The Shifting Sands by Joseph Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing for use with OSRIC. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
The supplement is available as a 38 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three the front matter and three the Open Game License.
The opening paragraphs gives some background on the Jural Empire and a dead emperor whose pyramid tomb was lost in the desert, but has recently been uncovered.
For the Dungeon Master explains that this is an adventure for up to six characters of 5th to 7th level. It explains that it’s set in the author’s campaign world but would be easy to move. The pyramid will be covered again soon, determined randomly, and there’s an oasis near the pyramid. It gives some general details on the pyramid as well as the undead in the tomb and the advantages it grants them.
Adventure Hooks/Rumors has twenty rumours to hear about the tomb, marked as to whether they are true or false.
Random Encounters explain there are none in the desert but there are some in the tomb.
The Great Pyramid of Nkua details the tomb, which has five levels. It’s a tomb inhabited primarily by undead and has a variety of different traps as well as quite a bit of treasure.
New Monsters has new creatures for the adventure.
New Magic Items has new items.
The final four pages of content have maps of the pyramid.
The Shifting Sands in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the maps and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.
This is a potentially dangerous adventure, given the number of undead and the benefits they gain from the tomb making them harder to deal with. It will also be reasonably easy to drop into another setting; all that’s really needed is a desert and some minor tweaks to the lore to fit it to another campaign setting. The Shifting Sands can be found by clicking here.
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