Sweet friend, I almost loved thee

[jarulf]

Over the years, have you come across any systems or settings (other than BRP/RQ/Elric!/etc or Glorantha!) that were so close to being just right, but had some fatal flaw that prevented you from bowing down in worship?

For me, I think Harnworld is a very good candidate. It's a richly detailed setting for a gritty low-fantasy type of gaming I often enjoy. The maps are pretty and informative, the details on society, culture and economics are good and so on.

But I absolutely hate the religions. They are silly and dull. They are no different probably from what you'd find in many other games, but I just think they clash with the medieval quasi-real feeling of the rest of the setting.

Isn't that island a little bit crowded with all those kingdoms?

Elves and dwarves lifted from Middle Earth (literally, I gather).

I really want to like Harnworld, but can't.

[Shaira]

Bizarrely enough, Traveller.

I've played it loads, love the background to death, but really, I mean REALLY, have a problem with the fact that Traveller space is FLAT. I mean, you're in a starship, and you can fly forwards, backwards, left and right - but not up or down!

Traveller space is 1 parsec thick... It's just such a massively illogical non-sequitur that it just blows the rest of it out of the water for me. Plus you can't use all that nifty stellar cartography software out there...

Then again - Arcanum and the Bestiary. Loved all the setting material, but something about it never quite gelled for me. Shades of Conan, which was absolutely great - but then with all these Tolkien elves in full-plate armour popping up. Shattered the illusion.

Cheers,

Sarah

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by jarulf

But I absolutely hate the religions. They are silly and dull. They are no different probably from what you'd find in many other games, but I just think they clash with the medieval quasi-real feeling of the rest of the setting. ... I really want to like Harnworld, but can't.

When I used Cities of Harn, I had to swap-out the religions for ones from my world, just saying "X = Y". So if you have some "medieval quasi-real" religions in mind, why not try that to reignite your ardour?

Originally Posted by Shaira

Bizarrely enough, Traveller.
I've played it loads, love the background to death, but really, I mean REALLY, have a problem with the fact that Traveller space is FLAT.

Not bizarre at all, I never liked Traveller. (Something about (1) getting shanghaied to a tin-can where all escape plans failed because the plot required us to find a ship disguised as an asteroid (who could rely on that happening?) and (2) joining the game with a scoutship(!) but being unable to join in the adventure because, when the party came by chased by the baddies, the laws of physics prevented me accelerating enough to catch them before they were out of detection range. )
Then again, if it helps you accept the Flat Space idea, I did once encounter some disturbing tentacled entities that the GM said were from "outside the normal plane of exploration". Maybe the parsec-wide accessible space is just a demilitarized zone between Northern and Southern factions of gross Cthulhoid type horrors. The various governments of known space, who can't bring themselves to admit the situation is hopeless, just put limiters on all the nav-systems ever made, and refuse to talk about it...

[jarulf]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

When I used Cities of Harn, I had to swap-out the religions for ones from my world, just saying "X = Y". So if you have some "medieval quasi-real" religions in mind, why not try that to reignite your ardour?

I'm not sure I ever had any ardour that needed rekindling as I never really got into it.

For Harn I'd want religions analogous to real world ones, so I'd have to change Larani, Morgath et co into something not entirely different from Judaism, Christianity and Islam. With several twists of course, carbon copies are rarely fun. Recognizable, but different, but it would mean rewriting quite a bit of history.

I did start working on this ages ago, trying to shoehorn the different deities into two or three related faiths with Nolomar (the Sun) as the principal God for all.

But the religions isn't the only thing, I don't like the elves and dwarves, the earthmasters, Lothrim and so on. Most of these are easily ignored, but they add up.
I think my real problem is that while I love fantasy, I don't like the fantasy elements of Harn much. To me, it's just an odd mix.

The magic system is pretty cool though and should be transferable to BRP from what I remember of it.

We did play Traveller (the little black books) a bit but never got a proper campaign going. I think we had more fun rolling up characters to see how long they survived during character generation.

[Ars Mysteriorum]

Nobilis. Hands DOWN.

Here is a game where you are literally god-like. And you can create your own universe as your hometown. Do you like space opera? Are you the Power of Destruction? Guess what! You are Darth Vader, cloaked in darkness with all the power of the Dark Side of the Force in your hands. None of that Midichlorian bullcrap. You are a Dark Lord in all his Evil Majesty.

You're bearing down on Yavin 4 and this time, there's not going to be a Luke Skywalker. That's right. Those rebel bastards are really gonna get it. BOOM! Their impending screams of fear and agony make you drunk with power.

