The Tipping Point

I've come to realize in preparing for the con a couple weeks ago that GURPS 4th edition holds little of interest for me. My play style is more aligned with a much lighter set of rules. The camel straw was downloading a combat cheat sheet. It was 2 pages of tiny, densely packed print with more than half of the cheat sheet stuff that I completely ignore.

Don't get me wrong. I love GURPS. I've written for it and played it for 25 years. They publish IMHO the best supplements on most any given topic that I've read or played. Their advice in Space, Fantasy, Thaumatology, Time Travel, etc. for building a campaign and a world of a particular type is hands-down outstanding. I'm currently using Thaumatology to build the magical underpinnings of my daVinci-punk setting that won't even use GURPS rules.

One complication of this is that I'm a member of The Men in Black, Steve Jackson's cadre of demonstrators and GMs for store and convention support, and I still want to remain a member. I could just start running tournaments of Munchkin and Revolution! at cons, but my heart is in roleplaying.

So, I've decided that I'll continue to run GURPS games at cons using GURPS Lite, a free 32-page ruleset that contains the essence of the GURPS system. On top of this, I can add whatever I need, magic, ultra-tech gear, time travel, whatever.

Another outcome of this revelation is that for system development, I'll be focusing on other things, notably OSR rules and supplements. I'm writing my own d100 old school game and several settings. Tekumel will remain at the center of my interest, as it has for the last 38 years. I will finish my GURPS Tekumel rules, but that is probably my last major GURPS project. I will also translate some of my other projects into GURPS for the purpose of running at cons, but those will mostly be only personal translations, not published ones.

Five Minute Map

Here's my five minute map, a small castle that might show up in my default setting for my d100 OSR game, 100 Ways to Kill a Kobold.

In retrospect, I'd move the inner gate to the south wall, and place another wall across the word 'Bailey' -- tower to tower -- and have another gate in that wall. Increases the security. This way, an invader just has to get through the first gate and immediately can hit the inner gate.

Now *that* was a con!

I had a great time at Con of the North, a nice regional con with about 700 attendees.

I took Friday off to prepare for my game, scheduled for 2pm. Good thing I did too, because I spent a good chunk of that picking up miniatures from a friend's house. After chatting and picking lead, I went out and found my battery dead. (My friend had gone to bed immediately after I left.) That's what AAA is for. An hour later I was on the road to eat, shower, and drive to St. Paul.

I had four players for GURPS Tekumel: a mage, a K-9 warrior, a scout, and a florentine ax man. I was running Rumble in Jakalla again. Everyone worked well together and the party did not split, at least not out of sight of each other. They walked into the tunnel to the underworld beneath the city without trepidation. They dispatched denizens of the darkness handily with spell and bow and chlen-hide. They did walk right up to the entrance of the very interesting section, but then turned around, because of someone's paranoia about not checking every inch behind them. I let them leave as much as I wanted them to check it out. They walked farther down one tunnel than I expected, but at the end, discovered fellow explorers in need of decent food. They made a deal with them to supply food for them in exchange for cooperating in the investigation of the area of the dungeon. I think everyone had fun. I sure did.

I've now run this scenario three times with three different systems (TFT, EPT, and GURPS). Each works just as well as the other, though I think EPT is somewhat deadlier than the other two. Two out of three times, the player's missed the clues to find the cool part. The third party walked in to the tomb, found the forced exit, and never went back. After the first time, I adjusted things to present fewer options to the players. Cave-ins after an earthquake are good for that. Both of the later groups at least found the entrance. Another good reason to playtest. Before I finalize this to publish it, I think I'll move some corridors and rooms around, putting more interesting stuff in the vicinity. In the end, it will be a small area of the Jakallan underworld of my own design.


The next day, I spent the morning entering characters into GURPS Character Builder to print character sheets. I printed them and left for my first session of the day. I played Pandemic by Z-Man Games. It's a boardgame of deadly disease outbreaks. It is unusual in that it is a cooperative game, the players against the diseases. I really liked the cooperative play, and the mechanics of the diseases were very nicely worked out. The special abilities of the various character types were interesting. In the end, we lost, with a huge cascading outbreak in Europe that infected North America as well. We all had fun anyway.

