A comparison of narrative mechanics in 'Tales of the Arabian Nights' and 'Eldritch Horror'

Although on the surface very different, Fantasy Flight's 'Eldritch Horror' and Z-Man Games' 'Tales of the Arabian Nights' are actually quite similar in some ways; primarily in their mechanical approach to narrative building. For reference, the former is about a group of adventurers trying to save the world from Lovecraftian horrors, while the latter is a story based game about travelling around having adventures.

This isn't intended as a full critique of either game, but instead will mostly be talking about a single mechanic from each game and focusing on each mechanic's context within the game. There are other things that could be discussed, such as narrative consequence, but this will focus solely on one more interesting comparison between the two.

In Eldritch Horror, at the end of each player's turn, a card is drawn which essentially tells a snippet of a short story. There is usually a small amount of exposition, then some sort of test which will change the outcome depending on whether it is passed or failed. In some of the more complicated cases, there are a series of tests and/ or decisions.

These cards are also contextual. Depending on whether the player is in the wilderness, the ocean, generic cities, larger named cities or through a portal to another dimension, they can expect both the flavour of the encounters, the dangers and the rewards to differ, which is handled by having the player draw from different decks depending on location.

Similarly in Arabian Nights, at the end of each player's turn, a card is drawn (from a singular deck though,) with several possible results.


The first is a character encounter card. Depending on the time of day, the player will be directed to an encounter matrix which will ad an adjective (wealthy, lost, vengeful etc.) and then direct the player to a reaction matrix, from which there will be various ways they can respond (attack, aid, hire etc.) This will finally direct them to the relevant passage from the book of tales.

Slightly lengthy process aside, each tale has preceding section of exposition, then often a choice presented to the player, based on their acquired skills. If the player had the quick witted skill, for example, they could optionally use it to resolve the encounter differently (though they still wouldn't know the outcome either way ahead of time)

Location encounter cards mostly work the same as character encounter cards, with an extra step to determine the encounter based on what terrain type the player is on.

Finally, the city card will direct the player to a specific set of encounters and provide a benefit if the player goes to the named city at some point.

Like Eldritch Horror, these are contextual, but overall, I would say that the locational contextualisation of Eldritch Horror is implemented slightly better than Arabian Nights.

There are effectively six terrain types in Arabian Nights: mountain, desert, sea, land, city and island, with each providing an encounter roughly suitable to that terrain type. The trouble is, that these need to be generic enough that they could fit any space of the same terrain. If I were to travel to the city space of Britain, it would pull from the same encounter pool as Baghdad and not be personalised to the region.

 I suspect this is a problem introduced by the book of tales. Although an enormous amount of work has clearly gone into the extremely numerous tales, if they were to further segment the tales by board region as well as terrain, it would inevitably result in tales being recycled more often. This particularly would effect the area around Baghdad, since everyone starts there every game. Inevitably everyone would get to know the stories around the starting region better than everywhere else and familiarity with the tales in a game like this is probably one of the worst things that could happen. The solution of course, would be to expand the book size, but this probably isn't feasible, given its already huge size.

In some respects, Eldritch Horror suffers from a similar issue. The basic terrain types: city, wilderness and sea, much like Tales, provide a reasonable degree of contextual coherence, but still don't change by location. The east Asian wilderness is unlikely to be particularly similar to the jungles of South America, for example.

What Eldritch does do slightly differently to combat this, however, is provide some more specific locations, each with their own deck of encounters. Several major cities around the board, such as London, Istanbul, Rome and Shanghai have individual encounters more apt for those location. In Rome, for example I have the potential to interact with the Vatican, while in Arkham, the cults to various old gods are likely extremely active.

There are various other well fleshed out locations too. Various expedition spaces are around the board (the Great Pyramids, the Arctic etc.) While players can occasionally travel through gates to other worlds in an attempt to seal them and hold back the coming doom.

There is an attempt to do something like this in Arabian Nights: the location encounter cards each has a letter rather than a number in one terrain type. The card 'Magnetic Mountain,' for example, has an 'N' rather than a number, directing a player straight to the reaction matrix. In this case, the encounter would be directly relevant to the location, since it would only trigger in a mountain location. With such a large number of terrain types on the board, however, these aren't particularly frequent occurrences.

The reason I believe this mechanic, (to create encounters based on specific locations,) is important, is that it adds a great deal of weight to player actions. Moving onto a mountain space and getting a mountain event has far less significance when it it effectively is no different to if the player had gone to the other mountain space. Moving into Rome, as opposed to going to sea or entering the wilderness means that the player made the outcome happen. Even though its still randomly drawn from the deck, the fact that is relevant to the location means that the player had an impact on the narrative of the game. Even a seemingly small impact like this can be hugely relevant in making the player feel like their input matters.

