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Two tabletop gaming veterans are creating a unique Arab World-centric game to dispel some of the myths around the hobby and spin local mythology into its yarn.
Hamad Alnajjar, 45, who has been capturing the imaginations of the small but passionate roleplaying community in Bahrain for more than 30 years, is working with his childhood friend and fellow gamer Saleh Al-Bufalah, 43, to create a mythological game with its own unique Arabic lexicon and lore.
Hamad attributes his passion for table-top roleplaying games to a Choose Your Own Adventure style book that he discovered at the age of nine.
However, as he has seen the community expand in Bahrain, he has sensed a need for and serious lack of Arabic roleplaying.
“Most of the community just translate or transliterate Dungeons and Dragons, the most popular table-top roleplaying game (TTRPG), into Arabic,” he explained to GulfWeekly on the sidelines of the third-ever Bahrain Comic Con (BCC), which took place last weekend.
A TTRPG, also known as a pen-and-paper RPG, is one in which the participants describe their characters’ actions through speech. Popular TV shows like Stranger Things have nurtured a resurgence in the popularity of such games, the most well-known of which is Dungeons and Dragons.
Participants determine their actions based on previously created character sheets and actions succeed or fail according to a set system of rules and guidelines.
Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise and their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game. In most games, a specially designated player, the game master, administers the rules and sets a fictional setting in which each player plays a single character.
These characters can include all kinds of fantastical creatures, including elves, dragons, hobbits, orcs, and goblins.
“However, in Arabic, many of these characters don’t have an equivalent, so there’s no Arabic mythology equivalent of, say, an elf or dwarf, and even if there is an equivalent, sometimes translating can touch on some cultural sensitivities,” Hamad explained.
He hopes the new game, which he is hoping to test out during the next BCC, can attract more people to the hobby without offending anyone.
The idea was born out of a conversation he had with Turk-Alman University professor Dr Moritz Botts, who talks about TTRPGs being played by people for whom English is not the native language.
When Hamad was asked by Dr Moritz about why there wasn’t an RPG in Arabic, Hamad said that in a bilingual country like Bahrain, enthusiasts of the hobby were likely to play in the language of the game and translate at the gaming table ‘if needed’.
However, the conversation got him thinking about creating a TTRPG in Arabic with its own thematic setting and mythos. And so, he reached out to Saleh, with whom he used to play Dungeons and Dragons in Arabic, as a teenager – when he himself could barely speak Arabic.
Back then, a love for the game helped them overcome the language barrier, and they are hoping to now get a whole new generation of Arabic gaming enthusiasts into the vast and ever-expanding world.
According to Hamad, the ‘Arabic’ in the game is more about the vocabulary and mechanics of the game that are intended to make the game identifiable and relatable to Arabic-speakers.
The duo are deliberately veering away as much as possible from creating a setting that ends up as a derivative of real-world history.
If done right, it will be its own thing – familiar to Arabic speakers, but distinctly unique.
“We are building a game to function as a figurative gateway to welcome a new cadre of enthusiasts into the hobby,” Hamad added.
“We want to see this game played by teenagers in our public schools and universities, telling wonderful stories in our mother tongue, flipping through beautifully illustrated books from right-to-left, and rolling dice in between.”
Although this will be his first time dabbling in Arabic game creation, Hamad is, by no measure, new to the art.
Most recently, his illustrations were published in the Weird Frontiers RPG by David Baity, and a gamebook Only the Dead Will Hear Your Screams by Jonothon Kelly.
For details, follow @art.of.geed on Instagram.
