The Ruin in the Savage Wastes by Connor McCloskey is a role playing game supplement published by Black Gambeson. The supplement comes in three versions, for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Shadowdark and Old School Essentials.
The PDF is available for free from DriveThruRPG. Each of the three PDFs has ten pages, with two pages being the front and rear covers. There are also four PNG players’ maps.
The Ruin in the Savage Wastes explains that ten years ago a catastrophic earthquake struck a borderland keep and three days later it was attacked from within, leaving only a few survivors. In this section, there’s an adventure hook, with the now-Baron older brother of the keep’s Castellan offering a reward for his brother’s sword. Design Notes explain that this is The Keep on the Borderlands after its fall, that it’s for 1st level characters, some notes on mechanics depending on system, inspirations and to make it eerie. It also has details and stat blocks for two groups of enemies.
The Battered Village of Last Tree maps and details the important locations in this village, together with a d6 table of rumours.
The Resentful Savage Wastes is a small hex crawl of the region, with a d6 table of random encounters and brief descriptions of each hex.
The Shattered Ruin of Men covers the aboveground area of the keep.
The Fractured Donjon of the Ruk covers the belowground area.
The Ruin in the Savage Wastes in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, though short, has enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text varies between one and two columns format and some minor errors were noticed. There are a number of black and white illustrations and maps. Presentation is decent.
This is a small starter adventure though that doesn’t mean it’s safe; there are a number of things that could be a challenge, and possibly a fatal one to the careless. It would also be possible to add some more details to both the village and the hex crawl to develop them further. Given its frontier location, it should also be easy enough to drop the adventure into many settings. The Ruin in the Savage Wastes can be found by clicking here.
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