Ruins of Intrigue (PDF)

An Arcana Evolved Campaign Sourcebook by Mike Mearls

The ruins of Serathis loom high in the mountains. Only recently uncovered, this ancient city draws hundreds to its shattered streets in search of treasure and adventure. Giants and dragons square off from opposite sides of the ruins. The winds of war howl in the distance. Vast wealth and terrible monsters await!

Ruins of Intrigue provides the foundation for an entire campaign using the Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved variant player's handbook. It presents Serathis, a ruined dramojh city located between territories claimed by the giants and dragons. Both factions seek to hold the city and its treasure, setting the stage for conflict. The book's adventure source material will take your characters to 10th level and beyond.

Ruins of Intrigue provides a detailed, modular overview of Serathis. Major NPCs and locations have sets of optional secrets and variants, making every campaign different! A rich array of ideas, plots, and vying factions gives you varied ideas for creating adventures. Just pick a hook, choose a goal, select an obstacle, and you’re ready to go! The campaign-in-one-book also contains new monsters, secret societies, organizations, and other material that reflects the city's ancient secrets. Suitable for characters of all levels.

This comprehensive look at an exciting new realm of adventure gives DMs the chance to start and run a campaign with ease and offers characters the opportunity to play an important role in the Lands of the Diamond Throne.

Ruins of Intrigue

Ruins of Intrigue is of course an intriguing place. It is a site adventure and setting for Arcana Evolved. Arcana Evolved is the updated version of Arcana Unearthed though with can work for this. Arcana Evolved though will work much better. This book is many things from the start and foundation of a full campaign to a setting sourcebook with information and intrigue all around the ruins. It is a versatile book and really one of the more interesting takes on an adventure and making a book that has lasting potential.

Ruins of Intrigue is a new book by Malhavok Press. It is written by Mike Mearls one of the unsung writers in the d20 market these days. He does some very high quality work and tends to write full books by himself. This ninety eight page PDF also comes in a print format though this review covers the PDF version. The content of the two though are the same so aside from the mention of book marks and how well this prints out the review can be used to for the print version. The book is well book marked and aside from the color on the first and last pages that are the covers this black and white PDF prints out nicely. The lay out and art are both well done.

The book is written as the description to the ruins of the old and ancient city. There are plenty of adventure hooks and mysteries for the characters to explore. Not all of them will be of the appropriate level for the PCs but the book makes a grand attempt for being able to challenge characters at first through twenty fifth levels. That is no small feat in itself. The book is not written as an adventure that leads the players from point A to point B to point C and so on and so forth. The book is has many different places described and it is up to the players to go were they will thought the DM can lead them to challenges appropriate for their level if hew wants to.

The PCs are not the only people in the ruins. The Giants and Dragons both have people here and they are trying to explore and learn ancient secrets as well. Some of the secrets they have already uncovered. One great detail that makes the ruins so versatile is that the giants and dragons can be friends, neutral towards the PCs or even hostile. Each possibility is described and detailed leaving the DM with some nice choices that fit into the way they are running their campaign.

There is a lot of information here as there are plenty of places to be explored. The book can be useful to people not play ing an Arcana Evolved or Unearthed game, but it will require a lot more work on the DMs side. The classes and characters would need converted but more importantly this book assumes a certain history as it is built in the campaign setting of Arcana Evolved. It can be used though the amount of work needed to do so will vary from campaign world to campaign world, and depend on the variation if any on the d20 rule set the DM is using.

Ruins of Intrigue is a very good campaign supplement. The adventure ideas and versatility of the book are very good. It is rare to see a single book that has so many adventures and ideas built in. The book can be used weekly for years to come without exhausting everything that is inside it.

I've been waiting for a review on this product. I have had an itchy trigger finger on the "buy" button at DrivethruRPG.com for this product, and now I think I will pull it.

Does it go into any detail about the adversarial relationship between the Dragons and the Giants, setting up some different conflicts for the PCs in each of the adventure hooks? The no-alignment setting of Arcana Evolved is set up this way, where there are no "bad guys" or "good guys", just different ways of viewing things (OK, so that was entirely oversimplistic).

Are the adv hooks related to each other so that it could be built into a larger arching campaign?

CatsClaw

The big thing about Ruins of Intrigue is has a very skeleton framework, from there which you can change it to fit your ideas.

For example, you can make the area a boomtown where everyone is finding artifacts (like a gold rush) or a bumtown (lots of people coming to find stuff, but few find anything) and the module gives you suggestions on how to run either.

You can run the giants as being very helpful, or as an oppressive regime. The dragons can be there just for their own power, or are secretly scheming to take over the place.

The big advantage of ruins is that you can tweak it anyway you want. The big disadvantage is it takes a whole lot more work to get it going than a standard module. It gives you adventure ideas, but in reality you will have to build your adventures yourself.

I only recommend it for experienced dms who don't mind some grunt work, but it can be very worthwhile if you fit in that category.l

Conversions?

Hi - any thoughts on Ruins of Intrigue 's compatability with other settings? Could it be converted into a more standard D&D ruleset (ie with standard races, monsters, classes), or would the whole begin to fall apart with such tinkering?

Cheers

How tied in is the product to the Diamond Throne setting? I'm using bits of Arcana Evolved/Unearthed in a couple of games, but not the setting itself.


Cheers


Richard

Hi - any thoughts on Ruins of Intrigue 's compatability with other settings? Could it be converted into a more standard D&D ruleset (ie with standard races, monsters, classes), or would the whole begin to fall apart with such tinkering?

Click to expand...

It'll take some work but it is doible. It could fall apart or not, it really depends on how close to the Diamond Throne you are using (or at least have two adverseries that can take the place of the giants and Dragon).

Thanks. Specifically, I was thinking of Eberron (or, at least, the mutated Eberron my game looks like becoming). Giants and dragons are fine, I think, and them plus ruins should fit nicely into Xen'Drik (or some equivalent).

Setting aside, it sounds as if you think that AU mechanics (specifically classes, magic, PC races) are not essential to the product's success?

It does have NPCs stated using AE races and classes, but they can be replaced with other races and classes. It will change things like there is no good Akashick like class in core D&D. It is usible with out AE but it will take some work by the DM.

Thanks for the pointers - most appreciated.