A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Secrets Of The Old Ruins

Secrets Of The Old Ruins by Edward E. Sutton is a role playing game supplement published by FEI Games Inc. for use with Old School Essentials. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is an adventure for 6-8 characters of levels 2-4.

The supplement is available as a 14 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers and one the Open Game License.

GM Notes: explains that all descriptive text is presented as if no alarm has been raised; should the inhabitants become aware of an intrusion, changes will need to be made. It also covers the location of the stat blocks used, lighting, noise, morale, location and approaching it. The ruins can be placed just about anywhere close enough to trade routes and settlements for the bandits to raid.

The various locations are then described. There are the aboveground ruins and a lower level; the outlaws who inhabit the ruins fear the lower region. The locations primarily follow a bullet point format, with a description, general bullet points then more specific ones to do with encounters, which can change depending on the time of day, treasure and rumours. Only those relevant for the location are included.

Complete Stat Block Appendix has stats for the various encounters.

The final two pages of content have maps of the ruins and belowground area.

Secrets Of The Old Ruins in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text follows a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. As well as the maps, there are a number of stock black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.

This is very much an old school adventure. The goal is to go in and clean out the ruins, and the belowground area is effectively independent of the upper ruins, essentially making it two different types of adventure. The encounter formatting is the more modern minimalist approach however, that aims to cover as many details as efficiently as possible. Secrets Of The Old Ruins can be found by clicking here.