A Journey of a Thousand and One Nights Begins With a Single Step ...

The Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) Role Playing Game keeps on evolving. Recently, Alderac issued its new L5R 3rd edition Revised. This new edition fixes some of the problems players complained about when 3rd edition came out 3 years ago. The only problem with Revised is that far from fixing the problems, they created more. A comprehensive Errata is being written and AEG will likely publish it online.

But along with the new Revised edition of its flagship, AEG has also published Legend of the Burning Sands (LBS). LBS also started life as a Collectible Card Game that existed in the same universe as L5R. In fact the Burning Sands are just north of Rokugan. The new LBS rule book is a gorgeous 300 page book detailing the world of Medinaat al-Salaam and its inhabitants. The Roll and Keep rules from L5R have been transplanted here, but they use a hybrid of L5R's 3rd ed and 3rd ed Revised - making it compatible, with a bit of work, with its sister game.

Hot on the heels of L5R, is Qin by French RPG company 7th Circle. Now published in English by Cubicle 7, Qin reminds me of a wuxia version of L5R - before L5R became heavily laden with CCG inspired metaplot. The corebook and its few supplements are fantastic to look it and minimalist in feel. It is still fantasy, but it is fantasy with deep roots in Chinese wuxia literature and film as well as Chinese history. It looks and feels as if it could be a primer in Chinese anthropology. It took almost 2 years before 7th Circle translated their game of fantasy China into English.

Well, 7th Circle is at it again. First, Qin gets a Kung Fu makeover with Qin: Shaolin and Wudan. This fatsplat supplement (with a stylized tiger instead of a dragon on the front cover) acts as a stand-alone game and updates Qin with rules about Kung Fu. The timeline is also updated. This one takes place in 17th Century China.

But 7th Circle didn't stop there. In a parallel move to AEG's Legend of the Burning Sands comes Caphernaum: the Heritage of Dragons (trans.). It is a fantastic version of the Tale of 1001 Nights. It is only available in French and so far there are no plans for an English translation, but it tackles the same subject matter as LBS does. It even uses a "Roll and Keep" system, but my French is too rusty to allow me to figure out how close it is to AEG's system. If my experience with Qin is any indication, Caphernaum will be fantastic. I hope we don't have to wait too many years before they publish it in North America. There is already a couple of websites for it. One is right here.