REVIEW I4 - OASIS OF THE WHITE PALM
By Philip Meyers and Tracy Hickman
Published by TSR in 1983.
Oasis of the White Palm was the 2nd adventure in the popular Desert of Desolation series. It took the party from I3 Pharaoh into the finale of the trilogy, I5 The Lost Tomb of Martek. The title gives away the nature of the setting, it's a Desert based romp based around a settlement that has grown up at an Oasis. As the second part of a trilogy it occupies an awkward position, that being it exists as a means of getting the story from opening salvo to the big finale. Can it overcome this natural hurdle?
Let's get the presentation of the module out of the way 1st, before I dive into the nuts and bolts of the story and how it plays. Presentation is rather poor. Jim Holloway's cover piece of a huge genie is not a patch on the covers of the other 2 modules in the series, the scale is all wrong, and though the lightning crackling in the sky looks cool, the whole piece just doesn't inspire in the way the other 2 covers do. Internally the art is barely average, Holloway's comic style is grating once again, while other pieces by Keith Parkinson are somewhat sparse and simplistic. Both artists would do much better work elsewhere. The maps of interior locations are decent, the cutaways showing side views are useful, but as with I3, the outdoor maps are poor. The text is the biggest problem though. Snippets of information are dotted all over the place, and while it follows a formula in terms of encounter layout that worked with I3, it does not work in this module as it insists on listing NPCs under the heading Monster throughout. There are a lot of NPCs.
I ran this adventure several years ago, and while I can normally prep with a skim read followed by a more detailed one, this one required multiple re-examinations and liberal application of a highlighter pen...no I didn't butcher my precious original copy, I printed out a throwaway pdf copy for this purpose!
So it's ugly to look at, and ugly to read, is it worth ignoring those issues and persevering?
In short, yes!
Oasis of the White Palm takes the story from I3, where the party inadvertently release an evil Efreeti and discover the purpose of artefacts called Star Gems, and wraps it all up in a layer of intrigue. Having escaped the Pyramid of I3, the party seek refuge from the harsh desert at a thriving Oasis settlement. There they discover the Sheikh's daughter is missing. With multiple factions at work and a plethora of NPCs the module really comes to life. Add in 2 very satisfying and entertaining dungeon crawls, and you get a rather deep and compelling adventure, filled with imagination and challenge. Some of the tricks and traps are wonderfully sadistic.
It's now going to feel as though I'm picking holes for the sake of it, however there are a lot of minor irritations with Oasis of the White Palm, and many of them feel lazy or unnecessary. I've mentioned in other videos that Tracy Hickman has a very heavy handed style, and doesn't not seem to care much about established game mechanics. This series of modules is I3 - for levels 5 to 7, I4 - for levels 6 to 8 and finally I5 - for levels 7 to 9. Increasing levels of difficulty, therefore expected character progression. Doing experience points by the book, they are woefully light on rewards for the characters. And they have nowhere for the characters to train to get levels. I know a lot of groups ignored the training rules, but a module should not be written with the assumption of that being the case. When I ran it I had to boost the treasure rewards, add some additional encounters, and some extra allies capable of training my party at the Oasis - though this interrupted the flow of the story somewhat.
The Desert is still too damn small. The introduction talks about the adventurers trudging through the desert for 5 days. All well and good if that corresponded with the map scale. The main map showing the entire desert is on the inside cover of I3, and it is smaller than Wales, and a fraction of the size of the Mojave - which is NOT a large desert by any stretch of the imagination. If they were walking for 5 days then to fit the map scale they will have been covering no more than 3-4 miles a day! It also talks about them running out of water. I wonder if any high level parties exist that do not have the magical capability to Create Water?
And then there's the rewards. One of the NPCs offers the party 3 +1 Maces as a reward. A party of level 6 to 8 PCs will most likely be well armed and have no need for these, plus they are heavy, and they already have the issue of transporting treasure, with nowhere in the module to sell it or trade it. And there's not enough of it anyway.... to make a campaign such as this work within the core game rules, treasures needed to be largely valuable jewels and gems.
One final minor gripe I have is the inclusion of Drow at the Oasis. Yes, these are all over the place nowadays, but at this time they were a relatively new foe, rare, found deep beneath the earth. Drow slavers? At a burning hot Oasis with its beating sun? No, no, no no no no no no no....
The biggest problem for me is the nature of the main enemy. In I3 they release an Efreeti, and in this module they confront him, but he's far too powerful, so hopefully they are able to use the 'thing' that makes him flee. And at the end of the adventure they free a Genie who flies off to fight the Efreeti on the party's behalf. How satisfying is that? It isn't.
But despite all these annoyances, I4 is masses of fun! It plays so much better than you would expect from the way it reads. What really lifts this module above I3 Pharaoh for me is the Oasis settlement itself, the variety of NPCs and their machinations. It's raw, and not as well developed as Orlane in N1 for example, but the bare bones are there in a solid enough manner to allow the DM to go to town and fill in the missing details.
And the DM needs to for the reasons I've already explained..
The story behind the creation of the module talks about how Philip Meyers originally wrote something, and Tracy Hickman needed material to link his campaign together, and he adapted Meyer's work to fit the overall plot. I have a feeling the basic town and dungeons are Meyer's work, and the story elements are Hickman's. That would make sense. I've been critical of Hickman's writing style before, I know, but it feels very much as though the clumsy, linear, forced parts are down to him, and the fun parts are largely Meyer's doing.
It's very hard to give this module a rating, because it is simultaneously highly frustrating and immensely entertaining. A pain to prepare, but a joy at the gaming table. Once again I wish they'd hired Hickman for his ideas, but never let him anywhere near a typewriter. But I have to be objective - what is a module meant to provide? Fun. And I4 does that in spades. Rather than being a mere vehicle to get the party from I3 to I5, I4 is the surprise highlight of the entire series.
