Re: Tsolyani

On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Terrence Donnelly wrote:

> set on Tsolyani grammar.  Boy, is it detailed!  One almost thinks he
> created the Tekumel game just an an excuse to do conlanging.  Is anyone
Ngangmuru!

Actually, Professor of Linguistics, M.A.R. Barker created the language
and world simultaneously, the world to act as a setting for his
language.  Gary Gygax was so taken with it that he convinced Barker to
allow a D&D variant set of rules be published ("Empire of the Petal
Throne").  I'd love to get a copy of those rules, just for historical
sake.  Anyway, D&D was a poor model of Tekumel, and TSR didn't want to
put any effort into further support of the line, so they parted ways.

> familiar with the Tekmuel game system?  How important was Tsolyani the
> language to the play of the game?  Somehow I can't imagine gamers willing to
> learn an entire language just to do role-playing!
Not for playing, but Tekumel fans do very often put some work into
learning the language.

I keep meaning to get those books and the Tekumel source material, too...