Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:Pinball: Tales of the Arabian Nights - Soundtrack - YouTube
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BenIn Tales of the Arabian Nights there are these Places of Power where you can encounter some cool stories. Zev had originally said we might just use the icon things from the third edition, but I thought they'd really clash with the updated hand-painted style and suggested illustrated vignettes. These are like a story within the story, which is the entire rationale behind 1001 Nights.
Anyway… I don't consider myself an illustrator, but wound up doing these myself (be gentle!). I’m doing some touch up work on the Places of Power illustrations this afternoon. About to start in on the Valley of Diamonds and make the sparkly rocks sparkle more. I modelled the snakes in the illustration after one of the more common ones around here – the Eastern Brown. Work gets interrupted by having to relocate a metre long specimen out of the garage.
It’s the second-most venomous terrestrial snake in the world, and responsible for more deaths from snakebite in Australia than any other species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_brown_snake
Please pardon the potato photos and poor illustration!
#TotAN — Tales of the Arabian Nights
About 14 hours left on the campaign!
Going Solo. With all of the gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy in the 80s it’s not surprising that the original game had a solo mode. To win you had to reach your Story and Destiny goals, become Fabulously wealthy, and complete 2 quests before the event deck ran out.
Did you know there were plans to produce a computer game version in the 90s? New solo tales were written by the talented Jennell Jaquays and Kevin Maroney. These recently came to light, and they’re now the basis of the new solo mode for this edition. (I’m going to try to find out more about this computer game)
In the 40th Anniversary Edition you’ll start with a Solo Quest card that will start you on your journey. The story unfolds over a series of milestones across the map that relate to the new paragraphs in a dedicated book. I’m really looking forward to giving these a good play through when I’ve got a chance. Trying to typeset and avoid spoilers might be a bit hard. *squints*
^ link has a Fediverse-only refcode (I'm trying to get 'em on here!)
Samples from the printer for the #TotAN limited edition dials. I think I'll be playing with the laser cutter next week. These should spin only when you set them, not accidentally if they get knocked.
#TotAN — Tales of the Arabian Nights
Maps! I love cartography, but I’m not going to make that a hashtag because anyone actually involved with it would cringe at the liberties taken with this warped projection. Having said that I did try to pull and push things around to be closer to where they should be compared to previous versions of the board… and reattached the Malay peninsula. Yeah yeah things are still a bit off—it’s fantasy, ok?
This is the fourth edition of the game, but in my travels I came across four previous versions of the board—there was an Italian version that looked similar to the French one although it had different flavour images. As a 40th Anniversary, I wanted to pay homage to a bit of all the versions while giving it its own personality. The second edition was, I think, German only and it was very dark. Third edition emulated that. The Gallimard edition was gorgeously vibrant and provided the initial direction. Love that map.
“But why isn’t it all grimdark like 3rd ed? It’s got ‘Nights’ right there in the title!”
Well, Scheherazade was telling her *tales* at night, but the adventures were colourful and dazzling. The board should be, too!
The campaign is in its last 2 days now–currently over 250k AUD!
^refcode (should you choose to use it) is for the Fediverse as I'm trying to convince folks to be here with us
I love a good amount of narrativium in my games. An avid reader of the Fighting Fantasy books, I discovered Tales of the Arabian Nights well after it was out of print. Then Z-Man produced a third edition of the game in 2009 and I pounced on it. So much fun. You can imagine how much my eyes lit up when Zev emailed me a few months back asking if I wanted to work on a 40th Anniversary Edition! Happy to have been working on graphic design and art for it.
The crowdfund campaign launched a few hours ago, funding in just over an hour. I don’t get any extra financial gain out of posting about this—I’m just excited to see it in print again.
I might blather on about this a bit, showing sneaky details that aren’t posted elsewhere or talking about graphic design and art. Mute or follow #TotAN to taste.
^ I made a refcode just for the fediverse. Help me get them on here!
JanUnleash the lamps power!
#pinball #vpin #vpinball #VirtualPinball #retrogaming #totan #flipper