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(From a publisher’s perspective, publishing a book called HAMUNAPTRA instead of, say, D&D: EGYPT, has several advantages. Creating a fictionalized country with different place-names (Nyambe instead of Africa, Khemti instead of Egypt, the river Yor instead of the Nile, etc.) not only means the designers don’t have to be 100% historically accurate, it also means they can copyright their new inventions. This is probably also a reason why things like displacer beasts and beholders get more play from Wizards of the Coast than “open-source” monsters like goblins.)
The game is a boxed set, containing three books and a color map. The map is immediately recognizable as Egypt with different place names. However, the map shows only the largest cities and is lacking in detail. In addition, terrain types aren’t shown – the entire setting is desert yellow except for the river and oceans. (Shouldn’t there be at least a strip of green around the rivers and lakes? While I’m nitpicking, shouldn’t the Red Land be red?)
Book One, the Book of Days, begins with 11 pages of the history and mythology of Khemti. After reading the introduction by Monte Cook, which basically warns not to expect historical accuracy, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much Egyptian myth, history and religion made it into the game. (There’s no bibliography, however.) Those familiar with Egyptian myths will recognize the murder of Osiris by Set, the story of how Isis discovered the True Name of Ra, and much more. Khemti’s history, too, has many real-world echoes, and it would be easy to set a campaign in a different historical period if the DM liked.
The core D&D races are reinvented in Khemtian terms, with sometimes heavy changes. Except for humans and half-elves, each race is the creation of a specific god. Half-orcs are replaced by a heavily modified form of gnolls: the Anpur, the children of Anubis. Elves, being the children of the fertility goddess Isis, are able to breed with any of the other races (except Halflings, for complicated mythical reasons); thus Elf-Gnomes, Elf-Dwarves and Elf-Gnolls are all possible.
The next 32 pages are devoted to completely redoing all the core D&D classes in Egyptian garb. This is a mixed blessing. Some of the modified classes are truly well-designed, such as the Ghaffir and the Priest, which are basically Paladins and Clerics stripped of all their vestiges of Medieval-European-ness. The Ghaffir is a holy warrior who can be of any lawful alignment, and whose spell list includes the Domain spells appropriate to her god. Similarly, the Priest spontaneously casts Domain spells, instead of merely curing or causing wounds. For example, a Priest with the Domains of Water and Plant can prepare one Plant spell as her daily Domain spell, and then spontaneously cast Water spells all day, or vice versa. Other modified classes, however, are so close to the original PLAYER’S HANDBOOK classes that the space would have been better spent on a single paragraph’s description of how that class fits into the Khemtian setting. The 3rd edition ORIENTAL ADVENTURES doesn’t waste space re-stating the stats for Sorcerers, Rogues and Fighters, and HAMUNAPTRA doesn’t really need stats for the Bequenu (fighter), Kheri-heb (wizard), or Khebenti (rogue), which are essentially identical to their PLAYER’S HANDBOOK counterparts. (For that matter, I prefer the TESTAMENT version of the Khery-Heb, in which the “Egyptian wizards” reap benefits from choosing a patron deity.) As for the Bahati (monk), Kama’at (druid) and Shenu (bard), although they don’t bring much in the way of rules innovations, it’s impressive to see those most culture-specific classes reinvented in Egyptian terms.
The Book of Days is rounded out by 6 pages of feats, 13 pages of new spells, and several new rules for magic, including extended rites (taking 4x the time to cast a spell in return for two free levels of Metamagic Feats), Cooperative Magic, True Names (basically a plot device used at the DM’s discretion) and modified Khemtian Spell Foci. Many of the new spells involve sand and the desert in some way, including Touch of Dehydration and Mummify. There’s very little in the way of new weapons or armor, or even standard ones; Khemti is a low-tech, low-metal setting. Many of the feats are good; Greater Unarmed Strike (which allows unarmed combatants to inflict slashing or piercing damage) could be used in any setting, while Hybrid Shape (which lets druids use Wild Shape to become animal-headed humanoids) and Red-Haired (because red is the color of the god Set) are specifically Khemtian.
