson
(aka "Captain Harchar") and MAR Barker himself, the latter is closer
to so-called "real Tékumel" than the former.
I am currently running a Tékumel Campaign that is in its second year, with two
of the four players in the group not having a clue what the game world was like
before they sat down to play. The remaining players in the group had, at best,
a passing familiarity with the milieu but certainly were not
"experts." They are now, finally, "getting" Tékumel. They
have absorbed the background material and, to quote the above mentioned Chirine,
have "gone native." The reality is that I could have easily had the
same campaign set in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or my own campaign world and
changed very little of the story. The complexity would have gradually developed
except that you would have a faux medieval world to explore instead a fusion of
Mughal, Meso-American, Egyptian and Barsoomian cultures. Both have their
challenges if an immersive gaming experience is desired, but in both cases you
can still enjoy yourself and not give a toss whether a name is pronounced a
certain way, or someone should be greeted by a particular honorific. There is
no need to understand the cultural nuances of Tsolyáni society prior to
playing. I would be curious if anyone knows if such a requirement is even
stated anywhere in the official literature.
The fact that many gamers feel that some type of major prep work is mandatory
in order to play is too bad. They are missing out on a playing experience that
is not a mere re-hash of the same Tolkienesque tripe.
