Tales of the Arabian Nights

We had another family boardgames session on Saturday, getting together with our friends to play the 1985 edition of 'Tales of the Arabian Nights'

As you might expect, this is a boardgame based on the 1001 Nights, where each player plays an adventurer travelling the world in search of fame, fortune, adventure and to seek their destiny. It is driven by The Book of Tales, and is essentially a massive Choose Your Own Adventure book with tons of added chrome. There's not a massive amount of skill required, and player interaction is limited as well, but the colour and attention to the theme make it enormously entertaining.

We had nine people, and it's only a six-player game, so some of us played in teams. We took Abu Hasan, and made him a cerebral chap, wise and knowledgeable and always willing to converse with others who had wisdom. You choose skills at the start of the game, and these will tend to drive your decisions, but you can also build a character by consistently choosing 'in character' responses to encounters; where we conversed, honoured and aided our encounters, a rogue might rob, attack or trick them, each getting different stories.

We wandered Asia for a while, before our destiny took us into Africa. There we picked up a clue to the whereabouts of the fabled City of Brass, but were curse to wander at the whim of another and ended up back in Asia. A strange encounter with some snakes, combined with our knowledge of their behaviour, led us to the incredible Valley of Diamonds, where, after some adventures, we acquired fabulous wealth.

Things were looking good for us, but Eric had also been having great adventures as well. A famous seafarer, he had wandered the Indian Ocean where he fell in with a beggar and a wizard who were both on dangerous personal quests. They put him on the path to his true destiny, and he entered the famous Dusky Land, wherein dwell the djinnis and ifrits, eventually rising to become their Sultan. With his new-found mighty status, he returned to Baghdad as the winner.

With six player the game took a while to play - I am the only one familiar with it, so had to teach it as we went along. But everyone enjoyed reading out the result paragraphs to other players, and there was much building on the stories created. We had fun and laughter.

We finished the session with a game of Love Letter: Premium Edition, which adds sufficient new cards (with new abilities) to allow up to eight players. This was entertaining as well, although the fact that none of us had ever used the new cards before made some of the strategy a little unclear. Eric won that as well.