Other basic moves for the Falesa islander characters featured in this scenario:Īnd so on. However, if you do play along with it you gain experience. So you can refuse to give in to a convincing argument even if the other person rolls 10+. Those can be applied to player-characters, but of course a player isn’t obliged to have their character behave in any way other than what they decide.
#Shen empire of the petal throne full
I already said that this isn’t supposed to be a full Tekumel hack of Powered By The Apocalypse, but here are a few basic moves: On a roll of 6 or less you fail, and ideally the referee will use that failure to set up something else (“you slip, end up flat on your back, and you’re the laughing stock of the island get the nickname Yojo, which means Wobbly”). On a 7-9 you’ve achieved a qualified success: the referee will offer a cost (maybe you sprain your shoulder, which could be reflected as Harm taken or an ongoing -1 modifier) and if you choose to press ahead you succeed but pay the cost. If you score 10+ you’ve done it just like you intended. In the PbtA system any character can attempt a basic move.įor example, aiming to wrestle somebody to the ground would involve rolling 2D6 and adding the appropriate stat (Body in this case). Maybe they once humiliated you in front of everyone and you’ve never forgotten it, even if they have. Note that having History +2 with another character doesn’t have to mean you like them. With that caveat in mind, each player assigns relationship values (History, or “Hx” in the AWE system, as in “this character has history with me”) to reflect their character’s attitude to each other PC: +2 for the character they have the closest link to, -1 for the one they know least, +1 for other members of their own lineage, and 0 to all others. For example, in a pinch any of these characters would be expected to put other family members first, whatever their personal friendship with another character from outside the lineage. Tsolyanu has a rich and complex social system which does not readily reduce to a few numerical values. What the players do in those episodes will decide their adult stats. One option is to assign values to the five stats (+2, +1, +1, 0 and -1) at the start of the game.Īlternatively, you could play through the characters’ childhood allowing them each in turn to “remember” early escapades. Enemy = basic emotions aggression, selfishness, lust, etc a person with strong pedhetl is forceful and likely to be noticed – whether as a trouble-maker or as a hero depends on other attributes.Soul = social attributes how honourable, balanced, confident a person is.Shadow = imaginative attributes inspiration, creativity, intuition.Mind = conceptual attributes memory, intelligence.Body = physical attributes health, strength, and reflexes.With a little licence we can translate the five selves into AWE stats: As Patrick Brady’s article on Tsolyani metaphysics makes clear, we exist in five overlapping worlds and we have an identity in each of them: the physical world, the conceptual world, the social world, the dream world, and the world of primitive drives and animal needs. The point isn’t simply that we have multiple flavours of soul. And finally the id (pedhetl, literally “enemy”) is the infantile self of instinct, desires and fears. The soul (baletl) is the immortal essence of the person. The mind (hlakme) is the reasoning entity. To a Tsolyani, each person has five selves. But it should be enough to get started with. This is not by any means a complete hack of the AWE system for Tékumel. Which is why it works much better as an RPG setting than worlds that were designed to tell a story – Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, say, or Vance’s Dying Earth.Ī new set of rules for Tékumel roleplaying comes along every few years (I've only contributed to the glut with my own Tirikelu RPG, though I happen to think it's rather good and has the added advantage of being free) but conscpicuous by its absence is Powered By The Apocalypse (aka the Apocalypse World Engine, or AWE). It’s certainly not want of rule systems that’s responsible for the obscurity of Professor MAR Barker's world of Tékumel - an obscurity that is unjust and tragic too, because not only did Prof Barker create a fascinating and intricately detailed world, he also designed it from the outset with gaming in mind.