Tales of the Arabian Nights
In Tales of the Arabian Nights, you are the hero or heroine in a story of adventure and wonder just like those told by Scheherazade to her spellbound sultan! You will travel the land seeking your own destiny and fortune. You will learn stories and gain wisdom to share with others. Will you be the first to fulfill your destiny? The next Tale is yours to tell! There is, of course, a winner in Tales of the Arabian Nights, but the point of the game is less to see who wins and more to enjoy the unfolding and telling of a great story!
In this new edition of the groundbreaking storytelling game, you enter the lands of the Arabian Nights alongside Sindbad, Ali Baba, and the other legendary heroes of the tales. Travel the world encountering imprisoned princesses, powerful 'efreets, evil viziers, and such marvels as the Magnetic Mountain and the fabled Elephant's Graveyard.
Choose your actions carefully and the skills you possess will reward you: become beloved, wealthy, mighty - even become sultan of a great land. Choose foolishly, however, and become a beggar, or be cursed with a beast's form or become insane from terror! YOU will bring to life the stories of the inestimable Book of Tales in this vastly replayable board game with over 2002 tales that will challenge, amuse, astound and spellbind you for years to come.
This edition of the game has nearly 2000 more paragraphs than the original edition.
We have added variants to the game which can be downloaded on the right side of our official game page. Please note that these variants are not rigid: use what you need to get the best enjoyment out of this game.
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If you are like me, you enjoy all sorts of games – those that employ higher strategy, and those that are pure fun. One of my favorite game experiences involves immersion – that is, playing a game to be immersed in a world or experience different than our own. So, if you are looking for an immersive play experience that lies somewhere between adventure game and role-playing game, with beautifully crafted components and wonderful poetic style – read on.
Style/Components: (Artful and Sophisticated)
When you pick up the weighty game box is as if you are holding a treasure stolen from the forty thieves themselves. The Arabian and Persian themed illustrations; the art on the game board, cards, and tokens is perfect for the theme. If you enjoy tearing the wrapping off a new game, smelling new game smell and looking at the components thinking, “How do I use all this stuff?” then you will love the overall production value of Tales of the Arabian Nights.
Game-play: (Simple and wonderfully unpredictable)
The game play is quite simple for “Tales.” You seek to win by earning Story and Destiny. And you the player get to decide how many you need in any combination adding up to 20. (8 Destiny and 12 Story for example.) You receive these points by completing quests and resolving successful encounters in the world of mythological Arabia – complete with Princes, Magicians, Efreets and Djinn.
Each player portrays a character from this world (Aladdin, Sinbad, etc) and gets to customize their character to a degree – choosing three skills before play begins. These skills help (or hinder) in encounter resolution. Players move about the board, meeting the inhabitants of this ancient world, hoping to achieve their preset goal of Story and Destiny Points. There are “Treasures” that help and also “Conditions” that can affect your character and you can acquire new skills as well! The uniqueness of the game is in how encounters are resolved…
The main component, the Book of Tales has thousands of paragraphs that are matched to every encounter. When you meet a Beggar for example, will you help him or rob him? The reaction matrix cross references your reaction with an adjective describing the beggar, (Poor, imprisoned, etc) and the Beggar’s reaction and what happens next come from that combination. The “tales” in the book are wonderfully written.
In this way the game does have a “choose your own adventure” feel. But so much more is dependant upon the outcome than a simple reaction choice. Skills and Conditions, Treasures and even what sort of land region you are in all affect the outcome. The math is actually staggering.
Value: (Worth its weight…)
The game retails for around $59.99, which is a lot these days for an evening’s entertainment. But Tales of the Arabian Nights offers so much replay value, it’s worth it. If this game sounds like a good one for you or your game group, go ahead and spend the money.
Overall Review: (Unpredictable fun… for the right group.)
“Tales” was originally released in 1985.(During the height of popularity of the “Endless Quests book…) For those of us over a certain age…(ahem) games in the 80’s also employed a certain random generation process as a main mechanic (it was the era of the first computers and folks loved multiplication matrices). Now admittedly, I liked these games. The random results were still at the mercy of probability, but you always came away thinking that anything could happen. So it is with “Tales.”
Avid and casual gamers will enjoy “Tales” for the components; shear adventure, random elements and story telling. But if you are not a fan of letting fate determine your success – stay away. The game is great for families, with some educational qualities and I would even say the age could be lowered to reading age children (8-9 yrs) because this game is all about reading the tales and not as much about strategic planning several turns ahead. The 2 hours playing time is accurate, but plan for more to fully enjoy the “tales.” Sometimes there are a lot of things to keep track of but its hardly a detraction.
Immersion is still the key. If you want to feel immersed in the strange and unpredictable world of mythological Arabia, rub the lamp…
I’m an avid reader and struggling writer, so it seems natural that I’d love a storytelling game like this. And I do.
Speaking first from a game perspective:
The initial “out of the box” experience is fabulous albeit a bit overwhelming at first. There are a ton of tokens, cards, etc that need to be sorted and organized to ensure gameplay is efficient and understandable. The quality of the components is good quality cardboard and plastic.
The artwork is beautiful…from the map to the cards & tokens to the character icons. The game is visually lovely to experience.
Where I rank it a little lower out of the box is the “ease of learning” aspect…though not necessarily because of any problems with the instructions or with overly complex rules. As I mentioned above, the out of the box experience can be overwhelming. When I first pulled it out, each of us around the table gave a slight gasp and even cringed a little. Looking at the pile of components and the size of the books (~20 page rulebook) sitting in front of us, there was a little anxiety to learn the game.
Once we got everything organized, we found that the instructions were fairly well written and opened up the game world to us in a logical and easy to follow way. There were still a number of times we had to refer back to the rules to remember what we needed to do to handle encounters, movements, items, etc but we got the hang of it fairly quickly.
My biggest complaint with this game is definitely NOT a knock on the game…my biggest complaint is that each gameplay ends long before I want it to. Whether I “win” or lose, I want the game to keep going. I’ve generally played the game with 3 players and our average gameplay has been ~80 minutes. Sadly (for me), that’s about the max single-game session that these gamers want to have. So they don’t concede to my request that we keep playing…or that (when we start the game) we begin with a goal of 30 destiny/story points.
I want to try out the solo variant just so I can get more experience, but part of the fun is the storytelling with other players.
As a final note – if you’re going into this game expecting a strategic game or a full role playing game, you won’t find what you’re looking for. While there is some minimal strategy (which decision do I make, which skills do I select, etc) and there is some role playing (encounters, skills to level up, items/treasures to collect), this game is really NOT a strategic game nor is it an RPG based on the general usage of the term. This is an EXPERIENCE game with an amazingly intricate storytelling system that is a lot of fun.
With that in mind, give it a try. It’s a lot of fun.
One to six players, best with three or four.
About two hours to play, longer if you do the voices.
Arabian Nights is the Choose Your Own Adventure board game.
Each turn, you get a random encounter, choose a reaction, and see what happens to your poor character. The game comes with a gigantic encounters book and a reaction sheet, which reference each other in a combinatorial explosion of story snippets. Oh, I met a Disguised Prince on the road? I’m going to Rob him! Uh oh, he’s actually the prince of the land, and has his bodyguards throw me in the dungeon, eh? I guess I’m Imprisoned now. Next turn.
To win, you need two types of VPs: Story and Destiny points. At the beginning of the game, you choose a number of each (summing to twenty) that will be your goal. You can reduce the total points for a shorter game, but I wouldn’t recommend increasing it. Ten of each is pretty standard. As you go through encounters, you get points based on what happens to you. For anyone attempting to game this system, though, don’t bother. Encounters give out practically random assortments of points, so much so that “winning” might as well be a roll of the die itself. The crazy thing: you probably won’t care.
This game isn’t about the win. It’s about the insanity that happens along the way. Encounters are wide and varied, and drop long-term status effects on characters, such as ***-changed or married. Reactions vaguely cover most anything you might want to do, and some things you’d never consider had they not been on there. Encounters themselves feel like they’re pulled straight from the old tales.
My wife was annoyed that the game didn’t have much continuity between turns (encounters are disconnected and episodic, with your character being the only constant), but that doesn’t take much away from the game. Your character does grow and change over time, with skills (which alter the available encounter paths), status effects (which change your options each turn), quests (which provide VPs or treasure for completing a goal), and treasure. However, these just add to the story, rather than present a strategy. Even your quest, ostensibly the means with which you pick up your winning VPs, is impossible to be deliberative about. Often, the best you can do is wander until a random encounter gives you what you need.
In all, this is a great low-key game. Like Fluxx, if you get frustrated over losing (or winning) for no good reason, it might not be worth picking up. However, if you want to laugh over whether a ***-change changes your married status, you might give it a try.
