Review - I3 Pharaoh

Pharaoh

1982 -Tracy and Laura Hickman - for levels 5-7.

 Republished in 1987 as part of the Desert of Desolation 'Supermodule'

The 1st part of a 3 part series, Pharaoh was the 1st module written by the Hickmans to be published by TSR - the Hickman name being one which would endure and go on to shape the nature of D&D adventures to come.  They had previously published their work privately, but when TSR saw it, then not only bought the adventures, they hired Tracy Hickman as a game designer.

So what was it that got TSR so excited about the Hickmans, what did they do differently?  Well, most adventure modules up until now had been highly location based, some had overarching plots, though in most cases these were either secondary to the action, or consisted of nefarious schemes that the PCs had to foil somehow.  In the Desert of Desolation series, the PCs are 'expected' to be the unwitting cause of the plot, and thus get placed centre stage to try to undo their mistake and 'save the world'.  If that sounds clumsy and somewhat heavy handed, well, that's because it is, and this approach would define the Hickman style of adventure writing for the rest of the decade - it was a style that placed story above convention, expected the adventurers to be heroes, and rode roughshod over the game mechanics in many places.

There's a heavy Egyptian theme to Pharaoh, unsurprising given its title.  C1, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, was an earlier adventure which was similarly based on a mythological theme, so this was nothing new, and Tamoachan did that aspect much better than Pharaoh, which cannot compete in terms of the level of research and attention to detail.  But much of that detail would not come into play in C1, so such niceties would only be appreciated by the DM.  Certainly, I doubt my players noticed any discernible difference between the 2 modules in terms of their appreciation of the mythology. 

The Party react to the appalling introduction with a degree of bemusement...

The premise of the adventure is that the party are forced to go into the Desert in pursuit of some unknown band of raiders as punishment for some misdeed they are alleged to have done.  They have no say in this matter, and no opportunity to defend themselves.  Already, this introduction is a mess.  A party of level 5-7 characters, forced to meekly accept a punishment for something they know nothing about - and given the stats of typical guards, the party could most likely take them on easily? But they are not allowed to - they have to accept the 'punishment' - it really is as daft as it sounds. They are then given supplies to help them survive the Desert, and there's a list of 'rumours' to give them some clues as to what lies ahead - a popular feature of modules of the time.

Once in the Desert itself there are a number of keyed locations, along with a selection of suitably themed and mostly challenging random encounters.  The intention is that the plot of the adventure will initially be revealed by 2 main encounters - a ghostly Pharaoh, and the discovery of a sunken 'city' - it's actually not much of a city, just a few partially buried rooms.  While investigating the 'city'. their inquisitiveness will get the better of them, and they will unwittingly unleash a great evil upon the land.

This throws up a problem.  What if they miss this encounter area?  What if they don't investigate it?  Ok, on the 2 occasions I have run the module the party have behaved precisely as the adventure expects, but the possibility is there for issues to arise.

More clues dot the adventure in the form of inscriptions, the idea being that the party decipher these, and combined with the encounter with the Ghost of the Pharaoh, they should begin to realise that they need to find a series of 'Star Gems' in order to be able to deal with the evil being they have set free.

It's all a bit of a muddle, and Hickman's inscription translation mechanic does not help - he assigns a fixed % for the PCs to be able to read each one.  But this is often vital information.  It's a bit crap to be honest.  I typed up each passage, downloaded an hieroglyphic font and converted them to this font - then handed each inscription to the players as they found them.  Thus the emphasis was on the players to decipher the clues themselves, the more inscriptions they found, the easier it became.  This approach is infinitely more satisfying.

 Clues abound in the many inscriptions.

The bulk of the adventure takes place inside a Pyramid - though first they have to get past a group of mad zealots to gain entry - and it is inside this Pyramid that the adventure redeems itself with a wonderful dungeon crawl.  AD&D adventuring at its finest, and most traditional - slightly bizarre after the writer's clumsy efforts to get the party there - but very much worth the wait. The labyrinth is packed with traditional enemies, imaginative tricks and traps, and is very challenging and a LOT of fun for everyone. 

Again though, there are issues.... some of the boxed text is poorly written, there are typos, and several sections are badly explained - what on earth is a Chabang Man?  There's an encounter with a Paladin, but no name, no description of her equipment, and no logical way she would have survived to where she is with her supplied statistics.  The Dervishes are listed as having 4HD, yet many have fewer than 4 hit points.  Is 4HD simply an effective fighting level, or just an example of Hickman ignoring AD&D's game mechanics?  What armour do they wear? None of this is specified...  Still, in the grand scheme of the adventure this doesn't matter, even though it grated a little with me as DM, it didn't spoil my players' enjoyment in the slightest.

Presentation is a bit of a mixed bag.  The cover art by Jim Holloway is superb, one of the best cover pieces of any 1E AD&D module.  Internally however, his whimsical and somewhat comedic style feels a little out of place - he was to go on to illustrate the satirical RPG Paranoia with great success. Encounter locations are neatly broken up into boxed text, 'play', 'monster', 'trap/trick', 'lore' and 'treasure' and this system of dividing up the relevant information mostly works quite well, though there are editing issues with the text, some of the monsters' stats are lazily produced, and Hickman's writing style can be a little grating as he doesn't explain things very well.  Maps are generally adequate, the Tomb/Temple maps are good, but the wilderness map is too small, both in terms of scale and presentation - it's supposed to be a vast Desert - but it isn't.

Stunning cover art by Jim Holloway.

Pharaoh, for all its faults, is a highly enjoyable romp.  It takes time to get going, and has some very awkward moments, especially earlier on, but once the party reach the meat of the Pyramid they are in for a roller coaster ride of classic dungeoneering.  It would however, have been so much better if Tracy Hickman had sat down with one of the established module writers and let them deal with the actual  nuts and bolts, to properly translate his ideas into AD&D terms, as the overriding feeling is that he didn't care for game mechanics.  I would love to see what someone like David Cook, Graeme Morris, or even the great Gygax himself would have done with the material.

Presentation: 5/10 – superb cover art, but internally not so great.

Brawn:  7/10 – it's a tough adventure, the party will need to have their wits about them.

Brains:  9/10 – this is where the adventure shines, ignore the dodgy intro and clumsy railroading, a thinking party will forgive those failings and relish the many challenges inside the Pyramid.

Overall: 7/10 - A myriad of great ideas from a fertile imagination cobbled together in a cumbersome way, it just needed a competent writing/editing team to make them gel and iron out the wrinkles and thus could have been a classic.  But the fun to be had in the Pyramid allows for forgiveness of the module's numerous faults.