Inside the Ruins

Credit: Streamline Studios

Hello and welcome to my world building blog!

Today, we'll be referring to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Design Kit by Harold Johnson and Aaron Allston, published in 1988 by TSR, Inc.  Book III: Adventure Cookbook has a formula for picking your settings.  We already know our major setting is going to be the Ruins of Azamar; I mean, it's in the name.  But the book gives us options that will make this adventure interesting.

The first part of the formula is the General setting:

"The adventure's General Setting is the broad area where most of the adventure takes place."

The Adventure Cookbook has a list of settings ranging from Alternate Plane and Exotic Distant Land, to Here's Home Town and Under the Sea.

Referring to my random generator, the General setting for the Ruins is "Torturous Terrain".

"The adventure takes place in some sort of unsettled, uncivilized, dangerous terrain; in action stories, the desert and the jungle work best; choose one of those two or decide on a setting that is similarly dangerous and exotic.

"In this setting, the heroes have to contend with their villainous foes, yes, but they also have to deal with the inhabitants of the region, the monsters of the region, and the effort of just staying alive in a dangerous or unfamiliar climate."

Even though we already know our setting is the Ruins of Azamar, the above description gives us a general idea and a little more insight into what the Ruins are going to be like.  It gives me the vision of crumbly, craggy ruins, of walls ready to collapse at any moment, and unsteady floors that could fall into the level far below.  There could be death traps set by the Cult of Ithaqua against adventurers.  Conjured, monstrous creatures at every turn.  And Cult guards patrolling the halls of the Ruins.

The general idea here is make your players work for it.  It's not going to be an easy journey to the cult leader, who is preparing the ritual to summon the Death-Walker!

The next part of the setting formula is the Specific setting.  According to the book, "...you can choose specific locales for scenes in your adventure.  You can choose as many of these as you want; usually two is best."

I programmed my generator to choose two, and we got Temple/Church and Demi-human Community.

"Temple/Church.  This can be either the church of some lofty and good deity, or the dark and grisly temple of some horrid deity (doubtless filled with evil soldiers and monsters), or even the temple that the madman villain has dedicated to himself for when he becomes a god."

This one is a gimme, and fits too well with our General setting.  Within the Ruins lies a temple occupied by the Cult, and could be the finale scene where the adventurers find the Cult leader performing the ritual.  They'll have to act fast!

"Demi-human Community.  In wilderness areas, this will be a large community of demi-humans - elves, dwarves, halflings, whatever - or intelligent nonhumans such as orcs.  If your action is taking place in a city, this could be a hidden community (such as a secret underground dwarf community) or a section of the city inhabited mostly by demi-humans."

Considering the above entry is taken from the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons supplement published in 1988, the word "demi-human" actually stems back from the Basic book, which came out in 1974.  Any playable character that was not human, back then, was considered a demi-human, which included elves, dwarves, and halflings.  Nowadays, with the popularity of 5e, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and other role-playing systems, I think the word demi-human could be a reference to any non-human playable character.

Since the Ruins of Azamar takes place in a high fantasy setting, the demi-human community settled in the territory of the Cult is probably one that the religious zealots haven't found, yet.  Could it be that the adventurers arrive at this place as the Cult is invading them with their conjured creatures?

Oh!  So many stories to tell and adventures to be had.  Sorry, sometimes I get a little giddy when developing an adventure.

So, when developing your adventure, the book does state that you can pick as many settings as you want your adventurers to find.  I think I'm going to keep it down to just the two Specific settings, and call it a day.

Next week, we'll take a look at Allies and Neutrals for our adventure because, you know, everyone needs allies.

I hope you enjoyed the read, and until next time, thanks for reading.