The Necropolis campaign scenario is an epic adventure which sweeps the Heroic Personas across the dramatic landscapes of Earth's most magickal kingdom, Egypt. From a hidden evil in a desert village, to tribes of raiders in the wilderness, to the secrets of ancient tombs and beyond, the Necropolis campaign scenario takes your HPs on a danger-filled mission to prevent an undying archpriest-wizard from calling a dark god back to rule the Earth! The designation of this work as a campaign scenario means that playing time for this product is judged in weeks rather then days. The book comes complete with extensive GM information and multiple maps. Also included is an appendix of commentary on the Kingdom of Egypt, with a detailed full-page map meant to supplement data found in the Epic of Earth companion volume. Finally, there is a full-color, foldout 17x22 inch map of the adventure's primary tomb.
It's odd to see a book as thick as this one and realise that it's actually an adventure. It has more than 280 pages that describe both an epic adventure and the lands of Egypt - or at least, a fantasy version of the same. The Temple of Elemental Evil was a mere 128 pages, and I used to think that was Gary Gygax's greatest work in the art of module writing. It wasn't, for this surpasses it by far.
Comparing it with the Temple of Elemental Evil may have some relevance - in both, the adventure begins in a small community. The village of Aartuat, which is amply described in the text, has factions of NPCs working for either good or ill, in addition to other features which make it an interesting place to begin the adventure. From there, the characters will set out to the main place of the adventure: the Gorge of Osiris - the Necropolis, the Valley of the Dead. However, where the bulk of the action of in the Temple was in one dungeon complex, the action in this adventure varies much more in approach and location.
Breaking down the book into chapters, this is what you get:
Chapter One: Introduction, 2 pages: what the book is about.
Chapter Two: Beginning the Saga, 9 pages: notes on getting the characters into the action, and on the plans of the villains.
Chapter Three: Aartuat Village, 22 pages: a small village where the characters get introduced to the land, and find their first allies and enemies.
Chapter Four: The Pool of Hapy, 8 pages: an encounter location near the village.
Chapter Five: The Road through the Gorge, 14 pages: the wilderness travel to the Gorge of Osiris.
Chapter Six: The Temple of Osiris, 38 pages: the first major encounter area within the Gorge.
Chapter Seven: The Gorge of Osiris, 17 pages: the lesser tombs within the Gorge and other encounters.
Chapter Eight: Rahotep's Tomb, 58 pages: the goal of the quest, and the climax of the adventure.
Chapter Nine: Epilogue: 2 pages: wrapping up the adventure.
Chapter Ten: The Blemmysh Tribesman's Account, 2 pages: this details information that will get the party interested in the adventure in the first place.
Chapter Eleven: The Temple of Set, 10 pages: an additional encounter area that the party might stumble into.
Appendix A: NPCs of Necropolis, 12 pages: stat-blocks and personality notes for the major NPCs.
Appendix B: Monster Appendix, 46 pages: a host of new monsters - more than fifty of them - and two monster templates.
Appendix C: The Lands of Khemit, 8 pages: details on the land of fantasy Egypt.
Appendix D: The Gods of Khemit: 10 pages: details on over fifty gods of the land.
Appendix E: Classes, Spells and Items of Khemit: 12 pages: a ranger variant, plus many new items, spells, cleric domains, and notes on other classes in Khemit.
The rest of the book is taken up with the maps, pictures and the legal appendix. As you can see, there's a lot of material here.
Above all, what strikes me most of all is the amount of advice that Gygax gives the DM about running the adventure - in scaling it to meet the needs of the players. "Are the PCs virtually unscathed?" he asks at one point. "If so, you've been too lenient, they've been too clever, or I've not made this adventure as deadly as I intended... Is the group nearly destroyed? That's no good, either." The sheer bulk of the material here is going to make this a true challenge to DM, but Gygax helps as much as he can to make it easier for you.
