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Once upon a time, a young DM of the old school bought a book called Deities & Demigods. Among its dizzying array of the mythos he expected and "knew" (Greek, Norse, Arthurian), there were also sections on ones he'd barely heard of. And his favorite of the Asian selections was the Indian mythos, with its many-armed gods and ascetic pacifists with real spiritual power. Wouldn't it be great, he mused, to make a campaign based on that?
Fast forward an embarrassing number of years, and the now-seasoned DM of many editions began to draw up notes for his very own homebrew Indian setting. He hit the interwebs searching for what others had done (because like any good DM, he is an inveterate cannibal), and lo, he stumbled upon Arrows Of Indra. It seemed to be everything he needed, complete with Indian races & classes, rules for caste systems, and even detailed benefits of "enlightenment."
The author of Arrows Of Indra states that his goal was to create an old-school roleplaying game based on Indian mythology that is at once exotic enough to be intriguing and familiar enough to be instantly recognizable to fans of old-school gaming. He meets the goal spectacularly.
The races are all interesting, and the classes seem to be re-skinned standard old school archetypes (the fighter, the thief, the scout, etc., are all here; the paladin is now called the virakshatriya, mages are sidhis, and so forth). This is the part that's instantly-recognizable, so much so that a reader could be forgiven for thinking at first that there's not much new here.
But read on past the char-gen and combat rules, and you get to the part where Arrows Of Indra really shines. There are some early hints in the skills section for priests and sidhis, and the enlightenment powers, and it all blossoms in the chapters on the Petala Underworld (talk about the ultimate mega-dungeon!), the Guide to the Bharata Kingdoms, and the Gods & Religion section. In these places, you really get the feel of Vedic India, and it's clear the author really knows his source material intimately. Everything a newbie needs to know about these subjects is located in one place, and there's no "homework" required.
I can to Arrows Of Indra hoping to find a source to cannibalize for my own campaign. I now find myself wanting to play the game as-is, or at least adapting its rules to my homebrew, rather than sticking to my standard of the last few years, and trying to cobble the setting together from multiple sourcebooks.
In all, Arrows Of Indra is an excellent product, and the perfect introduction to a mythology and culture than few RPGs have ever even tried to do right. Miss it at your own risk.
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