jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) (09/13/85)
[...] Quickie review of Tales of the Arabian Nights: (Warning: I have yet to play this game, but I have bought it and read over the rules, not to mention experimenting a bit solitaire.) This is a relative of those "make-your-own-story" books that are coming onto the market in such force these days. Everyone plays a character who starts off poor, with a few simple skills (skills are picked at the beginning of the game, things like "Navigation", "Courtier", "Storytelling", etc.). Every turn you have an encounter with a person, place or thing. You are given about five choices of action in response. For example, if you meet a merman, you can run, attack, converse, bargain, etc. You choose an action, sort through a couple of tables, thumb through a book, and finally find a paragraph describing the results of the action. Results can give you new skills, financial reward, Destiny points (plusses in the eyes of fate, I suppose), or just a good story. (No deaths in this game.) Results often depend on what skills you have, so there is a lot of variation from one game to another. The winner is the person who accumulates enough money, destiny points, and stories, then gets back to Bagdad in one piece. The rules for the basic game fit on four pages, and are easy to understand. Advanced rules give a few different character classes with different victory conditions (for example, the Merchant class has to make a lot more money or establish a particular type of trade route). One of the most interesting aspects of the game is the "story-teller" option. If you choose to use it, it works like this. You have a minute to look at the paragraph describing the results of your encounter. You then tell the others about your encounter, adding as many embellishments as you see fit. These embellishments should explain why you deserve an additional reward over and above the one assigned in the paragraph. If the group votes your story as Exceptional, you will get the additional reward; if it is just good, you get an extra Destiny or Story-telling point; and if it's nothing much, you get the reward as specified. The game sounds like it has a lot going for it. I can't say how long an average game would be, but it doesn't look like the basic game is much more than three hours. The book of "paragraphs" is long enough and varied enough that there should be a lot of replay value...and of course the story-telling option gives even more variety. I have high hopes for it. Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo