The rest of The Book of Ebon Bindings is flavorful descriptions of Tekumel's demons and how to summon them. It's obvious that a lot of work went into these entries; they're imaginative and lavishly detailed. A lot of care has gone into making them both lurid and similar to the kind of demonic lore found in real-world occult books.
The problem is that after a while the descriptions get really tedious.
Maybe this is just me, but after a few of these I start to wonder why I'm bothering to fight my way through all the detail because much of it isn't immediately gameable.
I'm all for flavor text that is rich with adventure hooks and embellishments to add into your games, but The Book of Ebon Bindings is a case of diminishing returns: once you've read one of these and implemented it into your game in some way, can you really go back to that well again? Frankly, the entries in the book are really well done for what they are, but they're not particularly compelling reading one after another.
Let's also talk about "the Carcosa factor." The rituals detailed in this book feature human sacrifice, human violation, and other oogie stuff (one of them seems to imply necrophilia, for example). It's in a cultural context, but it's also definitely used to emphasize the evil-ness of the demons and their rituals.
That said, I find it all to be not nearly as squick-tastic as Carcosa's rituals. Here's the difference as I see it: Carcosa's chief offense is in presenting horrific rituals in a banal way; it's simply the horrors of the nightly news transposed matter-of-factly into a fantasy setting. It's laundry-list malevolence; it wants to be shocking, and transgressive, but instead it just renders horror empty of impact.
The Book of Ebon Bindings at least presents its horrors as part of an occult context that gives you a sense of the setting and its mythology. I can't see myself using either as written, but somehow The Book of Ebon Bindings felt far more interesting and far less mediocre than Carcosa's magic descriptions.
I can see the tedious bit. Taken as a whole work, it probably is mainly for people interested in the world itself. I don't know that I've ever read it all the way through. I see it as mainly inspiration for the sort of thing you can do in Tekumel and what they ought to feel like. You also could probably let a player use it just as a grimoire they found. Let someone who's invested because of their character do all the heavy reading and point out to you what they want to do.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with you about this vis a vis Carcosa. Tekumel is at least coherent and contextualized.
It's weird--it's the only product I can think of where I thought "Wow, this is really well done but it is making me nod off reading it."
DeleteSo it goes. But if you thought the Tekumel goetia was sluggish going, there's always the cabala:
Deletehttp://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1763/The-Tongue-of-Those-Who-Journey-Beyond%3A-Sunuz?it=1
Oh my.
DeleteArcane de luxe.
Delete"The Grammar of Sunuz" actually proved quite fun and interesting in aTekumel game last fall. If you want to operate the technology of the Ancients, it can be quite useful.
DeleteI've always felt that Tekumel is for people with a bottomless appetite for detail who want to receive a complete world and not to modify it at all. Whereas Carcosa is the result of a couple of random generator tables, plus rules for sex sacrifices.
ReplyDeleteYou know, that is exactly correct. Oddly, I seem to favor something in the middle. I want enough detail to get the feel of a place, but without being exhausted.
Delete@Alec - I'd disagree. I like Tekumel quite a bit, but I don't think I'd play it. Instead, it serves as great fodder for ideas I want to develop in my own world. In the way that real history and culture, and fiction inspire game stuff, Tekumel does for me. Maybe I'm out of the ordinary among people that like it, but I'm not sure that's the case.
Delete@Trey - I assumed he meant people who played in Tekumel?
Delete@Jack - Possibly. It wasn't specified. I took it as "use Tekumel in some sort of gaming context."
DeleteI meant people who play in Tekumel. Almost anything can be good fooder for idea, and something as detailed as Tekumel is bound to be full of useful elements.
DeleteOddly enough, I found the banality of the vileness in Carcosa a positive. As you say, it seemed no more lurid that the nastier stories on the News at Ten. It could have been presented in a far more 'titillating' way.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I know lots of people do play in Tekumel, and Glorantha, but in both those cases, over time, the world seems to have come to exist for the purpose of world building and pseudo-scholarship rather than gaming. I like them, but...
I can see how it would be a positive for some people, but for me it just felt...tacked on without need.
DeleteAgreed about both Tekumel and Glorantha. Hell, even Warhammer starts to feel that way around the wrong folks!
Lurid. Good word for the Book of Ebon Bindings. Yes, if you read it all the way through, entry after entry, it does start to blend together. But I really appreciate the detail put into each entry and also like that it's system neutral. It is a handy reference to grab an entry from if you need a ritual. Actually, I'm prepping for tomorrow night's session right now...hmm.
ReplyDeleteIf you ended up grabbing a ritual from it, which did you pick and why?
DeleteI find the effect of reading The Book of Ebon Bindings cumulative not as a result of a continuous reading of what, after all, is presented as encyclopedic categorical and comparative reference, but from a compounded sense that, Christ, this must be real, there is so much detail.
ReplyDeleteCarcosa is a lesser and derivative work but it is well written, exhaustive and as quirky as the company it wishes to keep (od&d). It remains by some distance the best thing to come from the osr.
ReplyDeletehttp://somekingskent.blogspot.ie/2009/11/review-carcosa.html
I'm genuinely surprised you liked Carcosa, Kent. I'm afraid I don't agree with your assessment, though; Carcosa seems like lazy work to me. There isn't much to it that I found interesting.
Delete