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2024-05-19, 08:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: Introducing a Fantastic Religion to the Players
I don't consider it particularly hardline to note realist fiction is still fiction. What you see is not a pipe, it's drawing of a one; your tabletop game doesn't take place in real Boston, it takes place in fictive reproduction of it. So on and so forth. The actual point was that when counting works based on a thing, I see no point in excluding things based on realism - a game set in Boston and a game set in totally-not-Boston are, obviously, both inspired by Boston.
Originally Posted by Devil's_Advocate
I don't have any particular gripe or disagreement with the rest you said on this tangent.
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Originally Posted by Devil's_Advocate
If I wanted to criticise "secret information" in games, I would note that the real problem here is that people who weren't let in on the secret, like you, are perpetually left with a mistaken idea of how rules impacted by said secrets actually work. But this happens just as well in games where referee rules are public information; many such rules are not directly relevant to players so players often just don't take time to learn them.
Originally Posted by Devil's_Advocate
This is already visible in how the Great Wheel cosmology is set up. You can have different pantheons, not just individual gods, on opposing sides of the wheel. As a corollary, you can have an entire culture believing that the gods work in a particular way, and another that has violently opposed views. That's already part of what the alignment system exists to describe.
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2024-05-19, 11:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
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- Texas
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Re: Introducing a Fantastic Religion to the Players
Using fancy terms doesn't change the simple fact that humans from earth play the game.
there's also no mystery, because there's no Earth stuff to compare anything to. The characters in Tekumel aren't perplexed by how Earthlike their world is.
Things only look weird from a third mutant hybrid perspective of "Earth exists, and Tekumel also exists".
A core problem that the humans on Tekumel have is that they are interlopers; they were space travelers who settled there. There are any number of native species on Tekumel (The Hlyss and the Ssú being the two most prominent) whose overall, in-world aims are the purging of humans from the world and their retaking of their home world.
A substantial teaser that Barker left in the game for each group to develop was the rediscovery of some of the old Space Age tech long lost since the time of darkness. Like any well made D&D world, it is post apocalyptic, full of empty / unexplored / wilderness territory, full of rival factions (human, and others) all competing to grow and prosper at the expense of the other factions. (Which is a faithful re creation of the chaos of the Feudal age of the Dark ages through the Middle Ages and High Middle Ages ... which is D&D's sweet spot. Other games have other sweet spots).
Mind you, as Vahnavoi points out, a fictional setting is often described as connected to Earth somehow anyway.
As an aside:
Tekumel has grown as a game world since I played and GM'd it. I played with the original book as provided. For example, the Good and Evil gods and cohorts were retconned / re templated. I suspect that he did this as the RPG hobby evolved.
The Gods of Tékumel
The religious systems of the Five Empires are based on two ‘alignments’ (Stability and Change), each represented in the Engsvanyáli pantheon by five major ‘Gods’ (Stability: the Tlomitlányal; Change: the Tlokiriqáluyal) and five ‘Cohorts’ (the Hlimékluyal).
Information in this section paraphrased from Swords and Glory Volume 1, M.A.R. Barker, Copyright ©1983 Gamescience.
These deities are really vastly poweful interdimensional beings, though ‘gods’ to the limited being that is man. For a discussion of these beings and the Scrolls of Pavár, see the relevant History entry. The most comprehensive source of material about Tsolyáni religion and ritual is Mitlanyál.
All of my stuff is still in notebooks and folders. I've traded a few emails with Jeff Barry in the last decade since I know he's a Tekumel afficianado, having been in Barker's original play group.
And thanks to this conversation, I now have a pdf of the original game book, but sadly there are some edits...at least they still spell the Hlyss correctly.Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2024-05-20 at 06:20 PM.
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2024-05-20, 11:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
Re: Introducing a Fantastic Religion to the Players
Echoing @Unoriginal:
Almost every game I've ever played in has either used a D&D pantheon (mostly the toned-down Greyhawk one in the 3.5 PHB) or one the GM has invented, and the players (whether or not I am among them) have gotten the message pretty well, in my experience. Just be ready to provide simple reminders for what the characters would reasonably know as part of their setting's common knowledge: "The chryselephantine idol before you wears a diadem of oak leaves, and you recognize this as the emblem of Ceilesyl, goddess of motherhood and healing. The presence of such an idol here means this courtyard is likely consecrated to the goddess and subject to her personal attention. Speak and act here as you would in her presence." If you expect them to know to do a specific thing (e.g., clap thrice before addressing an altar), let them know, or else be willing to accept generalities from players: "I perform the appropriate ritual gestures as I cross the threshold of the sanctuary."
(Or, you know, your players might ignore all that and cold-call the god of the sea and ask him intrusive personal questions right before setting out on a lengthy sea voyage and while currently underwater.)