The time for my next game I was running, a GURPS Traveller scenario, came and went with no players. I think the 8 pm to 2 am time slot scared people away. I'll request an earlier time next time. So instead, I cruised the open gaming area and found a couple of my buddies, Richard and Don. We played Trans-America from Rio Grande Games, an easy and fast train building game. I was impressed with the fast play. I accidentally helped another player win by connecting with San Diego instead of Los Angeles. Oops. Then we played the 4-player Lost Cities boardgame, which I also enjoyed.

Sunday was my turn to play RPGs. I first played Heirs to the Lost World, an alternate history Age of Pirates game from Obsidian Serpent, with the author GMing the game. The setting is also a wonderfully creative place. The premise is that the Aztec and Mayan empires never fell to the Spanish, because their magic counteracted the European edge in technology. So the new world has both Aztec and Mayan cultures intact. All of the cultures have magical workers: alchemists, Voodoo, shamanism, shapeshifters, etc. The spirit world comes into play frequently. I really like how the GM runs things. I've played this game before, and I love the dice pool mechanics, even though I hate dice pool mechanics. These flow easily and give the players lots of options for play. I highly recommend this game.

The other game was a FATE version of Tekumel run by . I've never played FATE before, and I think it worked well. John's adaptation to Tekumel was good. I had a lot of fun playing one of the alien races, a Tinaliya. These are small (3.5 foot) beings with four legs and an insatiable curiosity. And they are totally literal. Fun to play. This fellow was an expert in mechanisms, and thus became the burglar. Another great time was had.

So for me, a great con, even though one of my games didn't run.

At Con of the North

Since I'm at Con of the North this weekend, there will be no Alternate History Friday or Random Campaign Sunday until I get back.

Don't worry. You'll get your fix. Just a little late.

Testing Eyes to Determine their Nature

On Tekumel, Eyes are small techno-magical devices of the Ancients. They draw power from the Planes Beyond and produce specific effects. They were originally tools, now they are magical treasures. Most of them are somewhere between 30 to 40 thousand years old. Some are older.

They are called Eyes because they are about the size of an eyeball and they have a lens or aperture on one side and stud on the other. Some have counters in some old forgotten language, and some of those have had more modern numbers written over them. Some people have written the name of the Eye in paint or ink on the Eye itself. It will probably be in some ancient tongue no one remembers.

The 36 types listed in Empire of the Petal Throne require some fearsome testing to figure out what they are. Here is the surefire method of figuring out what magical bauble you have recovered from the deep underworld or been given as a birthday present.

Testing Eyes to Determine their Nature

Materials Required

• a mrur or other undead.
• human slaves that satisfy each of the following conditions. They can be all one slave or several slaves, but all of them are at risk of death. The necessary conditions are: sexually attractive to the tester, a recent injury, missing a hand, foot, leg, or arm. If slaves are too valuable, use bound captured soldiers or expendable persons from the Foreigner's Quarter.
• a dead body not more than 18 days dead.
• an unenchanted steel weapon.
• a free person who knows a foreign language that you don’t know.
• a jealous rival or captured enemy.
• a rock.
• a trapped chest or other item.
• a bonfire.
• an Eye with no remaining charges, hopefully with a known effect
• a Magic user with Remove Curse, Detect Magic, and either Neutralize Poison or some kind of wind spell.

Setup

• In an outdoor area, preferably on the roof, just after sundown or before sunrise, have the Mrur and the slaves stand close together in front of a wall.
• Lay the dead body at their feet.
• Place the steel weapon on the dead body.
• Situate the foreign speaker, the rival or enemy, the magic user and trapped chest behind the tester. The rival should be 2 yards away, the foreign speaker 3 yards away, and the trapped chest 4 yards away.
• Ask the slaves, “Which is more important? The stability of society or the freedom of the individual?” Note their responses.
• Light the bonfire nearby.
• Stand at an angle from the Mrur and slaves 1 yard away.

Procedure

1. Twist the stud
• A bunch of inanimate stuff appears: Eye of Retaining All Things.
2. Push stud halfway, while standing 50 feet away from testing area. Return to original location.
3. Point the Eye at the undead creature.
4. Push stud fully.

