The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 - on Sale Now!

A fanzine for The Empire of the Petal Throne rpg. Issue #5 is now available...but only until it sells out. IIRC only 200, maybe 300, copies are printed.

Dyson Does it Digitally...

There is a new Character Sheet for "Empire of the Petal Throne" players available over at Dyson's Dodecahedron.  You can see it pictured in the background above (picture from his blog, used w/o permission, but hopefully he won't mind!) Also shown are the original rules for "Empire of the Petal Throne" and two issues of a new publication by James Maliszewski, of Grognardia fame: "The Excellent Traveling Volume". The first issue (now sold out) was rather nice. I'm still waiting on my copy of the second issue. Make sure to order yours soon - he only prints about 200 copies and they go fast!

Dyson's Character Sheet is a PDF download and, as he says, it could be "prettied up". Hopefully, if there is enough interest, he will do just that! :-)

E is for the Empire of the Petal Throne

The Empire of the Petal Throne, often abbreviated as EPT, is a role-playing game created by Professor MAR Barker way back in the early nineteen seventies of the millennium just past. It was published by TSR a little after Dungeons and Dragons. Tékumel is the planet on which the game takes place. Tsolyánu is the proper name for the Empire of the Petal Throne, a vast empire larger than modern day Europe that is ruled over by a God-King. The box cover is shown above. It depicts the city of Béy Sü, the capital of the Empire. My previous posts on Béy Sü can be found here...

Games that I play...

Seems like a logical place to start to explain a bit about the games that I play. I am primarily a "wargamer" rather than a "role-player", though the wargames I like to play are often the sort with an almost role-playing type of character development.

I mean, I play a wide selection board games and games like "Battlelore" or "Command and Colors" but tabletop miniatures games are my hobby. Heck, I play both of the latter games using miniatures on the table (w/o hexes) rather than the way they were intended to be played.

I collect role-playing games, and have, on-and-off since I first received "Greyhawk" and "Blackmoor" for Christmas as a kid. The boxed D&D set was sold out and on backorder so I guess I got a second printing. But it a first printing of the first two supplements! I also have the other books, but they came later. And I went back and ordered "Chainmail" because it was referenced in the rules and I didn't understand the "Alternate Combat System" - not at first anyhow.

Back then I lived in the country and I had to make my first odd shaped dice out of cardboard and cellotape.

I encountered Tékumel in a Wargaming Magazine, "Wargamer's Digest, which featured a battle report about the "Battle of Ry". That got me interested. The "Empire of the Petal Throne" game was always advertised in the TSR ads each issue but $25 was too costly for me at the time! I had to wait until the Swords and Glory books came out in the early 80's - I snapped those up as soon as I realized what they were! :-)

Anyhow, I'm rambling a bit here. Back on track...

The aim of this blog is to ramble on about my Tékumel gaming. This will include "A Band of Joyous Heroes" which is more of a tabletop game than pure role-playing game though it definitely has an element of character development. Also "Kerdu" which is a set of wargames rules. Both of these rulesets are based upon the Two Hour Wargames mechanisms. I have also recently been toying with the Original EPT rules - which I finally picked up on ebay a few years back, and also Humanspace Adventures, by The Drune. Visit IX to see what he is doing.