Coming Soon: Humanspace Empires!

Proposed Cover Art

Of all the classic fantasy settings, Professor M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel stands out as my all time favorite. Its unique history, cultures, languages, religions, strange alien beasties, and other unique attributes makes Tékumel far more fascinating than the standard Tolkien-inspired backgrounds that most fantasy RPGs seem happy to regurgitate.

Now The Drune over at the Ix blog ("Many machines on Ix. New machines…") is working on Humanspace Empires, a fan-created game that develops a previously little-seen aspect of the Tékumel universe: its space opera prehistory!

For the uninitiated, Prof. Barker's universe takes place thousands of years in our future where the mighty Humanspace Alliance and their non-human allies controlled much of this portion of the galazy. One such world was Tékumel. After using their advanced technology to wrest it from the planet's native populations, the Ssú and the Hlüss, the Humanspace Alliance terraformed Tékumel into a resort world for the Alliance's rich and powerful. It was only after the "Time of Darkness" where Tékumel was mysteriously forced into a pocket universe and cut off from humanity does the setting move from science fiction to fantasy.

The Drune writes;

The rules system for HUMANSPACE EMPIRES will be very similar to that presented in Empire of the Petal Throne(1975); however, it will hew somewhat closer to the rules of the original fantasy RPG, than even EPT did.  As such, the mechanics of HUMANSPACE EMPIRES will be generally compatible with OE D & D, Swords and Wizardry andLabyrinth Lord.

The Drune states that Humanspace Empires will be feature three player classes : Warrior (obvious), Astronaut (ship's crew members and technicians who can also develop psionic abilities) and scientists. Besides humans, the appears to players can also play aliens or robots as well. Currently, no release date or information on price (if any) is available.

Stay tuned.