Tim Lowell

Ruins Near Town

"Near every village there are ruins to explore." -Dwarf Prospector Proverb The Ruins Near Town is a fantasy role-playing game, designed for solo play, wherein your party of bold adventurers explores monster-infested ruins, dark dungeons, ancient dwarf realms and spider-haunted crypts, where horrid monsters roam and fiendish traps snare the unwary, where coffers of riches lie waiting. It is a world where knight, cleric, rogue and hireling; slayer, enchantress and leprechaun; jester, elf and dwarf join forces to explore dungeons and travel the land on a quest for fame and fortune. The goal of play is to have fun, slay some monsters, find some treasure and earn ten Legend Points. As the party recovers certain artifacts, slays certain monsters and travels the land performing certain deeds that the villagers deem to be good, the party's legend grows. If they perform enough noble or noteworthy deeds, bards start to sing of their deeds in the taverns of the land. If the party gains 10 Legend Points, they retire from adventuring and take up farming or maybe move to a large city and open a shop or something. Game play is centered around an extensive number of encounter tables. Once the party enters a dungeon, d66 rolls are made on the Dungeon Room Table - the central "hub" dungeon encounter table. From there, you will often be sent to one table or another until the encounter is concluded. There are 35 dungeon tables in all. Your party of adventurers is created with a standard deck of playing cards. The party's gear is also determined by card draws. If not playing a one-shot dungeon delve, there are expanded rules for traveling the land to find more ruins to explore, attracting more characters to your party as well as equipment costs when you find some gold. The rules are simple enough to allow you to play an entire party of characters solo. Monster encounters scale in difficulty according to party strength; combat is boiled down to a single d6 roll per side (the stronger side adds 1 to its roll); keeping track of lost party strength (the main attribute) is a snap given the game's combined strength rules, while delver action rolls are resolved with d6's as well. To play, you will need a pencil, a pad of paper for your expedition record, a standard deck of playing cards with two jokers, 6 and 10-sided dice.