You put your finger on the shiny red button labeled "Kill Rebel Scum" as Moff Tarkin's skeletal face pulls into an expression you can only interpret as glee.

You begin to push the button.

Then you feel a tingle in your spine like someone just shanked you from behind with a knife made of ice. The very concept of Destruction is being undermined in reality and is beginning to exist less. Well, crap.

So you scream a curse word, get in your TIE fighter and go back to the crappy real world to find out nasty fey-like beings (called Excrucians) from outside "reality" have conspired a plot. They have managed to start making the idea of Destruction exist a little less by turning the War in Iraq into Entertainment rather than Destruction through some terribly clever means I do not have the capability of mapping out here while I'm at work.

So you force choke a few of the right people and twist the media coverage into showing the horrors of destruction and death. There we go. That's not so bad. But then, in order to really screw over the Excrucians you have to do a ritual. Involving flowers. A very detailed ritual with very detailed flowers. Seriously. There's a whole appendix dealing with it.

Flowers...?!

FLOWERS?!

DARTH F$#%ING VADER DOES NOT USE FLOWERS!

So when Darth Vader gets done fondling some pansies, he returns to his happy little universe he arrives just in time to see a squad of X-Wings and the Millenium Falcon gunning for the Death Star.

Well, crap again.

This is game is the very idealization of what an RPG is. Masterfully crafted and beautifully written. And I absolutely REFUSE to play it. Nor will I part with it.

Naturally, it sits on my shelf in a place of respect, but out of the way from my other, more used books. It's the greatest game I will never play.

[jarulf]

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

Nobilis. Hands DOWN.

Wow! That sounds really, uhm. Different? I've never played Nobilis and all I know about it is the name :-)

[rust]

Empire of the Petal Throne. I would have loved to play it, and still love to
read it, but all the potential players took a look at the names, shook their
heads and said that it was absolutely impossible to pronounce them - and
unfortunately I never was in a mood to "rename" an entire RPG.

[Shaira]

Originally Posted by rust

Empire of the Petal Throne. I would have loved to play it, and still love to
read it, but all the potential players took a look at the names, shook their
heads and said that it was absolutely impossible to pronounce them - and
unfortunately I never was in a mood to "rename" an entire RPG.

Yeah - Tekumel's one of those games that rates very highly amongst GMs and "reader"-type players, but is just like a completely foreign language to the casual player. It's a shame, cos it has some cool ideas, but just gets a bit too inaccessible sometimes without an arch & anth or comparative linguistics degree.

About the only way I've ever been able to get players to play it is by using the "original" scenario premise, way back from TSR times - that the PCs are a bunch of PCs from Relatively Comprehensible Stereotypical Fantasy Land, who've just got off the boat in Jakalla harbour. That way it's *okay* they can't understand anything that's going on!

I do enjoy reading bits of it from time to time though. Cool GM source material. I've also toyed with the idea of "pulping" up a Tekumel campaign, just never got around to it. Concept: it's the mid 1930s, somewhere in central America, and an Indiana Jones clone and sidekicks are being pursued into some Strange Forbidding Ruins by a bunch of Nazi occultists and - kapla! - they suddenly find themselves in some equally strange ruin on Tekumel somewhere. The Nazi Occultist Bad Guy finds himself a real hit with the local politicos, and Indy tries to work out what the heck he can do to stop the rot and get his gang back home.

Cheers!

Sarah

[jarulf]

I got the latest incarnation of the rules, and played for a while in a game on rpol.net. It looks really cool but at least as difficult to get into as I suspect Glorantha can be for the uninitiated.

And those names...

Oh, and that pulp version sounds like lots of fun.

[Zane]

Harn -- You know, this rates up there as something I'd really like to like, but can't. The background never did anything for me. But those maps, WOW!

Traveller -- One of my all time favorites. I have to agree with Sarah on the 2-dimensional aspect, yet that can be fairly easily explained away thanks to jump drives. It really isn't "2 dimensional" it just appears to be that way.

EPT -- I probably should take offense at the comments against it. But as I'm still not sure I can run a game of it, I can't very well take offense.

Rust, renaming it is actually an interesting idea. Just starting out with easier names, and slowly adding in harder ones would be an interesting tactic.

Sarah, how well did the "off the boat" start work? The way I see it is that such a campaign would be a stepping stone to a follow-on campaign where the players are actual members of Tsolyani society. I like your pulp idea, I know the Professor has taken trips Earth's past at least once.

I think the problem is the vast amount of knowledge needed by both the GM and the players. It is also worth pointing out that Sandy Peterson did a Runequest for Tekumel conversion years and years ago that is floating around the net.