I'm beginning a game next weekend on Fantasy Grounds, and we've settled on an Arabian theme for the campaign. I will be doing my own research to make sure it feels right, but I could use any help anyone has to offer. I've never run a campaign in this type of setting, so my knowledge is rather superficial.

Is there anything I should know of or include to make the setting feel more authentic? For example, I will be researching this, but how is society structured in a legendary Arabia? Royalty? Etc.

If you were playing in such a campaign, what would you expect or want to see?

Links for further reading to get me started are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;738322I'm beginning a game next weekend on Fantasy Grounds, and we've settled on an Arabian theme for the campaign. I will be doing my own research to make sure it feels right, but I could use any help anyone has to offer. I've never run a campaign in this type of setting, so my knowledge is rather superficial.

Is there anything I should know of or include to make the setting feel more authentic? For example, I will be researching this, but how is society structured in a legendary Arabia? Royalty? Etc.

If you were playing in such a campaign, what would you expect or want to see?

Links for further reading to get me started are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I would start with Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples.

How real-world do you want it to be vs. something like The Arabian Nights... which doesn't have so much to do with authentic Arabia?

Thanks, Bedrock Brendan .

Simlasa- I definitely want to be inspired mostly by the Arabian Nights, but real cultural elements should help to flesh it out. It's Pathfinder, so I'm thinking that the setting will have as much authenticity as a typical European-inspired setting does in D&D... so a veneer of historical accuracy, but the primary concern is having fun with the themes.

I'm running it as a sandbox, but I need to give them a starting adventure as a seed. So far, we know it will involve tomb-raiding. I've decided that under the desert are ruins from an ancient Empire, possibly ruled by djinn or efreet.

I ran the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path a few years back. We had good fun with it. I believe it was 3.5e but if you're using Pathfinder, the adventure path and associated Golarion sourcebooks would be useful references for you as far as stat blocks and such goes.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;738322I'm beginning a game next weekend on Fantasy Grounds, and we've settled on an Arabian theme for the campaign. I will be doing my own research to make sure it feels right, but I could use any help anyone has to offer. I've never run a campaign in this type of setting, so my knowledge is rather superficial.

Is there anything I should know of or include to make the setting feel more authentic? For example, I will be researching this, but how is society structured in a legendary Arabia? Royalty? Etc.

If you were playing in such a campaign, what would you expect or want to see?

Links for further reading to get me started are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Sinbad movies.

Have you read the original 1001 Nights?

If not, you can get free translations here and at Project Gutenberg.

It won't give you much insight into daily life in the Abbasid Caliphate, but it will show you just what kind of wild stuff the genre actually contains.

Also, if I wanted to emphasize the arabian flavor, I'd avoid starting with a tomb burglary. I find regardless of the above-ground setting, one hole in the ground ends up much the same as another. An enchanted island, or a vanishing city in the desert might work better. Your mileage may vary.

Also, as antagonists or rivals, I'd throw in a band of the perfidious Romans, who speak a dozen tongues and lie in all of them.

The best thing to do is watch the two Sinbad movies from the '70s

I would tend to agree that worrying about historical stuff is far less important than getting the genre feel right.

Sinbad, alladin, thief of bagdad, even the 2e Al Quadim setting guide which you can probably hook out of someplace, all give you a feel of the setting.

I would probably tweak some rules to try to stop people wearing so much armour (some default per level defense adjustment perhaps) and pinch some of the swashbuckler, panche rules from other bits of D&D.

If you really want to get into history without wading through a text book I think a couple of Arabian nights style fantasy novels is a good start try Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed or Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear. Genre fiction, but you might get a better insight by cheating a bit and using their research than getting through Said or Hourani (good though they may well be )

Quote from: JeremyR;738431The best thing to do is watch the two Sinbad movies from the '70s

I can think of two very good reasons to watch The Golden Voyage of Sinbad:



"Dude, my eyes are up here!"

The Thief of Bagdad is another great choice.

If you look at http://autarch.co/forums/actual-play, the most recent sample campaign run by one of the ACKS authors ("Opelenean Nights") was strongly Arabian themed. It's mostly sandbox, but there's some meta-discussion of how the campaign was designed as well if you read all of it.

IIRC 60+ sessions and name level before the TPK.

dndclassics.com has the old Al-Qadim ruleset, but reading over it last night I suspect it'll be of minimal use. The rules for environmental conditions and limiting heavy armor are a start, and I thought the elemental magic system was a bit inspirational, but I don't like the Sha'ir (summoners / genii-magicians) as much as many playing with the setting seem to, and the bulk of the book seemed to be a bunch of 2e class kits and some role-playing guidelines that don't fit the take on an Arabian setting that I'd choose. As far as I can tell they do *not* have the old Al-Qadim setting book.

One thing I'd want in an Arabian Nights campaign is fairy tale magic like that featured in the stories...
I was reading the story of princess Parizade the other day and what struck me about it was the casual creation of minor single-purpose magical items by relatively non-magical characters.
For example... her brother, going off on a journey, gives her a knife telling her that if she looks at the blade and it is clean, he is safe. If it shows blood, he is dead.
Her other brother, going off on the same journey, gives her a necklace of prayer beads and says that as long as they move along the strand he is alive, but if they won't move, he is dead.
In both instances the brothers just seem to give these items magical properties on the spot.

Later on there's also a Dervish (are they inherently magical?) who has an entire sack of magic bowls that serve only to guide people to the bottom of a particular mountain. Since none ever come back he just waits for the next adventurer, pulls out another bowl and hands it to them. (the bowl works by throwing it on the ground and following where it rolls to).

That sort of minor/casual magic is everywhere in fairy tales and very flavorful... but I can't think that I've often run into such things in RPGs.
I suppose a GM could easily just toss in such things... but if it were up to the PCs to dream them up I'd think you'd want some sort of rule for it (to reign in excesses)... but I don't know of any games that provide for such things, at least not for ordinary humans (maybe royalty provides such ability?).

You'll want to do some reading on the Sufis.