Pharaoh: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Module

Intermediate #I3

by Tracy Hickman

The 1st module in the Desert of Desolation series.

Genres: Gaming, Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons

32 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1983

About the author

NYT Best-selling fantasy authors Tracy Hickman, with his wife Laura, began their journey across the 'Sea of Possibilities' as the creators of 'Dragonlance' and their voyage continues into new areas with the 'Drakis' trilogy, 'Wayne of Gotham', a Batman novel for DC Comics and his 'Dragon's Bard' collector's series . Tracy has over fifty books currently in print in most languages around the world. A record of both Tracy and Laura's DNA currently orbits on the international space station and he is the writer and editor of the first science-fiction movie actually filmed in space. Follow us on Facebook or, of course, right here!

Reviews

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my favorite of the Dungeons and Dragons modules I played as a kid (well, of the ones I didn't write myself.) The ghost of a Pharaoh finds you in the desert, and you have to rob his pyramid to release the curse on his land. It was written by Tracy Hickman and his wife in 1977, and they sold it to TSR to be able to afford shoes for their kids (TSR decided to hire him because of it, and Tracy later went on to write Dragonlance.) It really helped to change role-playing games from a series of fights with various monsters and traps into a story-telling medium.
I just played it again with my son. Our party included a pirate, a cowardly scholar named Sir Bandersnatch Crumbleplum, a jaguar-riding Aztec dwarf who volunteered for every dangerous task, a cleric of the dinosaur god, a sorceror named Hyacinth who specialized in beautiful spells, a gypsy king, and a were-owlbear nicknamed Winnie-the-Hoo. It was a great way to spend a few evenings.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid dungeon crawl in a pyramid with lots of interesting teleportation tricks, a good 3-D feel, and a great Egyptian theme. The largest level of the dungeon is a maze of misty corridors, which works but is a pain to map or make sense of. Also, because the party teleports to the first level of the dungeon and teleports back out of the last level, it's almost as if the dungeon could be on Mars instead of in the pyramid; I just find that odd. Also plot-wise, the party is hired to stop desert raiders, who never make an appearance in this module and instead the party is later "hired" by Amun-Re's ghost to release him from his endless wanderings. Finally, the grand finale of this adventure, the 'gauntlet' encounter with Munafik, is easily circumvented. So all in all, I think 3 stars is about right.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s an insane dwarf right at the end who through his babbling can give the players a hint to avoid a route with massive damage.

I hammed it up something rotten and the lads ignored me. I think there may have been a TPK, certainly lots of bloodshed. I don’t think I’ve ever been forgiven.

[Ross Kitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I played AD&D in the 80s, the Hickman's earlier work (I3-6, B7) passed me by as I jumped straight in on Ravenloft and Dragonlance. Their greater story-based style marked a seminal point in module design. The earlier modules (A, G, D, S1-3, C1-2 etc) were often derived from tournament and convention modules, monster and cash heavy, with a nod towards story. For some the freeform setting allowed their own stories to be created, for others the story became more important. Indeed modern 5e adventures are more in this latter mode.
Pharaoh was said to be the module the Hickman's wrote that grabbed the attention of TSR when Tracy Hickman approached them with it (having privately published a version years before).
Essentially, the PCs are sent into the desert on a bit of a daft premise to track down bandits. There's a desert wilderness section, with good flavour that could have been longer (but expands in I4 and I5), with two key locations: a small sunken city location with a powerful efreeti to unleash (who features in I4/5) and the main event, a small temple and a massive pyramid.
The pyramid is excellent in design. It's got a logic to it's layout, it's populated fairly sensibly, and the traps are solvable rather than straight Gygax fatal. The use of clues as lore on the walls and altars is clever, although much needs rolls to translate, which is fine for flavour stuff but tight for vital clues. The pre-finale BBEG is a tough fight but can be bypassed fairly easily for a lesser scrap with a golem. I'm cool with that as the end stage with the floating boat is utterly epic.
The design of the module is definitely a step up. The layout of each encounter into box text, play, monster/character, treasure, trap/trick, lore works surprisingly well, with occasional clunkiness. The maps are good, although the desert one is a little hard to decipher, and the pyramid would have benefited from a Ravenloft/ DL1 style 3d map. That's nit-picking as the text and diagrams illustrated the layout well. Even the maze level didn't annoy me as much as mazes usually do, as there's no shitty teleport traps.
There's few let downs in here. Some of the random adventurers wandering around merit more rationale (like the paladin); there's scattered magic items in the maze making little sense; an androsphinx that needed more work (why there? how it eats??); and the frankly daft gnome with a spoon that is in juxtaposition to the tone of that whole level.
But as the start of a new style of module, there's no doubt this is a classic perhaps latterly overshadowed by the iconic I6: Ravenloft.

[Andrew Brown]

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