Negotiations, or asking for directions? Either way, i have always liked the three guys in the back…. Just waiting to go kill something!

What part of this drawing is your least favorite? I need some critique!

Such a good spell, and probably one of the most utilized utility spells in the game!

My depiction here is of a cleric checking out some ruins and finding that the indeed have some sort of magic upon them.

Is it a trap? Is it a portal? What other ideas do you have about this image, what is our cleric detecting here?

Detect Magic! For @gamewickgames for the BOSS RPG. #ttrpg #inkdrawing #inking #cleric #osr

This is a personal work, a break from commissions to work on me, my flow, my technique. Love commissions, but its nice once in a while to just draw something for me. I got away from that, and am finding my way back. Hope you like it.

Just some pencils for you! All for @goodmangames various projects. Something about raw pencils. Mmmm mmm mmm …

Welcome back to another Tékumel Thursday! This week we will look at Empire of the Petal Throne, the first ruleset published for the setting of Tékumel and a game that has a long list of firsts under its belt for TTRPGs.

Released in January, 1975, Empire of the Petal Throne (EPT) was 2nd RPG ever released by TSR and arguably the 2nd RPG ever released (Tunnels & Trolls was released that same January). EPT is essentially a hack of original 1974 D&D (OD&D) with some neat changes that I think people may be interested in for houseruling their own games which I will point out below.

As a note, while some people complain about OD&D’s organization and lack of explanations, I’ve found that EPT is much better organized in a way that is still familiar, being organized mainly following the Men & Magic; Monsters & Treasure; Underworld & Wilderness Adventure 3-book format in one 121-page book.

Being a ruleset for Tékumel, EPT only has 11 pages of direct lore in which the pre-history & history of the planet, the current political situations around the Five Empires, and the species of Tékumel, all in a fairly broad view that doesn’t get you weighed down in too many details. The rest of the lore of the setting is drip-fed throughout the rest of the book in the form of magic items, spells, class information, skills, etc. EPT originally came in a box set consisting of the comb-bound rulebook, some reference pages, maps of about half of the known world of Tékumel, and the city map of Jakálla, the City Half as Old as the World.
One fun note is that while OD&D doesn’t go into details on how you actually play an RPG, EPT does! EPT breaks down how you play RPGs in a very easy to understand way, instructing you on how to build your own dungeon, social setups, characters, and wilderness adventures. This bit of detail was one of the reasons EPT actually outsold OD&D until TSR began to put EPT on the backburner and not advertise it as much so as not to compete with their flagship game, leading to quite the legal dispute.

Making a Character

There are 3 professions (classes) of characters in EPT: Warriors, Priests, & Magic-Users (which serve as a lay-priest of sorts). Characters aren’t expected to be blank slates just arriving from the wilderness, either. These are people with a previous place in society, as we will see in the Skills section.

Alignments

There are two basic alignments in EPT “Good” & “Evil”, though this was a change requested by Gygax as he felt Tékumel’s system of Gods of Stability and Gods of Change would be too confusing to players. Characters are expected to be worshipers of either the 5 “Good” Gods or their Cohorts (attendee deities) or the 5 “Evil” Gods or their Cohorts. As another note, the nomenclature of “Evil” really is a bad way to explain the Gods of Change, as they are more gods of entropy or base desires/emotions. The Gods of Stability are more gods of tradition and, well, Stability! Both sides of the pantheon are worshiped and accepted throughout the Empires, some more than others depending on the location.

Sex

Characters also choose a sex, noting that women in Tékumel are treated as equals of men with their own protections and powers. The Yán Koryáni Empire to the north, for example, is a matriarchal society where women head the clans and rule vs the patriarchal Tsolyáni Empire. As an aside, 1983’s Swords & Glory (the 1e AD&D to EPT’s OD&D) would later go on to elaborate on the sexual progressiveness of Tékumel society, describing how LGBTQ+ persons on Tékumel are given an equal status as cis-gendered, heterosexual persons!

Basic Talents

These are your core attributes, some of which will be familiar to D&D-heads.
Strength, intelligence, constitution, psychic ability, dexterity, and comeliness are the main characteristics of your character. These attributes are rolled using a flat 1d100 rather than the familiar 3d6 bell curve. This means that attributes can vary fairly widely and is a common spot for houseruling. The typical bands of adjustment are 1-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61-80, 81-95, and 96-100. Strength is the main attribute for Warriors, Intelligence for Priests, and Psychic Ability for Magic-Users. As you level there is a chance your Basic Talents increase, as well.

