Land of Fate
Land of Fate is an accessory for the 2nd edition of the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" fantasy role-playing game, published in 1992. Contents. The "Land of Fate" set described the fictional land of Zakhara in the Al-Qadim campaign setting at length. "Land of Fate" describes the maps, geography, routines of daily life, fashion, customs, organizations, class status, the legal system, magical items, languages, calendars, 12 different desert tribes, 17 deities or deity types, and 27 city writeups in the "Adventurer’s Guide to Zakhara," along with DM-only secrets for each city in the "Fortunes and  Fates" book. Publication history. "Land of Fate" was published by TSR, Inc. as a boxed set containing a 128-page locations guide, a 64-page campaign guide, 8 loose "Monstrous Compendium" sheets, 12 cardstock mapsheets, 3 large color maps, and a plastic hex scale. Design was by Jeff Grubb with Andria Hayday, the cover was by Fred Fields, and illustrations by Karl Waller. Reception. Allen Varney reviewed "Land of Fate" for "Dragon" magazine #219 (July 1995). He began by saying: "It makes sense, unfortunately, that the "Land of Fate" box quickly followed the "Al-Qadim" rulebook as its first supplement . The rulebook briefly introduced the setting of Zakhara, but this set described it at length. A campaign needs this basic data", but with everything in "Land of Fate", he said, "It's all very large." He went on to say: "In principle the jottings of a campaign set can be satisfying in themselves. In the "Land of Fate" set, they make for dry reading. We get a useful chapter on all aspects of daily life, and a couple of wonderful sidebar articles on the Zakharan coffee ceremony ("the measure of a good host") and pearl diving, the stuff of memorable  scenes in an adventure. The rest is a sandstorm of little details, one-paragraph character outlines, societal tidbits (we're told twice that worshippers in Zakhara "prostrate" themselves), and jottings. With work you could assemble any dozen jottings into a free-wheeling adventure like the loose-jointed Arabian Nights tales, where one thing follows another without much logic. But not much of "Land of Fate" matches the screwy imagination of the best Nights tales. At times the designer's creativity clearly flags, such as in this candid beginning to an entry describing the secrets of Hilm: "The City of Kindness  is boring." And, as with the rulebook, there is no hint in all these pages of how to develop these jottings into a memorable, characteristically Arabian campaign." Varney concluded the review by saying: "Parts of the "Land of Fate" boxed set enhance any Al-Qadim campaign, but its length is excessive and its inspiration uneven. Unless you plan to construct a long, ambitious campaign, you can probably get along without this box."