Sunday, January 24, 2021

The Best of the Journal: The Pettigrew Selections

Mark Pettigrew wrote the delightful swashbuckling role-playing game, Flashing Blades. He also wrote two Tekumel adventures, A Jakallan Intrigue and The Tomb Complex of NereshanboThe Best of the Journal: The Pettigrew Selections is a collection of his articles from two of the Tekumel fanzines of the 1980s, The Imperial Courier and The Journal of Tekumeli Affairs.

Tauknelin Zu'aryal: A Thousand Flowers describes an ancient art of paper folding similar to origami, used for various occasions. It makes a nice detail to add to a festive party or ritual.

Marching with the Ever-Glorious provides a sort of life path system for being in a legion during the war with Yan Kor. It reminds me of the classic Traveller Book 4: Mercenary military tour of duty system. You roll each month for an event and find out what happens. Do you go on a raid or lose your kilt in a Kevuk dice game?

The High Seas of Tekumel provides a system for ocean-going merchants plying the seas looking for profit and adventure. You buy a ship and acquire a crew, and then you better fill the hold with valuables. The economic system is a little simple and fairly easy to make a good profit. Might need tweaking. But it is a solid framework to work from. This also reminds me of Traveller merchants.

The Underworlds is a complete system for random Tekumel underworld mapping. It divides levels up into groups of rooms with a single purpose called structures. Sample structures are catacombs, shrines, tombs, palaces, wizard towers, canals, mazes, nexus points, and ancient tunnels. Each structure type has a table of room types, like labs and summoning rooms, living quarters and courtyards for the wizard tower. Further tables give more details to the rooms. I really want to map something out with this. It sounds like a way to make underworlds that make some sense in the setting rather than purely random affairs.

New Magical Items for EPT details sixteen amulets and miscellaneous magical Items. The Scimitar of Chake the Dismemberer was mentioned in The Book of Ebon Bindings. Korunkoi hiBiyurmongekh or The Tome of Alchemy is a book that teaches the Transmutation spell. More delights await.

The Hirilakte Arena delivers tables for determining the opponents at the arena and betting. 

NPC Personalities in EPT gives a system for giving NPCs some pizzazz.

I encourage you to explore his work. The Flashing Blades boxed set is one of the best Three Musketeer-style swashbuckling games published. It has several adventures and a Caribbean pirate supplement as well. Highly recommended.

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