Con of the North: Mostly Great! But Some Improvements Needed!

 

Legion of the Lord of Wisdom

This weekend was virtual Con of the North. I ran three, three-hour RPGs:

• "No Small Favor", an all-Klingon Star Trek Adventures scenario using the brand new Klingon Core Book for the RPG line. The story was set during the TNG episode "Unification II", and explored what a Klingon Bird-of-Prey was really doing while Picard and Data were visiting Spock on Romulus. The PCs were an Imperial Intelligence team on special assignment for this mission. We had three Imperial Klingons (to use John M. Ford's terminology), as well as a Klingon-Romulan Fusion (another tip of the hat to Mike Ford); and one of the Imperial Klingons was one of the freaky-looking Discovery-era Klingons. The PCs decided that to complete their mission, they had to assassinate Captain K'Vada. That's what happens when you don't take Imperial Intelligence agents seriously when they "urge" you to do something important for the Empire! And so an alternate Trek universe is born! 
• "Lex Arcana: A Simple Mission for the Emperor" was my first time running a scenario for the brand new English edition of Italy's most popular homegrown RPG. This is an alternate history RPG set in 476 AD. The Empire has not fallen due to the vigilance of the Cohors Auxiliaria Arcana, Christianity is a tolerated faith but not the established state religion. The PCs are members of the Cohors Auxiliaria Arcana, a special unit of the Praetorian Guard charged with investigating and dealing with supernatural threats, magic, and monsters. A lot of the character sheet is in Latin and the game is very immersive. The mechanics make combat high stakes and quite unpredictable.  The entire game is a labor of love.
• "Servants of the Divine Daughter" was a Tekumel RPG using my own forthcoming Fate of Tekumel RPG. The PCs were members of a mostly Stability-oriented party armed with an Imperial Writ* to conduct a shakedown of Change-affiliated clans in Thraya during the reign of the Stability fanatic Empress Shaira Su. This was a really fun game to run!

I was also able to play in David Lemire's scenario "The College of the Hand of Hrugga" an EPT-based scenario in which youthful wizards in training took advantage of the absence of their teachers to do some archaeological exploration of their own to the east of Bey Su. We encountered Chnélh, and discovered a temple-tomb with a humanoid incarnation of the demon "The Beast With No Tail."

The Good Things About Con of the North 2021:

• I had great players in all my games - and that makes all the difference!
• While my scenarios are typically very player-driven, I do considerable prep in the days immediately before a convention (at least 15 hours per 3 hour game, usually for 3-4 days). That means I take PTO from work. After running the games, that really felt like that was PTO time well-spent.
• I'm getting more of the hang of using Discord. I ran all three games using that platform, and had a good experience with it. The sound quality was excellent in all but one of the four games that I GMed/played-in.
• In two of my games, I had players from across the United States! This is one of the great aspects of virtual play.
• At least one friend whom I see - and often get to game with - every year at Con of the North (and only there!) popped in to say hello right before my game. It was great to see him. 
• The technical support during game days was just great!

The Bad Things About Con of the North 2021:

• Communications by the convention organizers were too late and too infrequent.  
• Communications about the convention were not focused on the core activities of the convention experience. There were way more Facebook posts about signature characters/artwork being used to promote the convention than there were communications about what GMs or players should expect in terms of the play platform. We were all pretty much left guessing how things might happen until just a day or two before the convention started. This is no way to treat your GMs, Con of the North; we are the people who will make or break the experience, so please, please, please - tell us what's going on, and what to expect! GMs especially need clear and recurrent guidance about the technology to be used. Players want that too. People need to know where the convention server is, how the server will be organized, and how to find their games. I do get that the convention platform borrowed heavily from Gamehole Con's successful virtual game convention last Fall, but no one should have to have attended virtual Gamehole Con to have a guess at what and how things might happen at virtual Con of the North.
• The COVID-19 themed official convention dice were truly tasteless. Gamers should recognize that there is far more to life than gaming, and that having to play in a virtual convention in order to continue enjoying our hobby really has nothing to do with "rolling all 1's". That is a perfect example of why "Geek Culture" is such a First World, narcissistic turn off at times. Seriously, concom, please recognize that many people are experiencing losses and making real sacrifices. Don't trivialize that with tasteless dice jokes.
• Finally, I really miss being able to play in-person with some of my regular Con of the North buddies, as well as the special in-person things like the conversations that happen in the food vendor lines, in the dealer's room, or over meals. Hopefully that will be possible again in the next couple of years.

