1001 Odysseys tells Tales of the Arabian Nights beyond the stars

One Deck Dungeon designer Chris Cieslik is headed into space for his next tabletop adventure. Well, his next thousand-and-one adventures, actually.

1001 Odysseys is a co-op storytelling game in the vein of – as the name suggests – Tales of the Arabian Nights. The game is driven by story booklets that make up a connected ‘season’ of 15 episodes, with players’ decisions branching the narrative along different paths within each standalone scenario.

As with a choose-your-own-adventure game, particular actions and events will guide the players to read different numbered entries in each booklet, meaning that each series of scenes can be vary from playthrough to playthrough – a separate booklet called the passport tracks the group’s overall story so far. Each individual episode can be played with a different group of players, and there’s no hint of any permanent or legacy elements stopping endless replays.

The players are the crew of the faster-than-light ship the Odyssey, which has set out to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations, and get up to all sorts of hijinks along the way.

There are planets to discover and alien species to encounter – including the first revealed radish-like aliens the Plumplim, who hail from the planet Brumigum and look a bit like sentient radishes.

The Plumplim also star in the online prologue to 1001 Odysseys currently available to play in a browser, which will shape the backstory of the board game based on players’ collective decisions.

1001 Odysseys is due to go live on Kickstarter on January 3rd, after being pushed back from its planned launch this month.