U-Con Tekumel Track Schedule

We have the schedule for the U-Con Tekumel Track. I'm running two games, Fresh Off the Boat using Heroic Age of Tekumel, and Princess Zira and the Jungle Ruins using Warriors of the Red Planet.

Sometime today, event registration begins! Register here!

10a

Ahoggya Ark, GM: John Till, 6 players, Metamorphosis Alpha 1st edition, Friday 10a-2p. 

Humans, mutants, & thousands of disgusting Ahoggya, trapped together on an out-of-control generation ship! If you like Metamorphosis Alpha, Tekumel, or are Ahoggya-curious, this adventure is for you!

5p

Tekumel: Joyful Sitting Among Friends, GM: George Hammond, 30 players, Friday 5p-7p. 

This is the annual welcome gathering for the Tekumel Track. Join us to find out about the weekend's Tekumel events, or the Tekumel setting in general, and meet other fans of the setting. 

8p

Tekumel: Hlaka 2: The way home, GM: Patrick Brady, 7 players, Friday 8p-12a. 

You are a group of Hlaka mercenaries who find themselves on the losing side in the civil war.

Rumble in Jakalla 2, GM: Brett Slocum, 8 players, Friday 8p-12a. 

Jakalla, the City Half as Old as the World, trembles before the power of the Gods! Priests of the Temple of Thumis, Stability Lord of Knowledge, must deal with the aftermath of an earthquake and the crack in the temple foundation.

Saturday

9a

A Night’s Entertainment, GM: Krista Donnelly, 6 players, Bethorm , Saturday 9a-1p. 

Emerald Circlet may be the lowest of the low clans, but you sing, you dance and you entertain as you make your way along the Sákbe Road of life. Sometimes the Guard chases you away, but sometimes the high clans just want some amusement. Today is your lucky day - you are on your way to your biggest commission yet. 

2p

Fresh Off the Boat, GM: Brett Slocum, 8 players, Heroic Age of Tekumel, Saturday 2p-6p. 

After a disaster, your entire tribe pulls up stakes and moves across the ocean to the sparkling gem of Jakalla, The City Half as Old as the World. Is civilization all it's cracked up to be? Can you survive in an urban metropolis? Will you see what lies beneath the streets and live to tell about it? 

8p

Princess Zira & the Jungle Ruins, GM: Brett Slocum, 6 players, Warriors of the Red Planet, Saturday 8p-12a. 

On the way to a peace conference, Princess Zira and her entourage are kidnapped. Survive the trials of Ayo-Xatl, a ruined city in the jungle, including cultists of the Outer Space Goddess, Vu-bats, and the legendary Beast of Ayo-Xatl. Experience Tekumel during the Latter Times, only a couple thousand years after the entire star system was sucked into a pocket dimension, in this Sword and Planet adventure. Using the new Warriors of the Red Planet rules, a D&D clone for Sword and Planet roleplaying. 

Sunday

9a

Trouble in the Foreigner's Quarter, GM: John Till, 5 players, Fate of Tekumel, Sunday 9a-1p. 

Strangers in the Foreigners' Quarter bring trouble to the Great Stone clan of Thraya! Clan members must investigate, before embarrassing affairs come to light! Tekumel adventure for fans new and old! 

2p

A Guard’s Life, GM: Krista Donnelly, 6 players, Bethorm, Sunday 2p-6p. 

Life is sweet as a Sákbe Road guard. Opportunity abounds, especially when the tirrikámu is away on mandatory training. But he will only be gone for one day so you had better make the most of it. 

Tekumel Track at Con of the North, Feb. 12-14, 2016

I have submitted a proposal for a Tekumel Track with a dedicated room for Con of the North in Minneapolis MN in February 2016. We have 40 hours of roleplaying and board games!

Three of the RPGs take us to previous historical periods: The Latter Times, the start of the empire of the Fishermen Kings, and The Time of No Kings.

Here is the schedule of games:

Title	GM/Host	Time Slot
Tekumel: Intro and Q&A	All GMs	Fri 12-14
Tekumel: Shopping!	Don Kaiser	Fri 14-20
Tekumel: Wizard Duel	Brett Slocum	Fri 20-22
Tekumel: Fresh Off the Boat	Brett Slocum	Fri 22-02
Tekumel: Panic in Pán Cháka	Bill Acheson	Sat 10-14
Tekumel: A Royal Visit	Don Kaiser	Sat 14-18
Tekumel: Jakallan Urban Sprawl	Brett Slocum	Sat 18-20
Princess Zira & the Jungle Ruins	Brett Slocum	Sat 20-02
Tekumel: A Thráyan Intrigue	Don Kaiser	Sun 10-14
Black Ships in Jakalla Bay	John Till	Sun 14-18
Tekumel: Wizard Duel	Brett Slocum	Sun 18-20

Come have some Tekumel fun in February!

