It's a blah rainy day here in Chicagoland. Great day to do some prep on my Desert portions of my
Second Campaign.
I am currently
re-reading all the desert adventures I own and working out a coherent narrative.
Right the idea is the PCs head out to the desert in search of the reptile cult that has been plaguing the land.
The adventures are:
The
Desert of Desolation series:
and the
Desert Nomads/Temple of Death series:
and then the two stand-alone adventures:
The adventures span several designers, worlds and even games, but all link back to the idea of ancient Egypt. Known as Eyrpt on Oerth, Ayrpt on Mystara, and Aegypt in Gary Gygax's original Dangerous Journey Necropolis and then later Khemit in the 3rd edition version. I combine them all into one place I call "
Ærypt". The series is called "
The Deserts of Desolations and Death".
But I am missing some bits. Originally I thought that I could gloss over some of the missing ideas (at least in terms of my campaign plans) with
B4 The Lost City, but there are some issues there. One the module is too low of level to fit with what I want exactly, also I ran the kids through it years ago so likely they will remember it even with some changes. But most of all the Elder Evil Zargon is a bad or more exactly problematic fit for the current game. Besides if I do bring back B4 it will be as part of a game using
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea as
Eric Fabiaschi often talks about.
No, I am going to need something else. Thankfully something almost exactly like what I need dropped into my lap.
Cha'alt
Venger Satanis sent me a copy of his latest publication in exchange for a fair review, but it was on on my radar anyway. There are a few reviews ok for it now, so I am going to gloss over some of the "reviewy" bits in favor of how I am planning on using it.
Cha'alt is 218 pages, full color, desert-themed adventure in Venger's normal gonzo style. The rules are his O5R system which is a mix of OSR and 5e, so it works with just about any game.
There is a "Campaign Map" of sorts with twelve areas, but only a few of them are heavily detailed. The campaign map and the sandbox nature of this adventure gave me a few ideas for use in my own desert-themed games, so that made the review worth it to be honest, but there is a lot more here than just that.
Like all of Venger's books there is a high-quality production value here. He is not afraid to spend the money to get high-quality artists and layout. Also, true to his style, there are plenty, ok LOTS, of tongue in cheek pop-culture references throughout the book. Ranging from 80s nostalgia to yesterday's internet humor.
The adventure is gonzo as I mentioned, so there is a fair bit of science-fantasy thrown in for good measure. Enough that is t makes me think it too is also a good fir for
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. The levels are more in line with AS&SH than my current campaign, but that is fine. Though in either case, I'll need to figure out what to do about the giant sandworms, spider droids, and hunter-killer robots.
In true old-school fashion, there are plenty of random tables and charts. Advice for surviving in the desert and plenty of new monsters.
The Black Pyramid
The biggest feature of this book is the Black Pyramid.
The obvious inspiration for this portion is the venerable
Lost City, but again through a darker, slightly warped lens. As with the rest of the book, this section is full self-referential humor and nods. So of it works, some of it doesn't. Adventure-wise the pyramid is full of eldritch weirdness. At 111 rooms not all of them are great, but there is enough here to keep the players all busy and adventurers entertained.
There is a lot of fun to had with Cha'alt. I have quite a lot of ideas of things to do with it, none of which are as it was designed. Still, there is a lot of material here and plenty of ideas. For me, I am likely to remove many of the sci-fi elements if I run this as part of a campaign, or at least tone them down if I run it using AS&SH.
If you are familiar with Venger's work then you will find more of this here though this might be his best looking work to date.