Overall, the strength of Arabian Nights is certainly in the length of its stories. Each is much more lengthy than the corresponding Eldritch card and provides an entirely self contained short story. Eldritch on the other hand relies far more on player imagination to fill in the gaps, as it were. The chunks of exposition simply aren't large enough to provide the players with a complete story; you'll never know why you decided to visit the asylum or go to Alcatraz prison island, its simply left to the players' imaginations. In exchange, however, Eldritch does gain something just as important, a situational awareness that is present in Arabian Nights a little but to a far lesser degree. The players may not know why they decided to visit Alcatraz island in particular but it does at least make logical sense, given where the player is in the world. More importantly: the player made it happen.

Crafting a narrative: War of the Ring vs Star Wars: Rebellion

On the surface, Ares Game's 'War of the Ring'  and Fantasy Flight's 'Star Wars: Rebellion' are somewhat similar, (the first edition of WOTR was in fact published by Fantasy Flight.)

Both aim to create an epic and sprawling narrative, with an inferior and outnumbered force of good attempting to defeat a far superior evil enemy. Both succeed in their aims but achieve them in different ways.

There are two divergences in the games' approaches: the use of characters and the use of the overall grand strategic map.

I'll briefly describe the core objectives and some of the mechanics of each, though intimate knowledge won't be needed and I won't be able to go through every relevant system.

The primary win conditions for WOTR are:

1. For the shadow player to capture 10 vp's worth of points from free structures around the map

2. For the free people's player to destroy the one ring at mount doom

3. For the shadow player to corrupt the ring bearer

4. For the free people's player to capture 4 vp's worth of shadow structures

Rebellion has just two win conditions:

1. For the Empire to conquer the Rebel base

2. For the Rebellion to earn enough reputation and survive long enough to cause a general uprising

The core action of Rebellion is assigning a leader (essentially a worker) to an event card, then later assigning them to a planet where they will attempt to fulfil that event, possibly opposed by an enemy leader. At the end of each round all leaders return to their owner's leader pools, ready to be reassigned in the subsequent round. If a player chooses not to assign one or more of their leaders, at the beginning of a battle, one of these leaders can be sent to contribute their skills to the fight.

In WOTR, however, characters are (with a few exceptions) essentially permanently on the board from the beginning of the game until the end, excepting their early deaths. Broadly speaking, they move with or without an army, they rally nations towards war and they contribute towards battles.

The end result in this is that the characters in WOTR have a little more permanence than in Rebellion.  Gimli and Legolas splitting from the fellowship, rallying the Dwarves of Erebor to war and then defending the lonely mountain against hordes of Easterlings creates a more effective continuous narrative than can be found in Rebellion's characters.


The big downside of this system, however, is that the characters have less focus than Rebellion. There are a handful of contextual systems that players can use: Gandalf the Grey can be resurrected as Gandalf the White, Aragorn can be crowned king of Gondor etc. But the focus is largely not on the characters but on the overall board state. In Rebellion, everything the players do to affect the game board is initiated by moving a character somewhere. In WOTR, the opposite is true: the characters are an ancillary system, not the primary one.

The benefit of this, however, is that it shifts the focus of the narrative as much onto the board state as the characters. The VP based objectives on both sides encourage a greater awareness of the state of the entire board. A combination of this and the larger board means that armies and agents are far more restricted in their movements. As such, each movement bears far more weight for the player. When the player cannot influence just about anywhere, at any time, as in Rebellion, long term board state becomes more important

As a result, the board state has far more narrative weight for the player: each action contributed crucially to the unique makeup of the board. Sometimes a great focus of that game may be on a swift Strike on Minas Tirith, sometimes the war shifts further north towards the Elven and Dwarven realms or east towards the Shire. The important thing is that this varying and emergent state is slowly developed by player impetus over the course of the game.

In contrast, Rebellion's characters have little permanent board presence, persisting only until the end of the round. As a result the system lends itself far more to emphasising individual moments, rather than creating a more coherent arc for characters and board state

As an example of this, a few turns of Rebellion could go something like:

1. Chewbacca incites a rebellion on Kashykk, killing some imperials before his own troops are killed

2.  The Empire player, fearing another uprising, moves more troops to Kashykk to reinforce the garrison

3. Luke Skywalker travels to Kashykk in order to infiltrate the Imperial garrison.

4. The Empire, sensing an opportunity to perhaps capture and turn Luke, send Darth Vader to capture the young Jedi. However, because Chewbacca is still on Kashykk after his failed rebellion, he is able to assist Luke and fend of Darth Vader

This is the true strength of Rebellion. While still important, the war game style battles fought between good and evil take a back seat compared to the individual struggles between villains and heroes. Ultimately it is less of a war-game than WOTR, allowing these characters to be the focus rather than the greater struggle.

