There are multiple djinn, for instance — I might be forgetting some, but I think the last three boxes has one djinn appearance between them. One TOTAL. That’s not enough djinn! Further evidence that Caravans returns to the unusual source material: the first scenario is called “The Talking Tent” and another scenario involves a giant skeleton flying on the back of a giant skeletal roc. There is a fortune-telling carpet. It’s pretty great, even if it is still fairly events-based. It doesn’t really have an adventure frame, either, other than these all take place in caravan-friendly regions of the high desert. Which is a relief! Most of the latter box frames felt perfunctory anyway.

Karl Waller is on point as ever. His giant skeleton riding giant roc is one of the most ridiculous illustrations in the entire line but he somehow manages to give it the same weight as all his other work. Not feeling the Fred Fields cover though. Not entirely Fred’s fault — the banner and the djinn’s eye are just…I hate that overlap. It isn’t entirely NOT Fred’s fault either. That camel’s proportions seem…strange.

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Up until now, all these skinny boxes have included source material about the world and a set of adventures that explores them. At this point, the source material is dispensed with, allowing for the box to return to familiar environs, detailing dead cities that have already been touched upon in other sets. The adventures aren’t really connected. Five of them are short dungeon dives. The sixth is more developed and is a favorite of mine because is so clearly draws inspiration from Clark Ashton Smith’s “Empire of the Necromancers” (the whole box feels Smithy, honestly, particularly his Zothique stories). This scenario features Kazerabet, a powerful necromancer who Kurtz liked so much, he brought her to the Book of Necromancers.

As ever, nice illustrations from Karl Waller. He’s quite good at skulls and wizened visages. I don’t know cover artist Roger Loveless, but I like this cover. It’s nicely evocative and reminds me a bit of Hickman’s Deserts of Desolation modules.

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Granted, it is the sea on the other side of the Zakharan peninsula from Golden Voyages’ Crowded Sea, but the characterization of pirates here is completely contradictory. In that earlier box, piracy is almost a normal trade, plied occasionally by any ship with enough men and bound by the same code of hospitality as the rest of Zakharan culture — there was no Caribbean style culture of pirates, but that’s what we get here. Perhaps it is the corrupting influence of the regular Forgotten Realms, who the pirates regularly trade drugs and slaves to.

The source material is the best stuff in the box, though. The adventures…not so good. They’re a mixed bag, almost all of which involve players witnessing events rather than driving them. Thematically, its all over the place. There are pirates in all of the scenarios, I guess, but that is like saying sticking frost giants, white dragons and white puddings in a cave together and calling it an ecology, you know? (That’s a G2 joke)

Karl Waller still providing excellent art. I quite like the one of the creep rising out of the well. Less sold on Fred Fields’ cover — that fellow seems a little too thoroughly dead for having been stabbed in the stomach.

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The adventure frame isn’t that great either, to be honest. Very events-y, but not in an interesting way. I do like some of the depictions of the ruined cities and welcome the fact that there are crocodile people to be encountered here, but Ruined Kingdoms is one of my least favorite in the line (which is saying something, since the wheels sort of come off Al-Qadim generally at this point). Some of the material here was recycled by Kurtz for the Book of Necromancers, a book I find equally puzzling, but, compared to this box it is the superior treatment.

Karl Waller’s interiors are still pretty great — that geomancer with the pharaonic headdress is awesome. And I enjoy the atmosphere of Fred Fields’ rather un-Fieldsish cover.

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The ship rules are interesting. Most TSR-era ship rules (none of which are compatible) consist of ship attributes and rules for knocking them into each other until one sinks. Here, the ship is characterized less like a weapon and more as a combination of NPC and base of operations and even a tool. It’s an interesting, adventure- and roleplaying-focused approach and I like it quite a bit. There’s no combat rules at all — the campaign doesn’t need them, but I still would have liked them.

The campaign structure is interesting. It is very modular, defined by a loose framework of departure/journey/return. Where the players decide to journey determines their adventures. The plot centers on the retrieval of a great treasure for…reasons. Both the treasure and the reason, though, are customizable, with suggestions keyed for a variety of play styles. Thus, the treasures for power gamers clearly increase the power of their characters, and thus the lure of the adventure, and puzzle-focused players will get puzzle-focused prizes. This is one of the earliest examples of an adventure explicitly catering to play style that I am aware of!

There are some cool monsters, too — coral people and giant crab people. As with just about every Al-Qadim product, Karl Waller provides gorgeous interior art that suits the setting well. I’m less sold on the Easley cover, though.

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That is why the existence of Reunion, published in 1998, was such a surprise when I learned of it. As an RPGA publication, it was likely written and run as a tournament modules (there’s a long history of Al-Qadim tournament adventures) but I can’t find any confirmation of that. Weirder still is TSR’s decision to publish it for the public four years after the end of the line.

It is pretty great, though. It follows the adventures of the Altair tribe (Assassin’s Creed fans take note) as they are taken prisoner by an evil mage. The adventure is divided into three sections. In the first, players take the roll of the tribe’s men and attempt to escape slavery. In the second, the tribe’s women seek to escape their harem. Finally, in the third part, you are the tribe’s children, escaping sacrifice at an evil temple. Each section is markedly different: the first is combat heavy, the second hinges on diplomacy and the final depends on the creativity and unpredictability intrinsic to kids.