• If the undead and slaves both flee in terror: Abominable Eye of Detestation.
• If the slaves flee in terror, but the undead does not: Eye of Indefinable Apprehension.
• If one or more of the slaves and undead, completely stop moving, and get a reddish tinge: Excellent Ruby Eye.
• If a beam blasts one or more of the figures and puts a hole in the wall: Eye of Advancing Through Portals.
• If a beam blasts one or more of the figures, but the wall is intact, and the beam bounces off the wall: Terrible Eye of Raging Power.
• If a beam hits the targets and they freeze or get frostbite: Eye of Frigid Breath.
• If a beam harmlessly strikes the figures and they are illuminated for a period of time: Eye of All-Seeing Wonder.
• If the figures are crushed and crumpled as if by a giant hand: Splendid Eye of Krá the Mighty.
• If one or more of the figures and the tester begin to fly vertically and horizontally: Eye of Aerial Excellence.
• If the tester floats up in the air, but can only move vertically: Eye of Rising Above All.
• If one or more of the figures and the tester disappear and reappear over where you pushed the stud halfway: Eye of Departing in Safety.
• If the dead body starts breathing, gets up, opens its eyes, etc.: Eye of Bestowing Life.
• If up to a hundred mechanical men appear: Eye of Calling Forth an Unconquerable Army.
• If scary things that are not mechanical men appear: Eye of Insubstantial Visioning.
• If the eye emits a cloud of gas: Eye of the Creeping Fog of Doom. Have the magic user dissipate the cloud with the wind spell, or cure everyone affected by poison.
• If the sexually attractive slave acts sexy and comes on to you: Eye of Exquisite Power over Maidens.
• If the area is bathed in a soft light: Eye of Illuminating Glory.
• If some number of the slaves, the rival, and the foreign speaker act mad, gibbering, talking to themselves, laughing uncontrollably, etc.: Eye of Madness. Have the magic user cast Remove Curse on them.
• If the magic user exclaims, “You’ve all disappeared!”: Eye of Non-Seeing.
• If the magic user exclaims, “You’re all enshrouded in darkness!”: Eye of Returning Unto Darkness.
• If the Eye buzzes, move more than 5 yards away from the trapped chest. If it stops buzzing: Eye of Opening the Way.
• If a wall of fire appears 5 yards around the tester: Eye of Raising an Infernal Barrier.
• If the slave with the missing body part is restored: Eye of Regeneration.
• If the recent wounds heal: Ineluctable Eye of Healing.

If Nothing Happens

5. Have the person with the rock toss it at you.
• If it bounces off without hitting you: Eye of Being an Unimpeachable Shield against Foes.
6. Ask the slaves to run fast.
• If they run very slowly: Eye of Retarding Destiny.
• If they run very very quickly: Eye of Hastening Destiny.
7. Ask the foreign speaker to say a couple sentences in the foreign language.
• If you understand them: Eye of Incomparable Understanding.
8. Ask the rival to have tea with you. Bring up the subject of their jealousy.
• If the rival acts friendly and discounts your conflict: Eye of Joyful Sitting Amongst Friends.
9. Have the magic user cast Detect Magic on the steel weapon.
• If it is magical: Eye of Strengthening the Majesty of Weapons.
10. Mentally command the slaves to attack the Mrur.
• If they comply with your command: Incomparable Eye of Command.
11. Verbally command your rival to attack the Mrur.
• If they comply with your request: Eye of Ruling as a King in Glory.
12. Ask the slaves again the question, “Which is more important? The stability of society or the freedom of the individual?”.
• If their responses are different than previously: Eye of Transformation.
13. Quickly put a foot into the bonfire.
• If you don’t scream in pain: Eye of Triumphant Passage Through Infernos.
14. Touch the Eye to the uncharged Eye and click the stud again.
• If the uncharged Eye vanishes: Eye of Retaining All Things.
15. Attempt to use the uncharged eye.
• If the uncharged Eye produces an effect: Thoroughly Useful Eye.

If some other effect occurs, you have a new Eye, probably caused by a malfunction. If the Eye explodes, the Eye is defective. Otherwise the Eye is broken, defective, or a fake.

Random Campaigns

These random campaigns have nothing in common, except the ultimate gameablity of the settings. I think either one would make a great campaign.

Sensei Von Helsing

(Horror, Martial Arts, Blood Types)

  With the help of a Shaolin priest, Von Helsing begins training a cadre of martial artists to combat the rising tide of vampires. A new weapon maneuver is perfected using a wooden stake.

East meets west against the vampires. I suppose they might run into Chinese hopping vampires, as well as the more usual Romanian ones. I've seen Buffy train in the dreaded stake maneuver.

