Dmitri Kaminiar's page

This was our final concluding game in the Mummy's Mask campaign, and it was a great one. Again, it was more of a dungeon crawl, which was good, and there were fewer mummies and more more varied monsters, with very developed elemental schemes. We have really enjoyed battling them and solving the various puzzles and obstacles that came our way. The only complaint is regarging Hakotep's mummified queen and her involvement with the Dark Tapestry: it didn't feel quite right with the rest of the campaign, but had a more Lovecraftian atmosphere. Other than that, we had a great time playing it.

I have really liked the adventure. The first part was your basic dungeon crawl, albeit set in a flying pyramid, and most of the monsters were mummified, just to add a little of something extra.

The second and third parts were basically the same, save that there were more puzzles than in the first part, and there were the undead elementals, that tended to appear whenever our DM felt they were needed to appear. "Slave Trenches" was a straightforward dungeon crawl (no KP or anything like that) and we really enjoyed playing it.

On the flip side there was a distinct lack of setting - of Wati or anything like it. The previous two parts were in reverse: very acting-heavy, but they were interconnected, we had an idea where to go. Here it was all rather loose and unconnected, and, frankly, when we shifted the background from Wati to Tephu it didn't change anything important in our dynamic. Otherwise, it was still a great game.

This latest installment in the MM campaign noticeably differs from the previous installments: there the PCs had to participate/play-act a lot of social interactions, as they maneuvered between the haty-a of Tephu and her excellency Mumminofrah of Sothis. Most of that adventure felt like a theatre - and not everyone liked it. This one feels like a prolonged dungeon crawl instead.

In a sense, of course, this is what is is: most of this adventure feels like a continuation of the final part previous installment: the PCs go on walking through the Parched Sands, after barely a break in action at the intermediate showdown with the cult at Chichisek's tomb. The style of the campaign is the same, the format is the same, and the feel is the same: several random encounters in the desert (further supplemented by the secondary features in this book), which aren't interconnected with each other, complete with some maflet/girbatallu add-ons. Mind you, this approach is still better than what had happened in the previous installment; battling the genies in the second part was very fun (for us, the players, at least), but it is still weird, and several times felt like unnecessary add-ons to the main campaign, places where the players could raise their XPs before tackling the titular sphinx statue, etc.
The final part was different. It was still a dungeon crawl, but a very confusing one. Not only the chambers inside the sphinx were practically a maze, but their descriptions seemed rushed and it was hard for the DM to explain why this or that monster was in that chamber, and not out on the prowl, for example. Yes, the book gave some idea, but still it was erratic and left the players with a sense of incompleteness, as a matter of speaking.
As for the supplementary material, instead of the encounters/curse elaboration, maybe some more information about the maflet would've been in order? Interacting with them raised questions what are they really like, and this book provided no answer.

Not unlike THDC, this game has some connection problems. The first part, when we were set in the city of Tephu had a distinctly different feel from the other parts. We constantly had to go in and out of various libraries, while constantly keeping track of which of our opponents (and allies) did what; as players, we had to balance between making the game too hard and too simple; but anyways...
The other two parts had a distinctly different feeling to them - they were more like the more ordinary varieties of RPG. We had to go through the Parching Sands to find the tracks of the cultists, and if you don't mind that this section covered a really big section of the desert and we constantly tried to go in different directions, it was good.
The same can be said about the last part. Sadly, it felt more connected to the part 2 than part 1; this is an improvement over THDC, where all three parts were almost separate from each other, but otherwise, this is the same problem.
Beyond that, however, SS was still a fun game and a good installment in the exciting saga of MM.

Empty Graves is a very exciting, very intriguing game. The characters have to defeat the rising tide of panic in the city, while unravelling the mystery of who is actually behind it at the same time. A colorful cast of characters and monsters - there is even a dragon, when we came so early across a dragon in the overall campaign we were surprised to say the least - rounds up the game and improves it further. Curiously, most of our opponents were mentioned in the Wati gazeteer in the THDC - it isn't good or bad in itself, I just wanted to mention it...

The good thing about THDC is that is set in Ossirion, the land of the exotic and the hot. The bad thing is that THDC starts slow, very slow in fact - the first third of this adventure felt more like a training session for the beginners - few monsters, few traps and some treasure. The speed began to pick up in the second third, but even then the action was uneven, and in the final third THDC did feel like a proper RPG game, but the problem was that there was little connection between the three parts. Yes, it did give us plenty of time to play-act various scenes...but this situation works only when players want to play-act; otherwise, it is just a waste of time. THDC feels more like three different adventures combined into one, and this isn't the best of feelings.