Traveling the Thousand Thousand Islands

Learning about different places, people, and cultures different – whether through physical travel or wandering the internet (or, gasp, even a book!) – can provide new experiences from which we might learn and grow. These different perspectives don’t simply expose us to new elements; they challenge us to examine ourselves. We use the phrase “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” reflecting both our appreciation for foreign places and our own gratitude for the comforts of home. We might claim the same thing in our gaming. Many of us play in fantasy roleplaying games heavily influenced by western European history and culture. It’s worthwhile to venture out in an imaginary sense to explore new lands in our gaming...especially with tour guides native to a foreign culture. I recently embarked on such a journey, immersing myself in A Thousand Thousand Islands fanzines inspired by southeast Asian culture. It’s given me some wonderful game inspiration as well as a taste of a world quite different from my own privileged, white American male perspective.

I’d heard about A Thousand Thousand Islands during the pandemic, though the first issue’s been out since 2017. At the time I’d seen some online discussion about cultural sensitivity in roleplaying game material, particularly the irony of westerners creating content inspired by non-western cultures (the most notable being the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement Oriental Adventures and the Kara-Tur setting). While A Thousand Thousand Islands didn’t appear in the conversations I read, it appeared on my internet gaming radar about that time...and immediately piqued my interest in my meager efforts to explore and appreciate cultures different from my own.

The fanzine website offers some insight into the inspiration behind the content:

A Thousand Thousand Islands is a Southeast Asian-themed fantasy visual world-building project.... This project is a series of zines, designed for use in fantasy adventure tabletop RPGs. Ongoing since 2017, this project draws from the overlapping material cultures, lived stories, and mythistories of that region of the world variously called Indochina, Suvarnabhumi, and the Nusantara – Southeast Asia.

The project quickly disappeared from my immediate view in the flood of internet gaming content and the numerous challenges of managing through the pandemic. But then in mid-December 2021 severe rstorms and flooding caused a humanitarian disastaer in Malaysia and the Philippines (one not much covered by western media). To raise money for aid organizations, numerous Malaysian tabletop game designers donated their PDF materials for a fundraising bundle on itch.io. I donated at the higher level (rounding things upward for good measure) to get all the Thousand Thousand Islands materials offered, along with a slew of other Malaysian games that I really need to take time to read. It was a great deal (I am programmed to wait for sales, deals, and coupons when possible) and enabled me to contribute to a worthy cause. The bundle managed to raise more than $18,000 in one week to aid relief organizations working in both countries.

The bundle included the first six PDF issues of A Thousand Thousand Islands plus the second of two books of illustrations. I read a few on my computer – despite my low attention span for exhaustive reading on a screen and a low ability to retain much of it – and ultimately printed out the first two issues to saddle-stitch myself. I’ve yet to print and explore the other issues, but what I’ve seen so far in the first two inspire me in form and content.

Each issue runs about 44 pages, though I had to check that in my PDF reader because the pages are not numbered. My inner editor wants to register outrage at this publishing blasphemy...but I peruse the fanzines and realize page numbers would ruin everything. As a result, no issue contains a table of contents. Each page provides plenty of white space to cushion illustrations and almost minimalist text. Some sweeping illustrations offer busy panoramas spread across two pages. Each page or two devotes itself to one setting concept. The exceptions to both white space and idea density come in random tables reflecting the setting’s diversity. For instance, in the first issue, MR-KR-GR: The Death-Rolled Kingdom (a river kingdom ruled by divine crocodiles), I discovered random tables for encounters, people, crocodiles, and even demon idols; each offered bits about appearances, motives, and immediate goals. You won’t find dense columns of text with exhaustive treatises on every aspect of each setting; nor will you find any game stats; nor will you find even find a map of the land or locations outlined here. It’s refreshingly different in form and content.

These editorial and design choices entice readers to leisurely meander through each setting. Most every page contains inspiring line art by artist Mun Kao: character portraits; breathtaking vistas; views of temple, palaces, and towns; close-ups of everyday wares and enchanted items. Writer Zedeck Siew provides tantalizingly concise text accompanying the art, offering just enough – sometimes cryptically enough – information to spur gamemasters to start daydreaming how characters might interact with the people, intelligent animals, trade goods, cultural laws, notable personalities, adventure hooks, supernatural creatures, and magic items outlined in each fanzine. Each issue comes filled with wonderful game elements inspired by Southeast Asian culture...yet they feel like no other game resource I’ve encountered. These aren’t comprehensive roleplaying game settings that detail every aspect necessary to run games here. They’re invitations to explore both the content and the games they inspire at your table. They remind me of Tékumel, the land of Empire of the Petal Throne, in two major ways: they’re infused with an exotic, non-western quality; and they invite you to take inspiration from what you find here and run with it, developing it however you like into your own game experience. Also like Tékumel each issue has some bits of “mature content” one might not feel appropriate for younger games (by western standards); these include the usual references to human reproduction to which western Puritans object as well as truly creepy horror elements. All easy enough to work around, re-interpret, or otherwise omit when bringing it to the game table.

The Thousand Thousand Islands website offers glimpses of each issue, particularly Mun Kao’s wonderful line art that brings the setting to life. Each PDF issue runs $5, with PDF and print $9 (not including shipping); you can get all eight setting fanzine PDFs in a discounted bundle for $37. At some point I intend to get the remaining two settings I don’t have and print everything out for my analog perusal. They’re a wonderful opportunity to explore game material from a different cultural inspiration and examine their format to influence the way we present game information. Perhaps this represents a deeper cultural difference: cramming information in text-heavy columns with little white space and a few illustrations so readers get a justifying sense of high production value...contrasted with enticingly minimalist text with detailed artwork gracing each page with plenty of room to relax and enjoy a leisurely journey through wondrously different lands.