Late last year, when I thought my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign was only a few weeks from ending — shows what I know! — I mentioned that I planned to let the players ask me questions about the campaign, particularly about what things looked like “on the other side of the screen,” so to speak. I’ve always believed in a certain degree of transparency when it comes to what I do as referee. None of it is “secret knowledge,” so long as revealing it doesn’t spoil or diminish the experience of play.
Now that House of Worms has finally come to an end, I’m happy to answer any questions the players might have.
For that matter, I’m happy to answer questions from readers as well. If you’re curious about the campaign, post your questions in the comments below and I’ll do my best to respond. Some answers might be lengthy enough to warrant their own posts and that’s fine. I already have several more pieces about the campaign and its conclusion planned for the weeks ahead, so they’ll fit right in. House of Worms may have ended, but after more than a decade of regular play, there’s still plenty more to say about it.
Is the idea of a pact between the first emperor and One Other original to you?
ReplyDeleteIt's entirely my own invention based on very small breadcrumbs in the canonical sources. I'm not at all convinced that my idea is close to the Truth Barker intended, but I like it nonetheless. Interestingly, this is one of the questions my players asked me.
DeleteDoesn’t it being imprisoned in Avanthár and having cultists there come from the solo adventures for Gardásiyal? Or am I forgetting the source?
DeleteI don't believe there's any reference to its being imprisoned there. However, there may be references to their being priests of the One Other who play a role in the emperor's funerary rites. That's one of the things I remembered and built upon.
DeleteMy impression was that the Lords of Change & Stability wanted to domesticate humanity, and that the Pariah Gods wanted to exterminate them - but this might be a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you choose a clan dedicated to Sarku?
Exactly what the Pariah Gods want is a bit unclear. There are hints here and there that even the Goddess of the Pale Bone isn't quite as bad she's imagined as being, but who can really say? I only know that The One Other must be somewhat less inclined toward destruction, because he cooperated with the other gods to imprison Ksárul.
DeleteI didn't chose Sárku; the players did. When the campaign was being planned, I wanted to set it in Sokátis and offered the players a number of clans to choose from, including House of Worms. Because one of the potential players was adamant that they not choose a Change clan, all the others decided to spite him by going not just for a Change clan but one dedicated to one of the more repellant Change deities.
So, Sárku was chosen out of a fit of pique and the rest is history :)
I take it that potential player took a pass?
DeleteI thought I read in some later publication that the Goddess of the Pale Bone wanted to take Tékumel back to its parent universe. Is that correct? But she/it is one of those aspects of Tékumel that seemed to evolve over time, with only one mention in EPT as I recall, but a lot of enthusiastic references to her/it in the pages of the Strategic Review and The Dragon.
You're correct: the plater never joined the campaign.
DeleteRe: GotPB, it's possible. Brief references to her are scattered across many publications, not all of which I've seen. Her cult played a small role in my campaign, but I never really explored what she might be about the way I did with the One Other.
How much did you use the science fiction elements of the setting, and what where the reactions from the players?
ReplyDeleteI used them quite a lot. The sci-fi background of Tékumel is one of the things I most like about the setting and why I've been so keen to play it. The players enjoyed these elements, though a few were occasionally surprised when something that their characters initially took to be "magical" in the traditional fantasy sense was revealed to have a technological origin.
DeleteHow on earth did you manage to portray a multiverse timeline without mashing it to a senseless pulp, or without the players doing so all while keeping it railroad-free?
ReplyDelete(I half-expected "Thayt Chevski" to make a cameo as an Undying Wizard at the College at the End of Time, only to chime in something ruthlessly insipid and irritating like "it was all just a game...")
I wish I could answer that. To the extent I can, I'd say it has a lot to do with having very imaginative and collaborative players who were very invested in the campaign and helped to keep things moving forward in a satisfying way. There was no plan or formula. That it all worked was, to a great extent, just dumb luck.
DeleteHi James, any thoughts of writing up the major world-affecting events and characters as a timeline of events others could use in their Tekumel games?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't, mostly because I get the impression that Tékumel is such a niche setting that the number of people who'd actually make use of it was vanishingly small. Assuming I did so, what sort of thing specifically would you like to see?
DeleteNo question, but I think that a campaign summary for a special Issue of The Excellent Travelling Volume would be great!
ReplyDeleteThat's been suggested by one of the players actually, but it's cost prohibitive to do it in print form and that's really the only way I want to do a 'zine.
DeleteDid you find yourself consulting Victor often during the campaign for tips or extra insight? Was there ever a time that the HOBI podcast affected an upcoming session?
ReplyDeleteNo, not really, at least not that I can recall. I'm sure that there was some topic we discussed that sparked an idea or three over the course of time, but I can't recall anything specific.
DeleteI know next to nothing about Tekumel. What are some things about this setting that you like the most, things that might make others interested, if they knew?
ReplyDeleteThe two biggest draws for me are its exotic, baroque setting that owes more to non-Western medieval cultures and its "secret sci-fi" elements. If you're looking for a setting that's not vanilla D&D-style fantasy and that incorporates into its background lots of Golden Age science fiction ideas, Tékumel has a lot to offer.
DeleteSo like an Umayyad dynasty, but post-apocalyptic, where you have old space ships and rayguns lying around ruins?
DeleteMore Egyptian/Moghul/Mayan but, yes, that's the general idea.
DeletePost-apocalyptic but the apocalypse is so far back (~30k yrs) that the current population only really knows that once the sky was full of lamps and humans walked among them like gods. And in most games you don’t run into spaceships or rayguns, unless you count the Eyes, which were made post-apocalypse and are ergonomically terrible as guns.
DeleteIf you’re interested in learning about the setting, “An Introduction to Tékumel” written by Donald Kaiser is very good and free:
Deletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3UwU25ULT8HTHlUWlBOTFZEZkk/view
Tékumel has evolved over time and this is like a digested form of the expansive Sourcebook for the second (incomplete) Tékumel game, Swords & Glory.
The original Empire of The Petal Throne itself is still the best and most evocative introduction, but some of the presentation changed later and some was corrupted by using D&D as a model (for instance, clerics & MUs appear in EPT with separate spell lists, etc., even though magicians in EPT are just lay priests). For this reason for rules I would use the (free) excellent “Heroic Age of Tékumel”,, which doesn’t provide the background or bestiary or lists of magic items that EPT has but, rather, cleaned up rules and character generation that reflects some of the later setting cleanup while keeping the spirit of EPT, along with being rules compatible, so the bestiary and magic items can be ported without alteration. For play with the setting described in Kaiser’s introduction I would probably use the free Tirikélu ruleset by Dave Morris, but this is definitely a lot crunchier.
The articles in The Strategic Review (esp. Vol. II, No. 2) and The Dragon (esp. Vol. 1, No. 4) hosted on tekumel.com from back in the day also give a nice taste of the flavor of EPT.
Did you ask the players to read one of the novels, or any other background info?
ReplyDeleteWhen I made my initial call for players on G+, I said that the campaign was open to players of all levels of familiarity with Tékumel. Of the six who started the campaign, it was evenly split between those with extensive knowledge, some knowledge, and none at all.
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