*I am not sure any of my players noticed that the Imperial Writ included a direct quote from Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, but there you go. The document was an entertaining project for the GM.

Tekumel at Gamehole Con

Adventurer Party from Jeff Dee's Bethorm

This weekend I attended Gamehole Con in Madison, WI, where The Tekumel Foundation sponsored at Tekumel RPG theme track. The GMs included Victor Raymond, Mark Seifert, Amanda Dee, Scott Kellogg, Jeff Dee, and myself. I was able to run three games, and play in another four games by other GMs. It was also really nice to GM for and game alongside Mark Eggert, a Tekumel veteran whom I haven't seen since my early years playing Tekumel!

Games I GMed included a two-part Fate of Tekumel RPG adventure set in the time of the Pe Choi Revolt (yes, there was one!), with Part I called (surprise, surprise): "The Pe Choi Revolt" and Part II called "The Time of No Emperor" (and this is NOT the same thing as the "Time of No Kings"!). The players represented an expedition/delegation sent by the ruling Temples of Change to enter into negotiations in the Chakas with a newly independent/separatist Pe Choi state. The PCs defeated Feshengas in the deep jungle, discovered an ancient Bednalljan Sarku shrine guarded by a Pe Choi Jagji, and eventually arrived at the Pe Choi village at the center of the new nation. I was pretty stunned to have a full table of 6 players ready to go for Part II at 8 AM on Saturday! Gamehole is a convention that draws about 5,000 players, and people are ready to game!

If you're interested in Fate of Tekumel or this adventure, be sure to come to Con of the North in February. At that convention, I  am going to pick up where Part II of the adventure left off, in an adventure titled "Tekumel: The Time of No Emperor."

I also ran a Barsoom-Tekumel crossover adventure, "Red Moon, Red Planet" using the 2d20 John Carter of Mars RPG from Modiphius Entertainment.

My fearless Barsoomians

Players started on Barsoom, and had landed in Katalal by the end of the adventure. But the player right in the center of the photo remarked that by the end of the game, his PC had lived in three different worlds!  He played Joseph Stands Alone, an American Indian spy from the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico, who had previously been transplanted from Jasoom (i.e., Earth) to Barsoom! The players picked up the system very quickly, and play was evocative and fun!

Amanda Dee ran a great Bethorm RPG game called "Maidens of the Mist". The PCs played priestesses-in-training in the Temple of Dilinala who had been sent on a spooky mission to a spooky, spooky place in the Kurt Hills. That was a great game for Halloween night!

Scott Kellogg ran an EPT-Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel in the underworld of Penom. His scenario, "The Rising Tide of Darkness" was a real hoot, with a lot of surprises for both Tekumel veterans as well as players new-to-Tekumel.

Jeff Dee ran "A Little Bit of Ice", another great Bethorm RPG game that became a TPK. You'd think that would have been the EPT-DCC game - which did have causalties - but no. Tune in to an upcoming Hall of Blue Illumination podcast for more about what happened in the story.

Finally, I also played in Scott Kellogg's Saturday night EPT game, "Hirilakte Hijinx", in which the PCs played a Stability-oriented gladiatorial team ("Red Rage"), that ended up with hijinx in the Underworld.

Gamehole Con was a great convention, and I plan to be back next year for more Tekumel gaming!

Fate of Tekumel Playtest

Yesterday was Dave Arneson Day at the Source, and since Dave was a Tekumel player and GM, I ran a playtest of some new chargen mechanics for Fate of Tekumel, and after that ran a three hour scenario set in the Forest of Gilraya. Both players were familiar with Tekumel (one is a veteran Tekumel GM, although this was the first chance we had ever had to play together), but new to Fate.

