A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set by Ed Greenwood

The Ruins of Undermountain boxed set by Ed Greenwood is a supplement and megadungeon for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition which was originally published by TSR. Undermountain is the Forgotten Realms’ iconic dungeon which is located under the premier city of the setting, Waterdeep. This was published as a boxed set, which can still be picked up from places such as Amazon. The set is also available as a PDF from RPGNow.

The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set

There are references to a number of other Forgotten Realms supplements, such as FR1 Waterdeep and the North, City System (not, as would be suggested by the name, a generic supplement, but one about Waterdeep), Knight of the Living Dead (a solo adventure gamebook), FRE3: Waterdeep and the Forgotten Realms Adventures hardback book, but not the Waterdeep: City of Splendors boxed set as that was published after Undermountain. Of course, the City of Splendors boxed set is a better supplement for fleshing out Waterdeep than the earlier ones, as it is far more comprehensive. Although these supplements are useful for integrating the dungeon with Waterdeep, they aren’t essential, especially if it is placed elsewhere.

The box set is comprised of the following items:

128 page perfect bound softback

32 page booklet with a removable cover

4 A1 poster maps

8 Monstrous Compendium pages

8 approximately half A4 cards

The softback and the booklet have full colour covers – the front of the Campaign Guide is the same as the cover of the box itself – and they have a number of black and white illustrations inside them.

Campaign Guide to Undermountain

Campaign Guide to Undermountain from The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set

This is a 128 page perfect bound softcover book by Ed Greenwood of which two pages are the front matter and Table of Contents. The book is not divided into numbered chapters, but it is divided into several sections. The one page Introduction introduces the entire boxed set, including how to use it. This is followed by The Known History of Undermountain, which covers how the vast complex came to be. The City Above is a single page dealing with Waterdeep. The Yawning Portal is a well known inn in Waterdeep, and is the site of one of the most well known entrances into the dungeon. Ways In and Out covers other means of entering and exiting the dungeon, of which there are many, and where they lead to and from – and how and when they work, if appropriate.

Gates of Undermountain covers how and why some of the magical gates into and out of the complex work. Rumours of Undermountain is a single page and naturally has a number of rumours that players may hear. General Notes on Undermountain covers such as its construction, climate, the potentially dangerous magic-dead areas and monsters.

The next section is Depths of Undermountain, which is divided into the first three levels of Undermountain. Each of these relates to the poster maps, and is divided into Core Rooms and Areas of Interest. This comprises the majority of the book, and covers dozens of different locations on the three levels, but still only scratches the surface of the mapped area. Some of these link to the adventures in Undermountain Adventures. NPCs of Undermountain covers some important non-player characters in the dungeon; Relevant NPCs of Waterdeep does the same with the city itself. Magic of Undermountain introduces some new magical items; Spells of Undermountain introduces some new spells. The final section, How to Expand Undermountain, gives some ideas on expanding the complex, both physically and using NPCs.

Undermountain Adventures from The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set

Undermountain Adventures

This is a 32 page saddle stitched booklet by Ed Greenwood with a removable cover, on the reverse of which are maps for some of the adventures. One page of the booklet is the Table of Contents and front matter. The adventures are divided into three types; those that take adventurers into Undermountain (two), those that leave Undermountain (two) and those chiefly concerned with Undermountain (three).

Adventure Hooks is a couple of pages of brief adventure ideas that need fleshing out. Monster Guide is a summary of monsters used in the adventures and Campaign Guide that are not in either of the first two Monstrous Compendium supplements, but have been covered in other supplements. This is intended to provide enough information to use these monsters if the relevant supplements aren’t owned.

Skullport provides a one page summary of this underground city on level 3, but it was, of course, more fully detailed in its own supplement later. There are a couple of pages on The Rat Hills, a garbage dump outside of Waterdeep, to which a number of gates lead, although this is also covered in the City of Splendors boxed set. Finally, there is one page of Maps & Charts of Undermountain.

The maps from The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set

Poster Maps

There are four full colour maps of Undermountain which fold out to approximately A1 in size. Levels I and II each have one map; Level III has two maps which join together.

The Monstrous Compendium pages from The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set

Monstrous Compendium Pages

These are eight hole-punched sheets detailing ten new monsters.

The cards from The Ruins of Undermountain Boxed Set

Cards

These eight cards are all double sided, with a variety of different tables on them. Three cards cover ten different pit traps, one card ten different smash traps, one card snares and lures, one card Naldrun’s magical doors – these are found throughout Undermountain, one card treasure tables and one card has three different dungeon dressing tables.

