Running The Ruins of Ramat

The Ruins of Ramat is an adventure for first level characters, published by Brave Halfling Publishing and written by John Adams. While I have already reviewed the Ruins of Ramat, today I finally got to run the quest as the "Labyrinth Lord".

Spoiler alert!! If you are planning on playing the Ruins of Ramat as a player, stop reading now.

For the first time in 20 years, I ran a game today. We had 7 players and some pre-generated characters. It took about 5 hours to run the adventure start to end. It's one thing to read an adventure. It's another to run it. Here are a few of the "gotchas" and speed bumps I ran into today.

The hook at the beginning of the module to rescue the young girl's dog was not a very good hook. It barely got the attention of the players. I think it would be better to skip the dog or replace the dog with a missing girl who was last seen with the dog.

The background in the module is for the referee. The "Ruins" are lost for 1500 years. So how do the players, or that matter "the villagers" know anything about it? What is there motive to go down into the ruins in the first place aside from the dog? This plot element is essential to sparking interest in the adventure. Today I handed out "hints" or rumors to spark their interest. It would be nice if the story were more coherent and if there was some way that the history of the place could be revealed during exploration. At least this way while trying to rescue the girl or the dog the players could solve a mystery.

In today's run of the game, the most difficult creature turned out to be the shadow in the training room. None of the player characters could hit the shadow because they had no magical weapons and only one magic missile spell. The ruins have magic weapons, but they are not in any linear path to the room with the shadow. Attached to the training room is a weapon room. But the module stocks, of all things, a cursed shield in there. Hmm, I moved a magical mace from another room into this room. It made for an interesting save for what would have otherwise been an unsolvable problem for the players.

The medallion and the golden disc is a difficult problem for the players to solve. Hours of game time can pass between finding the medallion and getting to the disc where the medallion is be placed to find the spear of Ramat. I had to drop some big clues, and then practically give it away to get the players today to make the connection.

We had a good time playing the Ruins of Ramat today. But I would change a few things the next time I run it. It needs a bit of polish. Would I run it again? Yup. But I'd rework some of it before I try it again.