D&D General Daystar West Pharaoh sold for $9,995!
not-so-newguy
I'm the Straw Man in your argument
Never heard of Pharaoh. Why is it so valuable?
darjr
I crit!
It was among the first of it's kind of adventure with a story attached. It was by the folks who later create Ravenloft and Dragonlance for TSR and I think it's the adventure TSR decided they needed to own and shift to this style.
darjr
I crit!
DayStar West Media - Dragonlance Nexus
Tracy Hickman discusses his earliest publishing venture, DayStar West Media, as well as the elements that would lead to Dragonlance and Ravenloft. Read More
dragonlancenexus.com
In fact it seems that Ravenloft and what would become Dragonlance were kinda in early stages at Daystar West! I didn't know that.
Henadic Theologian
Legend
Pharoh would get merged with other adventures after TSR purchased it, to because the first Forgotten Realms adventure, Desert of Desolation, which lead to the eastern half of Faerun to be restructured as a ripple effect of what Desert of Desolation added to the Forgotten Realms (basically they took what Ed Greenwood had planned as a Stygia inspired place, and turned it into fantasy Egypt, fantasy Greece, and fantasy Mesopotamia, and lead to the past Imaskari Empire. These Empire's histories in turn ended up reshaping the rest of Eastern Faerun.
Henadic Theologian
Legend
Product History
I3-5: Desert of Desolation, by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman, Philip Meyers, and others, is a supermodule for AD&D. It was published in May 1987.
Origins (I): The "I" Adventures. In the early '80s, TSR published a trilogy of adventures by Tracy and Laura Hickman, I3: "Pharaoh" (1983), I4: "Oasis of the White Palm" (1983), and I5: "Lost Tomb of Martek" (1983). They were well-received for their vivid Egyptian theming — and perhaps also for their adaption of Hickman's manifesto for next-generation adventure design.
Origins (II): The Supermodules. In 1985, TSR began publishing "supermodules", which were longer AD&D adventures accompanied by map booklets. The first adventure in this style, T1-4: Temple of Elemental Evil, was largely new material, but after that TSR began repackaging their old modules into the new format. The next two supermodules, A1-4: Scourge of the Slave Lords (1986) and GDQ1-7: Queen of the Spiders (1986), together reprinted 11 classic adventures, completing an extensive Greyhawk adventure path. The question was … what next?
TSR's answer was a repackaging of their classic Egyptian adventures; it would be the first of three supermodules that shied away from the Greyhawk focus of the series to date.
Origins (III): The Forgotten Realms. TSR was generally moving away from Greyhawk in 1987, in large part due to Gary Gygax's departure from the company. To replace their primordial campaign, TSR was developing a new setting, which would debut in just two months as the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987). TSR would heavily support their new setting with new products, but they were also retrofitting old products into the new world. One of the first such retconned products would be I3-5: Desert of Desolation.
TSR decided to adapt Desert of Desolation in part because the Forgotten Realms' creator, Ed Greenwood, didn't have many scenarios ready for publication. He had huge piles of Realmslore, but adventures were more troublesome. His Realms dungeons weren't appropriate because they tended to be either megadungeons (which were too big to easily publish, though TSR would find a way in the '90s) and minidungeons (which were too short, as they were intended for just a few hours play). However, most of Greenwood's games were less traditional, more organic sessions, centering on "heavy roleplaying, many subplots, a huge cast of supporting characters, lots of 'loose ends' that led to future adventures, the PCs choosing where to go and what to do, NPCs reacting to PC activities, and politics, trade, and 'day jobs' playing a far larger role than dungeon-delving" — and that couldn't be easily adapted to general play.
TSR wasn't afraid to bring in other writers to fill this gap in their nascent Realms production. They in fact wanted to avoid Greenwood potentially creating a "creator bottleneck", as had occurred with Gary Gygax and Greyhawk. So, Wm. John Wheeler was commission to adapt the original modules for the Forgotten Realms.
