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Tekumel is one of the original Game Settings in RPGs, and apparently the author has been running a campaign for thirty years. That’s some serious genes. I thought this would be a great new setting, a chance to see something a bit more coherent than the typical D&D style fantasy setting. Given the historical facts, I expected something as deep and rich as Tolkien, without the mandatory storyline that defines Middle Earth. I was sort of right.
Let’s talk good stuff first. A lot of reviews break things down into setting specifics, rules, and so forth. I’d rather talk good and bad. First of all, the rules are a creative take on the Tristat system. I like ‘em, they fixed some problems I had with the basic system. There are some interesting rules regarding teamwork that have been solidly embedded into the game itself. I like this system, simple, easy to play, but allows for a great deal of creativity and flexibility in character design. This continues into combat, where we finally learn why it’s a bad idea for an unarmed man to go up against someone with a sword, unless he’s really good, but why trying the same thing against two spearmen who work together is still a bad idea. The entire rules chapter is only about twenty pages long, and manages to squeeze in teamwork, advanced optional rules, weapon tables, two pages of poisons, and even several social rules. Theses aren’t the only rules in the whole game, of course, but they are really the only ones that should come up in actual play, as the rest are more for character design.
Races, I can’t talk enough about them. If you ever complained about how races were poorly thought out, and poorly handled in an RPG, look here. There are six playable races, seven if you check the bestiary, and they get 15 pages to cover them. They are unique, and alien. There are bits about stereotyped views, contrasted with the truths behind their stereotypes. Of course, the downside is that they are very alien, and we are given to understand, not really meant to be played. This is a human centric setting; the aliens are there for color. Still, they are handled really well.
The artwork is hit or miss, but mostly good. You have several full page drawings, often illustrating things that you wouldn’t normally see. It does a good job setting the look and feel of the setting. On the other hand, none of it is labeled, or apparently meant to illustrate anything specific. Some of the artwork seems kind of cheap, and none of it feels truly top notch. On the other hand, there is quite a bit of it, and it other than a few pictures, it seems very cohesive.
The setting is rich, alien, and obviously well developed. You have a unique measurement system for flavor, but the text and rules use the metric system so you don’t get lost. You can get a seventeen part lesson on the primary language of the world, and so on. One thing you don’t see, is ‘standard monsters’, everything is unique and has a place in the setting, which is a definite plus in my book. The gods and religion are pretty tight, and unlike most fantasy worlds, seem to fit an actual pantheon model. All in all I could find absolutely nothing that was ‘ripped off’ from conventional RPG settings. Very cool.
Now for the bad stuff, and there is quite a bit of it. I’ll go in the order I actually noticed things, so it may seem a bit disjointed, bear with me, I’ll bring it all together, I promise.
The first flaw I really noticed happened before I even opened the book. This is a fantasy setting, lots of magic, guys with swords, and so on. So why, on the back of the book, are there words like ‘interstellar’, ‘terraformed’ and the phrase ‘engineered by planetary scale technologies’? I’m not sure if it was poor reading by me, or a contradiction by the authors, but I am given to understand that bad stuff happened either 60,000 years ago, or 30,000 years ago, isolating this resort world in a pocket dimension. I don’t mind a technological history to my fantasy worlds, but I would like it if the author didn’t shove all the details in my face right off the bat. This refrain is repeated throughout the book, just in case you missed it on the back cover. Oddly, however, all the ‘high tech’ items that actually appear date from right after the ‘disaster’, and are actually magical in nature. All I know for sure is those 81st century folks knew how to build to last, as apparently there is a whole field of rockets somewhere, known as the plain of towers. Not bad considering just how long ago those suckers were built.
The next flaw I found happened much too early for my tastes. You see, the setting is very socially stratified; everyone’s status is pretty much tied to their clans, no social mobility to speak of. Okay, no problem there. Only, being clanless is worse than being a slave, ‘thieves and loners’ apparently do not work well on Tekumel. It is realistic, within limits, but a very poor beginning for a group of adventurers. More importantly, character creation has several ‘important’ steps that help place you within this culture, selecting a clan, for example, later you chose an occupation, an involved process taking two or three pages to fully cover. The only problem is that these have almost no impact on your character. The GM sets the status level of the game, and the players can chose to raise or lower it during character creation, usually only by one or two steps. Your choice of clans must be within the status of the game, you don’t need to work for the clan, worship the same gods as your clan, and so on. The only thing you need to do, clan wise, is wear a badge of some sort so other characters know your general social status. Occupations are about the same, since you buy your character’s stats; the minimum stats are kind of pointless. If you are a soldier, you are going to make your character strong anyway. In reality these two steps both belong in the character conception stage, rather than eating up space on there own.
