Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk

Overall score:

In the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons, creator Gary Gygax ran an epic series of adventures in a place called Castle Greyhawk. This was Neolithic roleplaying—a simplistic hack and slash that virtually defined the “dungeon crawl” mentality that dominated the hobby for years. Many people remember this campaign, having read about it in roleplaying magazines or even seen it played at conventions; but there can’t be more than a handful of people who think it would be a good idea to bring Castle Greyhawk back to life in the modern era. Unfortunately, one of those people apparently works at Wizards of the Coast, and so we find ourselves with a $35, hardbound book that says, “You meet in a bar—let’s go kill some monsters!” I had hoped the hobby had already made its saving throw against this kind of thing.

This is not to say that a dungeon crawl is an inherently terrible thing. In my D&D group we welcome the occasional break from politics, war, and mystery to slog through a dungeon and kill some monsters. What bothers me so much about Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk is that it’s so massive, and comes so late in an adventuring party’s career.

The adventure is designed for levels 8 through 13, which is an awfully long time to spend in a dungeon, and by level 8 I’d hope you have better things to do anyway. If you’re far enough into your campaign that you’ve hit level 8, and yet so little invested in your game world that you’re willing to play a room-by-room slugfest in an aggressively generic setting, why are you roleplaying at all? You may as well just play Descent or Heroscape or any number of similar games. Dungeon crawls have so little roleplaying, and D&D combat is currently half boardgame anyway, so if that’s what you want, why not just go all the way? It costs a little more, but you get better models and more replayability.

I think the boardgame thing may be at the root of my problem with this book. “Stop turning D&D into a minis game!” is practically the rallying cry of D&D’s detractors, and yet the game seems more and more tied to the maps and figures with every new book. The adventures from a year or two ago, like Red Hand of Doom, were complex and diplomatic, providing just as much roleplaying as combat, and lots of opportunity for study and decision making. Ruins of Greyhawk, on the other hand, could practically be played without D&D at all—just a bunch of figures and the D&D Miniatures rulebook. Call it Chainmail 2007. It may be a return to Gygax’s original style, I admit, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

Thus far this has been much more of a rant than a review, so allow me to get off my high horse for a minute and tell you about the adventure itself.

Castle Greyhawk is the creation of the mad mage Zagig Yragerne, and is said to contain countless riches. The characters’ initial interest in it is purely as treasure hunters, but as they explore deeper they find a plot thick with imprisoned demons, insane gods, and ancient plans still ticking slowly toward completion. This all sounds kind of cool, but the structure of the dungeon limits it largely to a string of fights and discoveries (explore level 1, kill some monsters, find a clue, defeat a boss, go to level 2, etc).

Throughout the early stages the characters are traveling in and out of the cleared dungeon to visit the nearby town, which provides not only a chance for healing and shopping, but a welcome change of pace in the middle of the book; halfway through the story you get embroiled in a subplot with the city’s Thief’s Guild, which is a nice break from dungeon-slogging.

Personally I prefer the ratio of dungeon to non-dungeon reversed, but if you’re still interested in this book after everything I’ve said then there’s nothing I can do to dissuade you. After you deal with the thieves it’s straight back into the dungeon, and you hang out there for the rest of the adventure trying to deal with Zagig’s tricks and the foul monsters that have infested his castle.

So: do I recommend that you purchase this book? Of course not. If you’re a collector of D&D memorabilia then it’s an interesting sidenote to the game’s legacy, but if you’re that interested in D&D history I imagine you’d rather have material from Castle Greyhawk’s original incarnation and not its exhumed corpse. If you’re just looking for a good adventure, I repeat my earlier recommendation of Red Hand of Doom—it’s a little cheaper, a lot better, and is a hallmark of how good modern adventure design can be. If they can shine that talent on some new ideas instead of dancing with dinosaurs, we can all forget this little indiscretion and move on with our lives.

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Written by Fellfrosch on August 31st, 2007