f13.net

I have no idea if anyone even remembers Tekumel or Empire of the Petal Throne or the other gaming or fiction materials spawned out of it, but MAR Barker died (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/03/mar-barker-1929-2012) last week at the age of 83. For people looking for an alternative to the standard "D&D" world backgrounds, Tekumel was the original "other option." My friends favored the somewhat easier to comprehend Glorantha and I remember Tekumel as a world that was completely out of my comfort zone and felt like I needed a graduate degree to just understand. It was just as fully realized as Middle Earth, but very foreign and all Silmarilian and no Hobbit. I finally got a taste of what it was all about in his novels and it was pretty incredible.

Yeah, it is pretty strange stuff. It does that sci-fi/fantasy crossover thing that I don't especially care for personally but it is certainly immensely detailed and pretty interesting if you like world-building.

Time to get my copy out of the closet and revisit. Haven't looked at it for some years. Was a mind-blowing thing when I was a teenager.

I don't know how I missed this entirely.  Tekumel, I mean.

It was an amazing bit of world-creation, really. Deserves to have a wider reputation than it does.

Yeah, it was basically about 20 years ahead of its time as far as getting a wide audience.  For the 70s it was fucking weird.  After a couple decades of a million other settings that each have a handful of strange things to acclimate one to non-medieval-europeness, not to mention the bits and pieces of Tekumel leaking out into other genres, the Tekumel Parade of Weirdness has moved up to 'pretty neat' imo.