[Yeleth]

Review of Tekumel by Nicholas Lewis

‘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.

That's a bit like complaining about it being difficult to play a human in a vampire game. I don't see how this is a flaw; it's just different.

selecting a clan, ..., later you chose an occupation, ... The only problem is that these have almost no impact on your character.

As I understand it, Clan and Occupation are very important within the game. Clan determines how and who one interacts with. Clan-wise I imagine that GM could build an entire series of adventures or even a game around doing one's clan business. It's specified on page 225 that clan is a good way to bring players together. Likewise Occupation. There are pages on working for the government, Temples, Military. Did the reviewer somehow miss reading these pages?

Perhaps the reviewer is complaining about some other aspect - that there should be a way to relate game stats (such as skill levels) to occupations? That's valid but such are the variety of occupations and clans available that there would just be too many rules for that. But it can't be the case because the reviewer then complains about minimum stats being needed to join certain legions.

I am baffled at what the reviewer's complaint is here. Seems to me that if you're going to mark a game down you should, at least be able to explain why you're doing it.

what had me head scratching about that was the peculiar nature of the gods.

Who ever said that a Religious pantheon had to make sense within our common sense 20th century framework. One moment the reviewer is awarding points for alieness, the next moment he's deducting points for the very same feature.

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 REALLY liked that aspect of the game: giving control to the GM rather than have the rules impose style of play.

the amount of Magic should already be somewhat fixed by the authors

I totally and passionately disagree with that.

Regarding the beef on indecipherable magic. I just read the magic rules again and they seem pretty clear to me. There are two types of magic: Psychic and Ritual, which are clearly distinguished in the rules. Temple spells are high level spells restricted by Temple membership in contrast to Universal spells which are available to members of all Temples. Inscribed spells are written spells (much like D&D scrolls).

There is a lot of missing stuff in this book.

This is true. For the authors to describe the entire world of Tekumel in detail (with rule mechanics) would require, I guess, at least another 500 pages. I heard, that 20,000 words had to be cut from the book prior to publication because it was already considered too long by the publishers. At the end of the day what counts is "do we have a playable game?". My answer to that is "yes we do". The review spends ages bitching about the game background being too big for the rules. I consider that an advantage where he sees it as a flaw.

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

There are thieves. Player characters are not encouraged to play them, perhaps because the penalty for theft is usually death.

I sense a dichotomy here, no thieves ... but ... assassination ... is ... common

The legal system itself is strange compared with our modern Western customs, but this game sells itself as being different. So how can one complain about it being different? Of course, if you don't like Assassins in your game there's nothing to stop you from just dropping them entirely - you still have a playable game with no Assassin clans.

The setting started to irritate me after some reading

Ha, at last we get to the root cause of your complaint. You don't like the setting. I don't like the setting for WW's Vampire. Dull, stereotyped, power-gamer's dream, etc. It's a personal thing. But even so I can still play Vampire and see the merits in their nice rule system. A reviewer needs to put personal preferences behind him when reviewing a game. You should just try to tell us the facts. What kind of a background is it? What are the rules like? Limit your personal preferences to a paragraph somewhere in the review.

On Tekumel ... one stagnant monolithic culture dominates the world, is destroyed ... and is eventually replaced by a more stagnant and monolithic culture.

Eh, This is a fantasy roleplay game. Did you miss that somewhere? Do you really believe that Vampire society could exist? Do you really think that Orcs are Chaotic Evil by genetic disposition? (that's the impression I get from D&D rules). Likewise the Evil Empire in Star Wars; does it make any sense at all? It's fantasy. You don't like the background. Why spend an entire 3800 word review dissing the background?

I think you are unfit to review games.

the editing and layout were slapdash

I didn't think so. The 4 page index is an excellent (when compared to the pathetic indexs in the Vampire books). The table of contents excellent. I am able to navigate my way through this book with ease.

Overall, I did like what I saw.

You're having a laugh. 2 out of 5 for style and you liked it????