I’ve played this game before, albeit an older version at a convention. Tales of the Arabian Nights is a paragraph game, which means that it’s quite like the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure book, with multiple players, a map, and status effects with actual tokens so that you don’t need pencil and paper. There are over 3000 paragraphs―chunks of adventure, basically―that you’ll never see all of thanks to how combinations of statuses, board position, cards drawn, and even gender of your character (which can change throughout the game!) affects which paragraphs you read.

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When played multiplayer, someone else reads from the book on your turn, making it seem like you’re involved in a story. But when you’re playing by yourself, suddenly it’s much more noticeable that you’re only playing a game.

I therefore think this game is best played when one is a little baked after a long day of work or gaming, and can sink easily into the fairytale world.

Z-man has solitaire rules, but for an experienced player I suggest a faster timer than what they lay out: after drawing 2 cards and picking 1, discard the next two encounter cards as well. You’ll be conversing with malicious viziers at noon in no time.

And so ends Adventure Game Birthday Weekend. I have never been so distracted before and for so long during one of these days. It helped quite a bit, and gave me the motivation to clear out a safe space—and a large one at that, because these are not small games.

I wasn’t free of the shakes but they were much better. Relatively speaking. And I think that’s all I’m going to ask for, for the time being.

Update: Won a tense solo game using my variant on Z-man Games’ variant. Small gallery follows.