Choosing your religion is its own step as well, but what had me head scratching about that was the peculiar nature of the gods. There are ten gods, divided into two groups of five; stability and Chaos, and they sort of mirror each other. So far so good, then there are ten Cohorts, one for each god. The Cohorts are just like the gods, and have their own duties, but don’t have their own temples, instead their temples are part of the God they serve’s temple. It was the Cohort thing that got to me. If the cohort was an assistant to the god, sure, of if there were several cohorts for each god, each one having his own subset of godly work, sure. For example, Ksarul is the Chaos god of Knowledge for selfish purposes (but NOT evil, uh huh), magic and demon planes, his Cohort is Gruganu, who is the god of sorcery, magic devices and other planar travel. Pretty similar portfolios, so much so that I wonder why there have to be four gods of knowledge and magic (two of stability, two of chaos) and just how it was decided which ones got to be the secondary Cohorts.
One thing that rubbed me the wrong way during character creation, a minor beef, was the need for the GM to set the Magic Level and Heroic Level of the campaign. I generally like these rules, really I do, but for a generic system. When talking a hard Setting, one with a great deal of background literature available for it, the amount of Magic should already be somewhat fixed by the authors. I paid good money for a setting; I want to know exactly how it was intended to be run. I didn’t really have any other problems, skimming through the book, until I got to the magic chapter. It proved pretty… um… let’s just say that trying to read it made me aware of every editorial fault I’d ever heard of in an RPG book. Things about magic that made perfect sense earlier in the book (say, inscripted spells) were mangled to near illegibility in the actual Magic Chapter. I’ve never been a huge fan of magic, but recently I’ve been paying more attention to magic systems in an attempt to be a more rounded GM. This was the wrong book to try it with. I am pretty familiar with the BESM system, so I figured this would be easy to understand. Err, no. You see, there are two types of magic, Psychic, Ritual, and Temple. No, wait, four types, Psychic, Ritual, Temple, and Inscripted, no, no... Temple magic can be ritual or Psychic and actually just describes spells that are ‘secret’ to one temple, and inscripted magic are really just scrolls and can be psychic or ritual too. But apparently inscripted magic can be incomprehensible to followers of different deities than the one that teaches the spell. I don’t know if that means Universal spells can still be cast by everyone, where the aliens that use magic fit in, since they don’t join the temples, and a host of other questions. Figuring out what spells a player knows is a serious pain in the butt as well. First of all, the only example we have was way back in character creation, and was largely devoid of costs, secondly, the points don’t add up. There is a nice big, algebraic equation to determine spell costs, with a minimum value of 2 if you are using ‘real numbers’, like every gamer should though I suppose a value of zero, or even a negative value is possible given enough penalties on a spell. Great, I learned comprehension, but since I have to shout it, use lots of power, and play twister, I get five points back. Yea!!! Never mind the shotgun behind the GM’s chair, it doesn’t mean anything.
Compounding problems in the magic chapter are the poorly organized spell lists, the lack of any real sort of glossary to all these oddly named (but cool sounding) spells, a few poorly chosen terms (level is the base cost of the spell. Took me three readings to understand that) and just general sloppy layout. See, a spell has a base cost, modified by any defects it has (got those, Erratic preparation lowers the level by three…) but also have spell attributes that can be raised? Bought? and specializations as well. You don’t get a break for knowing multiple variations or specializations, and there isn’t any good way to judge the value of these ‘add on effects’ since they don’t list costs, but do use levels, which leads me to conclude that they all cost 1 point per level, which doesn’t match anything else bought in levels in the game. There is a list of restrictions on how many spells you can have, but it reads like one of those ‘solve the mystery’ brain teasers, matching up who wore what coat to watch which movie while eating which snack food.
