The GURPS PDF Challenge Reviews: The Incense Trail

Continuing my reviews of all the GURPS PDF Challenge, we move on to Hot Spots: the Incense Trail.  By Matt Rigsby, one of my readers commented "It's Matt Riggsby, of course it's going to be good," and the executive summary here is that they're right: this is exactly the sort of thing we'd expect from Mr. Riggsby.

The book breaks down into:

• Geography and Land Use
• History
• Economy and Culture
• Gazeteer
• Campaigning 

Ultimately, this is about the pre-Muslim Arabian Peninsula, primarily from roughly 500 BC to 500 AD, which makes it an interesting time period because it isn't covered by most GURPS books (the closest he can get are GURPS Egypt and GURPS Rome, both of which are merely adjacent to the region in question).

My Impressions

This book reminds me of a Kenneth Hite book, not that it's filled with high weirdness, but that the information density is very high without giving the impression that it is.  Every paragraph or so there's a reference that, while totally fine on its own, makes me want to jump over to Wikipedia to learn more.  This sort of writing ultimately makes me want more, a lot more.  I think, after reading this, I would happily fork over $20 for a full supplement treatment, though I get that will never happen: have you heard of the Incense Trail? Do you know why you'd want to read up on it? No? Then the supplement won't sell.  That makes this a perfect treatment for a $3 supplement to be bundled in with a bunch of others.  I think most people will treat it as a book they also got while getting Megadungeons and Tricked Out Rides, but I think you should stop and really read it. There's good stuff in here!

I happen to be very interested... well, in the Middle East in general, but I've always been interested in the shadowy times of the pre-Islamic and early-Islamic Middle East. This book actually taught me a lot, giving me pointers to the religions and kingdoms that dotted the area south of the Fertile Crescent. Everyone knows about the Hebrews, Canaan, Assyria, the Sumerians, Babylon, etc; but how much do you know about the Nabatians and the Kingdom of Saba?  

One of the things I came across during my research into early Islamic history was a debate over whether or not what we call Mecca today was actually the real "original" Mecca or a creation of a later Islamic ruler; one of the key arguments the Mecca-Skeptics make is that some city in the middle of the desert right next to the Red Sea wouldn't be the center of a trade route ("They would just transport goods by ship").  Yet, if you read through the Incense Trail, you'll see that isn't true: it's not only plausible, but we know there were cities and communities that were central to the Incense Trail (really interesting cities too, like Iram of the Pillars).  It put Mohammed in a better context for me, as well as some of the other things I learned in my research (I may have to go back and reread "In the Shadow of the Sword" again with this context).  So this book taught me something.

Okay, so some of you are thinking "Well, then, this is dry and musty history." I happen to think history is a great source of inspiration, which is why I study it so much (I will also note that some of the most well-received RPG authors, like Kenneth Hite, or fantasy authors, like Tolkien or G. R. R. Martin, are historians, or are drawing heavily from history).  But even if you don't want a historical game, this is a region of the world that later inspired 1001 Arabian Nights, back when it was still polytheistic and "full of sorcerers," and was bordered by places like Rome, Egypt, Babylon, etc. It's the world of bazaars, spices, the sacred scent of incense, Petra, the djinn, ancient gods and fallen kingdoms in a world of sandswept desolation. Even if you're running a strictly fantasy game set in the another world, there's still some insights here for your campaign.

The one downside to the book is that it's very light on gaming information.  You have essentially a single page that touches on the sorts of skills and perks such a character might have and a very light sketch of what sort of campaigns to run.  I have mixed feelings about it.  First, I would have loved a much deeper treatment, but that means more words, more page-count, and we're back to the conundrum above which is you can't afford that on $3, and would people pay for more before reading the book? Second, some people argue that the strength of GURPS supplements lies not in how useful they are to GURPS people, but how universally useful they are.  This is a supplement that takes all the disparate parts of history (economic history, cultural history, religious history, military history) and begins to bundle them together so that you're getting a complete picture of what that part of the world looked like. Sure,  you could do a lot of this research on your own with Wikipedia and Google, but it's going to take weeks, and you're not going to find everything you need (I know, because I've looked!), and this integrates it all together in a way that the layman is going to struggle to do.  I think that's it's great strength, not as a GURPS supplement, but as universal RPG supplement that would help any campaign.

So, yeah, I would definitely recommend this. For only $3, you're going to get quite a treat.  It's more of a snack than a full meal, and it'll leave you wanting more, but there are far worse things to say about an RPG book than "I would happily have payed ten times that price for ten times the wordcount." And if you got this as part of the PDF challenge, don't let it settle on your hard drive and get covered with data-dust.  Read it! You'll enjoy it more than you think.