I've commented on this before, but in brief, what came through the game was the concept of Great Path/Lesser Path magic, which was a mechanical way to deal with why we had to concepts of magic, I should add, not that we were using EPT Magic system. The only thing that ever made it's way into the game were the EPT monsters.
So the concept of a riftwar was how we explained that. The one other concept that held on to was the metal poor thing, because I thought it made for a cool distinction technologically. Other than that, nada from EPT. I dealt with this silly nonsense 20 years ago. I've heard "Feist stole his ideas from Barker," "He stole Barker's dream," etc. Look, Phil Barker got published by DAW, two EPT novels, I believe. They did not do very well. Whatever tiny elements I inherited through the game, took nothing away from his opportunity for an audience to find his work. Apparently, not many people were that interested in his fiction. He had a very loyal, very supportive game community that loved his stuff and they stuck with him quite a long while, but EPT never challenged D&D either. Joel Rosenberg, God rest him, knew the situation intimately, living in Minneapolis, where Phil lived, and knowing him through the SF/F community. His take was simply that Barker felt a sense of injury. What he apparently didn't know or didn't care to know was that before Magician was published, Steve Abrams explained the genesis of the Petal Throne to me, lent me the manual, and I went though a VERY early draft of Magician and took out everything that was remotely EPT and that's when I started melding my Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Aztec/Zulu culture--I believe EPT was based on Indian/Dravidian culture, not Asian. I kept the bugs because I liked them, but I went for a hive-mind thranx, not whatever it was EPT had, and the one thing that probably set this whole thing off was I didn't change the name Tsurani, which was just me doing a funny spelling of the Serani tribe of Africa; I went for the Ts because of Senator Paul Tsongis just because I thought it looked cool. Anyway, Phil is dead, and Joel is dead, and anyone who has any sense of what influence is all about in the world of writing knows that what came from EPT through the game into my work is trivial. 30 novels over 30 years did not result from any labor but my own. Best, R.E.F. On Mar 27, 2013, at 8:15 PM, Paddyjack <[email protected]> wrote: > Was there a girl who rose through power fighting multiple deadly situations > and using her wit and smarts to go though them in Tekumel? No? Case closed. > > There were similarities between Wizard of Oz and Star Wars too, you can find > awebsite about that somewhere. So to go as far as calling Ray Feist a thief > over that, that guy should be sued IMO > > PJ > > On Mar 27, 2013 7:07 PM, "Anestis Kozakis" <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Ray, > > A friend and I have an on-going discussion about Kelewan. He has the > impression that you borrowed a large number of elements of Kelewan from > M.A.R. Barker's "Empire of the Petal Throne". > > He cites a couple of articles: > > http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-134.html under the "Why I only buy > his books second hand" heading. The writer of the article claims you have > admitted that Kelewan was very heavily from Barker's work in various > conversations with fans. > > The other article is at > http://www.rpg.net/columns/designers-and-dragons/designers-and-dragons13.phtml > and has the following paragraphs around the middle of the article: > > "Midkemia's unique creation has also resulted in one bit of controversy: > according to Feist, the original Midkemian Campaign run by Abrams and Everson > contained some minor elements borrowed from Tékumel, as described in TSR's > Empire of the Petal Throne (1975). Those elements were, of course, not > brought into any of Midkemia Press' published books. However, Feist wasn't > aware of this genesis, so some of these elements did find their way into the > world of Kelewan — which opposed Midkemia in the Riftwar. Feist says the > ultimate impact of Tékumel on the novels is "superficial", with other sources > like Alan Dean Foster's Thranx and Jack Vance's Big Planet being just as > important. > > Ultimately, we outsiders can never know the exact influence of the EPT world > filtered through a house campaign upon Feist's writing. Suffice to say, it > might be more than professional writer Raymond Feist is comfortable with and > probably is a lot less than fans have suggested over the years." > > I keep bringing up how you have always stated that you borrowed from Japan, > China, etc etc (the answer you always give when someone asks about the > influences for the Tsruanni society). > > Just wondering if you would like to share your thoughts on the issue. > > -- > Anestis Kozakis | [email protected] | http://www.akozakis.id.au/ ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