However, although important from a gameplay perspective, from a narrative one the board meant far less in Rebellion than WOTR. With the exception of the dread of an imperial fleet drawing close to the hidden base, there were few benefits gained from it. Characters were never vulnerable in the same way as WOTR, as if they lose a battle, rather than being killed and removed from the game, they suffer no narrative consequence, other than potentially vulnerable to an imperial capture

Overall, I don't believe the approach taken by either game is inherently superior and I like them both a great deal. The memorable moments from Rebellion involve specific characters and situations, not planetary battles. WOTR on the other hand instead lends itself towards remembering the greater board state, of battles won and lost and the desperate military struggle of the Free Peoples. In Rebellion, I remember how the Galactic population rose up after Darth Vader was defeated in an assault on Hoth, triggering the return of the Jedi or when Wedge, the sole surviving fighter in a daring attack on the death star, used the stolen plans to destroy it and retreat to tell the tale. Whereas in WOTR, I remember the people of Dale retreating in the face of an overwhelming Easterling attack to the dwarves of the lonely mountain, while Aragorn was crowned king even as the hordes of Mordor broke through Osgiliath towards the White City.

That's the difference between the two games, both creating a unique narrative but in very quite different ways.

The Thematic Brilliance of The Lord of the Rings: the Card Game

The Lord of the Rings: the Card Game

The LOTR LCG is a 'living card game' created by Fantasy Flight based on J.R.R Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings'. It contains no miniatures, no board and nothing to make it obviously stand out as a highly thematic game aside from generally stunning artwork

Nonetheless I believe that it is one of the most thematic games I have played for several reasons.

The game is one of the best examples expressing theme through mechanic: that is immersing the player by having the gameplay mesh seamlessly with the theme.

For reference, an example of a thematic misstep would be the 4X  board game 'Eclipse.' There is a limited pool of technology, with more available each round, meaning that there are finite copies of each technology. This makes sense from a game design and balance standpoint, but thematically makes little sense at all. The fact that the player to my left has researched a better reactor has no logical reason for stopping me from doing the same.

My favourite example from the core set, (though I am yet to find a deck he can fit in) is the player card "Wandering Took"


For those who are unfamiliar with Hobbits, the Tooks are well known within hobbit communities as being very un-hobbit like. They're constantly heading off on adventures and getting into trouble.

This is represented in game by allowing the player who controls the Wandering Took, as an action, to pass him to the another player, lowering their own threat ( a measure that effects the number of enemies that will attack the players) and increasing the other player's threat to represent trouble following the Took like a cloud of locusts.

Many of the player cards live up to this standard, though a great deal are far more obviously straightforward: an axe gives your heroes more attack, a breastplate gives them more health and so on.

There are some weaknesses without a doubt. These are generally found in the more abstracted 'event' player cards. While equipment is relatively easy to logically justify (weaponry giving damage etc.) it becomes a little more abstracted in parts of the game, though a reasonable job is still done.

 Giving a character 'Steward of Gondor,' for example, will enable the player to give that character more resources each turn, representing the vast resources of an entire nation's support.

'Gildor's Council,' however, is a far less obvious card in its justification. In the books, Gildor and several other elves drive away a Black Rider with their song, while in game it will cause fewer enemies to be revealed from the encounter deck. While this does make sense, the more casual player is likely to have less knowledge of this and will struggle to connect the card event with its in game effect.


Equally well designed are many of the quest cards which form the backbone of each scenario. In 'Journey down the Anduin,' for example, the players are tasked with taking a raft downstream. Once they have boarded the raft, an increased number of enemies will spawn from the encounter deck, representing the enemy gathering on the shores. Crucially, while numerous, these enemies cannot attack  the players at this point in the quest (because obviously they cannot reach them on the raft,) though the players can steer the raft towards the shore and choose to attack if they wish.

Once this stage has been passed, the raft comes back to shore and the accumulated enemies once again are able to attack the players en masse in an ambush, assuming the players haven't been clearing them out.

The point I'm getting at here is these all make contextual sense. If the players are on a raft, they cannot be engaged. If enemies are massing for an ambush, they spawn more frequently from the encounter deck. So on and so forth

The most impressive part of this is the sheer creativity on the part of the design team, frequently using innovative mechanics to represent particular situations or player choices.

In one of the most recent expansions, the sailing players have a compass card and will gradually drift off course each turn, potentially steering into bad weather and storms if they don't correct their course.

In another scenario, attempting to escape the fearsome Balrog is represented by a much larger quest deck than normal combined with one side of each of the cards being identical. This means that the players have to try and sift through the unpredictable deck to try and find one of the two exits. One exit requires the players to have a set of tools to break through a wall, potentially requiring them to temporarily give up until they find them, while the other exit is past the Balrog. The players can flee and attempt to find another way out, or risk elimination from the game by staying, attempting to pass the Balrog and  so escaping Moria.

In any case, its a combination of mechanical moments like these combined with gorgeous artwork that make the game what it is, an extremely thematic and tense experience, highly evocative of its source material.