All three of us created players from the noble Rising Sun clan. We were on a hunting expedition in the Forest of Gilraya, and the party included:

• Randy created a Sorcerer-Priest of Karakan who was a veteran of the legions. He made good use of the Doomkill and Vallation spells during the two combats in the scenario.
• Taylor played an aristocratic swordsman who was the party's hunter.  He was very good with a spear and held it together against some very tough foes in a couple very close fights.
• I made a socially ambitious and adept layabout from the Rising Sun clanhouse in Thraya. He was the guy trying to use a palanquin in the jungle. Poor Bekkanu met an ill-end, touching an execration inscribed into the bottom of a Hlutrgu caracole. These kind of things happen on Tekumel.  

The combats were tense and dramatic; Randy said they felt close to EPT, which is high praise.

The players shared some great feedback for the next cycle of chargen revisions, so I'll be incorporating their ideas over the next week!

Tekumel Track at Con of the North

This past weekend was Con of the North, a gaming convention in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. For the third year in a row, Con of the North featured a superb Tekumel track. This year, I had an accident the day before the convention so I was at my home and off my feet for the first day. However, by Saturday I was back on my feet and enjoying two full days of Tekumel.

Saturday started with Bill Acheson's excellent miniatures adventure, "Panic in Pan Chaka." Bill travelled all the way from Baltimore to run this game, and he put together a fantastic table. There were miniatures gamers popping in throughout his four hour game just to see the spread. One was a gamer who had last played EPT some 30 years ago at Augsburg College.

Interestingly enough, I have only-ever played miniatures games in Tekumel settings. Multiple parties (assembled by an auction process) set out to discover why human villagers in the Chakas were disappearing. (And of course, each party was also motivated by the possibility of discovering loot.) My party consisted of a priest of Ksarul, an Ahoggya, and a Hlaka. This was a deadly wilderness crawl; the Chakas have lots of nasty wildlife.

Here's the set-up we encountered:

On Saturday afternoon, Don Kaiser, a veteran Tekumel GM, ran "A Royal Visit". The story featured a group of Golden Bough clan PCs dealing with the sudden arrival of Princess Ma'in in the city of Thraya. Our charge was to find out why Princess Ma'in was here, so that our clanmaster could turn her visit to our clan's advantage. Most of the session took place at an elite reception for the princess. Don's game was a great example of the kind of clan-based stories of intrigue that are possible with Tekumel. He also did a great job thinking through the implications of the princess' secret mission.

Saturday night Krista Donnelly, visiting from DC, ran a playtest of Felip Moral's Tekumel boardgame. She had a full table for the game, including a least three folks who were new to Tekumel. I missed my chance to play the game at this con, but I heard that the game went well and that the players had a lot of fun with it.

Victor Raymond, chair of the Tekumel Foundation, also visited on Saturday night and brought copies of the new edition of the Tekumel Sourcebook as convention prizes for the Tekumel track. It was great having this kind of convention support from the Foundation!

Our late Saturday night game was Brett Slocum's. He used the Warriors of the Red Planet RPG to run an adventure set in the Latter Times, a period of Tekumel's history when the level of techology was still relatively high, making it perfect for Barsoom-style swords & planet action. I had played a version of this scenario at U-Con in November and had a great time with it there. This time, we ran with an all-Fighter party!

Sunday morning, Don Kaiser ran "A Thrayan Intrigue", a follow-up scenario to "A Royal Visit". This one was an Underworld adventure that dealt with the immediate consequences of the princess' mission in the city. The PCs discovered a second Nexus Point in the Underworld adjacencies to the Golden Bough clanhouse. We went through the Nexus Point, and had a classic experience of the Twin Cities-style of Tekumel high adventure.

I wrapped things up on Sunday afternoon with "Black Ships in Jakalla Bay", a Fate of Tekumel RPG scenario set in the distant past of the Dragon Warriors and the Fisherman Kings! The scenario pitted the PCs against a huge naval armada besieging Jakalla.Seven players showed up for the game, which was a great way to end the Tekumel theme track and close out the convention!