Tales of the Arabian Nights is an adventure game set in the mythical world of Middle Eastern folklore. You will find talk of friendli Djinni, wicked Efreeti and scheming viziers.The way the game works is that you have a character chosen at the start of the game, such as Sindbad, Aladdin or Scheherazade. You then choose a victory condition, which is a number of Story points and Destiny points that together total 20 points. What you do then is travel the world and have encounters. You determine the encounter by drawing from an Encounter deck and then rolling on a chart in the Book of Tales, which determines what you encounter. After what you encounter is determined, the player decides how he responds. Each category will have a list of responses, and this will result in a paragraph from the Book of Tales, which in turn may give choices based on skills your character possesses. That may seem like a lot to digest, but here is an example:
I am playing Aladdin, and on my turn a I move a few spaces. I then draw an Encounter card, which is a Prophet. The card also has a number which corresponds to a chart in the Book of Tales. I roll a number on this chart, giving the Prophet an adjective: he is now a Mad Prophet. I then choose how to react to him. In this case, I will Rob him (I am Aladdin, a street rat, after all!). Another player who has a list compares my choice to a list and tells the player with the book what paragraph to read. The paragraph indicates that I stage a scheme with accomplices to take his wealth, and it goes well, but alas, he is poor. There are then two results, based on whether or not I have a specific skill. I do not, thereforefore I earn a single Destiny point and my turn is over and passes to the next player.
What I like about the game
What I like about this game is that it is an adventure game that seems to have enough variation to play over and over again. The number of encounters make it unlikely that one will repeat in the same game. A common issue with games in the genre is that they easily go stale. After about 5-7 plays, I still see myself playing this game more. As a person with a game library of more than 300 games, that is saying a lot. I’d play this over Runequest or Talisman any day.
What I dislike
There are some statuses that a character can acquire that sometimes seem a bit punitive. In addition to awards, a character may end up with a status of some sort. Some are good (Blessed and Vizier, for example), some are a mixed bag (Married and On Pilgrimmage), and some are just nasty (Accursed, Enslaved and Grief Stricken). The mentioned ones are not the entire list, but the bad ones just seem to stick around forever and some take away choices, or require specific choices. A minor dislike, but worth noting.
Final verdict
Tales of the Arabian Nights is a great adventure game. Don’t open the box and expect to play this like a strategy game, though: it just isn’t. You can’t reliably expect to plan a strategy and execute it. It’s a fun, random romp through a story-rich world. Expect to be amused by this light-hearted and enjoyable game.
I got this game because my wife isn’t a gamer and she likes the story and theme of games. Abstract games and the mechanics just don’t do it for her. Z-man produced this game which previously was a West End Games title dated 1985. There was also a 1985 Star Trek game that West End Games did with a similar mechanic.
You choose a character right out of the famous book 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights (other titles exist depending on translation and editions)and everyone starts in Baghdad. You basically move around the map and depending on where you end your movement a die is rolled and the storyteller (who changes for each player) reads a paragraph from the book of tales. There is then a choice that needs to be made by the active player which might be modified by whatever skills that player’s character has. The outcome of each encounter is pretty random and a character might be ***-changed or imprisoned or even changed into an animal or married. The adventures of the characters are usually rewarded with story and/or destiny markers. The first player to collect a pre-decided combination of 20 of these points and make it back to Baghdad intact wins. This is a fun storytelling game which isn’t super competitive. The whole fun of the game comes from the adventures that the characters experience, it is totally in the spirit of the book and power gamers and players who don’t like luck will probably not let themselves have fun with this, but the experience is worth a few laughs and we usually joke about it the next day and hey, how many games are you still talking about a day after you played it? It’s even fun if you don’t win, you will have a fun story to tell.
Thank you for reading my opinion.
At the beginning of the game you select two numbers which must add up to 20 for destiny point and story telling points. The first person to reach these numbers must return to Bagdad, and then win the game.
Seems simple enough doesn’t it? You pick three skills at the start of the game. Select your character and start off walking. You can walk as far as your wealth allows, and you start off poor at the start of the game. After ending your walk you select a card to have an encounter. The selected card provides a letter of the alphabet that another person at the table uses to find a table in the encounter book. For example it might have the letter “N.” Now role a dice, add up any number on the town, or area, where you are located, add 1 or 2 points depending on how much destiny you have, and you have a number that is used on the table N to say what you encounter. For example, you might encounter a possessed chicken. So, what you are going to do with the chicken? You select from several verb options such as pray, run, engage, or fight.
After your selection a paragraph is read from the encounter book. (roll a dice to see if the paragraph below or above is read) and you find out what happens to your character. If you have a skill that applies to the situation, you might have a good result. If you are unskilled, usually you have some sort of status change, and you accumulate destiny and/or story points.
The game was just a little too random for me. And since you had a status change almost every turn it became difficult to keep track of them all. So currently I can’t collect destiny points, I can not use any of my skills, and I can only walk one space at a time. And I can’t wait to see what happens to me next turn.
