Gaz2 The Emirates of Ylaruam - the second BECMI Gazetteer set in the Known World (Mystara) 

What an amazing comment! Thank you so much so sharing your experience. Would you mind if I pin this post?

Absolutely. You have reignited my interest in BECMI so much that I bought reprints of all the Gazetteers. Please keep the videos coming, your content is amazing.

Wow, great comment. Thanks for bringing your perspective to this comment section.

Spoken with much greater skill than I can muster. D&D didn't have any mechanical differences based upon skin color. It intentionally tried to take inspiration from many different places around the world not just the white European worldview. That the current owners either don't know the true history or don't dare defend it is a great disservice to the many people who sought to create something special.

Excelent video, anyway. I played it on my big TV screen and was very interesting. I do have this GAZ2 in a POD version, but I haven't read with attention yet. Now I have a clear overview of Ylaruam and its culture.. Thanks!

It plainly needed the "breathing room" for a decent deep-dive. Well worth the length for a review. Thanks for that time devoted to producing this video!

You have nothing to apologize for (well, maybe that pronunciation of "Ylaruam")... We should be thanking you for these amazing videos. Thank you.

@@paulofrota3958 Pronounced as suggested in last page of Isle of Dread. At least how I read it. 🙂

Feel free to go long anytime you want!

Wa alaikum salaam!

Similiar. I knew of the gazetters but by the time they came out I had moved on to the more “advanced” game. So had stopped buying anything labeled as basic. Kind of regret it now. At least you can get them in pdf.

@becmiberserker Using Islam as a guide, I might be able to shed light on how a slave could have the same civil rights as a servant. In Islam, everyone is divided solely in terms of their faith and belief. All of humanity are equal (male and female) (free and slave) except in terms of whether or not the believe in Islam or not and in their piety if they are believers. ultimately, God is the only one who truly knows this as it is what is in one's heart that actually counts, but Muslims make due the best they can. As such, all of humanity are viewed as brothers and sisters. To break it down further, the disbeliever (kafir) technically is not just someone who doesn't adhere to Islam but kafir comes from kafara which is related to farming and is a verb meaning "to bury a seed", thus a true kafir (disbeliever) is actually someone who knows and is certain of the truth but then knowing it, tries to bury it and hide it from others in a conscious effort to lead them astray. A munafiq is a hypocrite, someone who professes and appears to believe and practice but doesn't really believe in it and may support the kafirun (plural of kafir). Since people are divided based upon piety and faith, everyone is entitled to basic human rights (even enemies). It is through the respect of these rights, that some disbelievers and hypocrites may be convinced to actually become true believers. The respect of basic rights shared among everyone regardless of belief, is a form of proselytizing through one's actions and shows that the believer is obedient to something higher than their personal feelings or prejudices. Freeing of slaves in encouraged, but a believing slave is no different than a free believer except they are committed to service for a time. Now there are some rights that a master has over a slave as a result of the condition of bondage. But from this mindset, I hope it makes it clearer how in the fictional Emirates of this setting, if their culture borrows from real Islamic culture, how the fictional people in Ylaraum would view those bound to slavery within their borders. Sometimes having a glimpse into a different cultures perspective can shed light on such things. With the understanding I described, it make perfect sense to me how slaves in this setting of D&D would be as described in the Gazateer. It is different than the slavery found in other parts of the world. In a sense, Islam gave slave's rights that did not exist elsewhere. (Also, before anyone jumps on me, I will say that at various times in real history, historical practice may have been different than described but technically this is how slavery in Islam was supposed to be practiced.

How would we access that information?

You are more than welcome. 🙂

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks. I really appreciate that.

Enjoy the coffee!

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Objective achieved! I hope you have a great campaign with them.

sure you did....and how much did that cost you? and where did you order from?

@@mysticx0 Oh, it was a couple grand, and Ebay was my friend here as all this stuff is out of print. Some items are still super cheap, and others...not so much (Immortals Set, I am looking at you!)

@@erc1971erc1971 im just jealous lol took me years to complete my collection! wrath of the immortals (complete) was the last BECMI piece. i also have the complete set in pdf form. i can make it available for you to d/l if you want. (also thunder rift, ad&d 2nd (core, splat, options, indy books like grimtooths traps, etc), forgotten realms (2nd), planescape, dark sun, dragonlance, greyhawk, ravenloft, mystara (2nd), every module, 3rd ed, 5th ed, etc---- all complete)

@@mysticx0 Thanks for the offer - but I have a very complete PDF collection. I don't actually have a hard copy of Wrath Of The Immortals...because it is ridiculously expensive now. So you do have one up on me. :P

Thank you. 🙂

I’m glad you stuck around to the end. 🙂

Absolutely agree. Thanks for watching.