Strength adjusts your to hit and damage rolls.

Intelligence adjusts your to hit & damage rolls; your ability to use spells of higher levels, Eyes (like magic wands), and other forms of technology; and abilities to find and detect secret doors and traps.

Constitution adjusts your to hit and damage rolls; chance of being revivified; chances that a healing spell/Eye will work on you and maybe adding to healing dice.

Psychic Ability adjusts whether or not you can even cast spells and the chances to successfully cast spells (you roll to cast).

Dexterity adjusts your to hit and damage rolls as well as giving you a chance to hit the wrong target if your dexterity is low enough.

Comeliness is how attractive your character is and is mainly a social stat. If you roll 96-100, there’s even a chance that people seeing you will attempt to kidnap you and gift you to a noble unless you cover your gorgeous self!

If you’ve kept track, strength, intelligence, constitution, and dexterity all can adjust your chances to hit and damage! This means someone with max stats can get up to +6 to hit and +4 to damage at level 1! This adds to the swords & planet feel because there are less rounds of everyone missing and more rounds of things progressing (for better or worse!).

Original Skills

This is the very first skill system released in any RPG! You roll to see how many skills and in which category they are: Plebian, Skilled, & Noble. These skills are actually defined, as well, so if you are an Animal-trainer, you can train any creature not totally hostile to man, taking from 1-3 months depending on the intelligence of the creature and the nature of the task being trained. There are 25 Plebian, 14 Skilled, & 17 Noble. As you level it is possible to gain new skills or to be trained during play by a teacher/master.

Some examples:

Plebian: cook, glass-blower, perfumer, bootmaker, and barber.
Skilled: mountaineer, scribe-accountant, ship-captain, and swimmer-diver.
Noble: geologist, alchemist, assassin-spy-tracker, and botanist.

These skills further reinforce that your character came from somewhere and existed before deciding to go adventuring one day. Gardasiyal, a later RPG fro mthe 1990s, even came with quite a few solo adventures you could use to role-play out your character’s “origin story”, so to speak.

Professional Skills

These are skills that your character gained in the training for their profession. For warriors it is the ability to use different weapons (commonly houseruled to give bonuses, allowing you to use any weapon from the start), for priests you get spells or extra languages, and for magic-users you also get spells.

Some examples:

Warrior: spear, mace/flail, axe, sword, sling, etc.
Priest: produce light spell, detect evil/good, cure light wounds, ESP, telepathy, or known 2 ancient/modern languages.
Magic-Users: control of self, illusion, telekinesis, astrology, the Grey Hand, and control undead creatures.

Bonus Spells

These are spells above and beyond the starting Profession Skills you can learn as you level up or throughout adventuring. They are divided in to 3 Groups, though the power level is relatively flat compared to old school D&D spell levels. They vary from Cure/Bless to the Hands of Krá the Mightyto The Demon. There are 18 Group I & II spells and 21 Group III. They can each be cast only once, though if you learn them further times they can be cast multiple times. Professional spell can sometimes be cast multiple times before you “lose” the spell.

Experience

1 gold Káitar recovered = 1 XP. Also, each HD of monsters slayed gives 50XP to the character who slayed the beast! A frequent houserule spot again, is to divide XP among all characters. If the monster was slayed with a magical/tech device, only 25XP/HD is awarded.

EPT also has the unique challenge of not only increasing XP requirements to level that old school D&D has, but also lessening the XP awarded. So, a level 10 Warrior needs 240,001+ XP but only revieves 5% of the normal XP due to their high level. Needless to say this is frequently ignored haha!

Hit Dice and Damage Dice

All HD are in d6s just like 3lbb OD&D with most weapons using 1d6 for damage with a +1 or +2 here and there as standard. Daggers and small missiles are the one exception using 1d4 (the first instance of variable dice damage in an RPG).

EPT uses the basic “roll 1d20, add modifiers, refer to the attack matrix to see what AC you hit”, but also adds the wholly unique Damage Dice Matrix. You would then refer to this matrix to see how many damage dice you roll vs your opponent. Say you hit with a 2-handed sword that does 1d6+2 damage as a level 10 Warrior vs a 1HD monster. Instead of the usual 1d6+2 the 2-handed sword would do, you would roll 5d6+2 vs that pipsqueak monster who dared stand before your blade! That, of course, is the most extreme example. Typically you only roll the normal damage up until level 4 where you get 2d6+2 vs a 1HD monster. So that increase happens in the mid-game vs the mooks and scales upwards.

