Administrivia dhiyalikh

Eventually, all of the sub-topics, such as "The Characters" and "Acculturation," will be links to additional information.


Cultural and Social Issues

Starting a Tekumel campaign requires a fair amount of research and preparation. First, you have to decide how you're going to bring the characters in; if they'll be native Tsolyani, you have to find some way to get the players up to speed on the culture. Will they all be members of the same clan? The same Legion? Different clans and/or legions? Generally speaking, what social standing should they have? (You can't have them too far apart, or they will only be able to communicate through intermediaries, which in play will be a major source of annoyance.) Will they start in a small town? On a battlefield? In a major city? If so, which one? The list goes on...

The Characters -- restrictions on character creation

Acculturation -- how we got the players squared away on Tsolyani culture

Departures -- how close our campaign is to "official" Tekumel, and the few specific changes we have made from the canon


Game Mechanics

Once you've decided on the cultural factors, you have to roll up your sleeves/strap on your armor/hold your nose/put on your Nomex body suit and address an ugly mechanical question: which of the many sets of ugly mechanics developed for running Tekumel are you going to use? Just as high-class Tsolyani disdain exact knowledge of numerical facts (like what time it is), hard-core Tekumel buffs generally consider all discussion of rules systems ugly and impolite. You can get flamed even for asking about them on the newsgroup, and they're a mostly forbidden topic on the Blue Room list. Nevertheless, you will have to pick one, develop your own, or decide to run "systemless."

This is mostly a lengthy way of justifying what this section of the Jakalla Nights web site is for: here we will grapple with the indelicate administrative questions involved in running the Jakalla Nights campaign.

Character Generation -- how we used four solo adventure books to generate a party of characters

Experience and Skills -- the only areas we have heavily modified


Sources

I've been able to collect virtually everything written about Tekumel, so we've had a large body of source material to draw from. Some sources we use for cultural background, others for reference, and still others for game mechanics. Here are some of the key ones.
Orientation -- basic, intermediate, and advanced material to help players understand the wild and wooly world of Tekumel

Reference -- where to go if you absolutely, positively, have to know what kind of houses they build in Khirgar, or whether it's okay for your Chegarra-worshipping character to partake of tekha-fish at a Jakallani banquet

Game Mechanics -- the canonical "physics" of our campaign, a mix of two official game systems and some supplementary material originally written for a third one



Suniyal hiJakalla Jakalla Nights