Friday, April 15, 2011

Introduction

The Eye of Joyful Sitting Amongst Friends is a powerful techno-magical item in the Tekumel universe. Eyes are small, handheld devices that use intraplanar power to create magical effects. They are called Eyes, because they are about the size and shape of a human eyeball. They have a small stud on the back to fire the device, and they hold up to 100 charges. The Eye of Joyful Sitting Amongst Friends causes a group of targets to be friendly to the user of the eye. I named this blog after this device, because I hope people will come here and discuss Tekumel as friends.

Tekumel is a fantasy world created by M.A.R. Barker, and described in several role-playing games, including Empire of the Petal Throne. For more information about Tekumel, visit the official Tekumel website or my own Tekumel site.

I have been involved with Tekumel since it was published in 1975. The first role-playing campaign I ever played in was set in Tekumel, and I never looked back. It ruined me, as far as D&D was concerned, forever.

In this blog, I want to discuss the current state of Tekumel, what products are available, what products have come before, and other musings on the topic of this great fantasy universe.

Welcome, Friend!

13 comments:

  1. Otulengba! Welcome to the blogosphere, Brett!

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  2. Ngangmuru! Glad to be here. I've been here a very long time, just not on a blog.

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  3. Delighted to see you doing this! I posted a little mention of your blog on mine, and I hope it'll get you some people. I'm really looking forward to your posts; I learn a lot from you!

    yours, Chirine

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  4. I have this blog bookmarked. I'll be checking it every day.

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  5. Hi Brett,

    Within the last few months I have been increasing my exposure to the widespread OSR (Old School Renaissance) sweeping D&D. I now read a lot of blogs about D&D - which is strange because though I am an original White Box D&D referee, back in the day I dumped D&D in favour of RuneQuest. But I find now I am thinking about EPT and wondering how hard it would be to "update" that set of rules to where Tekumel has advanced. I wouldn't mind a discussion about that, if you are looking for subjects to start you off...

    Howard

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  6. Looking forward to reading your blog Brett! I do a (rather slow-moving) play-by-blog-comment Tekumel campaign over on my blog, and you (and anyone else) are more than welcome to come by, take part, and share your Tekumel wisdom :)

    http://migellito.blogspot.com/search/label/Tekumel

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  7. Excellent, thank you for starting this!

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  8. I am with Howard on this one and would love to hear what the old Tekumel hands think about it.

    I find myself thinking a lot these days that a lightly-updated, re-released EPT would get real bounce in the circles we are blogging in.

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  9. @Howard and @ckutalik:

    The biggest thing EPT needs a temple-based magic system. Maybe you'll see it soon. I have thoughts.

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  10. Thank you for starting this post, Brett. With Ix, Netherspace, and Humanspace Empires, all thinks Tekumel seem to be making a comeback!

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  11. Nice work. Wonder what the astronaut has though. For instance, psi powers are prevalent after the pocket dimension, is this astronaut in that time? A survivor? Military issue of 'eyes' such as you mention in the intro would be exotic, can we have a 'Z-ray eye?'
    I have stats to a 'ring of the Founder' given to early explorers on Tekumel. It is one of the tools that they would have used. The Professor and I worked it out a long time ago. If you like I can send you some description to help equip the astronaut appropriately. :)

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  12. @wjhartle Humanspace Empires assumes those PSY powers were developed by the spacefaring culture, like the Force and the psionic powers from the space fantasy literature that inspired Tekumel.

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  13. As a Tekumel fan, & a gamer, I'm pretty excited to hear about this!

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