Welcome

Last Updated: 08DEC98

I suppose some of you are wondering what MacKévuk is, right? Well, basically it is a gambling game from Professor M. A. R. Barker's World of the Petal Throne. I suppose I've really lost some of you now. Simply put Tékumel is one of the richest Fantasy World's around. It has depths that have to be explored in order to be believed.

Professor Barker started working on Tékumel back in the mid-Forties. In the mid-Seventies when Role Playing Games were first making an appearance a small company published a Boxed set known as Empire of the Petal Throne. This small company was known as Tactical Studies Rules, and they had published some small booklet's for something called D&D a short time earlier. Since that time various companies have been licensed to produce materials for the Empire of the Petal Throne, and the game has maintained a very loyal following.

A few months ago I was asking in alt.games.frp.tekumel about a couple of problems I was having with interpreting some of the current character generation rules for the Character Generator I was writing. Anyway, lo and behold, I received a message from Professor Barker about my questions. The next thing I knew, work had stopped on the Character Generator, and we soon had a working copy of MacKévuk.

The early versions were very primitive, and often gave inaccurate results, but as the weeks passed, it started to congeal into it's present form. Better yet, thanks to the tireless work of Professor Barker and his Thursday Night Group, the bugs were slowly tracked down, and numerous improvements suggested.

When it became apparent that it needed some decent artwork to represent the opponents, Giovanna Fregni, who has done artwork for several of the books, was commissioned to do the artwork.

But I find myself digresing, I'm supposed to be talking about what it is, not how it came to be. Simply put, MacKévuk is a computer simulation of a game of Kévuk. The game starts with you seated at a table playing Kévuk, you are at a fancy party, but none of that matters now. The Host's Chamberlain asks you how much you are going to be and hands you the dice. What happens next, well if you want to know that you will just have to play the game, now won't you.

MacKévuk is being released as Shareware, and there is a $10.00 fee to register it. Normally I don't charge for my programs, in fact this is a first for me. The fee is being used to pay for certain expenses the were incurred in order to be able to bring you as good a game as we possibly could. We are interested in creating further games based on the World of the Petal Throne, and your registrations will help to ensure that they actually get produced.

The author, Zane Healy (that's me) can be contacted at healyzh@nospam.aracnet.com

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Macintosh: Macintosh 68020 or better; 1Mb RAM; Floppy Disk Drive. Recommended: 256 colour video; 13" monitor; 68040

Download (about 536k)

You are visitor number since 25 January 1997