I know there are some long time role-players and many fantasy fiction fans here. How many of you guys are familiar with Prof. Barker’s Empire of the Petal Throne and Tekumel?
I played the first version of the game for quite some time. Enjoyed it. I somewhat remember my character as being some small race, who was a cleric of some sort.
Read a couple of the Feist books, but gave up when they kept re-printing them under different titles, etc.
I remember the ads and always being impressed that he was a Professor. Never did get a chance to play it (or even see it).
I do remember there was a fairly mediocre video game about it at one time.
I’ve got one edition of the core rulebook somewhere in my collection, and The Man of Gold, one of Barker’s Tekumel-set novels. (Which is not massively good, as novels go, but does give a bit of a feel for the setting.)
I do not have the audiotape dictionary. I once was going to join a PBEM, but they insisted that every letter be in Tekumel.
I said noooo.
I’ve read Man of Gold and I tend to agree with Steve Wright – Excellent campaign material, so-so fantasy novel.
I started playing and GMing EPT back in '79, and never felt that the thin coating over 1st Ed D&D did the world justice. On the other hand one of the GMs I played with pretty much ignored the rules and just played the world and that worked pretty well.
Never played one of the later versions, how do they compare?
Overall I’ve got a big soft spot for EPT (it was the first RPG I played), but it was quite hard to introduce new players to, as the depth of material, and the odd creature names, customs, etc, almost meant a player had to learn a new language to play.