I also used the scenario to playtest character generation for Fate of Tekumel RPG!  More to come on that! Look for a post in the near future on the Tekumel Foundation blog.

Tekumel Games Played at U-Con

Brett Slocum GM's Heroic Age of Tekumel

Last weekend was U-Con, a high quality, well-organized, very friendly gaming convention based in Ypslanti, Michigan. I travelled there with my Minnesota road buddies Brett Slocum and Howard Hendrickson. It's a long trek through the Midwest to and from the con, but you have a lot of time for Tekumel-talk on a 12 hour road trip!

Here's a brief report on the games in which I was a player:

• Hlaka 2: The Way Home - T:EPT author Patrick Brady is know for his high quality military scenarios, and this one was a diceless adventure of a Hlaka mercenary flight that ended up on the losing side of the Civil War. Patrick spent a lot of time working out both the flight mechanics and social behaviors of these three-eyed, six-limbed, mammalian flyers. They flew using patagia, with behaviors and flight dynamics similar to those of bats. I played a Hlaka archer. Hlaka don't try to use bows while in flight; they're an intelligent species. Instead, you find a tree, land, and shoot from there. As always, Patrick's game was funny as hell, and provoked deeper thinking about how things work in Tekumel.

• Bethorm: A Night's Entertainment - Krista Donnelly ran two sessions using the new Bethorm ruleset. The adventure carried over a character (and storyline) from last year, and involved an Emerald Circlet (a very low clan) group of entertainers who had been summoned to a very remote island estate of the very high status Azure Cloak of Gems clan. This was a rather sinister scenario with a lot of strange things happening in and around the clanhouse. I've had a copy of Bethorm for a while, and found the system easy to learn and use.

• Heroic Age: Fresh Off The Boat - Our next game as a classic fresh-off-the-boat scenario in which a group of demon-worshipping islanders began new lives in Jakalla. We ended up taking a patronage offer from a member of a middle-clan with scholarly interests; this led to a rather deadly expedition into the Jakallan Underworld. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this demon-worshipping tribe becomes a recurrent "character" in future Foreigners' Quarter games set in Jakalla. Brett's Heroic Age of Tekumel is a retroclone of EPT. I've played it a number of times now, and I think it does a good job as an old school Tekumel game. The Heroic Age of Tekumel quickstart is a free download on RPGNow. 

• Warriors of the Red Planet: Princess Zira & the Jungle Ruins - I have run Warriors of the Red Planet a number of times; it is an old school swords & planet RPG that is very faithful to it's primary source material, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom. A Princess of Mars was one of Professor Barker's favorite books, and in many ways the world of Tekumel is a sister planet of Barsoom. WotRP perfect for Tekumel games set in periods such as the Latter Times, long before the low-tech, highly stratified Tekumel-as-we-know-it came into being. I played a member of the Mentalist Guild of Omel. The action involved the intrigues of a sinister cult in a very distant city. Great game!

• Bethorm: A Guard's Life - Krista's second Bethorm scenario featured a group of Sakbe road guards who had to deal with a BIG situation (50+ escaped slaves) way beyond their pay grade. This game was a challenging mystery in which we narrowly avoided killing or capturing the innocent. I played a guard who had been kicked out of the Temple of Sarku for failing to learn the prayers. However I had learned a few useful spells, which caught my fellow guards by surprise! Nobody expects a Sakbe road guard to cast Web of Kryag!

Converting Empire of the Petal Throne's Magical Skills to Fate

Over the last two days, I have converted the EPT priest and magic user "skills" to Fate, using the Fate Freeport Companion as a guide. A few of the items on the skills list are indeed skills, such as the skills that confer the ability to knows 2 ancient languages or knows 2 modern languages, and the astrology skill. Those I am rendering as simple stunts. Here's an example of Astrology as a stunt:

Astrology: Take a +2 to WIS to Create an Advantage while observing the influence of the sun, the four planets, and Tekumel's two moons. This stunt provides insights into the influences and motivations surrounding a person or situation, uncovering a hidden Aspect.

