Hollywood got hold of these stories early on; Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, was made in 1902 by Georges Méliès, one of the earliest important film producers. Ray Harryhausen thrilled audiences with The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and two sequels. And, of course, Disney made that fairly well-known movie in the early 1990s, Aladdin. The spectacle, exotic settings, and fantastic creatures have enthralled audiences for generations, both in print and in film.
So, it was only natural that tabletop gaming would eventually come around to the Arabian Nights setting. GURPS did it with Arabian Nights, a treatise on gaming in the setting, one that, according to a review in Dragon Magazine, took a very dry tone and sucked all the fun out of the setting. Fortunately, TSR did it quite a bit better.
The first time TSR used an Arabian setting was in The Emirates of Ylaruam, published as part of the Gazetteer series for BECMI D&D. The second in that series, it was not as well-received as the first offering, The Grand Duchy of Karameikos, but it included some useful ideas for desert gaming, and had an in-setting religion that was not even remotely subtle about its similarities to Islam. There wasn't a lot of detail on the setting; instead, the book focused on a small, starting village where adventures could be found. It was a game effort, though not their best.
Five years later, in 1992, TSR expanded their marquee setting, the Forgotten Realms, with the Al-Qadim setting. This was a limited line, deliberately set up to run for only two or three years. It was a good idea, as it kept the setting from becoming too bloated and losing the uniqueness. The line began with the Arabian Adventures rulebook, which gave the basic rules and setting information needed to get started. The highlight of the rules was the kits, which offered a fantastic amount of flavor to get players in the right frame of mind to play in Al-Qadim. Barbers, desert riders, moralist priests, sorcerers...and, of course, the setting's signature class, the sha'ir, the genie master.
The line was expanded with two setting boxed sets (Land of Fate and City of Delights), eight adventure boxed sets that expanded the setting and provided lots of adventures all over the place, a Monstrous Compendium expansion with a surprisingly low number of evil monsters to beat up, and the Complete Sha'ir's Handbook, which detailed the class and offered more kits for specialist wizards. In addition, the Complete Book of Necromancers added more detail to the setting in the form of the Isle of the Necromancer-Kings, which was officially set in Al-Qadim, specifically the Ruined Kingdoms region.
The line was beautifully produced, with a consistent art ethos throughout the entire series, as well as the signature golden lining on the pages. Running only for three years, the line remains popular with a small subset of gamers who have converted the setting to third and even fifth edition D&D.
While the line is complete, there are a couple of sub-settings that could have used more detail. The first is the Cities of the Pantheon, which were given only a little detail in the Land of Fate boxed set. These cities, full of moralist priests, would have made an interesting place to visit. And the Land of the Yak-Men, one of the setting's more intriguing villains, are virtually left alone in the official material. If there had been two more adventure boxed sets with these settings as the base, the setting would be as complete as it could possibly need to be. Still, they covered a lot, and it's good material.
Since I'm still reading the Arabian Nights, and I've always been a fan of this setting since it came out in 1992, I'm going to do some retrospectives on each of the products. Not one page at a time like I did with Traveller; I'm crazy, not stupid. But I'll give each product a look-through, and talk about some of the interesting bits that can be found within.
No comments:
Post a Comment