Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk: A D&D Adventure Supplement (Dungeons & Dragons) [Hardcover]

Based on the 2e adventure Greyhawk Ruins, this campaign takes characters from 8th to 13th level while they divide their time exploring and investigating the Ruins of Greyhawk and the City of Greyhawk itself. Their adventures will take them back and forth between these two locations as the story progresses.

- Several portions of each of the three towers of the Ruins of Greyhawk are detailed, the parts relevant to the campaign laid out in the book. Some of the maps are re-creations of the 2e version, others are modified somewhat, and the rest completely new. The basic personality of each tower seems to be faithfully preserved.
- Mordenkainen makes an enigmatic appearance, and there are hints of him affecting the spread of information leading up to the encounter, cleverly showing how he manipulates events in the world but remains in the shadows, as he always does.
- A map of the City of Greyhawk is provided, faithful to the layout of the 2e boxed set The City of Greyhawk. The building placement is more dense in this version, and only a small part of the city is detailed. There are basic summaries of areas not fully covered.
- Several side quests in both the Ruins and the City are provided as filler for the slower times during the campaign, as well as suggestions for random encounters between significant locations.
- Descriptions and backgrounds for key NPCs in the adventure (several of which are part of long-time Greyhawk lore) are also provided, but statistics are not provided for all of them.
- Most encounters use the one or two page format for ease of setup.

Over half of the adventure takes place in the Ruins, and there will be other tasks for characters in the City itself, as well as additional locations they visit from within the Ruins.

All in all, I would say it's a well rounded adventure with a wide variety of challenges. I particularly enjoyed how some of Zagig's leftover magic continues to function, preserving his humorous eccentricity without compromising how dangerous it can be as well.

I would have hoped that more of the Ruins themselves were detailed, but the original 2e adventure had over a thousand rooms. To detail that much in a volume like this which uses the encounter format present in the most recent DnD adventures would make the book far too thick, plus increase the scope of the adventure beyond what the designers intended. It was clear, however, that the designers used material from the 2e version and updated it for this campaign. It's entertaining to see their visions of how things have changed in the Ruins after all this time.

Also, those not accustomed to the more recent one and two page encounter format may have some trouble following the intended path through the campaign, so some study will be required, especially involving the NPC's and events in the city.

Added: As a final note, after taking a closer look at the material, I've found the campaign to be very treasure heavy. After selling what they don't want to keep and purchasing and making their own items, you can expect your players to not find any upgrades for a few levels afterwards! When asked about this, James Jacobs said it was a design decision, given the nature of the dungeon's reputation of being an adventurer's dream.

Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk is easily the best adventure release of the 3.x era. It contains a vast number of easter eggs for the old school gamers, while containing a great storyline for those who are new to D&D. I firmly believe that Mona and Jacobs are the best writers in the game, and Jason Bulmahn is a young talent to watch. His Dungeon adventure, Mad God's Key, was the beginning point to my current campaign.
This adventure has everything that makes for good playing: a great number of role-playing opportunities, an open storyline that allows freedom to the players, excellent and well thought out encounters, a vast city to explore, and, of course, the original Greatest Dungeon Of Them All!!
I honestly can't think of any reason why any Dungeon Master who purchased this product would be disappointed. As the title says--if you buy this, your only problem will be that you will want to scrap your current campaign and run this one ASAP.

Long before the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, heck before most of us even knew what a role-playing game was, there was Greyhawk. Created by Dungeons & Dragons godfather Gary Gygax, Greyhawk would morph from a castle to an entire world. This was the world developed by Gygax and other early D&D pioneers Dave Arneson and Len Lakofka. Over thirty years later Greyhawk maintains a mythical air. It's characters such as Mordenkainen, Bigby, Vecna, Tenser, and Lolth, whose names are scattered all about the D&D world in relation to spell names and magical items. Over the years, both TSR and Wizards of the Coast have put out supplements based in Greyhawk and the latest major edition is the Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, a truly massive campaign designed for characters of 8 - 13th level (Think higher rather than lower). And while it may be set on Greyhawks world of Oerth, it can easily be dropped into an existing campaign. One would have to think that Gygaz would have loved to have been able to produce a 200 plus page "module" but that was unheard of back then.

The lore of Greyhawk is some of the richest ever developed and frankly puts The Forgotten Realms to shame. The characters developed are some of the most interesting and vibrant characters ever created. The first chapter of the book details many of these major NPCs such as Zagyg (Gygax spelled backwards) who built Castle Greyhawk; Iuz the Demi-God, Archmages Iggwilv and Mordenkainen, and Lord Robilar.

The developers could have just thrown a massive dungeon crawl at players and most would have probably been happy to run gleefully off to play in Greyhawks many levels. But you really do get a complete campaign of not only the castle itself, but its surroundings that is loaded with side quests brimming with intrigue and action. Many of these side quests are ongoing throughout the book and can be revisited numerous times over the course of the entire campaign. The Welcome to Greyhawk chapter details the town itself, popular stopping points like the Green Dragon Inn and Temple of St. Cuthbert; major NPC's, town culture and much more. Mini-maps of the towns various regions are included.

All that remains of the castle are the ruins of three towers: The Tower of magic, The Tower of Zagyg, and the Tower of War. The real action lies underneath these interconnected towers in miles and miles of dungeon levels. Each tower and its dungeons are full detailed with maps and encounter areas as well as random encounter tables. Even getting inside the ruins are no easy task as the players will find out in a series of daunting quests. The sheer scope of the entire adventure could be daunting and its really best suited to a very experienced DM as this much more than a usual hack-n-slash adventure. I mean, it's fun just to sit down and read through the levels. I'm still not real crazy about the major encounters being written up at the end of each chapter instead of just being there as you go along.

There are surprisingly few new monsters and magic items which is fine by me as there are MORE than enough to go around already. Literally this is an adventure which, depending on how often you play, should take players many weeks if not months to complete. It's big...it's deep...and its waiting...I really like this book although I'm partial to the whole Greyhawk mystique. I think the writers have tried to be faithful to Gygax's creation while adding their own unique handprints.

REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON