The Sacred Sands: A Dungeon World™ Adventure

Description

The Sacred Sands sees our intrepid band of Dungeon World™ adventurers brave the scorching landscape of the legendary desert of Uruk, the barren expanse said to be the final resting place of many an ancient civilization. It's the perfect place to seek out the treasures of the ancients, provided one is prepared to take on the ancient evils also said to lurk in this land...

Artist's Statement

This project was born primarily from the desire to make a unique Dungeon World™ adventure setting without straying too far from the characteristics of the fantasy genre (for example, a straight-up western wouldn't have sufficed). I came up with the idea that I should create a desert-themed adventure when my mind wandered to the Indiana Jones films. I felt it wouldn't be too hard to translate that feeling of discovering the buried secrets of the ancients into a fantasy setting that could work within Dungeon World's rules.

This notion was further reinforced when I thought of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories ever told, and I realized another benefit of this kind of setting is that it's full to the brim with royalty-free names thanks to such ancient fiction coming from such parts of the world. However, I still felt invoking the name "Gilgamesh" directly would be too on-the-nose, so I named my ancient hero NPC "Enkidu" instead, after Gilgamesh's closest companion, since that name is less likely to raise eyebrows except to those more familiar with the Gilgamesh story than most.

The NPC Doctor Ypress Hume Livingston is another important piece of this puzzle. I came up with him to serve as a hallmark of the adventure genre, the somewhat haughty but ultimately noble old professor with a passion for treasure-hunting. His name is a pun on the pop culture phrase "Dr. Livingston, I presume?", a joke for which I'm probably a little more proud of myself than I ought to be.

Ultimately, by having the party of players serve as protective escorts for the Livingston Expedition Team through the treacherous desert, what I hoped to achieve here is to create a genre-fusion between the classic archaeological adventure serial and the high fantasy setting that the Dungeon World system is primarily designed to support.