The actual adventuring areas throughout this module are fiendishly inventive, and often deadly. The module's cover says that it's "An epic adventure... designed for 4 to 8 characters of 10th to 18th level." This isn't really a module for novice players with high-level characters. Inexperienced players are likely to find this adventure too hard without much adjustment of the challenges on the part of the DM; however, it is a superb challenge for experienced players.
With regard to the storyline of the module, well, it's epic. An ancient evil is stirring, and it's up to the PCs to stop it. I don't want to detail that much of it, in case a player is reading this that shouldn't be. (Go away! Get this module for your DM to run!) However, I can reveal that finishing the quest will require some crawling through the ancient trap-filled tombs of a fantasy version of Egypt, as well as role-playing, problem-solving, and actual fighting!
Gygax broadly details a couple of methods for which the characters can enter the story: the Direct Mission, where they're sent by the Archpriest of Thoth to the area to find out what's going wrong, or the Casual Approach, where the PCs are simply looking for treasure in the fabled Necropolis, having discovered certain papers suggesting that such a treasure is available. (The Blemish Tribesman's Account, detailed in Chapter Ten).
I should point out that, strictly speaking, this isn't an adventure in Ancient Egypt. It's in a fantastical version of the same, with a recent history that diverges from our own. It is long past the days of the building of the first pyramids, and many of the tombs have been plundered. Compared to our own history, it seems as if the year is about 870 A.D. or so, but Khemit has not fallen to the Greeks and later the Romans - it remains its own country.
Physically speaking, this is an extremely attractive book. It is a hardback, printed on a superior quality of paper; the internal layout is excellent and eminently readable. Very little of the module is actually Open Gaming Content, even though this is produced as a d20 System module, due to the fact that Wizards of the Coast actually own the original material from which this module was converted. We must greatly thank Necromancer Games for doing the conversion - which is excellent - and Wizards for allowing it to be published.
Are there things about this module that I don't like? Well, I haven't found very much - perhaps more will reveal itself to me when I finally get to DM it, but, as of yet, not much has become apparent to my reading. Two things come to mind: one is that it's deadly, though that's not much of a blemish. It will require experienced players, though. The other is that it may be hard to fit into an ongoing campaign, for Egypt is a little outside the parameters of normal fantasy campaigns. To solve the latter will probably require some individual DM ingenuity, but such effort will be fully paid off.
The most important thing about this module for me is that I can't wait to DM it. With a lot of adventures, I think "that's nice", and may draw inspiration from them for my campaign, but I don't have a real desire to run them. I want to run this adventure, and that's pretty much the highest praise I can give.
I've tried to shy away from giving too much away of the adventure details, but it's worth mentioning the Temple of Osiris section. As one might expect - this being an adventure - the Temple has a few problems of its own. There is plenty of opportunity for fighting and role-playing here, and the characters are likely to find themselves descending to the Underworld! Once they get there, the sense of wonder steps up a notch. The place is dangerous, but Gygax carefully makes it possible for the characters to succeed, even if they have been tricked into entering it. As he writes, "It will then take a lot of skill, hard fighting, and luck to get them back above ground safely, but that's what dungeon adventuring is all about, isn't it?"
It certainly is, and the Underworld section (not the actual Land of the Dead, but it might seem that way to the players) is fascinating to read. Deadly, certainly, and the players must avoid various magical areas and traps as well as defeat the forces of Set if they are to survive. However, it is to be hoped that in the end they will restore the fallen statue of Osiris to its place of honour. The action is interesting throughout this section - as it is throughout the entire adventure - and of a grandly heroic style.
If you haven't realised it by now, I strongly recommend that you put down whatever you're doing, and rush off and purchase Necropolis. This is one of the all-time classic adventures, finally made available to the wider gaming world under the aegis of the d20 system. It presents opportunities for dungeon delving, treasure finding, monster slaying, role-playing, town adventuring, wilderness adventuring, intrigue, magic, wonder, and most importantly of all, a chance for the players to be heroes.
What more could you ask for?
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