Each chapter is divided into well-structured encounters, each with a definite beginning, middle and end, which flow directly into one another, taking a lot of guesswork out of the hands of the DM. That lack of guesswork is offset when you discover that, bizarrely, there are no pre-generated characters in the module. They don’t even tell you a suggested level.

Despite that, Reunion remains an excellent coda for Al-Qadim, tapping into swashbuckling and intrigue perhaps better than any other adventure published for the setting.

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First, a note on Sha’irs, the most intriguing character kit in Al-Qadim. Rather than memorizing spells, Sha’irs use genie familiars to fetch them from the multiverse, channeling raw power from the elemental planes or even stealing them from gods and demons. The resulting mix of mischievousness and constraint provides endless potential for plot complications, just like a yarn from the 1001 Nights.

The bulk of the book is devoted to the introduction of new mage kits and sorcerous societies. Much of the magic presented here is, like the Sha’ir, indirect. Zakharan mages largely channel their spells through some sort of craft, like clockwork baubles, tapestries, arithmetic and astrology. This folds in nicely with the setting’s focus on roleplaying and culture – to be a literal weaver of spells has limited application for dungeon crawling after all.

This is a good place to mention Al-Qadim’s deep love of genies of all kinds. Much of the world is dependent upon genie magic, which leads to all manner of wonder and trouble. In its simplest form, this is entertaining and Al-Qadim mostly leaves it at that. I find it curious though, that, for a setting that follows Dark Sun – one so preoccupied with freedom and slavery – that genies were never examined very critically in Al-Qadim. The imprisonment and forced labor of genies (as well as their wrath over the same) is taken as granted, both by Zakhara’s fictional society and the designers themselves. To my eye, there is much rich (if perhaps uncomfortable) material to be mined there.

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In all honesty, Robh Ruppel’s cover painting tells you all you need to know about the exotic atmosphere of the contents of the box. This is the D&D equivalent of Hollywood’s Baghdad, where Sinbad and Ali Baba dwell. You’ll note the lack of combat, so often depicted on D&D covers – this is again a supplement with a strong focus on culture and roleplaying, though the potential for a little swashbuckling is always present.

What City of Delights finally gives Al-Qadim is stories, a strange omission up to this point for a game based on a book about storytelling. The previous entries in the setting provide scant details on the sorts of adventures Al-Qadim is meant to provide, the why of it all. City of Delight delivers that in spades, providing dozens of characters and adventures seeds all worthy of Scheherazade. Finally, Al-Qadim begins to breathe.

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The main problem is that Zakhara, the Land of Fate, is huuuuuuge and the detail given here ranges from sparse to uninspired. Most features of the region, interesting or not, are given only a few paragraphs of description. Much of the good stuff is, like Arabian Adventures, cultural, but it is also of dubious use for running a game – the details on the coffee ceremony are an excellent example of something that is of great interest but limited utility.

I suspect the reason for this that Zakhara is simultaneously part of the Forgotten Realms (this probably annoyed Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Realms, who disliked using versions of real-world cultures in his world) and isolated from it (partly to justify its unusual customs, partly to make it easily usable as a bolt-on for homebrew campaign worlds). I think including it in the Realms hampers the setting from really coming into its own because of the need for a kind of Realms orthodoxy, while keeping it isolated from the greater Realms also meant the setting was unable to directly benefit from its richness. It’s the worst of both worlds, really.

That said, the box contains some of my favorite Karl Waller art, which does more to infuse the setting with intrigue and adventure than all the text combined.

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As with any D&D setting that moves the focus from tactical combat, Al-Qadim has its quirks. There is a strong focus on cultural customs. Concepts derived from real-world Middle Eastern customs like honor, social standing, purity, hospitality and more play an important role, requiring adventures to test roleplaying as much as sword arms. The inclusion of rigid character kits gives players a number of cultural and occupational tools for their roleplaying, grounding them in the world.

My feelings about that world are complicated. I have an unabashed love for the Sinbad movies that so obviously form the backbone of the game, but I also recognize they, and Al-Qadim, are steeped in Orientalism (that is, an exotification of Middle Eastern culture for the entertainment of Westerners). I’ve no way of knowing if the designers included practitioners of Islam, but judging from the credits, I suspect no one of Middle Eastern descent participated. And all this is complicated by the book’s publication shortly after the first Gulf War.

That said, Al-Qadim has an air of scholarly remove and feels respectful, even if it is a portrayal of non-Western culture through Western eyes. There is a focus on equality that reflect the attitudes of the golden age of the Arabian Empire – cities are full of many races, even traditionally “evil” ones like goblin and kobolds, and all are valued members of society. The widespread belief in Fate, from which all the setting’s laws of hospitality derive, is a clever, secular substitute for Islam. On the other hand, the book is uncritical in its presentation of slavery and polygamy. As ever, your mileage may vary.

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