Sunday, February 16, 2020

Tomb of Ra-Hotep

Alan Lucien's short, handwritten adventure "Tomb of Ra-Hotep" was the inspiration for Gary Gygax's "The Tomb of Horrors".  Lucien's adventure was also included as part of the special edition of "Art and Arcana" in 2018.


There was an actual Egyptian pharaoh, the first king of the 17th dynasty, named Rahotep.

This short, but inventive, little adventure looks like it would be interesting to run.  The lich is a tough opponent, so I would suggest high level characters (10-14 sounds about right).

As a Mystara fan, I can see "Tomb of Ra-Hotep" being situated in the Emirates of Ylaruam, a forgotten remnant of the ancient Nithian Empire.

T. Foster posted about similarities between Alan Lucien's "Tomb of Ra-Hotep" and Gary Gygax's much later "Necropolis" (1992) for the Dangerous Journeys RPG, in 2018.



Update (March 29, 2022): Lucien's "Tomb of Ra-Hotep" was used as the basis of the Legends of Roleplaying tournament at Gary Con XIV (see this Facebook post, by Paul Stormberg)

According to Paul, the Tomb of Ra-Hotep "was an Egyptian-style tomb without too fine a point put on the mythology aspect.  It was the tomb of a long-hated villain in their campaign, originally name Quodwyr the Feared, in death he was known as Ra-Hotep.  Alan's group of players' characters were the ones responsible for the wizard-priest's demise but found out years later that the cruel necromancer had designs in place to return as a lich--more powerful than ever!"

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