The Tékumel - The World of the Petal Throne Forums is a forum that one would expect to be an active vibrant forum that emulates the world that M.A.R. Barker created starting (IIRC) when he was about 10 years old. One would be wrong in that expectation.
This forum was founded in May of 2005 and over the next 12 years through the end of 2017 it amassed 268 members, 304 threads and 1476 posts in total or 10.6 posts per month over than time period with no posts in 2018 at all as of today.
So I asked myself why is this forum dead and dormant, when it has every reason on the surface to be 100 times bigger at this point. So I tried to create an account, but registration is disabled. I started reading through the forum, not a long task by any means.
Here is my opinion of what I found
1. The site Admin has only 97 posts in just over 13 years, if the Admin is not excited enough to talk about the world, why would anyone else.
2. No posters that have any appreciable amount of posting for the length of their membership.
3. No one priming the pump with interesting topics and no one engaging anyone in discussion. Most threads have three (3) or (usually) fewer posts.
4. Many posts have had the content of the post deleted so there are many blank posts.
5. Many threads say that they contain a link to fan made materials, but all or nearly all such links seem to have been deleted.
6. My conclusion is that the site is not fan friendly, and the few people I talked to agreed with that.
7. My other conclusion is that the whole issue of discouraging fan materials is choking the IP out of existence.
8. The current owners need to loosen the choke hold they have on the IP and allow fans to create fan material.
Where are all the fan sites? IP owners, re-open your forum, jump in and start some conversations, engage with the fans and encourage fan material. Get some games going at conventions, fan friendly and gamemaster friendly games. If you have a lot of hoops to jump through for these things, then get rid of the hoops.
This forum was founded in May of 2005 and over the next 12 years through the end of 2017 it amassed 268 members, 304 threads and 1476 posts in total or 10.6 posts per month over than time period with no posts in 2018 at all as of today.
So I asked myself why is this forum dead and dormant, when it has every reason on the surface to be 100 times bigger at this point. So I tried to create an account, but registration is disabled. I started reading through the forum, not a long task by any means.
Here is my opinion of what I found
1. The site Admin has only 97 posts in just over 13 years, if the Admin is not excited enough to talk about the world, why would anyone else.
2. No posters that have any appreciable amount of posting for the length of their membership.
3. No one priming the pump with interesting topics and no one engaging anyone in discussion. Most threads have three (3) or (usually) fewer posts.
4. Many posts have had the content of the post deleted so there are many blank posts.
5. Many threads say that they contain a link to fan made materials, but all or nearly all such links seem to have been deleted.
6. My conclusion is that the site is not fan friendly, and the few people I talked to agreed with that.
7. My other conclusion is that the whole issue of discouraging fan materials is choking the IP out of existence.
8. The current owners need to loosen the choke hold they have on the IP and allow fans to create fan material.
Where are all the fan sites? IP owners, re-open your forum, jump in and start some conversations, engage with the fans and encourage fan material. Get some games going at conventions, fan friendly and gamemaster friendly games. If you have a lot of hoops to jump through for these things, then get rid of the hoops.
One would expect lots of historical articles related to D&D, maybe some help with pronouncing the language and inventing words. There would be a lot of stuff to work on! Too bad that nobody wanted to put in the work, huh?
ReplyDeleteThere are several Yahoo groups for Tekumel and I am surprised that none of the stuff buried there was ever transferred to the forum. I think the things that I noted would explain the failure of that being done.
DeleteI think part of the problem is that Tekumel is a very niche setting/RPG, most people searching for a setting are going to look to more traditional fantasy. I am intrigued by the setting but won't run it as I am not a fan of the more alien races present in the setting. I'd rather take much of the setting and rework into a D&D campaign minus the bits I don't like, but I have no real desire to do so. Then you take this forum which Harry mentions is basically dead which is sad as it could be a great way to grow the fan community for the IP.
ReplyDeleteI hope that they will make a serious attempt to revive it. It would be valuable if they would take steps to make it work.
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