Acculturation
There's a reason the original Empire of the Petal Throne rules set tells you
to introduce player characters as ignorant foreigners -- because your players
are ignorant foreigners in the world of Tekumel. This game world has a culture
that is not only more elaborate than anything else out there, but also far more
unforgiving of mistakes and "uncivilized" behavior. To add to the confusion, their
definition of "civilized" and the 20th century Western definition of
"uncivilized" track closely in some important respects...
As a GM, if you want your player-characters to begin as members in good standing of
Tsolyani society, you have two options:
you can "Tsolyanify" your players before you start, or you
can spend the first several sessions saying "Uh, no, you wouldn't actually do
that..." every few minutes.
I was fortunate in that I not only had players who were highly
motivated to study background material, but I also had some excellent material
to give them. We basically used three major sources:
Before we started the character generation process, I handed out some
introductory material about Tekumel that Patrick Brady had written for his
campaign. It covered the basics (post-technological society, little metal,
chlen, clans, etc.) in a few typewritten pages. I also talked a bit about
the world, and answered basic questions.
The Adventures on Tekumel books themselves gave the players most of the
background they needed beyond those basic facts. They are extremely rich in
detail, and I don't think I could have started a campaign without them unless
I wanted to assign tons of homework to my players (or use the "ignorant
foreigners on the docks" method, which wouldn't jibe at all with my desire to
run a high-society political campaign). These allowed the players to learn
a lot about Tsolyani society as they went along. Learning by doing; it's a
beautiful thing.
Finally, one or two of my players had read Professor Barker's novels before
character generation. Those who hadn't, read them immediately afterward.
The novels also give an excellent feel for how the society works from the
inside, and are far more accessible than the Swords & Glory Sourcebook is;
they're fiction, and fun to read.
Once the campaign got under way, of course, various players have read the
Sourcebook, Deeds of the Ever-Glorious (well, at least the chapters on their
own legions), and other stuff. But requiring them to do that first would scare some
folks off.