Happy to discuss this further if you wish to email me. Address and be found in the video description. Thanks for the comment!

You’re right that I’m not a fan of 5e, but I’ll acknowledge good RPG tools when I see them and Xanathar has a lot going for it in this respect. Thanks for reminding me. 🙂

There was an old name generator book, that Gygax participated in, which had big lists of name generators for many cultures. An impressively large amount. Not sure if the PDF is still available but it's been floating about for awhile. Called "The Extraordinary Book Of Names" or something to that effect.

Tend to agree.

Great comment.

I think all of the Gazeteer maps are 8 miles per hex. It helps conversion to the earlier "zoomed out" 24 miles per hex used in the Isle of Dread known world map. 8 x 3 = 24.

That is one of my complaints about the Known World (well, the part covered by Gazeteers). It feels very small. In particular when it comes to the deserts (Ylaruam) and plains (Ethengar Clans): both are about the same size (Ylaruam a bit smaller), roughly 500 miles by 300 miles (by eye), so about the size of Germany or Montana. I mean, it is not nothing, but Eurasian steppes or the Great Plains it isn't. By contrast, the Isle of Dawn is HUGE, and very very sparsely populated. Edit: Wow, I got that so wrong. I should have trusted by recalculation of hexes. Ethengar Clans is about 60 000 sq.mi. or about the size of Tunisia or the state of Georgia. Ylaruam is a bit smaller, around 54 000 sq.mi.

Can I plead that I was using an obscure dialect? 🙂 Funny though. I did consult the Mystara Facebook group when doing my research and no one mentioned this. Thanks for letting me know.

@@RobinD. Thanks for that. At least I’ll have Fatima-bint-Ismail to speak with in my Thyatian tainted accent. 😏 BTW, that map is outstanding!

@@becmiberserkerHave fun. I like the character Fatima btw. I have more of these 1 mile maps, just scrounge around on the deviantart link i gave earlier. my gallery is ordered by nation of Mystara

@@RobinD. Much appreciated. Thank you again.

While you have a point, you're also ignoring dramatic cultural variations located close geographically because of a physical barrier. Or in fantasy terms because of the divine power of the immortal being worshiped in different nations.

Maybe one day. Got my head too deep in Gazetteers at the moment and these take a long time.

You’re welcome. The population numbers were for each emirate, so they were spread out. As for the potential of mentioning slaves/slavery to affect sales, I don’t think so. However horrific slavery is, the RPG audience was a lot more accepting of the potential of civilisations to use it, basically because it was (still is unfortunately) a system that permeated history since the dawn of time. In a fantasy setting based on pre-enlightenment history, it would actually be unusual for it not to be there. Anyway, thanks for watching and hope you enjoyed the non-Eurocentric focus. 🙂

The recent history of language is not popular. In the 80's and even 90's. Men referred to a group containing both genders. As was the case with other masculine pronouns. Only if one was certain that the reference is exclusively to females would women or other feminine pronouns be used. The lack of female NPCs was fairly common in early (and sometimes modern) RPGs for a variety of reasons.

Do not need to bring real world politics in a FANTASY game mate.

The Iron Ring slave traders exist in Forgotten Realms as well as Mystara. Modern players don't have to like it but I love all the variety and borrowed culture in Mystara. Plus Mystara lore isn't as well known to most players these days which is another reason I picked it. So many DMs want to set there game in something other than fantasy NOTeurope and Mystara has a whole nation based on other time periods and cultures for them to start with.

Almost all of D&D is based on real world cultures at some level; it's just that for some reason nobody seems to get upset when it's based on Medieval Western European cultures.

I would go a step further and say a vocal minority of gamers object to slavery within a campaign setting. Most see a villain to be defeated or an authority needing to be overthrown.

@@josephbeckett2330 That’s an outstanding comment and really informative. Thank you so much for spending the time to write all that. I was particularly struck by the final few sentences whereby the tribes don’t see themselves as part of any particular nation, they just see themselves as their tribe. This isolationist thinking is incredibly difficult to understand in the west, given how accessible everything is. It really does seem like a world away.