Perhaps this has been discussed before; if so, please point me to the thread.  

If not:  does anyone know anything of the history/inside scoop on relations between Barker and Gygax, and how Tekumel became a TSR product.  It seems from some of the forwards and acknowledgments that Tekumel personnel were grateful to Gygax for help and support, though not so obviously grateful to Dave Arneson.  The latter is interesting because Prof. Barker was located in the Mini Apple (he taught at the U. of M., didn't he?).  

I'm really interested in learning more about this history.  How did Barker and Gygax connect, and which came first, the world of Tekumel, or Chainmail and D&D?

Ayone here ever met Barker, or communicated with him?

From what I gather, Barker's world of Tekumel was a childhood invention. He created the world, and added more and more detail to it as he grew older. When he went to university and studied liguistics (or a field closely related), he created a language for his world as an exercise for his studies.

When D&D came out, he read through the books and decided to 'convert' them for use in his own world (up until that point, Tekumel wasn't a game as such - merely the product of an enormous imagination). He duly did so, and sent the result to Gygax to see if it was worthy of publication. Gygax loved it, and there was some back-and-forth between the two as Gygax advised on fine-tuning the game before it was released.

I've always though the mechanics of the Petal Throne game to be secondary to the world itself, and thats probably due to the game world to be the main creation, with the mechanics tacked on afterwards.

I might be completely wrong on all this of course. I've always been a big Tekumel fan - one of the jewels in my meagre collection is a letter from Barker to Dave Sutherland, which talks about commissioning Dave to do various bits of Tekumel artwork.

Regards

Mike

I believe Barker is still around and gaming Tekumel with a group.  I corresponded with him for a bit back in the late 90's over e-mail and he seemed like a really nice guy.  If I remember correctly, he taught South Asian languages at U. of Minn. with a specialty in Urdu.  You can probably contact him directly through Brett Slocum (a member here but rarely posts) at tekumel.com or through Carl Brodt at Tita's House of Games, or even perhaps through the U. of Minn. where he's now emeritus.

There's a gigantic EPT section in issue 71 of Space Gamer. I recall that the interview with Barker touched on D&D quite a bit.

http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=6129

Well, doing some stuff for my site I came across an interview of Mr. Barker in Dungeoneer Journal 23 (5.5 pages worth)..pretty interesting just skimming it.

ShaneG.

bombadil wrote:Shane,
Could I coax you into sending me a photocopy of the article?

Hmmmm...

Yeah shouldn't be a problem...give me a bit to scan the pages..PM addy you'd want this sent to.

ShaneG.

Wonderful!  Thanks!  

DungeonDelver wrote:
Quite welcome.

I also find it interesting that Gary notes but one print run of Empire of the Petal Throne.

1st print: released around July 76
2nd print: released around July 77
Legions of the Petal Throne: released around August 77
3rd print: released around sometime in 78 (don't have this figured out)

ShaneG.

Plaag wrote:
Hmmmm...

Yeah shouldn't be a problem...give me a bit to scan the pages..PM addy you'd want this sent to.

ShaneG.

Great article.  Thanks a million, Shane.  It was just what I was looking for.

Quite an interesting history between Barker and Gygax, and between Barker and TSR, which I take it developed into two separate relationships over time.  Sounds like the latter didn't work out so well in the end.