Heroic Age progress report

I haven't updated on Heroic Age here for awhile.

I'm going through a second editing pass on the spell descriptions and filling out many of the skill descriptions. Mostly just changing the generic spell names to Tekumel spell names.

I should have the Quickstart done by the end of the month.

I've also been preparing a Warriors of the Red Planet game set on Tekumel in the Latter Time for U-Con in November. I've also been thinking how that time period could be handled by Heroic Age.

At U-Con I will run the above game, plus a Fresh Off the Boat game using Heroic Age, focusing on the Tribal character rules. Yes, more underworld exploration, maybe some wilderness reconnoitering.

Heroic Age of Tekumel Convention Packet 2015 (Tribal) available

I said I was going to put this up a couple weeks ago. Then I found a few places where I hadn't taken out everything non-tribal, especially spells. Also, there were a couple things I wanted to add for Tribal games, such as the Tribal Name generator and Random Tribe Generator. So it took me longer than anticipated to get it done.

So here is the 2015 Convention Packet for Heroic Age of Tekumel. This will allow you to create 1st level barbarian tribe members. It is designed for a "Fresh Off the Boat" game I'll run at U-Con in Ypsilanti, Michigan in November and at Con of the North in the Twin Cities, Minnesota in February 2016.

Download the Heroic Age of Tekumel Convention Packet 2015 (Tribal) here.

Con of the North Tékumel Track, Part I

(I apologize for the lateness of this report. I really had to getmy dad's taxes for two years finished, as well as my own.)

The Tékumel Track I organized at Con of the North in February went off in grand style. We had 40 hours of games over the weekend, including adventures run by Don Kaiser, Stephen Vossler, and myself, a wizard duel miniatures game of my own design inspired by War of Wizards, Tékumel Trivia (I didn't know all the answers) and a Hirilákte gladiators card game from Stephen, and a palanquin street race (with scavenger hunt) miniatures game from Howard Hendrickson. One of the Referees that was scheduled to run games was unable to attend at the last minute, so Stephen and I covered his time slots.

Before I arrived on Friday morning, Stephen Vossler from South Dakota and his players decorated the room with 40 years of Tékumel art.






Then the Referees added their own floor plans and maps.

My Broken Reed clan house floor plan
plus Stephen's Penóm area map

Don Kaiser's Trireme floor plan

Friday started off with a meet and greet for track participants and referees. Jeff Berry told tales of playing Phil's campaign. Don Kaiser displayed 40 years of Tékumel game products, with some help from me (he didn't have Bethorm). About a dozen folks showed up, besides the referees.

Next up was a session of my Wizard Duel board game. Two non-Tékumel folks came to play, plus a couple of Track-folk. I redrew the arena from a two-wizard arena to a four-wizard arena. The players had fun. One player chased the others with a Wall of Serpents, one of the others summoned a demon right off the bat, and then proceeded to blow the rest of his spell rolls during the game. He ended up being the winner by shooting the last opponent with his trusty bow and arrow after all his spells were exhausted. The mechanics for the Wall seemed to work nicely.

Next was Stephen Vossler's Tékumel Trivia, designed sort of like Trivial Pursuit on a pyramid. We had fun, there were several questions I didn't know the answer to, but I won in the end.

Next came Don Kaiser's Intercalary Intrigue, a little murder mystery during the intercalary days at the end of each year. 

I played a Tinaliya, surprise, surprise (my personal favorite nonhuman race).

Then came the late night 10pm to 2am game slot, where I ran Heroic Age of Tékumel in a modified version of Dyson's Delve. I called it The Broken Tower of Gilraya Forest. If you're not familiar with Dyson Logos, he's one of the top OSR mapmakers, and due to his Patreon campaign, he pays his rent making maps for us to use. He releases his maps with a free non-commercial license, and at least 2 maps a month are released with a free commercial license (starting this month). I love his style and attention to detail. 