We had a player who had placed their destiny, and story points at 10 each at the start of the game and was way past 10 points on each, but could not win the game because they had a gender change due to a bad encounter. The card said he had to be his original gender before he could win the game. Where should he go on the board to have that happen? He just wandered around the board hoping to eventually have an encounter that would allow him to win the game.
This is a upgrade of an older game. Why with the upgrade did no one take the time to address the issue that night-time adventures were never going to happen, because you would have had to go through the adventure deck twice to get to them?
There are lots of variants that can be found that people have come up with to play this game. For example, each turn around the table it goes from dawn, full day, to night. And some limit the amount of troubles that each player can have. (We eventually decided that even if the person didn’t get changed back, if he made it to 20 in story or destiny he could still win)
All of these game changes found on the web represent a good game that could have been made better, if someone would have taken the time to update and refresh the rules with the new edition.
Now let’s talk about some of the fun in the game. It is possible to be a man who’s been turned into a woman, who has been turned into a beast, who is insane. If you have the right group of people, I could see these changes as being the kinda of events talked about after play. We enjoyed some of the encounters, and I thought the game materials were very nice.
Perhaps the random game play represents the idea of being lost in a desert looking for a way out. If so the game is the Sahara of all games.
A truly joyful, playful and exciting experience in a magical Arabic setting. One moment you’re skilfully fending off desert bandits, the next you feel a strange urge to drink from a stream of murky black water and then, all of a sudden, you’re locked up in jail – trying to convince the keeper to let you off the hook. In the end, you might have a happy ending where you leave the table as wealthy as a Sultan and powerful as an Efreet, or just as poor as a beggar and with the look and shape of a beast.
The game is really easy to pick up and play with anyone, no matter what their relationship to board gaming is and what previous experience they have. In fact, TofAN isn’t so much of a board game as it is an adventurous interactive story – both told and played by everyone participating, which helps endure things when the pace feels slow due to having so many participators and that’s the only real flaw about this game: that it’s pretty time consuming and one turn could take anything from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on whether you’ve been stranded somewhere with no real options to choose from or is having the adventure of your life.
But while luck plays a strong part in this game, the whole “going on a big adventure”-thing with all these encounters that are awaiting is what makes TofAN not only such a joyful and varying experience, but also accessible to anyone and a truly interesting way of playing a board game.
AN was a title that I was eager to see reprinted on the strength of the word of mouth it got as a great old game, and the fact that the very talented Headless Hollow guy was involved in their art side was very encouraging. And I’m a sucker for thematic games that use game mechanics as a storytelling device, so we powered through the needlessly complex rules (seriously, just a little more distinction in the layers of tables and this game would take 2 minutes to explain instead of half an hour) and started playing.
But, frankly, I can’t say there’s much of a game there. You do things that are game-like, such as make decisions and receive results according to a combination of chance and your stats, but it’s a thin veil disguising utter randomness. You can choose a stat to use that’s wholly inappropriate for the situation from its initial appearance, and the outcome is just as likely to be harmful or beneficial as if you’d chosen what seemed to be the best fit.
I just can’t imagine this sharing a space with games that genuinely use a strong theme to create a narrative as you play, which are surprisingly common and operating at an altogether different level, and perhaps it’s my fault for walking in with the expectation that it would be at the level of your Battlestars or Arkhams or Chaos in the Old Worldseseseses.
The caveat I’ll add is that I can see this being fun for an adult playing with young children, assuming s/he pulls a Princess Bride and edits the storytelling as needed rather than randomly murdering little Tommy for failing to roll dice more successfully. Personally, I’d rather just read one of the many variations on the actual stories with a child, depending on their age, and not risk ruining what is a beautiful conceit for storytelling with a game that belongs in the history books alongside King’s Quest games and other dated experiences.
As others here say, there isn’t terribly much gameplay here. Plenty of your experience comes down to the luck of the dice and draw, and some telepathy with the Book of Tales’ authors. But the tales that book tells are stunning. My best experiences with the game are with its Storyteller variant, where each player personalizes their adventures with their own narrative flair.
My hope is to once, just once, find myself in the Haunted House. In ten years of joy with this game, I’ve never seen what lies in its mountain halls.
Less a game and more of a storytelling experience on a board, in this game you will experience a large array of fantastic adventures set in Arabia. Strategic decisions are few and far between — most decisions are simply two different actions in the story, with a seemingly random result. However, if you just want to immerse yourself in theme and experience a great story you can help drive, this is an amazing game. On the other hand, if you are looking for more, skip this game. I hesitate to call this a game; think of it more as a storytelling experience.