Book Two, the Book of Gates, contains information on day-to-day life, currency and measurements, the gods, and map locations. Although the locations are useful, the Khemtian pantheon (including 9 greater and 18 lesser gods) is possibly the most impressive part of Book Two. Unlike the locations, the gods retain their original Egyptian names, and while they don’t betray their historical characters, they’re very different from the Egyptian pantheon depicted in DEITIES & DEMIGODS or the mishmash of briefly described gods in TESTAMENT. Ra is the chief god, but he’s not “good”; the gods rarely interfere with the human world, and have no alignment (even Set), and can be worshipped by priests of any alignment. (Indeed, there is a new Khemtian spell which detects one’s deity, and a particularly bold DM could theoretically use it in place of “Detect Evil.”) This element of moral ambiguity makes it much easier to have something like “real-world” politicking and religious rivalry in the game, and saves the pantheon from the predictable “Set is the bad guy” scenario. The religion section even includes rules for things such as priests switching between gods, and the historical worship of “composite deities” such as Amun-Ra. While I found this fascinating, though, some DMs might find the “low-divine-intervention, high-moral-ambiguity” restrictive. Even I admit that I immediately started thinking about how to slip demons and other capital-E evil outsiders (which HAMUNAPTRA mildly discourages) into the setting. But if you’re willing to run a campaign where rival paladins clash, where priests of the same god plot against eachother, and where those darn monotheists make life hard for everyone else, you’ve come to the right place.
In addition to outsiders, another area which is lacking is any description of Khemti’s Outer Planes. The Ancient Egyptians had a fairly complicated and exciting afterlife, but while DEITIES & DEMIGODS mapped it out for players to explore, HAMUNAPTRA leaves it as a barely-described myth (in keeping with Hamunaptra’s general separation between mortals and gods). The only planes which are even briefly described are the Astral and Ethereal planes, one of which is renamed the Dream World, and given its own prestige class, the Dream Shaper.
Book Three, the Book of the Law, contains all the DM’s secret information: campaign ideas, 100 adventure seeds, rules for chariots, secret societies, monsters and prestige classes (such as the aforementioned Dream Shaper, the super-powerful Lector Priest, the corpse-animating Deathblade, and the Spell-Eater). Magic items get short shrift, with only three pages. The monsters are interesting, with creatures such as the crocodile-headed Sobekhi, the ferocious Serpopards (do a web search for “Egyptian monsters” for more info), Desert Elementals, the symbiotic insects called Ba Fentu, and for Epic-level encounters, the godlike, summonable Great Sphinxes. There’s even a template for the “pharaoh,” which as it turns out, really IS the earthly representative of the gods, and gains magical power based on their number of followers.
Despite the presence of all the standard classes in Egyptian drag, HAMUNAPTRA is a more thorough remaking of D&D than AFRICAN ADVENTURES or ORIENTAL ADVENTURES; orcs and dragons are completely missing, and the alignment-less gods forces a change from many standard campaign conventions. (I can’t wait to play a Lawful Good worshipper of Set.) The Priest, the Ghaffir, and many of the new spells, feats and rules suggestions would be useful in any campaign. My only reservation in recommending HAMUNAPTRA would be that, for the cost, it’s got slightly less information than AFRICAN and ORIENTAL, clocking in at 216 pages compared to 256 for the other books. Perhaps this is inevitable, since HAMUNAPTRA is based on just one country, while the other books are based on entire continents. Still, if I were making a wish list, the game could use more magic items and equipment, more planar travel possibilities, and more monsters. Egyptian lore has more untapped monsters, such as the Crocodiles of the Four Directions (dragons?), or the inhabitants of the underworld, or Ammit, the crocodile-headed, lion-bodied Eater of the Dead. Apophis/Apep, the great snake demon, is missing…and could green-skinned Osiris possibly be served by some kind of plant creature? But now I'm just getting greedy... and of course, this just shows that the DM can easily expand the setting based on their own needs.
Despite these minor complaints, HAMUNAPTRA is an excellent setting which is surprisingly historically accurate. I hope it’s successful enough for Green Ronin to support it with modules and expansions.
