Okay, so I'm not really into the OSR, which this adventure module is for, but I am a huge ancient Egypt fanboy. So naturally I have to check out any gaming anything with Anubis in the name anywhere. Darn you clever game designer type persons for exploiting my weakness! The Ogress of Anubis is by Richard J. LeBlanc, Jr. and published by New Big Dragon Games Unlimited. It is for use with 0e/1e/BX editions of Dungeons & Dragons and compatible retro-clones.
The adventure has a pretty straightforward plot (no spoilers here) involving a ruthlessly ambitious priestess, disappearing children, and a temple dungeon. I was pleased to see that the entire adventure has lots of ancient Egypt bits throughout, particularly in the authentic design of the temple and in the creatures encountered. The deities in the module are drawn from ancient Egypt, which might be awkward to work with if your campaign doesn't include any of them. This adventure would also be useful in a game set in the ancient Egypt clone country of Osirion in the Golarion game world for the Pathfinder game, although you'd have to work out new stats for everything.
The one thing which I didn't like about it is the old school penchant for having lots of random rolling for creatures. There are day encounter tables, night encounter tables, and even percentages for inhabitants of each tent in several encampments--with each encampment even having its own set of percentages. Having to roll stuff like that during play is really obnoxious. I'd prefer a GM's version of the map with the tent inhabitants already written next to each one. (Actually I think all dungeons should have a GM version with notes next to each room right there on the map so you don't have to keep flipping around to the room descriptions all during play. But I digress.)
Overall, It's a solid, straightforward adventure dungeon module.
I find the themes of 'ogress' and 'Anubis' conflict in my head. One I see as inherently European and the other is of course Egyptian. It seems odd to me.
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks for the comment! For some reason it didn't register with the blog dashboard. Yeah, the name is kind of "unbalanced" but Richard's background explanation is interesting.
DeleteHi Edward. This is Richard, the designer of the module. I stumbled across your review and greatly appreciate the coverage. To address Testsubo's comment, the inspiration for the name of the module actually came from a 1908 non-fiction book entitled La Mort de Philae (The Death of Philae) by a French novelist named Pierre Loti (a pen name for Julien Viaud). It's a recounting of a trip to Egypt (non-fictional account; sort of a travelogue). In the chapter "In Thebes at the Temple of the Ogress", he recounts a visit to Karnak and a temple dedicated to Sekhet "whom in these parts locals call the Ogress." Loti continues to refer to Sekhet throughout the chapter as "the ogress." Sekhet (aka Sekhmet) was also known historically as ""Mistress of Dread", "Lady of Slaughter" and "She Who Mauls." The Ogress title was a bit of a "riff" off the Loti story which I stumbled across while researching, applying the Sekhet personality to the main NPC in the module.
ReplyDeleteHi Richard, thanks for the background on the name. That's actually pretty cool.
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