Post by greentongue on Nov 8, 2014 7:40:33 GMT -6
Quote Originally Posted by Omega:
Then you arent playing Tekumel. I can do the same with Gamma World, MA, D&D, etc. Tekumel lacks the tech element. Other than the eyes and the subways theres little tech in the game.
Can the games be adapted? Certainly. Are they S&P right out the gate? Aside from MA. No.
/QUOTE
After reading this, I was reminded just how far my adventures in the Professor's campaign differed from the published 'canon' Tekumel. Phil's games were full of ancient and mysterious technology, some of which worked and some of which didn't - in very mysterious and unpredictable ways.
Examples (in no particular order): The Three-Light Drive (do not activate while still on the ground!), lighting-bringers, air cars, energy weapons, clothing steamers, anti-grav 'floaters', canned goods (ask Old Geezer about this one!), the planetary defense fortress on one of the moons, Nexus points, in-system spaceships, androids, translator marbles, the space marine R & R center at the South Pole, Hlyss nest-ships, Ssu grav elevators, the life tanks for healing casualties, the 'Silver Suits' - the spacemarines, robots, spacesuits, the vats for tissue modification, replicatiors, the anti-grav engines at the planet's core, the Egg of the World, and all of the other 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s Gernsbackian 'scientifiction' tropes that made the Golden Age of the pulps what it was.
Phil was a F/SF fan from way back, beginning in the late 1930s when he was kid, and kept that interest for years. He knew Jack Vance and E. E. 'Doc' Smith, among many others; he won the costume competition at the 1950 World Con. He was an avid reader and fan of ERB, Lovecraft, Howard, and many, many others - and he regularly inflicted them on us.
I don' think, now some thirty five years on, that much of any of this made it into his published 'canon'; a lot of it was, at least in my time with him, because he was always afraid of being laughed at by gamers for being a fan. The number of letters he got from gamers taking him to task for "not getting Tekumel 'right' for a Swords and Sorcery setting" was astonishing...
Pity, really.
- chirine ba kal
Then you arent playing Tekumel. I can do the same with Gamma World, MA, D&D, etc. Tekumel lacks the tech element. Other than the eyes and the subways theres little tech in the game.
Can the games be adapted? Certainly. Are they S&P right out the gate? Aside from MA. No.
/QUOTE
After reading this, I was reminded just how far my adventures in the Professor's campaign differed from the published 'canon' Tekumel. Phil's games were full of ancient and mysterious technology, some of which worked and some of which didn't - in very mysterious and unpredictable ways.
Examples (in no particular order): The Three-Light Drive (do not activate while still on the ground!), lighting-bringers, air cars, energy weapons, clothing steamers, anti-grav 'floaters', canned goods (ask Old Geezer about this one!), the planetary defense fortress on one of the moons, Nexus points, in-system spaceships, androids, translator marbles, the space marine R & R center at the South Pole, Hlyss nest-ships, Ssu grav elevators, the life tanks for healing casualties, the 'Silver Suits' - the spacemarines, robots, spacesuits, the vats for tissue modification, replicatiors, the anti-grav engines at the planet's core, the Egg of the World, and all of the other 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s Gernsbackian 'scientifiction' tropes that made the Golden Age of the pulps what it was.
Phil was a F/SF fan from way back, beginning in the late 1930s when he was kid, and kept that interest for years. He knew Jack Vance and E. E. 'Doc' Smith, among many others; he won the costume competition at the 1950 World Con. He was an avid reader and fan of ERB, Lovecraft, Howard, and many, many others - and he regularly inflicted them on us.
I don' think, now some thirty five years on, that much of any of this made it into his published 'canon'; a lot of it was, at least in my time with him, because he was always afraid of being laughed at by gamers for being a fan. The number of letters he got from gamers taking him to task for "not getting Tekumel 'right' for a Swords and Sorcery setting" was astonishing...
Pity, really.
- chirine ba kal
link
I always felt that everything should have a SCIENCE! explanation even if it looked like magic to the character. Of course it would be SCIENCE! and not real life as we are projecting future super science here. Some of the things we think are possible even now would be SCIENCE! to people when the game was written so some flexibility is acceptable to me. The "magic" of nano-tech pushes that boundary for example.
Involuntary brain implants makes planar energy manipulation "acceptable" since we have brain|machine interfaces already. I see nano-tech as very fixed in what effect it has as it would need to be focused on specific tasks. There is only so much programming that you can fit in it or it would be bigger than nano.
Are Chirine and I the only ones that see EPT this way?
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