Retrospective: Swords & Glory

As early roleplaying game go, Empire of the Petal Throne is fairly well known, if only for the fact that it was the second RPG published by TSR, just about a year and a half after the release of OD&D. EPT is legendary, too, for its price tag – $25 – which was a considerable sum in 1975 (D&D, by contrast, retailed for $10). Of course, what makes the game truly stand out is its setting, the alien planet of Tékumel, one of the greatest works of the imagination in the history of the hobby.

Tékumel stands out in part because it differs in many ways, both small and large, from the assumptions of D&D's idiosyncratic brand of fantasy. Instead, it draws more "from Egypt, the Aztecs and Mayans, the Hellenic Age, Mughal India, and mediaeval Europe," giving it a strong and unique flavor of its own. For all of its virtues, Empire of the Petal Throne didn't wholly do justice to it and so it was perhaps inevitable that there would one day be a "second edition" of sorts, one that might more fully exemplify Tékumel and its rich history and cultural details.

That putative second edition arrived with two boxed sets from Gamescience released under the title of Swords & Glory. The first of these, Tékumel Source Book: The World of the Petal Throne, appeared in 1983 and consisted of a 136-page softcover book and a large, double-sided map in full color. The second, Tékumel Player's Handbook: Adventures in Tékumel, came with a 240-page softcover book, some character sheets, and two polyhedral dice. Together, they constitute an attempt to present a more fully realized vision of Tékumel as a setting for fantasy roleplaying. They only partially succeed in the attempt, for numerous reasons, as I shall explain.

The Tékumel Source Book is a truly wondrous volume. In its cramped columns, whose tiny text is decorated with innumerable hand-drawn accent marks, the reader is treated to an exhaustive examination of nearly every aspect of the setting. The Source Book begins with a treatment of the physical aspects of Tékumel – its solar system, geography, weather – and then moves on to its lengthy history, inhabitants (both human and nonhuman), and the cultures, both large and small, that can be found on one of its continents. Each of those cultures is further described in detail. Everything from family and social structure, religion, entertainments, militaries, housing, and more is laid out in a dry, quasi-academic style that would be severely off-putting if it weren't so compelling. Compared to nearly anything else available on the market at the time, the Tékumel Source Book is masterwork of RPG setting design.

The Tékumel Player's Handbook is far less impressive. Much of it is given over to needlessly complex and detailed treatments of various mid-1980s roleplaying obsessions, particularly in the area of combat. Rather than better grounding the rules in the setting of Tékumel – something that would have been welcome – the reader is instead subjected to discourses on encumbrance, skill development, and height-build factors, among other things. I don't mean to be overly critical of this; plenty of RPGs at the time were similarly punctilious about this kind of thing. However, little of this does much to support the setting of Tékumel, which is the main selling point of Swords & Glory. At least the spells presented in the Player's Handbook do this very well or else there'd be little else to recommend the book.

There should have been a third boxed set that would have presented material intended for the referee, such as monsters, magic items, and other information necessary to use the first two sets as part of an extended campaign on Tékumel. However, that set never appeared and, as a result, Swords & Glory was never really playable in the way that Empire of the Petal Throne was, despite its inadequacies as a vehicle for presenting Tékumel to roleplayers. That's certainly unfortunate, but I reckon that Swords & Glory was already something of a misstep even before it became clear that it would never be a complete game system.

That's the real tragedy of a game like Swords & Glory. What was originally intended as a better presentation of a rich and complex setting like Tékumel became bogged down in minutiae and unnecessary accretions to the point where it likely turned many people off ever giving the setting a fair hearing. While I adore the Tékumel Source Book and its lengthy digressions on the governmental structures of remote tribal peoples and the entertainments enjoyed by the flying Hláka species, they're likely discouragements to newcomers who simply want a straightforward presentation of Tékumel, why it's a terrific fantasy RPG setting, and, above all, what to do with it all. Nowhere does Swords & Glory even approach working toward providing any of this, leading to a game that was probably less read or played than the original Empire of the Petal Throne.

As a diehard fan of Tékumel, I can't help but shake my head at the missed opportunity that Swords & Glory represents. Tékumel is too good a setting to languish in the shadowy corners of roleplaying history. Yet, it's never really had a solid, approachable game version that would be appealing to complete neophytes. Instead, it's been saddled with a succession of ill-conceived and poorly presented games that have only reinforced the false notion that Tékumel is inaccessible to all but a chosen few. What a shame ...