So much for skills that are skills.

Here is an example of a skill that is a spell.

Telekinesis (Cost, Per Scene): Roll CHA to use your mind to move a solid object through air or water, but not through walls, etc. Weapons or missiles may not be moved this way, but the spell itself can be used to do harm. Target defends with DEX to get out of the way of the spell.

Some of the text in both these skills quotes the description in EPT. Neither is an exact replication of the EPT mechanics, however; Fate works differently as a system than EPT. For example, the description of Telekinesis in EPT says you can use it twice per day. We've described it for Fate as a Per Scene spell, meaning it can be used once per scene; the next level up is Per Session, meaning the spell could be used once per game session; the next level up from that is Per Scenario, meaning that the spell could be used once per scenario.

I'm thinking that people creating characters will be able to purchase three spells for one point of Refresh. Starting spells are selected at this cost from either/both of the priest and magic user skills lists. This is the cost for the first seven "skills" on each list. If you want some of the skills that are higher on the lists than the first seven on each list, the Refresh cost will be higher.

Hopefully we'll have the chance to test out some of these conversions today at CONvergence!  We may also do some conversions from the actual EPT spell list (as opposed to skill list) while we create characters.

Time for Lord Qon, Time for Fireworks

I spent the afternoon at CONvergence. When I left for the con, I felt sad leaving home. It had been a beautiful, cool morning, and the family had spent a pleasant morning on the couch.

It was parallel play.

The Anubian Ambassador was sitting in Carlos' lap, while he watched the World Cup and Wimbledon. For my part, I sat next to them reading about the mysteries of Lord Belkhanu and his faithful Cohort, Lord Qon. (And we might add that Lord Qon and the Ambassador have a bit in common).

But back to the Con we went. 

It was a nice respite from people complaining online about inclusion in gaming. Imagine that! I was with 7,000 people for an entire afternoon, and nobody complained about that one paragraph in Basic D&D supposedly being "unnecessary"!

In the afternoon, Rachel Kronick of the Blade & Crown blog was part of a great panel on how to have a game and - a life - as you get older. Really, the panel was all about how to make sure you can persist in gaming as life gets more complex, which it invariably does as you age. I know that when my dad passed away, I stopped gaming for almost a year, and that's just one kind of complication that gamers face in later life.  

I can't say I walked away from the panel with any magic bullets, other than a greater awareness of the importance of:

• Making explicit agreements at the table about the schedule, frequency, and length of gaming sessions;
• Taking turns running things, so no one feels stressed or overwhelmed;
• Carefully considering the style and format of games we choose to play:
• Are there workarounds or shortcuts that reduce GM preparation or facilitate greater improvisation?
• Are there games - Apocalypse World with its playsheets, and Technoir with its city templates - whose design makes it easier for both the players and the GM to get a game going"

So that was good, as was the wonderful moderation of Beth Kinderman. Yes, a CONvergence panel in which the moderator actually moderated. Beth engaged the panelists and audience in a way that enriched the discussion. No huge digressions, no audience talking over the panelists!

I came home and had dinner with the family. Later the three of us went to see the fireworks. Before and after the fireworks, I set out to convert Empire of the Petal Throne's priest and magic user "skills" into spells for Fate of Tekumel.  I was surprised to discover (re-discover?) that some of the original EPT "skills" were quite powerful - especially items 8 and up on each list!  

We'll be testing these conversions at the table tomorrow!

First Tekumel

Good poets borrow...

What was your first Tekumel? My first contact with the world of Tekumel was in a capsule review of Empire of the Petal Throne in a gaming magazine. My recollection was that the review was in Strategy & Tactics magazine. But in recent years, people have told me there was never a capsule review of EPT there. So I am not sure where that review occurred.