Jeff Grubb, the Realms-guy at TSR, contributed to the project, but surprisingly Realms-creator Ed Greenwood had nothing to do with it. In fact, he said: "'my' Realms would never have had pyramids"; generally, he disliked "overtly real-world historical ties and 'style'", a complaint that would become even more important with some of TSR's additions to the Realms of the early '90s. Nonetheless, with the publication of Desert of Desolation, the classic adventures became an official part of the Realms … and the first Realms roleplaying publication, out the same month as the first Realms novel, Darkwalker on Moonshae (1987).
Adventure Tropes. The original Desert adventures were primarily dungeon crawls with a heavy focus on storytelling. The new supermodule maintains all of that, but also has quite a few additions, reflecting the changes between adventure design in 1982 and adventure design in 1987. These new elements include: "history, storyline, and legends" (to better tie the adventure to its setting); an "adventure map" (to better unite the adventure as a whole); and "rewritten" text, "revised" formatting, and significantly expanded judging notes (to create a more comprehensive product, more focused on guiding the gamemasters).
The revised encounter format is a more carefully organized variation of the format used in previous books. Locations sometimes begin with a GM's description of the approach to the locale or an explanation of when the players might encounter it. A boxed read-aloud follows, then details on specific elements of the location, then monster stats. Though the format doesn't include any section titles, it's nonetheless very consistent. Chris Pramas says that it's the same formatting that would be used in Dungeon magazine for some time thereafter.
Exploring the Realms. This premiere Forgotten Realms adventure details one of its wilderness locales, the Raurin Desert. Amusingly, the poster map of the Desert is reversed north-to-south from its original orientation in the "I" adventures to allow it to fit with the actual desert in the Realms. The Realms connections are actually quite weak. There's a border town called Bralizzar, then Northknife Pass, and then it's into the desert, largely as it appeared in the original adventures.
Connections to the Realms would be slightly improved in the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas (1999), which better shows how everything fits together. A few decades later "History Check: Martek and the Desert of Desolation" in Dragon #424 (June 2013) would revisit the adventure's mythology, with twenty-five years of Realmslore under its belt.
About the Creators. Wm. John Wheeler was the co-founder of The Companions, a publisher of "generic" D&D materials in the early '80s and also the co-author of FASA's popular Star Trek roleplaying game (1982). He'd later work on S1-4: Realms of Horror (1987), the last of the supermodule compilations. He passed away in 2009.
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.
I3-5: Desert of Desolation, by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman, Philip Meyers, and others, is a supermodule for AD&D. It was published in May 1987.
Origins (I): The "I" Adventures. In the early '80s, TSR published a trilogy of adventures by Tracy and Laura Hickman, I3: "Pharaoh" (1983), I4: "Oasis of the White Palm" (1983), and I5: "Lost Tomb of Martek" (1983). They were well-received for their vivid Egyptian theming — and perhaps also for their adaption of Hickman's manifesto for next-generation adventure design.
Origins (II): The Supermodules. In 1985, TSR began publishing "supermodules", which were longer AD&D adventures accompanied by map booklets. The first adventure in this style, T1-4: Temple of Elemental Evil, was largely new material, but after that TSR began repackaging their old modules into the new format. The next two supermodules, A1-4: Scourge of the Slave Lords (1986) and GDQ1-7: Queen of the Spiders (1986), together reprinted 11 classic adventures, completing an extensive Greyhawk adventure path. The question was … what next?
TSR's answer was a repackaging of their classic Egyptian adventures; it would be the first of three supermodules that shied away from the Greyhawk focus of the series to date.
Origins (III): The Forgotten Realms. TSR was generally moving away from Greyhawk in 1987, in large part due to Gary Gygax's departure from the company. To replace their primordial campaign, TSR was developing a new setting, which would debut in just two months as the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987). TSR would heavily support their new setting with new products, but they were also retrofitting old products into the new world. One of the first such retconned products would be I3-5: Desert of Desolation.
TSR decided to adapt Desert of Desolation in part because the Forgotten Realms' creator, Ed Greenwood, didn't have many scenarios ready for publication. He had huge piles of Realmslore, but adventures were more troublesome. His Realms dungeons weren't appropriate because they tended to be either megadungeons (which were too big to easily publish, though TSR would find a way in the '90s) and minidungeons (which were too short, as they were intended for just a few hours play). However, most of Greenwood's games were less traditional, more organic sessions, centering on "heavy roleplaying, many subplots, a huge cast of supporting characters, lots of 'loose ends' that led to future adventures, the PCs choosing where to go and what to do, NPCs reacting to PC activities, and politics, trade, and 'day jobs' playing a far larger role than dungeon-delving" — and that couldn't be easily adapted to general play.
