Review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Plague of the Pharaohs, written by Allan Carey, the 12th and final entry in Type40’s Seeds of Terror series.
In-Short:
A linear, literal dungeon crawl with just enough colourful set pieces to keep the session interesting. Also, my favourite monster ever.
Spoiler-lite for Players and Keepers:
The Plague of the Pharaohs is the final scenario in the Seeds of Terror series and shares both theme and simplicity with its opposite book end, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange. Both obviously share the ancient Egypt motif, and both are also extremely easy to run – indeed, they’re the simplest of the series, barely requiring a full read through to get the gist before the session starts. While Pemberley Grange is more open ended and has fewer and less elaborate set pieces, I feel it has more spontaneous complexity than its opposite-end sister scenario. Plague is extremely linear with little room for meandering shenanigans, but the handful of set pieces do keep it from ever being boring.
As with all 11 of its preceding sibling scenarios, Plague of the Pharaohs is a tight little bundle of a scenario. 7 pages are devoted to the main scenario text, 1 page for stats, and 3 pages of handouts. The handouts are among the best in the series, being both great to look at, thematic, and directly used in the scenario. Top notch, good stuff. And as per the course, there are five varied pregenerated investigators. While there’s as nice a mix of professions and personalities as usual, there are less details given to each investigator as many of the preceding scenarios, but there also isn’t as much foil for players to roleplay off of in the scenario either.
The scenario is overall the most purely survival focused of the series, with very little room for roleplaying unless players make the room themselves with some inter-character shenanigans. The investigators get stuck in an ancient Egyptian tomb and need to escape. Straight forward, though of course there will be some curve balls along the way. While the handful of set pieces give bursts of excitement (including my favourite threat in the entire series) and the dusty tomb makes for a nicely claustrophobic atmosphere, when compared to the rest of the Seeds series, Plague unfortunately struggles to stand out, and it also has extra competition from other Egyptian-themed scenarios with Chaosium’s The Necropolis and Obscuriat Walser’s The Maw. But when considering its space in the Seeds of Terror series, it is the only scenario of this style, helping it stand out more than it does when compared to the wider Call of Cthulhu scenario landscape. For players looking for a short and simple ‘solve the problem’ sort of session with a dash of Seeds of Terror weirdness, Plague will probably be the go-to Seeds scenario.
Plague of the Pharaohs can be bought individually, or in the Mummies and Madness three-pack with The Mummy of Pemberley Grange and Flute of the Gods.
Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, The Plague of the Pharaohs is a very linear scenario, and as such is very easy to run, leaving me with little advice or suggestions to give.
The investigators are wandering through the Egyptian desert when a sandstorm strikes, driving them into a nearby cave. They are soon trapped, of course, and find that the cave is actually a deep tomb. Their guides are missing but helpfully left behind a map for the tomb (suspicious…). They make their way through rooms and passages filled with hieroglyphs and murals, aka hints. There’s plenty to pour over and make skill rolls to work out, but no threats or choices until one of the last rooms.
Earlier on the group passes through a room with four rotting taxidermy animals, one of which happens to be hippo. Later, the same hippo bursts into a different passage, chasing and trying to crush the investigators. I’ve yet to see a scenario feature a hippo, much less an undead one, and as hippos are my favourite animal, this scenario immediately becomes amazing for me. The creature itself is quite dangerous, with a healthy HP pool and some armour, and while its attack skills aren’t all great besides its basic attack (the bite skill has a typo – it should be 70% judging by its Hard and Extreme values, not 25%), but they all deal heavy damage, more than enough to chomp an investigator to death in a single turn. Luckily, the investigators can easily flee through a narrow passage way, leaving the zombie-hippo lodged in the entrance, blocking the way but unable to pursue.
To make this a little more risky, if all the investigators choose to flee, I would do an opposed DEX roll between the hippo and everyone else. Anyone who fails is caught by the hippo and has to deal with a round of combat. And for added urgency in the following scene, you could have the hippo slowly smash its way through the narrow passageway, giving the party 1D6 minutes or so to figure out the final puzzle before the beast returns with a vengeance.
The final puzzle also holds up, as players will need to have paid attention to the murals before hand to understand what the consequences of their actions here will be. There is one final mural before them with a crack in it, showing that an escape path lies behind it. The players may have worked out by now that smashing the mural will also break a seal locking away an ancient evil. The mural could also be opened by reaching into a deep hole lined with rusty metal spikes to turn a key. This allows the party to escape safely, but who ever turns the key will shred their arm, potentially losing it entirely or even dying. The final option is to wait and simply die of thirst (or the hippo, if you have it break through).
The Plague of the Pharaohs is very short – it only took my group a little over an hour to complete. This is largely due to only have two decision points where the players have an impact on progression. If they stay and fight the hippo, the play time could be lengthened, and same goes for how long they take to figure out the final puzzle. If you need to stretch for time, or want a pulpy finale, you could force the hippo fight by having it pursue the party even if they do escape, ending the scenario with a battle in the Egyptian desert.
Again, Plague of the Pharaohs can be bought individually, or in the Mummies and Madness three-pack with The Mummy of Pemberley Grange and Flute of the Gods.
Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios
