Al-Qadim: Land of Fate (5e conversion)

[DrOct]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]! This is really impressive! I'm very excited to keep following the development!

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks [MENTION=65948]DrOct[/MENTION]

[MENTION=6798775]Ath-kethin[/MENTION] also made the point that I should resolve any issues of income from the project, since there's a few folks getting involved now In the beginning it was just me, so it's awesome to see [MENTION=6789613]MessiahMushroom[/MENTION], [MENTION=6798775]Ath-kethin[/MENTION], and several others contributing things.

I'm thinking we'll offer it "pay what you want", and after any commissioned/purchased art costs are deducted, remaining profit would be donated to a charity like St. Jude's or American Red Cross. That way, it's clear this is for the love of the setting, not making money, and there's no bad feelings later.

Hopefully, what this will do is provide a common touchstone for anyone wanting to write DM's Guild products dealing with AL-QADIM in the future. Say you want to put together an AL-QADIM adventure, a monster book, or a class supplement? You could reference the Adventurer's Guide to Zakhara in your work. I think this plays to one of the strengths of DM's Guild which is that, ideally, it allows sharing of ideas and linking of products in this way.

Your input sought!
One point I've heard brought up a couple times is questioning the 100 year time jump that happened in FR, and claiming AL-QADIM should be insulated from this time jump as well as the Spellplague/Sundering shenanigans. I'd like to hear from you guys and gals what you think about this?

Should I throw together a poll maybe?

 

[Quickleaf]

Also, a very worthwhile read from Jeff Grubb about the AL-QADIM line...some thoughts relevant to the question of whether AL-QADIM should be seen as part of FR or not...

http://grubbstreet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/l-is-for-land-of-fate.html

Shannon Appelcline, who writes a great deal on the history of RPG Projects, got in touch with me a few weeks back asking about Al-Qadim - any behind the scene stories and the like. Well, I had a few, and warned him that it would eventually show up in the blog. So therefore L is for the Land of Fate, and here is what I sent him.

1) Al-Qadim Arabian Adventures (1992) was conceived as being a companion piece to Oriental Adventures. While OA was put together and then glued onto the Realms (there was some shrinking of the map scale in the process - Zeb put in not one but two full-sized Chinas onto Kara-Tur's map), Arabian Adventures was planned from the get-go to be part of the Realms, and situated to the south of the existing Realms map. The name of the area, Zakhara, evoked the word "sahara", and went to the Z because Abeir-Toril started with an A. [Hey, A to Z reference!]

2) The name itself was a challenge, in that there were different needs from marketing (which wanted a name that said everything and didn't need to be explained) versus legal (which wanted new words which didn't have any other meaning). At one point the name was "Burning Sands", which everyone on the creative side just hated (though I was amused when it showed up years later as part of Five Rings CCG). I was armed with an arabic dictionaries, and came up with the Al-Qadim, which meant, according to my dictionary "The ancient". I put it in some cool fonts and we sold that name in.

3) However, management was concerned that the name may have other connotations that we didn't know about. Maztica, for example, sounds like the Mexican word for "chew" (Doug had checked the name with other Spanish-speakers, but they were from the Caribbean, and as such did not make the connection). Since my Arabic dictionary was printed in New Dehli, I went to the Internet User Groups for help, and got that the name meant ancient, old, venerable, and wise. One contributor noted that it meant old in the sense of stale - "This cheese is old". Not horrible, but we kept the name, and thanked David Hirsch and Daniel Wolk in the credits for their help.

4) Speaking of credits, the great hero of this project was Andria Hayday, who served as the editor but is credited with "Additional Writing and Development". She is responsible, with graphic designer Stephanie Tabat, for the look of the project. She fought for the style of the Karl Waller line drawings, the gold foil borders (a 5th color), and the end papers. More importantly, she wrote the bulk of what became the first chapter. Originally we were planning on talking about the society at the end of the book, much like we did for OA. But her work was so good we moved it to the front, and I argued to give her full co-credit. She passed on getting her name mentioned on the cover (she didn't want to get gaming questions), but I got her name on the back.

