Has anyone run "Welcome to Jakálla"?

[Thorulfr]

I have finally decided to do more than just read about Tékumel, amd actually managed to convince some players to give it a try... No I have to actually pull it off.
Has anyone run "Welcome to Jakálla" from Eye of All-Seeing Wonder vol. 1? (www.tekumel.com/eoasw1_02.html) How did it go? Did you run into any issues?

Also, what did you do for a second adventure? In the text, it is implied that the next adventure would be rescuing Chuli from the clutches of the young aristocrat, but that leads to an obvious problem: how do they accomplish that without ending up as a wall decoration for the Foreign Quarter? The first answer that springs to mind is to go to their erstwhile patron Lord Vrimeshtu and try offering their continued services in return for him using his influence. (Talk about your 'deals with the devil'...) Are there others?

[vargr1105]

I ran it once before but changed some things considerably. The party had a prior adventure or two (mostly tomb-robbing in the necropolis) and made a few conatcts with the riff-raff in the Foreign Quarter before being patronized by Lord Vrimeshtu.

The kidnapping didn't happen until right before they returned from a a second adventure, an overland expedition for Lord Vrimeshtu.

One of the characters had been worried about Chuli since he saw the noble luring at her (he disliked all the slavery he saw in Tsolyanu), was prepared and moved immediately.

The actual rescue mission happened within the Foreign Quarter. Chuli had been kidnapped by the Salarvyani mafia and was being held in one of their houses to be deliveredto noble next day. The adventurers found about it by talking with their contacts (the mafia was a major plower-player in the quarter) and stormed the place en force bringing along most of the able-bodied men in the tribe and the N'luss warrior-woman lover of one of them.

By this time the PCs were 3rd or 4th level and had a special item or two. The rescue was a bloodbath for the Salarvyani mafia and made a name for the tribe as the "new boys in town".

Not being stupid, the group assumed they had incurred in the eternal wrath of the noble that engineered the kidnapping of Chuli, and asked Lord Vrimeshtu for aid. After some negotiating he took the whole tribe as agricultural servants to work in one of his semi-abandoned villas out of town. The common tribals were overjoyed at this as most of them had been farmers in their previous lives back home.

In return the party became exclusive troubleshooters to the Lord, sort of unnoficial, unpaid minor vassals (excepting for gifts for outstanding performance).

One their number, a fairly skilled priestess (the player made some great use of EPT spells, combining their effects in ways I had not forseen) had converted to the worship of Wuru and was being groomed by a nephew of Lord Vrimeshtu for citizenship and eventually joining the temple. The nephew was also interested in less academic pursuits with her, if you know what I mean.

The party's sorcerer was the shaman's apprentice and kept receiving training from him. He was torn between between the choice of eventually becoming the tribe's spiritual guide (and having to move to the coutryside) or joining one of the priesthoods. He well knew adopting one of the official religious cults was the path to progression. He was secretly leaning towards Thumis, which would put him at odds with his patron.

The warrior, curiously, was the person most interested in religion and was considering enlisting in one of the War Temples sponsored legions once he attained citizenship. The stability-change divide was a bit beyond him. He had a more heretical attitude, seeing all the deities as necessary and worthy of worship and having a strong dislike for politico-religious power-play games.


With the tribe's safety and income assured, and with each player character wanting to pursue different avenues, the party split and the game ended there.

[Thorulfr]

Thank you - that is an interesting way to resolve the issue: Chuli not being in the aristo's possession, so they don't come into direct conflict with him, only indirectly through other foreign nakomé.

Did you do anything with that little loose end the author dangled about the "real reason" the clan of leatherworkers moved out of the house?

Which rule set did you use? OEPT?

[rleduc]

This is a great thread! I hope to be putting badger's "Anyone can run EPT" article(s) to the test using something akin to this setup. This is all very helpful!

[vargr1105]

May 10, 2012 14:30:43 GMT -6 Thorulfr said:

Did you do anything with that little loose end the author dangled about the "real reason" the clan of leatherworkers moved out of the house?

Which rule set did you use? OEPT?

No, I didn't have the house have any horrible secret behind its availability besides a piss-poor location among one of the most violent and undesirable neighborhoods of the Foreign Quarter. There were gangs loitering about; the women of the tribe were afraid to even go out into the street if front of the house.

All that changed after the Salarvyani Mafia Night Massacre. Everyone knew messing with the tribals wasn't a good idea. But shortly after attaining this status the tribe left for Lord Vrimeshtu's fields.

We were using OEPT with some very slight modifications and I had Swords & Glory Vol I for extra background. I planned having the S&G Spells be available as secret magic taught only by the temples but we never reached that far.

We used Ascending AC, higher Hit Points and one random Group I spell guaranteed to magic users upon gaining a level. We also screwed up our reading of the rules and turned the "To Damage" bonus from Basic Talents into extra bonus DICE, and we assumed weapon damage dice were added to the dice indicated in teh "Damage per Level" table. This meant anyone using a weapon caused a minimum of 2d6 damage. Combat tended to end very quickly...

EPT is a fairly nice rules system. The a players were only familiar with 3rd Ed D20 D&D and were pleasantly surprised at various nuances of EPT. The one playing the Warrior was amazed at the amount of combat encounters the party won because the enemies fled or surrendered (Morale rules); and the other two liked that spells were per day and fiddling with memorization and spell selection was not an issue. The 19-20 Double Damage/Instant Death rule was quite popular.

[xerxez]

This was one of the best ever adventures I can recall!

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and the first timers to Tekumel got a good taste of the game flavor from it.

They decided to keep playing the setting (which they were both intrigued and intimidated by, as I was in refereeing it), but it was fun and our campaign ran for several months. We used the OEPT rules.

I drew a map for it-- as I remember there isn't one provided.

I used some Aztec maps from archaeology books as a layout of the general area of the dungeon and I also used the book images for visual props, deciding to sketch the entrance to this maze as lying in the remains of a ziggurat

I typed up a player handout where the employer who sent them to the dungeon gave detailed speech which introduced Barker's concepts of the tsurum and the Ditlana.

PLay went well and was very fun, lasted three sessions, the S'su sorcerer by the docks cast an illusion spell which as you know in OEPT can actually kill you if you think its real! And that took out our priest! The spider token on the door was fun too--one PC went to a demon plane and when he came back he was insane for nearly the rest of the journey.

The PC's were accompanied by a white Shen named Shu'Mish who was an outcast from Shen society because of his albino scales--the story of how he survived destruction upon hatching is still not clear but he still was perhaps the most memorable NPC of all our campaigns in any setting.

Great fun!

[xerxez]

PS I don't recall what we did for the next adventure, but I had changed some of the elements of Welcome to Jakalla and introduced some clan and Temple politics and the players ran afoul of the Change cults but were under the protection of some powerful Stability personages. This led to some further quests.

[rleduc]

Thinking of using this idea in an upcoming campaign set in Penom. I am going to try blogging about it at Tekumel Mojo, tekumelmojo.wordpress.com. I'd welcome any comments.