Hero in Mirrorshades

(Conan, CthulhuPunk, Voodoo: The Shadow War)

Escaping from the ranks of the cyber-gladiators, a new street samurai takes on the followers of the Great Old Ones, aided by a Voudoun Hougan, a common thief, and Red Sonja, the handle of a beautiful and talented decker.

I seriously want to play in this one, and I don't even like cyberpunk. And Red Sonja has me intrigued.

Online Tekumel Community Resources

Tékumel has a long history of an active community. In the late 1970s through the 1980s, the official fanzines (Tékumel Journal, Journal of Tekumelani Affairs, Imperial Military Journal, The Imperial Courier) kept the designers in touch with the players. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the community went digital and the mailing lists (Tékumel Digest, The Blue Room, and the Tékumel  ahoo! Group) took over. Nowadays, Tékumel  has a pretty active set of communities online. This post will survey them.

Tékumel Website and Forums

The official Tekumel website is a gorgeous creation, one of the best game-related sites I've ever seen. It is a fount of information about the world and games of Tekumel. I has adventures, rules, encyclopedic articles, art, and more. 

It also has the Tekumel Forums, a place to discuss all things Tekumelani. The folks ther are friendly and helpful. Check it out, read some posts, and respond. 

Tékumel-related Yahoo! Groups 

A variety of groups exist on Yahoo. The main Tekumel group is active, and the miniatures group is pretty active as well. Many of the other ones need more activity. Check out the archives. 

• tekumel: The main Tékumel group. Active. The archives hold great amounts of fun discussion. Anything new gets announced here. This is a must-read list.
• apatekumel: Visitations of Glory, the Tékumel Amateur Press Association (APA). No issues since Feb 2008. The files section contains most of the issues of the apazine, as well as Tekumel.com. If you need an adventure, the issues have tons of great material.
• tekumelnovels: Discussion of Man of Gold and Professor Barker's other novels. Last message in 2009.
• tsolyani: For the discussion of the Tsolyáni language. This summer they had a VOIP teleconference.
• MightyImperialDeeds: A group for posting your game reports in the style of Imperial Dispatches, as was done in the fanzines of old. Only one message, but a new one is pending. (I just sent a Dispatch that I wrote for a recent game and posted on my website. When I saw the description of this group, I sent the Dispatch in to the moderator.)
• savage_tekumel: A group for developing a set of Savage Worlds rules for Tékumel. The author of this rule set posted drafts in 2009. Nothing has been posted since then.
• TekumelArt: For the dissemination of fan art related to Tékumel, as well as discussion of various methods of producing said art, such as electronic means. Not much traffic.
• TekumelMinis-War: This group is for talking about Tékumel miniatures and wargaming. The new figures have helped revitalize this group, which has recent activity.
• tenebrousplaces: This group publishes Tenebrous Places: The Magazine for People Being Pursued by the Undead, a stylish graphic magazine with a humorous slant, as well as other graphical constructs of the moderator. It's been a couple years since the last post of substance, but the archives are well worth looking at. Very funny stuff.

Tékumel Facebook group

The Tekumel Facebook group is gets a fair amount of traffic. If you use FB a lot, check it out.

Tékumel Google+ Community

The Tékumel Google+ Community is brand new and quite active. I really like how it's taken off and brought new people into the Bethorm of Tekumel. 

Archives of Previous Communities

The Blue Room Archive Search Engine -- a search engine into the Blue Room Archive, a mailing list maintained by Chris Davies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Massive amount of good content.
The Tekumel Digest -- mailing list maintained by me during the early 1990s.
Shadowlands BBS archive -- a BBS maintained by James Roach in the 1990s with some Tekumel content.
alt.games.frp.tekumel archives -- a USENET group from the 1990s.

So, there's no excuse if you are feeling alone and isolated in your love of Tekumel. There are many places to hang out with new friends.

Alternate Histories Past and Present

First into prehistory and then to the recent past, two alternate worlds are here presented for your reading pleasure.

Walker World

A virus in the Pliocene Era wipes out Eohippus and all its relatives. The horse never survived to be the powerhouse to replace human power. Face it: a team of oxen just doesn't cut it when you want to go fast. Things in the Old World happened about the same as in our world, until the Roman Era. The barbarians never developed cavalry, and the Roman legion remained king. This just delayed the inevitable about 200 years. Rome fell due to internal decay. The desert tribes of the Arabian peninsula remained flea-scratching nomads, and Mohammed never started Islam, or, at least, it never caught on. The Crusades never happened. The Indian subcontinent retained much of its early culture well into the second millennia. No knights of chivalry. Countries are much more stable, since armies must travel at a foot soldier's pace. TL 4 prevails.