TSR wasn't afraid to bring in other writers to fill this gap in their nascent Realms production. They in fact wanted to avoid Greenwood potentially creating a "creator bottleneck", as had occurred with Gary Gygax and Greyhawk. So, Wm. John Wheeler was commission to adapt the original modules for the Forgotten Realms.
Jeff Grubb, the Realms-guy at TSR, contributed to the project, but surprisingly Realms-creator Ed Greenwood had nothing to do with it. In fact, he said: "'my' Realms would never have had pyramids"; generally, he disliked "overtly real-world historical ties and 'style'", a complaint that would become even more important with some of TSR's additions to the Realms of the early '90s. Nonetheless, with the publication of Desert of Desolation, the classic adventures became an official part of the Realms … and the first Realms roleplaying publication, out the same month as the first Realms novel, Darkwalker on Moonshae (1987).
Adventure Tropes. The original Desert adventures were primarily dungeon crawls with a heavy focus on storytelling. The new supermodule maintains all of that, but also has quite a few additions, reflecting the changes between adventure design in 1982 and adventure design in 1987. These new elements include: "history, storyline, and legends" (to better tie the adventure to its setting); an "adventure map" (to better unite the adventure as a whole); and "rewritten" text, "revised" formatting, and significantly expanded judging notes (to create a more comprehensive product, more focused on guiding the gamemasters).
The revised encounter format is a more carefully organized variation of the format used in previous books. Locations sometimes begin with a GM's description of the approach to the locale or an explanation of when the players might encounter it. A boxed read-aloud follows, then details on specific elements of the location, then monster stats. Though the format doesn't include any section titles, it's nonetheless very consistent. Chris Pramas says that it's the same formatting that would be used in Dungeon magazine for some time thereafter.
Exploring the Realms. This premiere Forgotten Realms adventure details one of its wilderness locales, the Raurin Desert. Amusingly, the poster map of the Desert is reversed north-to-south from its original orientation in the "I" adventures to allow it to fit with the actual desert in the Realms. The Realms connections are actually quite weak. There's a border town called Bralizzar, then Northknife Pass, and then it's into the desert, largely as it appeared in the original adventures.
Connections to the Realms would be slightly improved in the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas (1999), which better shows how everything fits together. A few decades later "History Check: Martek and the Desert of Desolation" in Dragon #424 (June 2013) would revisit the adventure's mythology, with twenty-five years of Realmslore under its belt.
About the Creators. Wm. John Wheeler was the co-founder of The Companions, a publisher of "generic" D&D materials in the early '80s and also the co-author of FASA's popular Star Trek roleplaying game (1982). He'd later work on S1-4: Realms of Horror (1987), the last of the supermodule compilations. He passed away in 2009.
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.
Henadic Theologian
Legend
This booklet presents the Old Empires for DMs and players alike. Descriptions of all the major cities and towns, maps of the most important ones, information of the people, places, economics, geography, and cultures of these countries, are within these pages.
Prepare, then, to enter the realms of god-kings and pharaohs, of strange magic unknown even to the likes of the Red Wizards of Thay. These are the Old Empires.
Product History
FR10: "Old Empires" (1990), by Scott Bennie, is the tenth book in the "FR" series of sourcebooks for the Forgotten Realms. It was released in February 1990.
Continuing the "FR" Sourcebooks. "Old Empires" is another geographical sourceobook — as was the case with the majority of the "FR" series, which had been running since 1987. However, it varied the standard geographical format in two ways. First, it covered three different kingdoms, something that had also been done in FR3: "Empires of the Sands" (1988). Second, it was extra large at 96 pages, where the traditional size of a "FR" book was 64 pages.
Expanding the Realms. "Old Empires" extensively details three of the oldest kingdoms in the Forgotten Realms: Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta.
