Here’s GURPS Al-Qadim … er, I mean, Arabian Nights (1993). Published a year after TSR debuted its own Arabian Nights themed campaign setting, comparisons are inevitable. While it doesn’t have the benefit of multiple, lavishly illustrated products to bolster it, I think it fares rather better in a lots ways.

This is partly because it is a sourcebook based on history and literature. Rather than trying to reconcile all of D&D’s fantasy baggage with the religion of Islam and fictionalizing the intricate cultural traditions of the Middle East, GURPS Arabian Nights just jumps in and puts together a straightforward sourcebook dealing with the subject. It does a pretty solid job of it, too.

Which isn’t to say that there isn’t any Orientalism here. A love of Sinbad movies is obviously at the core of this book (the cyclops from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad even makes an appearance in the art). But while a Hollywood Arabia style campaign is an obvious choice, the book is actually geared toward a campaign directly patterned after the literary 1,001 Arabian Nights. In fact, if you are unfamiliar with that piece of literature, you might feel a bit rudderless. Considering it never got a second printing, I am assuming that was true for most folks who picked it up.