I've played in this world. It's Tekumel, only not. Oxen don't make very good riding mounts.

Assassin's World

Ronald Reagan dies from John Hinckley's bullet. George Bush is ushered in, appointing Alexander Haig as his V.P. Two years later, Bush is assassinated during the Presidential campaign, and Haig invokes martial law. A massive FBI investigation reveals Bush's killing to be the work of a conspiracy of crazed lone assassins. The public buys the obvious oxymoron. Haig lasts thirteen months before, you guessed it, another lone kook blows his head off, as well as that of the Speaker of the House. Control of the country falls to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two of which are killed within weeks. The Surgeon-General, C. Evert Coup, issues a report explaining that this rash of insanity is caused by a new virus that has infected the population: Acquired Insane Dementia Syndrome or AIDS. Anyone can carry it and pass it along in large groups, like football stadiums, religious rallies, corporate stockholder meetings, etc. No symptoms appear, until one day the victim wakes up in a homicidal frenzy. Coup's news conference is disrupted when he and many reporters are killed by a suicide bomber. Multinational corporations and tour guides carry this plague to the rest of the world. Chaos ensues.

Ew, where was my brain when I came up with that? Whew.

Illuminati Random Campaigns

Well from Illuminati University, the natural direction to go is the Illuminati. Here's a couple campaigns that are sure to illuminate.

Templars Against the White Brotherhood

(Martial Arts, Middle Ages 1, Illuminati)

A group of Knights Templar, Weapon Masters all, are sent on covert missions to combat the rising power of the White Brotherhood, a secret society of magicians, alchemists, diviners and necromancers, who meddle in medieval affairs for their own benefit.

This is on my list of campaigns I'd run in a hot second. I have the start of the White Brotherhood in my C&S notes. And building the Knights-Templar templates, the special forces of their day, would be amazing.

The Sons of Freedom - Squish!

(Illuminati, Goblins, Reign of Steel)

In this darkly humorous future, the robots have taken over from the Goblins. In their fight for freedom, the Goblins band into secret societies to combat the android mechanicals. Much slap-stick involved.

I have some weird friends that would be amused by this. I think I'd go nuts.

An Alternate America

Continuing my alternate history collection, this idea came from my friend, +John Finsrud, a long-time gamer and history buff. #alternatehistory #alternatehistoryfriday

Imperial Earth

This alternate starts with the Confederate States of America receiving much stronger support from Britain because the crop failure in the European wheat crop from 1860-62 never happened, thus removing British reliance on importing Union wheat. The Confederate Army, with better supplies of arms and food along with training, fight  the Union to a stalemate. They achieve sovereignty, and the Union abandons the War as too costly. One interesting thing that happened during the war was that during the Union siege and blockade of New Orleans, the Mayor of New Orleans asked the French for help in lifting the siege, and a small French fleet breaks the blockade and French troops reclaim New Orleans as French territory.

After the war, the Union's nose is bloodied and the National Ego is bruised. The U.S. loses its expansionist fervor, and turns inward. It never becomes the world power it did in our parallel. The U.S. stretches from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. The vast expanse of the Louisiana Purchase is never heavily settled, and the Indians and what settlers there are strike a peaceful deal, since the settlers know there won't be any cavalry coming over the hill. Alaska remains in Russian hands.

Texas resumes its secessionist tendencies after the Civil War and leaves the Confederacy to become its own nation. Several border clashes occur between Texas and Mexico. A truce is settled and Texas and Mexico eventually form an alliance. Mexico keeps its original holdings in the Southwest and becomes a much more powerful regional state than on our timeline.

The forces that led Europe to World War I still exist. WWI arrives on schedule, but after the intense clashes of October, a hurried peace is made, ending the war but resolving nothing. The consequence of this is that the Great Empires of Europe never fall: Czarist Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans are all still around, as well as the British and French, conniving and scheming against each other.

This is a politically very interesting place to be. Lots of intrigue, diplomacy, espionage, etc. You've got multiple North American nations to deal with and Europe is very interested in the New World.


I created a GURPS character in this world: Jacques Devereux, Agent of France.