Reply To: D&D officially turning Forgotten Realms sights away from Euro inspired campaigns

[greyhunter88 1654xp 1]

Speaking as someone who played a 2-year campaign in Ancient Egypt, desert environments are extremely harsh, unique, and unforgiving.

That being said, they cease being of any note by around 2nd or 3rd level.

We were all excited about how it would fundamentally change the game. No heavy armour, survival being a big element, tomb raiding being fundamentally against the moral good of their society.

Sadly, we were playing D&D… survival ceased mattering the second Create Food and Water and Endure Elements became available (which was super early). Not to mention Know Direction… which is 0 Level, I believe?
And the way the game scales, it was basically impossible for the players to not rob tombs, since they needed X amount of loot to be on track to survive later encounters, and in Ancient Egypt, where else are they really going to get 95% of their magical artifacts and buried treasure?
So… by around the 1/3rd mark, characters were practically prying the gold off of sarcophagi, which would have been considered hideous blasphemy in Ancient Egypt. “Dear Sekhmet… forgive me for fundamentally rejecting the entire basis of our system of belief and existence… but if I DON’T sell this regal staff for 200gp I won’t be able to get that Ring of +2 Wisdom that I need to beat the next dungeon…”

It was still fun, but I’d say the generic “one-size-fits-all” nature of D&D stripped away about 90% of the setting. I’m certain some here will disagree, but the game itself did not really facilitate playing in this setting, and while I could have quadrupled my workload to push it more in that direction, it seems like p*ssing into the wind when other games are so evocative right out of the book.

The “Dungeons” part of the game made it very hard to actually follow the loot progression without robbing graves and going into tombs, and the sheer availability of low level magic robbed the natural environment of any threat.
Could I have made it so that ALL of their loot was somehow gifted by superiors and the like as rewards for accomplishing quests? Yes, but again, that’s me going well out of my way to make it work, and it would quickly get contrived.
Could I have removed spells like Endure Elements so that the desert was a threat? Yes, but then we end up in the silly position where a Druid in Ireland can protect against volcanic heats, but the Druids in Egypt, who can summon sandstorms and turn the whole party into camels, cannot protect against the weather.

If there were a game set in Ancient Egypt that took its unique elements into account, I’d be all over that. As it stands, though, I’ve yet to play in any game of D&D where the setting and environment served as anything more than window dressing and class/monster skin, whether that be the heart of the Congo, Egypt, or whatever.

Maybe at its core, I just don’t realize that I don’t really like D&D ^_^