This was great dungeon with a fun Egyptian theme 17 years before Brendan Fraser and the Mummy. The railroad to start was annoying and then you are basically stuck on the rails out in the desert, but honestly, in the day, we were there to play whatever module the DM had worked up. Kicking against being thrown into the desert because of some crime you didn't do was pointless. Lets go play the module. You can rework the start so it doesn't insult your players. That is mostly what I objected to. It's been so many years , do they send you into the desert without your magic items too? Cause I wouldn't do that to my players. Love the Hickman dungeon, the atmosphere, the fact that you can't immediately make your way in to this secret place. They also put together interesting tricks traps and magic items in these three modules. Loads of fun.

This is quite helpful! Looking into these for inspiration for my own homebrew desert. Won’t be running it as written, but hope for some interesting ideas.

This was extremely helpful. Now I know what I need to mod if I decide to run the Desert of Desolation series. I like that you pulled no punches in your ratings too.

I'm running a Desert of Desolation campaign for the TPK Stream and this video was by far the best breakdown and review I've seen for the I3 module. Hope you'll do 4-5 as well!

oh surprise, a hickman module thats really a railroad

I've always had a soft spot for I3-I5. I am hoping to upgrading them to 5e and run them in my next campaign.

A good and fair review. We just finished the I3-5 series using AD&D 2E, and while I liked the monster fights a lot, the path was very railroad-y.

I think you need to put into context that this is an OLD module written during a time when MANY of us were just thankful to be playing this great game. As long as TODAY'S DM is honest with his/her players that this is a railroad module, im sure a good DM will make adjustments to make the players feel like they have more agency..

Thank you for this video! Whenever I go back to use older modules it’s always awesome to have a quick synopsis

Why does this module need "Sensitivity Consulting" as mentioned by Teos on the Mastering Dungeons channel?

I've got to disagree with a lot of the comment here. Yes, it's contrived. Yes, it's a railroad. But I've played it as a DM 3 or 4 times and I played the Desert of Desolation series start to finish as a player and I loved it. We had a lot of fun. It was a game of it's time and while by modern standards it's got its short comings, in the moment and at the time it was as good as module's got.