A small group of Pygmy Folk was discovered, making furniture to sell in the Rǘ marketplace. Also a bunch of undead were discovered. Tombs were looted.

And that's just Friday!

End of Part I

U-Con 2014 was a big success

Sorry this too so long to get out. My week was pretty busy.

U-Con 2014 in Ypsilanti MI was a blast. +John Till, +Howard Hendrickson, and I drove from Minneapolis and ran and played games for the Tekumel Track. Since my games were based on Empire of the Petal Throne (EPT), I also included them in the OSR Track. I was able to play in +R.J. Thompson's S&W Eruptor's Vengeance game, which was great fun. Maxim the Brash, paladin of Pelor, died, but he got better, and went on to help slay a dragon. Roy Snyder's DCC game Friday afternoon was canceled due to lack of players, but he gave an in-depth overview of the DCC rules. They sound like something I'd like.

Patrick Brady's Tekumel: A Transient Apocalypse game was fun, and we never touched dice. We were members of a remote clanhouse in the Chakan forest who received three warriors telling of an army of undead approaching the clanhouse, perhaps only a few days behind them. The players had to make decisions about what to do that would ensure the survival of the clanhouse and its members with as few of casualties as possible. Do we stay and fight, do we leave and hope they just leave without destroying the clanhouse, or something else? We asked the local Pe Choi to help us delay the army by felling trees across the only road through the thick forest. We consulted with them to find out if they would help hide the women and children for the days or weeks we were gone from the clanhouse. They would do it only if we adopted them into a defunct lineage of the clan. The clan elders (us) felt this was a reasonable cost for helping to save the local clan. The rest of the clan took rafts that we had built across the lake so our trail would be lost. It worked. We successfully saved the clan with only minor losses.

In Krista Donnelly's A Game of Hide and Seek the players were members of the Clan of the Golden Sapphire. A teenaged boy was skipping temple school and they were about to expel him. Our job was to find him and get him back in school. After much investigation, it turned out the boy had been sneaking to the market and entertaining people with juggling -- consorting with a very low status entertainers clan, and we also found the Pygmy Folk slave baby that he was trying to free, hidden in our clanhouse. The Clan of the Collar of Bronze, the slavers clan, was searching everywhere for this high-value commodity. We managed, through the expertise of the clan lawyer, admirably played by Patrick Brady, to return the Pygmy Folk to the slavers, though an altercation, the boy's bloody clothing was recovered. A furneral was held for him, while the boy was actually alive. He was now free to pursue his dream of being a juggler and not a stuffy priest. No one but his best friend knew that he was alive.

My adventure session, The Broken Tower of Gilraya Forest, was full and included a woman new to Tekumel. She dove right in and led the team to a successful exploration of this ruin. I knew the session would be good when she said she wanted to be a Dilettante, one of my classes, and I said she had to roll her Background first. She rolled Noble -- perfect. The party fought off Qol (the vile snakemen), wild animals, cheeky anthropoids, cyclopean floating jellyfish, and undead galore. This adventure is a Tekumel-ization of +Dyson Logos Dyson's Delve, plus Dreamer's Tower for the surface structure. Once I recover from the good times, I'll start massaging my notes into something postable. I used Heroic Age: Tekumel, my OSR clone inspired by EPT and B/X that I've been working on for the last year.

Krista's second game, Lend a Helping Hand, was the sequel to Hide and Seek. A Pygmy Folk notable wanted us to get the Pygmy Folk baby from the slavers clan. They had a Carte Blanche from a very high status clan -- "do what the bearer of this document needs". We managed to complete the task, while not insulting the very high status nor the slavers clans. And the best part is we retained the carte blanche. It's in the clan archives, where only the clan lawyer knows where to find it.

My second game was a miniatures/boardgame of duelling wizards, inspired by Tekumel author, M.A.R. Barker's own War of Wizards, published by TSR in the 1975. I used a simplified form of the Heroic Age rules. Four mages faced off in pairs. Several demons were summoned, as well as warriors pulled from some other reality. Spells flew and blood was spilled. Two survived. I have many notes from this game that I'll incorporate in the next few months, before the next con, Con of the North in Minneapolis. They are all written on the Mega-Mat we played on.

It's a pleasure to come to this con, because of the expertise of the con staff and the creativity of the GMs running games. Thanks to all.

After the con, John, Howard, and I went to Zingerman's Roadhouse. Great food and beverage.

The drive home was mostly uneventful.