Tom-Toms and Talking Drums

[FailedSpotCheck]

I'm re-re-re-reading REH's yarns and am currently on "Queen of the Black Coast." At the beginning of Chapter Two there is a mention of tom-toms sending messages through the Black Kingdoms that Belit and Conan had 'hooked up' to use a modern euphemism. I would like to use the concept of "talking drums" in my campaign but don't know if any game-stat info has been developed for their use relating to the 'African-based' peoples. Would Black Kingdoms have any such info? Does anyone use the Pictish Perform (talking drum) [Thunder River, p. 119] for the Black Kingdoms tribesmen? The books says that Talking Drum is a Pictish Language. I would assume that the Black peoples would have a different drum-language than the Picts. Does anyone have any RL knowledge of this subject. I've seen plenty of jungle-adventure movies from old Hollywood, but I don't know how ethnographically correct those movies are. Gotta get back to reading. Ciao.

 

[sbarrie]

Your suggestions sound very reasonable.

(You'll have to copy and paste the link below - BBCode is choking on the underscore. The "_(communication)" is part of the URL )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_(communication)

 

[FailedSpotCheck]

Thanks for the link. It turns out what I was thinking of was not a drum but instead a "slit gong."

I found a site with a sound-sample of a message:

http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/trackdetail.aspx?itemid=27801

8)

 

[Trodax]

Would Black Kingdoms have any such info?

No, Tales of the Black Kingdoms doesn't have anything on talking drums. Good adventures, though. :wink:

I would assume that the Black peoples would have a different drum-language than the Picts.

Yeah, definitely. Question is if the same drum-language would be used throughout the Black Kingdoms, ie. could a message spread from Kush into Darfar, or would it be region-specific?

 

[VincentDarlage]

Does anyone use the Pictish Perform (talking drum) [Thunder River, p. 119] for the Black Kingdoms tribesmen?

I do.