My favorite thing about these magazines is how they hand-drew accent marks on all the weird names in the articles.

§ February 8th, 2012 § Filed under gaming, I cast magic missile § 8 Comments

Here’s something else I’ve never seen before, out of our recently-acquired boxes of old role playing game stuff…the first two issues of The Tékumel Journal (1978), a magazine devoted to the fantasy world that was the basis for The Empire of the Petal Throne and other games:


While tied to gaming, these magazines aren’t filled with charts and stats and other RPG-style information. It is solely devoted to exploring the history and the characters of this fantasy setting that, apparently, had been an ongoing project of its creator since the 1940s. Wikipedia has more information about this, thankfully, since I was a bit thrown when I first pulled these things out of the box.

Neat covers, though.

8 Responses to “My favorite thing about these magazines is how they hand-drew accent marks on all the weird names in the articles.”

  • Phersu says:

    Tékumel is really a wonderful setting. I wish I could buy your issues (although there is also an anthology called The Best of the Tékumel Journals).

    Ksárul is the Doomed Prince of the Blue Room, God of Knowledge and Magic. He is one of the “Gods of Change” (Chaotic deities) but he was trapped by the other Gods of Change in his Blue Room where he’s been sleeping for centuries.

  • The cover illustrations are head-and-shoulders above the traditional RPG manual artwork from that time.

    Nice stuff!

    People coming into the store and dropping off boxes of free swag they want to unload, so that you can unearth such weird and fantastic finds…
    Truly, yours is an enchanted life, Mt. Sterling.

    Keep ’em coming.
    ~P~

  • Hmmmm this Tékumel requires further study.

  • Mikester says:

    Aaron – GET BACK TO WORK.

  • Almost done with “Seymour” Mister Sterling!

  • Tom Spurgeon says:

    Are you selling these? These look terrific. Is there a bunch of stuff like this?

  • bad wolf says:

    Those are nice copies! I was always a fan of the Empire of the Petal Throne, probably going back to when comics-and-game stores were more common.

    For those interested i believe those two issues are available as pdfs from drivethrurpg.

  • Mikester says:

    Tom – We have a few boxes of old RPG stuff…not a whole lot of this particular vintage, but some. I’m putting them in our eBay store once I figure out what I should be charging for them.