Combat

Combat is done in phases that are familiar: movement, magic, missiles, and melee. There are a couple rules that may be interesting as houserules in your game:

Dying Blows: Any creature that hasn’t had a chance to attack in the round that it is killed gets a Dying Blow

Natural 20s: A roll of a natural 20 gives double damage and another roll of the d20. If that second roll is a 19 or a 20, that creatures is automatically slain!

Spellcasting

As said before, to cast a spell you must roll to see if your spell fails. At level 1 with average ability scores that chance is 60%. Fear not, your spell isn’t wasted, it just fails to cast. You can try, try again. Psychic Ability adjusts this, as well. For every level above 1 that chance to fail falls by 10% until level 6 where it drops by 5%.

Coin Weight

For all of you people out there that have ever complained about coins being too heavy at 1/10 per pound, here is your solution! EPT uses coin weight, keeping with OD&D, but gives each coin a weight of 3 grams (there are 454 grams to the pound for us Americans). That means a metal sword would weigh 900 coins, a dagger 325, a shield 2000, a waterskin 500, etc. etc. Leather armor weighs 4,324cn, chainmail 8,650, and plate mail 13,000. Light movement rate (12”) is 0 - 13,000cn, heavy foot (9”) is 13,001 - 17,300, and armored foot (6”) is 17,301 – 26,000. See, never again need you worry about that silly gold coin as large as your hand. Revel in your realism! (I’m being sarcastic, of course. This system is pretty “of its time” in my opinion, but fun to point out).

Dungeon Exploration

1 torch per 5 people in a dungeon partsy must be lit or the group fights as half strength.

Opening stuck doors happens on a 2/6 with a 1 rolled meaning the door opens easily and the party may surprise who/whatever is on the other side while a 2 rolled means it is forced open and no surprise chance exists.

3 beings max can open a stuck door needing 3/6 but having no chance to surprise who/whatever is on the other side.

One final rule I would like to point out for potential houseruling is the waterborne exploration rules.

Waterborne exploration procedures are as follows:

1. Determine day’s route of travel.

2. Determine wind speed (1d6) & daily movement allowance:

1 = becalmed wind, no movement.
2 = light breeze, move 1 hex (~83 miles)
3 to 4 = moderate breeze, move 1 hex (~83 miles)
5 = strong wind, move 1 hex (~83 miles)
6 = gale, move 2 hexes (~166 miles)

2a) if strong wind/gale, ship travels in the wind’s direction:

1 = NE, 2 = E, 3 = SE, 4 = SW, 5 = W, 6 = NW

2b) For each gale-force wind roll, 15% chance exists for storm damaging ship. After 4 damages, ship sinks! Crew must make saving throws based on dexterity to avoid drowning.

2c) Unfamiliar shallows/tidal flats: 15%/ day of wrecking. Regularly traveled waters only 10%/day. A captain familiar with the ares only has 5%/day.

2d) Ship going aground: if wrecked, saving throw of 12+ must be made. If saving throw is failed, crew must save vs drowning. If the drowning saving throw is failed they find themselves stranded on the nearest shore.

3. determine if ship gets lost:

open water: 2/6. Shallows/tidal flats: 1/6

4. daily encounter check:

open water: 1/6. Shallows or tidal flats: 2/6

5. If encounter:

5a) time encountered:

1-3 = day, 4-6 = night

5b) number of ships encountered:

1-4 = 1 ship, 5 = 2 ships, 6 = 1d4+3 ships

5c) Encounter type (see appropriate table)

6. Evasion: chances based upon wind (see #2):

Becalmed = 0%, light breeze = 10%, moderate breeze = 20%, strong wind = 30%, gale = 50%.

7a) If evasion failed: resolve encounter (combat, parley, trade, etc.)

7b) If evasion successful: move hexes according to wind.

8. Repeat for next day/move.

Rounding out the book is a short section on the Tsolyáni script used the Tsolyáni Empire. It is actually relatively simple and a great script if you need something for a puzzle or magical script for your games. It writes right to left like arabic and there are well-done examples in the book.

Hopefully there are some rules here you can steal or work out for your games/systems. Empire of the Petal Throne is tremendous system and rulebook for the setting of Tékumel and probably the easiest way to get started without being overwhelmed. It is still in print as a print as a print on demand book over at DriveThruRPG in a very good quality book, in my opinion.

As always feel free to join us over on r/Tekumel for discussions or whatever questions you may have and check out the Tekumel wiki over there as well as the New to Tékumel? wiki page.