Mulhorand is probably the best-remembered kingdom from this supplement because it's an evocative Egyptian-themed kingdom. This was actually the second Egyptian kingdom found in the Realms, following Tracy Hickman's I3-5: Desert of Desolation (1987). The Desert was actually not a part of Greenwood's original Realms, but instead was one of several existing landscapes that was shoe-horned into TSR's new setting.
To account for the fact that there were now two Egypts in the Realms, "Old Empires" touches upon how the Desert of Desolation was created by wars with the gods of the Mulhorand and Unther pantheons. Those peoples were then forced to migrate south, where they'd form the Old Empires.
The focus on the Egyptian gods of Mulhorand is also somewhat different from what was seen in Desert of Desolation. That's because Greenwood originally created Mulhorand as somewhere that adventurers could fight with "bald-headed priestesses of Set". As a result, the pantheon of Mulhorand is Set-centric.
The other two countries of "Old Empires" are also based on Earth analogues. Unther is Babylon (more or less) while Chessenta is Greece.
Monsters of Note. Several new monsters are introduced in "Old Empires", the most important of which is the brown dragon (or desert dragon). Not only does the brown dragon fill in one of the missing shades in the chromatic color wheel, but it's also a monster that's reappeared many times over the years.
Future History. "Old Empires" remained the prime source on these three countries throughout the 2e period. More recently, Lost Empires of Faerûn (2005) provided some updated details on Mulhorand and Unther in one of its chapters.
About the Creators. Bennie wrote extensively for TSR starting in 1988, focusing on AD&D and Marvel Super Heroes. Around the same time he also contributed to DLR1: "Otherlands" for D&D.
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.
Prepare, then, to enter the realms of god-kings and pharaohs, of strange magic unknown even to the likes of the Red Wizards of Thay. These are the Old Empires.
Product History
FR10: "Old Empires" (1990), by Scott Bennie, is the tenth book in the "FR" series of sourcebooks for the Forgotten Realms. It was released in February 1990.
Continuing the "FR" Sourcebooks. "Old Empires" is another geographical sourceobook — as was the case with the majority of the "FR" series, which had been running since 1987. However, it varied the standard geographical format in two ways. First, it covered three different kingdoms, something that had also been done in FR3: "Empires of the Sands" (1988). Second, it was extra large at 96 pages, where the traditional size of a "FR" book was 64 pages.
Expanding the Realms. "Old Empires" extensively details three of the oldest kingdoms in the Forgotten Realms: Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta.
Mulhorand is probably the best-remembered kingdom from this supplement because it's an evocative Egyptian-themed kingdom. This was actually the second Egyptian kingdom found in the Realms, following Tracy Hickman's I3-5: Desert of Desolation (1987). The Desert was actually not a part of Greenwood's original Realms, but instead was one of several existing landscapes that was shoe-horned into TSR's new setting.
To account for the fact that there were now two Egypts in the Realms, "Old Empires" touches upon how the Desert of Desolation was created by wars with the gods of the Mulhorand and Unther pantheons. Those peoples were then forced to migrate south, where they'd form the Old Empires.
The focus on the Egyptian gods of Mulhorand is also somewhat different from what was seen in Desert of Desolation. That's because Greenwood originally created Mulhorand as somewhere that adventurers could fight with "bald-headed priestesses of Set". As a result, the pantheon of Mulhorand is Set-centric.
The other two countries of "Old Empires" are also based on Earth analogues. Unther is Babylon (more or less) while Chessenta is Greece.
Monsters of Note. Several new monsters are introduced in "Old Empires", the most important of which is the brown dragon (or desert dragon). Not only does the brown dragon fill in one of the missing shades in the chromatic color wheel, but it's also a monster that's reappeared many times over the years.
Future History. "Old Empires" remained the prime source on these three countries throughout the 2e period. More recently, Lost Empires of Faerûn (2005) provided some updated details on Mulhorand and Unther in one of its chapters.
About the Creators. Bennie wrote extensively for TSR starting in 1988, focusing on AD&D and Marvel Super Heroes. Around the same time he also contributed to DLR1: "Otherlands" for D&D.
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.
