The Lost City of Ballogfar Part I aka All About Ruins by John Josten is a generic role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is part of the Small Bites series and is the “World Walker” version. The full version is available to Patreon subscribers and is about five times the length.
The supplement is available as a 19-page PDF for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover.
The Introduction explains that The Garrison of Greassnggraus is a useful addition to this supplement which is about a large ruined city. This part covers the city; the next the people. The city itself has a plot which keeps moving regardless of the characters’ actions.
The Fletnern Wiki duplicates entries from the wiki related to Ballogfar and ruins. It covers sites, regions, races and cities.
The Sounding Board duplicates several blog posts. Ruins says that the author loves ruins, but they always felt dungeons made little sense (because, truthfully, they don’t) and ruins above ground made more sense, from cities to buildings.
Massive Dungeons considers what’s needed in a “dungeon” site and how the ruined city contains these elements.
Building a Ruin from the Ground Up references an article on Ruins from Dragon Magazine and how that assumed every ruin was the same. However, cities can fall into ruin in different ways. Building a city then destroying it would be the best way, but time consuming, though an existing city could be used. Who inhabited the city and how it fell are important.
Dungeon Biology continues with the theme of dungeons making little sense and considers different dungeon food sources, with examples for a specific creature.
How to Play a… Ruin Explorer gives a number of motivations for why characters would want to explore ruins in the first place; greed, hatred, research, altruism and power. These are aimed at this particular city, but are transferrable.
News of Fletnern references The Garrison of Greassnggraus again and contains The Geology of the Rhoric Hills which covers the resources of the region.
Pull Back the Curtain explains how Ballogfar was originally created by the designer.
Y? Y? Y! references the Dragon Magazine article again and how randomly rolling ruins was boring, but the idea that the characters would not be the first to loot them made sense.
What’s Missing explains what’s in the full version.
In Conclusion asks for input on which direction to take Ballogfar and has various links.
Finally, Meneeolay’s Journal is a journal written in character, although in a font that isn’t that easy to read.
The Lost City of Ballogfar Part I aka All About Ruins in Review
The PDF is bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents is less thorough but is hyperlinked. There are also a number of external links to relevant material. Navigation is good. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be mostly free of errors. There are a number of stock and public domain black and white images. Presentation is okay.
As with others in the series, this is a collection of generally related articles, this time on the subject of ruins and, in parts, why they are better than dungeons. The articles adhere more to the subject than they do in some editions, though there isn’t a great deal of information on Ballogfar itself; that is largely GM material and not put in these free versions. The Lost City of Ballogfar Part I aka All About Ruins is an assortment of interesting articles and it can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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