Tales of the Arabian Nights (or Toftan for short) is a very entertaining game. If you have ever read/played a ‘find your own adventure’ book particularly the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook series you will have a good idea about how Toftan plays out.

The story behind the game is that you take on the role of Ali Baba, Sinbad or one of up to six different characters, and wander around a beautiful map of Europe, Asia and Africa having adventures. You get a cardboard stand up to represent your character, and a handful of tokens some of which you place on the board. You also get to choose three skill tokens for your character, which include Courtly Graces, Wilderness Survival, Weapon Use and Scholarship for example, and your choice of tokens helps define the kind of character you have.

Most importantly you have a Story token, Destiny token and Wealth token which go on one of three different tracks. Wealth determines how far you can move, while Story and Destiny are core to the game and determine the victory conditions, which could be 10 of each for example, though you can vary the thresholds.

Your objective is to score enough Story and Destiny points to reach that threshold and then return to Baghdad. You also start with a Quest, though often the completion of that quest is secondary to scoring Story and Destiny points. The quests can be a hindrance, as one of them puts you on the run from the Vizier and another puts you in the corner of the map with restricted movement. It is possible to get rid of quests without completing them, so it is really up to each player whether they concentrate on the quest or not.

In each turn you move (though you don’t have to) and have an encounter, so you draw an encounter card. You cross reference a number on the card to a chart in the book and roll 1D6 to see what you encounter, which could be an Evil Enchantress, a Mild Storm or a Glittering Artifact and so on. There is a list of options of how to interact with the encounter, like Aid, Rob or Converse, you choose one and your choice is cross referenced with the encounter to get a number listed with a paragraph in the book. It is a big heavy book with a couple of thousand numbered paragraphs with mini-stories that you read out.

These encounter paragraphs are generally only a few lines of text, but they cram in a lot of implied story and totally capture the exciting, romantic and clever nature of the Arabian tales. Reading them out is fun and listening to another player read out your fate for that turn can be exhilarating and depressing at equal turns. You have another choice to make at this point determined by whether you have a relevant skill for the encounter, which usually resolves the encounter in your favour if you have the skill.

Admittedly there is little strategy in how you move around the board, though you can keep some of the encounter cards that allow you to have an additional encounter in specific cities on the board. There is some strategy in what skills you choose and what choices you make during the encounter procedure however. Is it better to use Scholarship with a Learned Wizard? Do you try and trick a Mad Enchantress because you have Quick Thinking? Do you try and Seduce a Wicked Prince with Beguiling? There are no guarantees however, and without memorising the encounters it is often a stab in the dark. 

That isn’t all though as there are Places of Power on the board, that if you have the right type of encounter you have the opportunity to visit one of them, this seems rare enough during game play, but does make getting to a Place of Power a true novelty, whether it is the City of Brass or the Dusky Lands. The Places of Power have their own specific encounter sections that are usually more rewarding, sometimes with Treasure cards, though you might be lucky to collect more than one treasure card in a game.

Story and Destiny is all important though. The encounters determine what Story and Destiny points you gain or lose depending on whether you have the relevant skill or not, sometimes you gain or lose Wealth or a skill if relevant. The encounter procedure is initially confusing, but it is really well laid out and explained and responsibility for each part of the procedure is spread out around the players ensuring that players are kept involved in the game.

Integral to the game are Status cards, which can be good, like becoming the Vizier or Sultan, or more likely bad, for instance becoming Scorned, Outlaw or Imprisoned. Generally it is worth avoiding status cards because they mess with your game play, though they also make the journey that your character makes much more interesting and rewarding.

Unfortunately you sometimes get a game where status cards are a right pain. In a recent game my character was Sex Changed, which meant I couldn’t win unless I was changed back, another player was Lost with a maximum move of 1 and had another status card that stopped him from using his skills. The third player was Ensorcelled, Insane and Enslaved, so the other players chose where he moved, what encounter choices he made and his Destiny points were given to another player. Crippling really, but very very funny.

The turn sequence plays quickly, players are rarely left out of the loop, and listening to other player’s encounters is just as entertaining as resolving your own. Even though the encounter options are limited there are tons of them and most players are unlikely to memorise them, so there is loads of re-playability in the game. It is an ideal family/casual game that you can tailor the playing time to preference by adjusting the victory conditions.