5) Another unsung hero was Jon Pickens, who, when we first started talking about AQ (and it took a few years to put it on the schedule), started collecting books on the subject. When I started on it he delivered three boxes full of books to my office. My favorite was a Marxist analysis of Bedouin life, and it was from that volume I pulled the name "sha'ir" for our wizard kit. In addition to Jon's books, I had also been reading the Burton Arabian Nights and followed a lot of pop culture - Harryhausen movies and the like. We wanted the game to be a combination of history, mythology, and modern knowledge on the subject.

6) This was an era when we did a lot of "kits", and with AQ the kits blossomed pretty much fully into subclasses. Many of them paralleled western classes, but their own flavor. I think we had the first female-only kit with the Hakima. When I first wrote up the Corsair, I used the female pronoun because the art piece we used showed a female character. Andria changed it, which was probably for the best.

7) One thing that the Arabian legends did not have was the mixture of Tolkienesque races. As a result, Zakhara was created as a more cosmopolitan world, where species and race did not matter nearly as much. It made for a different flavor in the game.

8) Another big difference was Faith. Religion was and is a touchy matter, and we wanted the faiths of Zakhara to be evocative of the Middle East, but no more descriptive of living faiths than the Gods of Faerun are to western religion. As a result, gods themselves were gathered into pantheons as opposed to having their own unique clerics, which again made the world feel more cosmopolitan. We did break the priest classes of these pantheons into three broad groups - The Faith Pragmatist, The Faith Ethoist, and the Faith Moralist. These were based more on outlook on Protestant denominations (Unitarians, Presbyterians, and Baptists, if I remember right) than any Middle-Eastern group.

9) The concept of Fate worked well for a number of reasons - it gave us an overgod like Ao who would be evoked but not worshipped. It gave us neat little evocation ("We have no fate but the fate that we are given"). And it gave us a reason for what Ed had all of these Middle-Eastern style civilizations scattered around the Realms - Anauroch, Raurin, Thay, Calimishan, et al. In Ed'd campaign, he would always put these Arabian Night civilizations on the borders, and as his borders grew in his campaign, he just added more. We created a folk legend where the various peoples could not get along, so Fate banished them to the far corners of the world for a time out.

9) The cover was a bit of challenge, in that we asked for a horse. Jeff Easley is a great artist, but does not like drawing horses and has gotten flack for it from the fans (I don't get this - I like his horses). As an option we suggested a young woman opening a bottle and genie coming out. He created a very cheesecake piece (which was used in the "Women of Fantasy" calender that year) which looked like the young lady was ... um ... smuggling bowling balls in her vest. So we went back to the horse.

10) The interior art was great, but Jim Ward was concerned about nipple rings on the ogres in one piece. We had that one fixed. However, we did get a letter after publication from someone who was angry about the "blatant foreplay" we showed in one picture. That would be the one of two genies (male and female) playing chess on page149. OK, we had a good laugh on that one.

11) The map of the world was designed to be broken up into components for the boxed adventure sets. If we did them all (we didn't), we would end up with a huge mega-map.

12) Andria and I conceived of the line as having a definite life span of two, maybe three years tops. We did not want to fall into the mode where we had to do an AQ adventure every year, regardless of sales (see OA or Greyhawk). We would do cool stuff, and once the sales trailed off, we would be done. I think we did two years, then they added a third, and then we were asked for a fourth (which would have included the Land of the Yak Men, which was going to be Tibetian in nature), but management changed their minds and so the line closed out

13) The big rivalry in-house was with another desert-based adventure - Dark Sun. Dark Sun sold better per units than AQ, but AQ didn't have as high a unit cost (we didn't do the ring-bound adventure books and custom boxes), and as such is remembered more fondly. Further, we pitched AQ very much as being a sequel to Oriental Adventures. DS was going to "Replace the Realms" which was a statement that often would be the kiss of death for a line.

14) When we launched, we were supposed to run demos at GenCon Milwaukee. I got fezzes for our demo team, we had some play areas map up to look like desert terrain, and we ran short adventures (Andria and I actually came up with what the specific adventures were while driving to GenCon - I was going to make them up on the fly, while she wanted just a tad more structure). And I am the one responsible for the gong - I borrowed it from the Lake Geneva High School orchestra, and we were to ring it only at the end of the demo. The sales booth said later that every time the gong rang, they got more AQ books out of storage for sale. Other people running demos next to us did not like the gong so much, primarily because Jim Ward loved the gong, and would strike it whenever he was nearby. After the second day we started hiding the striker from him.

15) The books sold well - Dark Sun sold better, as I noted, and we got good reviews. I was told (but never saw the figures) that it sold very well in Israel, which is cool. I am very proud of what we did, and happy to have worked on it.

 

[MessiahMushroom]

A poll might be nice to see everyone's opinion. Personally, I could go either way. My players are relatively new and wouldn't know or really care to know about some historic event that doesn't really relate to them or their story.
[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], the .pdf is looking so good! I've got a few monster conversions we can add too (mostly beasts for our friend, the moon druid). The antlion lacewing, giant antlion larva, giant serval, dire lion, hippopotamus, giant mason wasp, elephant bird, giant monitor, and giant horned lizard are all primed and ready!

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], the .pdf is looking so good! I've got a few monster conversions we can add too (mostly beasts for our friend, the moon druid). The antlion lacewing, giant antlion larva, giant serval, dire lion, hippopotamus, giant mason wasp, elephant bird, giant monitor, and giant horned lizard are all primed and ready!

Thanks! Those style guides you linked me to helped quite a bit.

I'd actually encourage you to hold off on including your monster conversions in this product. I think that kind of work is worthy of an independent monster book that you'd deserve to be remunerated for! If there's one thing that DMs are always looking for, it's new monsters after all

EDIT: On second thought, since those are all animals, they would be useful for wizard's familiars, beastmaster ranger companions, and druid's summonings?

 

[Quickleaf]

So poll options would be something like...

In a conversion product for AL-QADIM on DM's Guild, how would you want to see the story and setting treated?

1) Leave the story/setting out of it - that's what dndclassics.com is for. Just do a rules conversion document covering kits, spells, equipment, and magic items.

2) Unchanged setting. Use the setting from the original AD&D books unchanged, providing a synopsis of cities/tribes from the boxed sets.

3) Follow the Forgotten Realms timeline. Update the setting to the 100 year time jump and Spellplague/Sundering that occurred in FR.

4) Other

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Well, it appears I've been gone too long. These are some intriguing developments I'd very much like in on as my group is just about to do some trial runs with my conversion materials in a month or so.

I hadn't even considered the possibilities of the Judge's Guild.

So. I'd be very happy to work on whatever section might be needed, but here's what I've got or partially got:
1. A list of all of the kits worked out as backgrounds
2. A reworking of the background personal characteristics into the virtues of Al Quadim
3. A lot of use of the optional rules from the DMG

So what I'd propose is that I'd be very happy to contribute an appendix covering the use of DMG options for Al Quadim. The DMG at the time of release Al Quadim's release was not what the customization engine it is now and it might help cut some time out for people and/or better demonstrate the unique possibilities of the setting.

 

[Quickleaf]

Well, it appears I've been gone too long. These are some intriguing developments I'd very much like in on as my group is just about to do some trial runs with my conversion materials in a month or so.

I hadn't even considered the possibilities of the Judge's Guild.

Nice to see you back, mate! Yes, we're slowly gaining steam.

I'm actually burning the midnight oil working on a Kahin conversion (a Circle of Aged Masters for druids).

So what I'd propose is that I'd be very happy to contribute an appendix covering the use of DMG options for Al Quadim. The DMG at the time of release Al Quadim's release was not what the customization engine it is now and it might help cut some time out for people and/or better demonstrate the unique possibilities of the setting.

Sure! What's an example of what you're thinking?

