The Gaming Voyages: Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

If you’ve been reading the column, you might have noticed I haven't written about the massive blockbusters many identify as hugely influential, such as Star Wars, Conan, or The Lord of the Rings. I’ll get to those eventually, knowing many of us count them as defining inspirations. However, I want to start with the more personal movies I share with some of you, even if they aren't quite as universally known.

Case in point: today’s movie. If memory serves, I watched this film before Star Wars, and it remains a fantastic example of a quest. It serves as a perfect template for GMs wanting to create epic adventures: Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

This movie has it all: giant animals, the undead, monsters, curses, witches, swordfights, and a golden minotaur automaton. I saw so many concepts I would later read about in the pages of D&D, for the very first time here.

Here’s a quick summary (with mild spoilers): Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) is a classic fantasy adventure following the legendary sailor Sinbad as he travels to the city of Charnak to seek Princess Farah's hand in marriage. Upon arrival, he discovers that Farah’s brother, Prince Kassim, has been cursed by their wicked stepmother, Zenobia, who wants her own son to take the throne. To break the curse, Sinbad, Farah, and the cursed prince embark on a perilous voyage to the ancient, frozen land of Hyperborea. Along the way, they befriend a massive troglodyte (not the D&D kind!) and battle a series of amazing stop-motion monsters, including a giant bronze minotaur and a sabretooth tiger, ultimately defeating the sorceress just in time for Kassim's coronation.

Here’s the trailer for the movie:

I started playing in 1986, but I didn't learn the game through dungeon crawls. I discovered Dragonlance soon after picking up D&D. As a fan of Tolkien and Elfquest, the idea that these games were tools to tell an epic story seemed natural. I easily fell back on the fantasy movies I watched as a kid.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger was the first Sinbad movie I saw, but not the last. I caught two others on VHS, and they heavily influenced my games, too. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1956) is another quest -type adventure, featuring shape-changing magic, a genie in a lamp, a dragon, a cyclops, and a roc (just not the D&D one!).

This is the trailer for it:

While I like The 7th Voyage, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) is just as strong as Eye of the Tiger. This is the trailer:

It has wizards, oracles, griffins, centaurs, a homunculus (the first time I ever encountered the concept), a dancing sword, and my favorite scene: an animated statue. Ray Harryhausen's brilliant work amazed me as a teen when the six-armed idol of Kali animates and fights Sinbad and his crew.

The special effects are dated and might seem ancient compared to modern CGI, but I adore their charm. They felt like magic to me. This was exactly how I envisioned fights in D&D.

All these adventures take place in a non-Eurocentric setting. It was Al-Qadim before the campaign setting ever existed, featuring tales of high adventure with a Muslim sailor. That is the strength of a tale like this: it showed me that fantasy was much broader than kings, knights, dragons, and fairies. It serves as a template for fantasy adventure independent of the game creators' cultural roots, which is why TTRPGs are such a powerful cross-cultural medium.

TSR eventually released an Arabian adventure-inspired Al-Qadim supplement, Golden Voyages, directly tied to the Sinbad stories. It is a sandbox adventure that allows you to explore this classic setting. Granted, the setting and the supplements are products of their age. Like the movies I mentioned, there are certainly elements of orientalism and stereotypical portrayals of the cultures they reference. But if you are aware of the problems and know how to avoid reinforcing those ideas at the table, the movies and the game supplements still provide great material.

When my group was about to start a pirate-themed fantasy campaign a few years ago, I invited everyone over for a session zero and to align our expectations on tone. We had dinner and watched the Sinbad films. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and its predecessors continue to inspire me, offering new ideas to bring to the table every time I watch them. If you haven’t seen them, check them out.