Another RPG Bundle Offer - Tékumel

[ffutures]

 One of the best early fantasy RPGs, an impressive feat of world building and labour of love by its creator, Prof. M.A. Barker

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Tékumel

In the roleplaying hobby, home to the Forgotten Realms, Glorantha, Jorune, and other detailed settings (to say nothing of Middle-earth), Tékumel has no parallel. Tékumel is the tabletop peer of computer games like Dwarf Fortress and EVE Online -- not so much a pastime as a field of study, a discipline. Its lore beggars comparison. An entire room in the late Professor M.A.R. Barker's house holds the filing cabinets stuffed with setting minutiae he diligently compiled starting at age nine. For 70 years Barker mixed influences from Mesoamerica, Moghul India, Egypt, China, and Arab cultures to create a setting that is exotic, bizarre, intensely flavored, and incomparably intricate.

Though universally respected, Tékumel has always been a tough sell. There have been five different official Tékumel RPGs, all short-lived and rather haphazard. It's hard to communicate the setting's signal virtues. Many of its most devoted fans are the players privileged to participate first-hand in Barker's own long-running Thursday Night Group. And believe it, these fans are devout. They write monographs about Barker's pantheons and constructed languages; they build scale models of Tsolyáni temples; and they've set up the nonprofit Tékumel Foundation to protect Barker's works.

The Foundation kindly approved this offer that gathers .PDF image scans of the Empire of the Petal ThroneRPG (TSR, 1975; reprinted by Different Worlds, 1987), its successor Swords & Glory (Gamescience, 1983-84), plus maps, histories, and treatises for a bargain price. This thorough introduction to Barker's world showcases its attractions. And if you fall in love with Tékumel, as so many already have, a lifetime of exploration awaits you.

We provide each ebook complete in .PDF (Portable Document Format). Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these books have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their ereaders. Most of these files are .PDF image scans of the original 1970s and '80s hardcopies. (This is most obvious in Empire of the Petal Throne and Swords & Glory, where Barker went through the printed pages and manually added accent marks.) The text is crisp and readable, but no optical character recognition has been applied.

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to this offer's designated charity, the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer is US$87. Any gathering of published Tékumel material, no matter how comprehensive, is inherently a "starter collection" -- but customers who pay just US$6.95 get all six titles in this particular Starter Collection (retail value $37) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Empire of the Petal Throne rules set originally published by TSR (retail price $18) and its Five Empires maps (retail $8) and Jakálla map (retail $4); two lengthy histories, The Ever-Glorious Empire and Deeds of the Ever-Glorious; and a booklet of vignettes from Barker's own campaign, Notes From the Thursday Night Group.

Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $16.95 to start, also get our entire Bonus Collection with five more titles worth an additional $50:

• Swords & Glory v1 and S&G v2, plus the Combat Summary (total retail $25)
• Two language books (a first for the Bundle of Holding!): The Tsolyáni Language (retail $9) and Tsolyáni Primer (retail $6)
• Tékumel Journal #1 and Journal #2 (total retail $10)

 

TÉKUMEL RESOURCES

• Start with Tékumel, The World of the Petal Throne, its Gaming on Tékumel page, and its page of Tékumel links
• The Tékumel Foundation
• Intro to Tékumel by Patrick Brady (.PDF link)
• Empire of the Petal Throne TVTropes page
• Brett Slocum's Tékumel Site
• James Maliszewski's Tékumel-related posts at Grognardia
• Chris Kutalik of the Hydra Collective (a frequent Bundle contributor) has lots of good Tékumel material on the Hill Cantons blog
• Howard Fielding's blog, The Tékumel Project
• Tékumel Collecting

 

 

This is one that every GM should look at, as a setting it really is head and shoulders above everything else of its era. But I'd recommend adapting it to a rules set you prefer if it can handle the complex background. Recommended!

Comments

[history_monk]

Ooo, nabbed.

[ffutures]

Always good to know someone finds this stuff useful!

[joseph_teller]

Ah Tekumel.... the Fantasy Heart Breaker. Only ever managed to run 2 sessions of it with a group as the setting involved too much detail understanding and alien concepts compared to western culture.

It has been a siren call that always dashes hope upon the rocks as it takes players who either know it or who are open to big landscape of culture stuff rather than being murder hobos.