D&D 5E Walk Like An Egyptian

@Zardnaar I’ve found lots of inspiration in Green Ronin’s Mythic Vista line of d20 products when it comes to kinda real-world settings. In particular I like Egyptian Adventures: Hamunaptra; there is a real nice blend of fantasy and inspired-by real world politics. There are some cool monsters, spells, prestige classes, magic items and such, but the best parts are the cultural ideas. I combined bits of GURPS Egypt with Hamunaptra, and plan on doing some conversion to 5e for an upcoming game.

I can't really go and buy PDFs etc ATM. Green Ronin normally makes good stuff.

Also any names for a fantasy Nile? Using the River Nuria atm, any better suggestions with another 2-3 factions would be great.
 
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Just throwing some ideas for the river and more factions.

The river is called ''the Water-Son of the 3 Sisters''. It his said in the old legends that the river is actualy the sentient spaw of three water hags who all fell pregnant from the god X and gave birth on their way to drown the unwanted kid in the sea, breaking their waters midway thru the desert trip, thus creating the river. The hags are said to have drowned. To this day, the River change its form from time to time, taking the shape of one of his mothers: the Hunchback (when the river gets wide and rise on inhabited land), the Thirsting (when its at his thinnest form, during the dry season) and the Sage (the normal, calm for of the river). During the Hunchback and the rainy season, children must beware of the Banderhobbs. The dry mummies that emerge when the Water-Son is almost dried up are slow and fragile, but can extract water from your body and the dust they release when destroyed can choke a man days after the mummy's final death.

Factions:
The House of Paper: magical archivist, creator of Scroll Mummies (egyptian-theme liches, embalmed in scrolls), collector of lore.
The Erosion: Group of people thinking ruins his the final and purest state of all things. Think the Doom Guard from Planescape. Attack conservationist, hunts undead.
The Fennecs: a guild of thieves that hides in caverns in the desert. Their leader his a blind woman who can ''see'' only with sounds. They use blind beggars as a spy network.
Pilgrims of the Final Dawn: a group of cleric and pilgrim that shelters repentant vampires from every lands, preparing them to go into the sun-scorched desert for one last time.
 

Good NPCs bring campaigns to life. For something based on ancient Egypt and that region of the world you can bring in other neighbors as well. A tribal warrior that aids the PCs comes from the central part of Africa. He can have a tiger cloak that protects him and exotic spells. A viking type group of explorers searching for a mythic artifact. They may provide aid to the PCs and information to help them on their quest. A tie-in would be the PCs finding info to help them in return. Most of the NPCs should be common to that area, but can be mixed as well since you can have the main city be a crossroads of sorts. Sea pirates and river pirates can be mixed.

You can have a group trying to raise an ancestor mummy back to life. It can be an overall plot device or a minor quest encounter. The PCs may need to ask the mummy- ancestor questions or destroy the mummy before it is brought back to life, like in the movies.

Do not be afraid to steal from movies and other stories. Send them up the African Queen to find the Raiders of the Lost Arc. Sinbad and Aladdin should not be overlooked as well. You can embrace the stereotypes to give flavor to the players and let them understand the world better.
 

It's going to be interesting to create a "classical dark ages". The classical empires were substantially more technologically advanced than dark ages Europe, who, for example, forgot how to build roads and plumbing (something the Romans both knew how to do). From a historical perspective, this was done in large part because the Holy Roman Empire destroyed, banned, stole away much of the written knowledge the Romans had developed.

It might be worth having one or more of the empires you create have taken this approach with whatever empire preceded it.

But at the same time, the "dark ages" were largely limited to Europe proper. The Asian empires did just fine during that time. That sort of contrast can make for a defining element in your game, assuming your characters somehow manage to travel the globe, as dark ages Europe experienced very little international trade since much of what had been developed between nations was lost (and ya know, some other empires collapsed too). By putting your players in a "dark ages" with fallen empires on one side and rising empires on the other, it can give them an idea of what is at risk for their own civilization, should they fail.
 

In the history of my world the Egyptian area underwent a civil war when the arcane classes decided to create human animal hybrids in the image of their gods, in an attempt to take power from the divine classes. So the Children of Sobek became the lizardmen as an example. However their creations acted more in line with their animal counterparts and revolted destroying their creators along with the majority of the priests.

This is the in game explanation for where lizardmen, gnolls, the various cat people, minotaurs, etc... come from.

The Egyptian gods have been replaced by the Sumerians and nature spirits and are only remembered in forgotten corners of the land, for now. People fear the ruins and lamia city of Thalos for good reason.
 

Just want to throw this out there: the "fancy names" we Westerners see on many foreign cities have literal name meanings. "City of the Sun", or "City of God" or "City on the River" or "City of Famous Person" are common ones in many cultures. Don't go overboard trying to make up names of cities and towns. It turns out people name their cities and towns pretty much the same regardless of the language.
 

I think something that can be interesting flavor is having the 3 empires at a stable phase in their history. We've seen our share of dying empires, ruined empires, corrupt empire, decadent empires, nazi-look-alike empires etc. What if you went with the idea of Empire that are doing fine? Enemies may threaten the empires from inside, empires may spy on each other, political factions may want to spice things up, but not because said empires are weakened or corrupted. Ex:
Your greek nation is ruled by a benevolent colossus made from the woods of the 1000 ships that won the war that created their empire, blessed by their gods, who watch over his people with kindness
Your egyptian nation is ruled by a undead king assembled by a concil of sages from diverse faction from a collection of canopic jars containing pieces of great rulers/heroes from the past.
Your roman nation is governed by a council of elected warlords from each region, the council room is covered by an Circle of Truth spell.
 

For the Greeks, I think I'd shrink it down to only the most famous 3 independent citystates - Sparta, Troy and Athens , and have them constantly shift between being allies and enemies among each other.

I'd set your Roman city right smack in the middle of Augustus transforming the Republic into an Empire - and add in lots of Star Wars references for kicks. Use the clerics of the Roman gods like jedi, for example
 

For the Greeks, I think I'd shrink it down to only the most famous 3 independent citystates - Sparta, Troy and Athens , and have them constantly shift between being allies and enemies among each other.

But secretly they're all run by the same orginization!

Oh wait, that's the plot to 1984.
 

But secretly they're all run by the same orginization!

Oh wait, that's the plot to 1984.

Don't wait, that's perfect! See, since I've set up the Romans as the evil Star Wars empire, now the Greeks can be the mirrored evil Star Trek empire.



. . . in my mind, I might have permanently crossed 1984 with that one episode where Picard is abducted by the Cardassians.
 

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