Just dive in

"I'd like to try Tekumel," a gamer friend of mine said, "but I'm put off because it looks like a lot to get into. The culture is so detailed and exotic."

And so it is. But you think Medieval Europe isn't? Or Victorian London? Or New York in the 1930s, come to that.

How do we normally deal with the complexity of another society? The usual answer is to cosplay rather than roleplay. We drop 21st century characters into the setting and most of the time the clothing, technology, etc, are just window dressing. When players butt against the mores of the culture, it's just to make a joke of the difference between the locals' quaintly elaborate ways and the etiquette of our own society -- which as any fule kno is simple and completely straightforward and has no oddities of its own. Ain't that so?

Hollywood used to deal with historical epics using the cosplay method. Movie audiences didn't care how the ancient Israelites, Egyptians and Greeks really behaved, they were content to watch modern actors stroll through the theme park version of those eras and cultures.

There's another way. Think about how you'd introduce readers of a historical novel to the intricacies of Regency high society. Most likely you'd start with a viewpoint character who wasn't familiar with that world. A simple bumpkin arriving in the big city to earn his fortune, perhaps, or a gypsy girl with a tray of flowers to sell. They'd learn about the rules and manners of Regency life along with the reader. 

If you look at a modern edition of a novel like Dead Souls, you'll usually find it festooned with notes that the editor has added to explain Gogol's Russia. So you'll be reading a bit about Chichikov visiting a friend and there'll be a superscript number, and at the back of the book that number will point you to an explanation of the grades in the Russian civil service, or the modern value of the kopeks paid for a deed of serfs, or whatever. And it's great to have all that information (or was, before we could just look it up on the internet) but if you stop and turn to each note as you come to it then you'll ruin the story. The only answer is to dive in, enjoy the ride, and if there are details that you don't understand it doesn't matter. You can look them up afterwards. Not only that, but you'll get more value from the notes then, because you'll have the context of a good story to fit them into.

That was how Empire of the Petal Throne introduced new players to Tekumel back in 1975. Their characters arrived as simple foreigners fresh off the boat in the harbour of mighty Jakalla, "the city half as old as Time". As they found employment and mixed with Tsolyani NPCs, they gradually absorbed the background details. The players who cared about that stuff acquired the manners necessary to speak for the group. And it leaves the option, if you're not interested in that kind of thing, to remain a gruff and proudly ignorant barbarian. 

I've tried that introduction many times over the years, with variants. Oliver Johnson started as a marooned space traveller. Others have entered Tsolyanu as refugees or traders from outlying islands where history consists of family anecdotes and social structure is much less hierarchical and mannered than it is on the mainland. Yet after a year or two of that, players know the ways of Tekumel more thoroughly than they ever learn how to be Victorians or Ancient Romans.

Footnote: (See what I did there?) Some US friends have got in touch saying that the word gypsy is a derogatory term over there in America. But here, you see, is yet another case where the very different racial histories and divergent tongue of our two nations has taken us down forking paths. In the UK we have the British Gypsy Council and the National Federation of Gypsy Groups, and gypsy is one of several categories of nomad recognized on this side of the Atlantic.