The Ruins of Undermountain in Review

The supplement is very text heavy, and there are a number of minor spelling and grammatical errors. There are a few, black and white illustrations throughout the two books, and these are mostly relevant to the associated text, but the text is definitely the main focus of the set. Otherwise, it looks pretty decent, and it possibly contains more writing than was common for the time.

Just like another famous dungeon near another famous city – Castle Greyhawk, near the City of Greyhawk – this dungeon was constructed by a powerful mage, Halastar, who is also more than a little crazy. The insanity is part of the justification for why such a dungeon would exist, and why it would be full of traps and monsters, and have new monsters appear to replace those killed and for traps to be reset – the insane mage is running the dungeon for his personal entertainment. Halastar also brings monsters in from other worlds, planes and settings, which does provide an explanation as to why a small number of creatures that aren’t found elsewhere in the Realms would be come across here (this being a perennial problem with the various iterations of Dungeons & Dragons – modules introducing new monsters not found elsewhere and with an inadequate population to sustain themselves). Megadunegons are not, on the face of it, terribly logical locations, but an attempt is made to get around this, and there are some suggestions that would make it a living location, rather than simply a bunch of separate monster encounters.

Undermountain has portals and gates leading all over the Realms, and beyond, even to an asteroid in the Spelljammer setting, which is referenced in this supplement but covered in a later module. There are numerous references to many external locations that are connected to Undermountain, but are not part of it. A Dungeon Master who doesn’t want his players ending up all over the Forgotten Realms would be advised to not use every single external gate that is listed. Otherwise, Undermountain can be used to explore the Realms as well as the dungeon.

The dungeon was later extended with The Ruins of Undermountain II, Skullport, which is listed on Level III as part of the map as well as being briefly mentioned in Undermountain Adventures, and three Dungeon Crawl adventure modules: Undermountain: The Lost Level, Undermountain: Maddgoth’s Castle and Undermountain: Stardock (the Dungeon Crawl modules are all stated to be possible to convert to other settings). The final one of these, Stardock, links to an asteroid in the Spelljammer setting, which is previously mentioned in this supplement. These were all for AD&D 2nd Edition; further supplements were published for other versions, including one for D&D 3.5 – which rivalled this supplement in size and coverage, and rebooted the dungeon – and D&D 4th Edition.

Undermountain is described as having nine major levels, of which three are covered in this supplement. Even with all of the supplements published for Undermountain in AD&D 2nd Edition, there are still huge areas of the dungeon completely unmapped (and these are often mentioned in the text), and even on the maps there are huge areas not detailed, and left for the DM to detail themselves. Undermountain also connects to the Realms Below – the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms, providing access to places such as the drow city of Menzoberranzan, if desired.

Given that each level of the dungeon that is mapped in this supplement lacks many detailed descriptions – or, indeed, any description at all – being simply empty rooms, passages, buildings and caves (and buildings inside caves) any Dungeon Master planning to run Undermountain will need to do extensive work fleshing out the dungeon before running it, or their players will end up tromping around a mostly deserted setting. By far the easiest way of doing this is probably by finding small, published adventures and scenarios (such as those that were published in Dungeon) that can, with a bit of work, be sited in this dungeon instead. Which will likely require altering the maps of the published scenarios to fit the maps of Undermountain – or possibly vice versa.

The collection of adventures is a bit odd, as many are sited outside the actual dungeon. Some do take players into it, but many take them out again, and some don’t even need to be inside it at any point. They aren’t truly a set of adventures set in the dungeon complex, only based around it. Of course, any party that heads into the dungeon may face other encounters.

Undermountain may be linked to Waterdeep, with references to that city, but there is no reason why it could not be located under another city – or even out in the wilds. It is, after all, a dungeon, and doesn’t need a specific aboveground location.

The Monstrous Compendium pages of new monsters – a common feature of supplements in this period – are still loose-leaf at this point for inserting into binders. They have already have become less than useful for their original aim, to collect together all monsters in alphabetical order, as all of these sheets are double sided, with different monsters on each side in a couple of cases which makes ordering them alphabetically impossible, and largely negates the whole point of having separate sheets. The cards are quite useful and can be of use in any dungeon, not just Undermountain.

This is a mammoth set that still only briefly covers this enormous dungeon, leaving a lot of room for a DM to make it their own, but it will need extensive development to make best use of it. The Ruins of Undermountain is still worth picking up, although those playing in D&D 3rd Edition or later Forgotten Realms may be advised to get the 3rd Edition reboot instead.