Ah… and then the spells. There is some cheese here. One spell lets you create a red gemstone, ‘indistinguishable’ from normal gems that when in contact with a type of enemy explodes. It lasts several days. So, you’ve got a nasty attack spell, especially combined with a sling, which doubles as a source of good money. Right. Sure, it’s expensive, but then again, all the attack spells are hideously expensive, and hideously powerful. The book tells you numerous times that the ‘source material’ listed certain spells as ‘instant death’ spells, but they are kind enough to simply list massive damage for them instead. If you went by literature, ninety nine percent of all attacks spell or not, are ‘instant death’. It’s called poetic license. Read a D&D book that isn’t munchkin and fireballs and lightning bolts are instant death spells to almost everything. Now try it in a game, doesn’t work so well does it? Unfortunately this chapter was a buzz kill for me. After struggling through it, I started noticing the minor details that bugged me, started rereading the other chapters I had gone through before with a greater eye for detail.
There is a lot of missing stuff in this book. We are given one country in any detail; the surrounding countries apparently use the same basic culture but are left largely unexplained. Despite the lack of transportation, the Empire is quite huge, as there are only these five major countries in the northern hemisphere. That’s pretty damn big countries, given that foot is the fastest means of travel. There are items unique to the setting without description, there are spells that are named without listings, creatures without descriptions in the bestiary, and so on. Being familiar with BESM, I skimmed the attributes (advantages) section originally. Closer reading brought me to a disturbing conclusion. While there were dozens of new, or new seeming, attributes specific to Tekumel, the more universal, generic ones were missing. In item creation, so your hero could have a heroic sword, there were item attributes that were missing, but strangely these reappeared in generic items. (high and low armor penetration comes to mind). At one point we are introduced to an Inimical race (inhuman aliens so bad we can’t communicate with them at all, and they hate us) that seems to be largely aquatic, they are described as pirates, but before that we hear of an enclave of some other race living in the heart of the empire, they don’t even have an honorable mention in the bestiary. Gah! There are variations on weapons, unique enough to have their own lines, but no information other than what is on the table (name, damage, one or two handed, that’s about it…). I could find no practical reason for there to be a ‘summoner upon the way’ hand crossbow and a regular hand crossbow, except that one is usually poisoned. A third crossbow has identical stats, but uses two hands and is slower to reload. What’s the only ‘practical’ difference between these three: the range. That’s it, well, that and the fact that two are used by non-humans.
I mentioned the oddity of not ‘allowing’ thieves, reinforced by the fact that stealth is actually harder to learn that fighting. Human nature implies that there will be thieves, especially when a huge amount of the population is poor and socially downtrodden. I think that it could be proven that no culture has escaped the scourge of theft to any real extant. Banditry should exist, thieves and criminals should be naturally found at all levels. But there aren’t, apparently. There are, however, assassin clans. I don’t think players are supposed to be in one of these clans, they don’t seem heavily developed and don’t appear to be mentioned until you get into items. There are also three pages of poisons in the rules. I sense a dichotomy here, no thieves, sneaking is hard, but apparently assassins and assassination via sneakiness is alright, and even common.
The setting started to irritate me after some reading. I understand that a rigid social structure is ‘historically’ accurate, but the level in the game is brutal. You can’t have normal relations with anyone outside your social level at any practical level, not even, essentially, business. The economic system is deeply flawed in almost too many ways to count, the very rich, with high status, aren’t ‘allowed’ culturally to understand numbers at all, clans provide everything to their members, often free of charge, and cover expenses beyond what members can actually afford ‘behind the scenes’. A great number of basic services are covered by each clan, for example agriculture, production of common goods, basic services, meaning there is very little reason for trade outside the clan, and trade produces no profit within the clan. In a culture where the highest virtue is acting appropriate to your stated beliefs and status, slave traders are ignoble, despite the prevalent use of slaves at almost every level of society. I won’t argue that slave trading is a noble profession, but the lack of internal logic to that bit seems…odd. I worship so and so, so it is noble for me to commit human sacrifice, oh, daily, but for you to sell me slaves, despite the fact it is your place in life, is ignoble? I missed something somewhere. The ‘clan’ that does most of the slave trading is rich, but rated socially with the guy who mucks out stalls.
