Desert of Desolation - your experiences?

[Hypersmurf]

Ad-libbing - but incredibly cool! I think in the module as written he's a lot less of an immediate threat.

I remember the scene where we met the Efreeti quite vividly.

"Don't open the flask!" we said.

He opened the flask. Whoompf! Big Efreeti. Much bigger than us. Lots of fire. Deep voice.

"Give me the flask," it said.

"Don't give it the flask!" we all insisted, horrified - it might be the only thing keeping us all alive!

"Meep," he said. He gave it the flask.

And I have a clear mental image of the DM miming throwing the flask up in the air, and doing the "six-gun fingers" thing to indicate blowing it out of the sky with fireball-at-will... It was a very cool moment

It promised to leave us alive today, and left.

"Oh yeah," we thought. "We're in trouble."

-Hyp.

 

[mgrasso]

It's probably been 15 years since I DM'ed those adventures, so I don't remember the details well. I remember that they were probably the most fun we had as a group. They were tough adventures. The group crawled out by the skin of their teeth four or five times.

I particularly remember the battle with the shadow demon and the ghouls. The entire party had been paralyzed or otherwise taken out of action except the halfling fighter/thief, played by my little brother, Scotty. The ghouls were all dead too. So it was just the halfling and the demon. The other players were yelling and screaming like it was a football game with each roll of the dice. When Scotty's halfling landed the killing blow they all mobbed him. It was awesome. Scott was 3 or 4 years younger than everybody else in the group and always treated like the little kid, so it was a really cool deal for him to get to be the hero.

Fun times.

R.A.

Best. War story. EVAR.

I remember a lot of great moments in Desert of Desolation, most of which I changed from the module... our gnome jester sliding the five teleportation cubes in a circle around the party in an effort to escape the deadly troll combat at the beginning of the game and thus kicking off the whole thing inadvertently, the random encounter with a yellow dragon that killed 1/4 of the party, and most of all, them coming back to the Sword Coast and realizing that the party leader's wife and unborn kid had been kidnapped by the cleric of Bane who was a former member of the party.

In character they hated being in the desert (because of the aforementioned distance from their home), but as players they loved the adventure.

Mike

 

[diaglo]

"Don't open the flask!" we said.

He opened the flask. Whoompf! Big Efreeti. Much bigger than us. Lots of fire. Deep voice.

"Give me the flask," it said.

"Don't give it the flask!" we all insisted, horrified - it might be the only thing keeping us all alive!

"Meep," he said. He gave it the flask.

are you sure you didn't play in my group? that is almost exactly what the players did when i was referee.

 

[Kestrel]

I ran it over ten years ago.

All I remember is a great rivalry between the party wizard and fighter. The wizard fired off one of the thunderclaps from the artifact pharoahstaff and gave the fighter a phobia for snakes. (Cant remember if this was adlibbed or not).

Later, the fighter charged into a room with a gorgon, got turned to stone. The wizard, hearing the noise from a room across the hall, fired a lightning bolt through both doors and the petrified fighter. The wizard then took the stone head and consulted with it mockingly from time to time. He also used it as a bowling ball.

I miss that group

 

[Davelozzi]

What are teh differences between the 3 modules (which I have) and the mega-module? Did the megamod add anything cool?

The megamodule places the adventure in the Forgotten Realms. The players start in Durpar (I think -- at any rate on the north side of the Goldenwater) and then head north into the Desert of Desolation, which is part of Raurin. There's some additional wilderness action, and I think some extra politics with the sandrunner's guild. I think there are a couple of extra mini-encounter areas simliar in scope to the one with th efreeti at the beginning of Pharoah, but I could be off on that.

 

[PetriWessman]

A wonderful set of modules, I remember running these years and years and years ago. Don't remember any details, tho', this was *way* back .

I just realized that running a modified version of these using Adventure! characters and rules (either Storyteller or d20) might be a huge pile of fun. Hmmm. A set of pulp-era heroes stumbles upon ancient Egyptian cults, lots of Mummy-style action, mmm yes.

 

[diaglo]

don't forget they (SSI) attempted sort of an altered version of this for the computer.

it started in the FR and the PCs entered ala Ravenloft...

 

[Savage Wombat]

Nah, that was a different desert in Ravenloft. Har'Akir is a desert domain, ruled by an ancient mummy-priest-king (Ankhtepot? I forget).

 

[Qualidar]

We ran this in high school, so....17 years ago? (yikes!) We had three alternating DMs at the time. Chris ran Pharaoh, and it was good. I ran Oasis of the White Palm, and it was good. And my best friend Todd, who excelled at his home brewed dungeons, tried to run Lost Tomb of Martek. It was not good He gave up half way through, and when I asked him for the module so I could give it a shot he revealed he threw it into the river in frustration!

Fond memories include: pineapple bombs, the fighter types unable to break the chains on a slave girl, but the venerable wizard making the bend bars check, the fight with our first purple worm ever on the sea of glass, and most importantly the best line in any module, still vivid in my mind nearly two decades later: "Woe to he who is hit by a flying mummy!"

Good Times,
~Qualidar~

 

[jasper]

yes the pine apples. I forget who but remember one pc falling into the water with the pineapples he survived the trip to the basement did not drown but then the pineapples cooked off. Fountain was spraying red water out of it.
One player reminded me of ??? with his silver spoon. The pcs had fireballed something taking it and him out. And the silver spoon fell on the party.
One person sky diving. Enjoyed until the sudden stop.