The reviewer was quite amused by the clever names and fanciful (dare we say Vancian?) titles that Professor M.A.R. Barker gave to the creatures of Tekumel. If memory serves, the Dnelu, "the Concealed Leaper", the Kuruku, "the Small Giggler", were cited as examples, but I have no idea why the reviewer didn't mention other worthies, such as the Hli'ir, "the Beast with the Unendurable Face" of whom we are told: "These mad creatures are hideous to look upon, and anyone who does may go insane" (EPT p.67). 

Medusans, anyone?

With that little review, I was bitten by the Tekumel bug. Not too long after then, I think, Dragon 4 came out. That was a much bigger dose of Tekumel for me, and sharpened my interest in getting the game.

But it would be a few years yet, before I could afford to buy a copy of EPT. At $25. the EPT boxed set was a serious expenditure for a high school kid. Back then, Whitebox D&D was only about $12. But when I did buy it, EPT proved to be worth every penny.

And those maps!

So what was your first Tekumel? An advertisement, an article in a gaming magazine, the boxed set appearing in your game store, someone playing EPT in a local game store?

Empire of the Petal Throne

Where did all these tusks come from?

Saturday afternoon at Jeff Berry's house was once again devoted to GM Rob Leduc's EPT campaign. It had been a couple of months since I was last able to play; it was great to get back in the game.

In Rob's campaign, our party are fresh-off-the-boat tribal islanders who arrived in Penom, and shortly thereafter signed up en masse with the marines. Several sessions ago, we completed our basic training, and began our two week survival stint on the desert island that the marines' use for recruits' capstone "do or die" field experience. We say "desert island," but it was anything but deserted. Wildlife was plentiful; we even had an encounter with a Serudla some time ago. We also discovered the presence of other humans on the island. These humans are indigenous non-Tsolyani, most of whom the marines had relocated off of the island long before we arrived.

The clues were there from the beginning. Mysteriously large and fecund frog populations. We'd been feasting on them for days. Some of the party were quite paranoid about the frogs, but, hell: they were edible, and unlike going out on the water in fishing boats, gigging frogs didn't put our lives at risk from predation by Tekumel's abundance of carnivorous sea creatures.

So I have to admit that a bunch of noisy and edible frogs didn't concern my two mage characters, Akho-Akho (the 1 HPer) and Tsuralnali (6 HPs), very much. But Saturday afternoon's explorations of the tusked giant frog god's underground shrine complex (apparently - at least in part - built by the non-Tsolyani islanders): these explorations brought everything together, resulting in both a rude surprise and a revelation.

The complex was located inside the largest mountain on the island. Near the first shrines adjacent to the entrance, a passageway split into two directions. We took one of them. Our party discovered several successive levels of shrines to the tusked frog god, as well as archways flanked by giant tusks. Up and down we went through tunnels and shafts. We checked out a number of chambers and shrines, and far below found pulpy, stringy vegetative life forms with odd saccules. Creeped out a bit, we decided to retrace our steps and walk back towards the original fork in passageways near the entrance to the complex. We walked past an underground lake.

Just as we were about to clear the lake, a giant tusked frog leaped out of the water to attack the party. One of the shamans cast a "Talk to Animals" spell, and spoke with the giant frog, who demanded large quantities of meat. The shaman told the giant frog that we'd be back with plenty. But that wasn't good enough for the frog, which extended its large tongue and snapped up a member of our party. We fought back, cutting off the frog's tongue, and then we beat a fast retreat (as did the frog). We went upwards towards the original fork in passages near the entrance of the complex.  .

When we reached the fork, we decided to explore further. We headed in the opposite direction from our original explorations, and soon found ourselves in an ancient chamber with a large multifaceted crystal in the center of the room.  On the smaller of the two mountains on the island we had discovered a Lightning Bringer emplacement; so this was intriguing, to say the least!

In the chamber, there was also a strange altar with all sorts of slots (i.e., a control panel with many broken knobs and buttons).

Akho-Akno began fiddling with them.  He may have even licked them. (Did I mention Akho-Akho came out-of-the-box with 1 HP? Such people by definition live life close to the edge.)

The giant crystal shuddered into motion, and turned.