Compounding this is the utter disregard for social dynamics. In 30,000 (or sixty, depending) years there have only been eight ages. Current social structures and traditions date back to the previous empire, which was largely religious in nature, but there was a 6-8 thousand year dark age between these two empires. There is no social mobility to speak of, either individually, or by clan, which makes for an incredibly stable empire, and boring. Compare this to earth, we remember next to nothing about six thousand years ago, the Ancient Egyptian empire lasted three thousand years, had thirty three dynasties and three Greek dynasties following Alexander the Great, divided up into ten major periods. Following that they were ruled by the Romans, the Ottomans, the French, the English on up to the modern age. What happens when a major empire fragments and a long dark age occurs is that you get several distinctive cultures, not one monolithic uber-culture. Stagnant cultures without social mobility tend to strangle themselves, as the Spartans did, all the more-so when social position in life is entirely dependent upon birth, you get crappy leaders who don’t know the first thing about governance. On Tekumel the pattern seems to be the opposite, one stagnant monolithic culture dominates the world, is destroyed by natural disaster, and is eventually replaced by a more stagnant and monolithic culture. The question becomes: Why adventure? What is the gain, your place in life is set in stone by the birth of some ancestor three thousand years ago, defying social conventions is difficult under the basic rules, leaving the city is nearly suicidal, given that most creatures are highly toxic making any mistake fatal, and staying in the city means endless rounds of struggling to keep your status and reputation up, for no eventual gain. Normally, even in a rigid culture like this I would see ways of ‘playing the margins’, as adventurers are hardly ‘typical’ of their social background, but in Tekumel, we are told it simply can’t be done. Despite the fact that magic predates the dominant culture by so far it’s basically as old as fire is to us, only the Temples can teach it. Oddly enough the sample character learned magic from aliens, and then joined a temple upon rejoining the human race, this apparently matches the hero from the first Tekumel novel, yet the rules, the setting, tell us this can’t really be done. There are no hedge wizards, no social outcasts that weren’t misfortunate to be born that way, no one trying to escape the hamster wheel. No bandits, no wanderers, no isolated villages that obey different rules.
The last thing that I really noticed, after my long rant about the terrible sociological inaccuracies, was that the editing and layout were slapdash. I covered part of this when I talked about omissions, but it goes deeper than that. The bestiary is smack in between chapters talking about the social and political structures, the book is slim at 238 pages, but many of those pages are wasted in long lists of featureless clans and legions of troops. I mentioned how the rules came in at a mere twenty pages, but three pages of that were toxins. In a thicker book I don’t mind this sort of thing, but for the size and cost, I feel I was getting shortchanged. I know that there is plenty of material out there to fill out chapters, why force me to slog through 84 different legions, and 110 rather generic clans? A wider variety of art would have been nice, or even less full page pictures, and more text. There are a dozen or more references to the arena, including at least one full page picture, what juicy bits of lore got skipped to repeat that they have a gladiatorial arena, over and over again. PS: isn’t that more Roman than any of the ‘non-western’ cultures that this supposedly draws from? And what about those dueling rules? By tightening up the layout, putting things together, and cutting out bulky, largely redundant passages, another chapter, maybe two could have been squeezed into the same page count. Character creation could have been shortened by ten pages or more, OR they could have included more of the meaty things from the source material, OR they could have found a more practical use for the Clans and Occupations in character creation. Or or or. There are plenty of missed opportunities here.
Overall, I did like what I saw. Most of my gripes, and I had plenty, were workable. The Economic system can be broken without hurting any games, the history of the world can be seriously twisted up without affecting the ‘now’ that most games occupy. Even the other flaws the missing entries and indecipherable magic and be gotten around by perusing a few other books, for example lifting magic out of a cleaner source, such as the BESM or dX tristat rules, the setting holes can be filled by buying more of the source material. You shouldn’t have to, however.
My recommendation is to get the book cheap if you can, wait for it used, or snag it from a buddy, use the Tri-stat rules and the setting as a framework for your own game. There is a lot of fun here, but also a lot of stinky not-so-goodness. If we are lucky, a later release will have tightened up the editing problems, and include more meaty stuff from the source material, rather than blathering on. Heck, maybe someone will actually figure out that typical adventurers, even the social ones, are not likely to hang out worrying about whether or not they are being treated according to their station or not.
