Have you ever read an adventure that immediately started your creative juices flowing, to the extent that you wanted to run the adventure right away? Entombed with the Pharaohs is just such an adventure.
I'd love to detail each and every component of this well-crafted adventure, but I do hope to provide a *mostly* spoiler-free review. (To avoid any spoilers, stop reading now.)
At its core, this adventure is a very well done Indiana Jones/Lara Croft-style, Egyptian-themed tomb exploration. Add to that a multiple trigger, impending curse and a rival group of tomb raiders, and you have an adventure that may play out completely differently every time it is run. Additionally, a lot of tantalizing background detail is sprinkled throughout the adventure, which makes one hope this adventure is just the first in a series of similar adventures.
Each encounter is fresh and unique, to varying degrees, and I particularly like the design of the rival group of tomb raiders, which includes a few simple variant class features and new magic items. Also, the first encounter (an auction) in some ways foreshadows the rest of the adventure, with all of the key parties present in some form. If the adventure were a Hollywood movie, I suspect this would be played up with a spooky event or two related to the Four Pharaohs, just to strengthen their "presence".
My one suggestion is that the provided adventure hooks and preliminary encounters seem to assume a relatively mercenary group of PCs, perhaps not unlike the rival group of tomb raiders. A sidebar with the author's suggestions for how to handle a predominantly lawful and/or benevolent party would be good to have. For example, might the mask be borrowed or purchased? If borrowed, would the owner want to send along his own representatives? If so, how loyal would they be (and to whom)?
In short, Entombed with the Pharaohs is an awesome adventure, and I am looking forward to more to come from the author.
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