Quests From The Infinite Staircase

D&D 5E Quests From The Infinite Staircase

Parmandur

Book-Friend, he/him
I don’t recall all the details, but I certainly had all three original modules. As you know, they were setting agnostic, even though Greyhawk was the official setting at the time, it had no Greyhawk connections. The name of the eponymous Pharaoh was Amun-Ra (but not the god, I don’t know why they didn’t go with a different name) I seem to recall some dervishes and similar mildly racist caricatures, but they may have been in Oasis. Like Strahd, it was mostly bsed on Hammer Horror movies. The villainous high priest (aren’t they always) was immortal because his heart was in a Canopic jar. There was a lot of confusion between Egyptian and Persian tropes. There was a wilderness hexcrawl, including overlevelled purple worms, because Dune. The sequels hung on one of the wilderness encounters and assumed the PCs had freed an evil Efreeti Lord.
The wilderness part has been replaced wntirely with a d6 Encointer table:

20240711_095456.jpg


The BBEG is the evil high priest, still, and he has his heart in a jar and is a sort of demi-Mummy because his evil unhealthy work was a rush job.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

The wilderness part has been replaced wntirely with a d6 Encointer table:

View attachment 372216

The BBEG is the evil high priest, still, and he has his heart in a jar and is a sort of demi-Mummy because his evil unhealthy work was a rush job.
It actually had a hex map and around half a dozen location based encounters as well as the random encounter table. Not surprised that is cut though. Doesn't make sense when the party is delivered directly to the pyramid, rather than wandering around until they stumble across it.
 

Their goals are to not offend Egyptians, amd to create a welcoming environment for new players of all minds. I see no reason to believe that they are failing at that goal.

Lore is fungible and can be changed to create a better rhyme environment by WotC or DMs willy-nilly.

There was no evidence Egyptians were offended by the original.

Consistent lore matters so that it makes sense, you change it willy nilly it loses coherence.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend, he/him
It actually had a hex map and around half a dozen location based encounters as well as the random encounter table. Not surprised that is cut though. Doesn't make sense when the party is delivered directly to the pyramid, rather than wandering around until they stumble across it.
Interestingly enough, both When a Star Falls and Loat Caverns of Tsojcnath retain the hex maps and exploration, though I have no idea how much is retained there.
 


Parmandur

Book-Friend, he/him
There was no evidence Egyptians were offended by the original.

Consistent lore matters so that it makes sense, you change it willy nilly it loses coherence.
Well, we at least know that a professional Egyptogist and two sensitivity readers went over this, and I have no reason to doubt thst helped.

Lore is a spice DMs can use to improve their game, it can be adjusted any which way.
 




There was no evidence Egyptians were offended by the original.

Consistent lore matters so that it makes sense, you change it willy nilly it loses coherence.
We know, because they have said so, that Egyptians are unhappy about western appropriation of their culture. Of course, not many people in Egypt play D&D, and it's sure to stay that way if WotC doesn't do something to fix things.
 

Remove ads

Top