The Archon Ruins

A new adventure by Brazilian author/illustrator Alex Damaceno (@gnarledmonster)!

Beyond the desert mountains lies the ruins of a forgotten civilization. The reason for its collapse is a subject of study to scholars from many realms, but one thing is known for certain: there lies the largest vein of arcane crystals in the known world! Yet, extracting them is no easy task and many ventures have already failed miserably...

The Archon Ruins is a system-agnostic microsetting for tabletop adventure games. Here you play as treasure hunters in a place full of mysterious magic, dangerous conflict, and pottery creatures! The zine is written for two styles of gameplay: those who enjoy using minimalist rulesets with lots of improvised rulings, and friendly tables without a Game Master.

As a GMless adventure, the text has no secrets to be discovered or revealed, except what can be added through randomness or player input. The challenges and situations have no expressed solution and are expected to be solved with creativity.

Ps.: Traditional GMs are also welcome to use this zine as a starting point to prep their own sessions beforehand!

The 44 page zine contains:

Two regional maps
The Desert Plateau (overworld)
The Glowing Caves (underworld)
Six dungeon maps with six rooms each
Six factions of dungeon reavers with their own goals
Six arcane scholars looking for lost knowledge
11 unique Potkin monsters to fight
36 magical artifacts to find in the ruins