The "kits as backgrounds" model was something I considered early on. Then I realized that there are 3 types of kits in AD&D Al-Qadim...

1. There are those that present new mechanics to the game, mostly spellcasters like the Astrologer, Clockwork Mage, Digitalogist, Elemental Mage, Ghul Lord, Mageweaver, Mystic of Nog, Sha'ir, Hakima, Kahin, and Mystic. These definitely need new sub-classes.
2. Then there are those that are just a re-skin like the Askar, Mercenary Barbarian, Outlands Warrior, Ajami, Jackal, Matrud, Sa'luk, Ethoist, Moralist, Pragmatist, and Outlands Priest. These don't need much of anything, maybe a snippet of flavor text, but not much else.
3. Then there are those that are a mix of class abilities and backgrounds, mostly "martial" archetypes. For example, the Corsair, Desert Rider, Mamluk, Barber, Beggar-Thief, Holy Slayer, and Merchant-Rogue. These are the ones that are a bit ambiguous. Most of them can be realized with existing PHB backgrounds and classes, though there is also a history of some of these being given d20 prestige classes write-ups. I have to make a judgment call on each of these on a case by case basis.

For example, take the Beggar-Thief. In the original AD&D it gave you a Face in the Crowd type ability, begging proficiency for free, some modifiers on thief abilities, and a penalty on reaction rolls with civilized beings. Sounds like the Urchin background to me, or a variant of it!

However, one thing I'm considering is going all out making it a sub-class with baked in flavor. I could look to parkour athletes, the Prince of Persia, and the Acrobat-Thief of old giving the sub-class features including Taunt, Misdirect Attack, and Reduce Falling Damage. And those would be cool features! Maybe I'll do that as an experiment and see if there's enough meat to put on those bones.

Then you could have a character of Noble background who becomes a Rogue (beggar-thief). Hmm, not sure I'm sold on that name "beggar-thief" as a sub-class. We'll see.

 

[Quickleaf]

Beggar-Thief sub-class (proof of concept)

Do you think the Beggar-Thief kit merits its own roguish archetype?

Here's my rough conceptual draft... is this worth pursuing? Or better to leave it as a background (Urchin: Beggar variant) + class (Rogue: thief)?

Beggar-Thief

Rooftop Tumbling
Starting at 3rd level when you choose this archetype, you take no damage from falls less than or equal to 10 times half your rogue level in feet. In addition, rising from prone no longer costs you any movement.

Face in the Crowd
At 3rd level, when you are in a city, you may blend in with the crowd effortlessly so as not to draw attention to yourself or to throw off pursuers. This allows you to make a Dexterity (Stealth) check in crowds, and if there is a significant beggar population you gain advantage on the check. Additionally, nobility and royalty tend to ignore you when passing you on the street.

Taunt
At 9th level, as a bonus action you can taunt a creature that can both hear and understand you. Make a Charisma (Performance) check opposed by the creature’s Wisdom (Insight) check.
If you win the contest, and the creature is hostile, it must target you with its next attack and cannot willingly move farther away from you. Additionally, its next attack against you is disadvantaged.
If you win the contest, and the creature is not hostile, it becomes hostile to you, acting in a manner suiting its nature.
If the creature wins the opposed check, it is immune to your Taunt for 24 hours.

Misdirect Attack
At 13th level, when a creature misses you with a disadvantaged attack, or a creature against whom you would have advantage misses you with an attack, you may use your reaction to misdirect their attack. The creature must re-roll the attack against another target of your choice within range.

Lightfoot
At 17th level, you gain a climb speed equal to your walking speed, you do not set off traps triggered by pressure plates or tripwires that you are aware of, and opportunity attacks made against you are disadvantaged.

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks [MENTION=6788732]cbwjm[/MENTION] for reminding me about the monk's slowfall ability. Another reason the beggar-thief probably doesn't need a sub-class.

I just put the finishing touches on the rough versions of the fighter sub-classes: Guard and Mamluk Officer. Any thoughts or critique?